Teleology Beyond Ends

Since Aristotle, teleological directedness has generally been taken to be a directedness at a goal the possession of which fulfills the teleology. I will argue that this is an oversimplification of agential and non-agential teleologies. My main argument is based on reflection on a common phenomenon in sports and games where we inaccurately describe ourselves as having an end and use the phrase “as F as possible,” where F is a term like “fast,” “far,” “high a score,” etc., in our description of that end. Such cases also come up in much more important pursuits such as that of knowledge, as well as in non-agential cases. I then offer a generalization of the goal-based analysis which better handles these cases and briefly discuss applications to ethics and eschatology. I end by offering a solution to the famous problem of the relationship between the natural and supernatural ends in Aquinas.