The Ethics of Living Without Final Causes

Why things do not exist for our sake, and why this truth is liberating.

I.

The belief that things exist for purposes is among the most natural of human errors. The eye exists for seeing. The rain exists for the crops. The world exists for us. Spinoza calls this the doctrine of final causes, and he devotes the Appendix to Part I of the Ethics to dismantling it. The dismantling is not merely a correction of a theoretical mistake. It is the foundation of an ethics that can survive contact with reality.

Final causes are the habit of explaining things by their ends rather than by their causes. We say that rain falls in order to water the crops. Spinoza points out that rain falls because of atmospheric conditions, and that the crops benefit is a consequence, not a purpose. The confusion of consequence with purpose is the root of superstition, and uprooting it is the beginning of adequate understanding.

II.

Why is the error so persistent? Because it is flattering. The belief that things exist for our sake places humanity at the center of the universe. The sun exists to give us light. Animals exist to serve us. Nature exists to provide for us. This anthropocentrism is emotionally satisfying, but it is intellectually disastrous. It prevents us from understanding how things actually work, because we are too busy asking what they are for to ask what caused them.

Spinoza traces the genealogy of the error. People notice that things in nature are useful to them: eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, plants for eating. They infer that these things were made for their use. They then infer a maker who designed them for that purpose. The maker is God, and God's purposes become the ultimate explanation for everything. The entire edifice of supernatural religion rests on the mistake of treating consequences as purposes.

III.

Living without final causes means accepting that things do not exist for our sake. The universe is not arranged for our benefit. It is arranged according to necessary laws, and we are among the things that those laws produce. This is not a cheerful thought, but it is a true one, and its truth has practical consequences.

The most important consequence is that we cannot appeal to purpose when things go wrong. You cannot say that a tragedy happened for a reason. It happened because of causes. You cannot say that a loss was meant to teach you something. It may teach you something, if you learn from it, but the learning is your achievement, not the loss's purpose. The distinction between consequence and purpose is the difference between agency and passivity. The person who treats consequences as purposes is passive. The person who draws consequences from causes is active.

IV.

Living without final causes also changes how we relate to our own desires. We desire things, and we naturally assume that we desire them because they are good. Spinoza reverses the order. We call things good because we desire them. The desire is primary. The judgment of goodness is secondary. Understanding this keeps us from mistaking our preferences for cosmic values.

You want something. Fine. The question is not whether the universe endorses your wanting. The question is whether satisfying the desire will increase your power or diminish it, whether it flows from an adequate understanding of your nature or from a confused affect, whether it serves your flourishing in the long run or merely gratifies an impulse in the moment. These are causal questions, not teleological ones. They can be investigated. The investigation is ethics, properly understood.

V.

The liberation in living without final causes is the liberation from imaginary obligations. If things do not exist for purposes, then you are not obliged to fulfill a cosmic role. Your life is not a story with a predetermined plot. It is a sequence of causes and effects, and your power consists in understanding those causes well enough to influence the effects. This is less grandiose than the belief that you are playing a part in a divine drama, but it is also less constraining. You are free to determine what your life means, because meaning is not built into the structure of things. It is built by the mind that understands.