Aquinas by Edward Feser

Author:Edward Feser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oneworld Publications
Published: 2011-04-13T04:00:00+00:00

The Fifth Way

The proof from finality starts with the observation that “things which lack intelligence, such as natural bodies, act for an end, and this is evident from their acting always, or nearly always, in the same way, so as to obtain the best result” (ST I.2.3). From this it is plain that they act “not fortuitously, but designedly” (ST I.2.3). But whatever lacks intelligence can only act for an end if it is directed by something which has intelligence, “as the arrow is shot to its mark by the archer” (ST I.2.3). “Therefore some intelligent being exists by whom all natural things are directed to their end; and this being we call God” (ST I.2.3).

Aquinas’s first three Ways are all variations on what is known as the “cosmological argument” for the existence of God (from the Greek kosmos meaning “order”). The Fourth Way is sometimes called the “henological argument” (from the Greek hen or “one”). The Fifth Way, in turn, is commonly taken to be a version of the “teleological argument” (from the Greek telos meaning “end” or “goal”). Etymologically speaking, this is an apt name for the proof, but it is also potentially misleading given that when most contemporary philosophers hear the expression “teleological argument” they naturally think of the famous “design argument,” associated historically with William Paley (1743–1805), and defended today by “Intelligent Design” theorists critical of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Indeed, many writers (such as Richard Dawkins) assume that the Fifth Way is just a variation on the “design argument.” But in fact Aquinas’s argument is radically different from Paley’s, and the standard objections directed against the latter have no force against the former.

Paley’s argument was roughly this. Like some human artifacts, the universe is extremely complex and orderly; and while it is theoretically possible that this complexity and order was the result of impersonal natural processes, it is far more likely that it is the work of an intelligent designer. Paley’s favorite examples of complexity and order are living things and their various organs. His successors in the “Intelligent Design” movement, though they attempt to formulate their position with greater mathematical rigor than Paley did, have followed him in this emphasis, focusing as they do on the purported “irreducible complexity” of various biological structures. Critics of the design argument respond that this is “God of the gaps” reasoning of the sort that is constantly vulnerable to being overthrown by the latest scientific research, which may well reveal (as it has in the past) that what seems at first glance to be irreducibly complex can be accounted for in terms of more simple, and impersonal, natural processes.

Whatever side one takes in this debate, it is irrelevant to the evaluation of Aquinas’s Fifth Way, which differs from the design argument of Paley and the “Intelligent Design” movement in several crucial respects. Paley’s argument would justify, at most, belief in a deistic god who gave order to the world at some point in the past

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