Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
example, the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights of the U.S. Consti-
tution presuppose a fairly definitive view of human nature—humans are
beings who wish to hold on to religious beliefs (or, as has been subse-
quently interpreted, beliefs that play a similar role to religion in one's
life), who wish to express themselves freely, who wish not to be tortured,
who wish to hold on to their property, who seek justice, who wish a
democratic form of government, and so on.
It is important to note that even if the majority of people at a given
time were not rational, did not care about religious freedom or free
speech, preferred a corrupt system of justice, or alleged that they were
content to live in a tyrannical society, this would not be taken by
Aristotle or the framers and interpreters of the Bill of Rights to mean
that the human telos had changed. All of these aspects would still
remain as ideals, as humanity at its best. For Aristotle, they would still
be unrealized potentials that ought to be realized; they would still be
human nature despite people's failure to realize it. There are, of course,
major differences between our view of human nature and Aristotle's,
most notably his belief in natural slaves, the inferiority of women, the
superiority of certain peoples over others, and so on (ironically, proba-
bly mirrored in the views of the framers of the Constitution, but have
been rejected in our ideal for human nature today). The key point is that
the idea of human nature or telos, for us or Aristotle, remains as much
prescriptive as descriptive, being in the prescriptive sense a goal to aim
at that humans potentially can and ought to achieve.
To summarize the discussion thus far, telos is both a metaphysical
notion grounding a certain view of biology in particular and reality in
general, best expressed in Aristotle. In many ways, this view accords with
common sense, though it conflicts with the dominant modern mecha-
nistic approach to science.
With regard to animals, the concept of telos helps to orient us ethi-
cally toward our obligations to animals—obligations that followed
naturally when animal use was based on husbandry. Now that we need
no longer respect telos to use animals successfully, the concept helps
articulate our moral obligations to them. Since animal nature is fairly
fixed and invariant, understanding animal nature factually is a simple
way to orient us ethically in how we ought to treat them.
