Means and Purpose – Why Telos Has Been Lost
For a long time, it was self-evident that things served a purpose. Nature had a goal, humans had aspirations, actions had a direction. Philosophy called this Telos—the purposeful, the meaningful. Aristotle thought in terms of final causes, theology spoke of divine plans. Even law had a direction: justice, order, peace.
However, this concept has faded. Modernity has replaced purpose with function, Telos with interest, the “why” with the “how.” Today, we no longer talk about purposes but about stakeholders. No longer “What is it good for?” but “Who benefits from it?”
Both questions answer the “why,” but in different ways: The question “What is it good for?” implies a goal, an “in order to.” For example: “Why are you watering the plant?”—”To keep it alive.” The question “Who benefits from this?” can refer to a specific advantage, such as: “Why was this decision made?”—”Because it benefits the company.” In this sense, purpose becomes an interest, Telos turns into a utility calculus. Ihering already distinguished between the “because” (causal explanation) and the “in order to” (goal reference)—and this distinction remains epistemologically central today.
Reasons for this Shift
One is the rise of the natural sciences, whose mathematical foundation has made the world understandable as a chain of calculable causalities. Cause and effect can be computationally traced, formulated into equations, predicted. Yet what things mean cannot be measured. Positivism—in its general form, not just in law—declared only what could be observed, counted, and repeated as valid. Everything else—ethics, meaning, justice—was relegated to speculation. Thus, the question of Telos was banished to the realm of subjectivity.
Examples of this can be found everywhere: In medicine, measurable healing success is valued, not subjective well-being. In education, tests and grades matter, but not curiosity or inner growth.
In the 20th century, humanity also had bitter experiences with ideologies that tried to provide meaning. Communism can be seen as an attempt to communalize societies, nationalism as an attempt to protect a supposedly homogeneous community. Both abused the idea of community (homogeneous human groups) and society (heterogeneous human groups), putting purpose above means and considering the deaths of millions not merely as side effects but as legitimate methods of achieving goals. These experiences led to deep-seated suspicion: Ideologies with predefined purposes are always at risk of being used as instruments of power.
The Crisis of Meaning Today
This crisis of meaning was compensated by the numbing logic of the market, which, through a quasi-mathematical basis, delivers “calculable values.” Here, the purpose seems to be quantifying the good to orient decisions toward utility. But purpose becomes means—and means become purpose. Economic growth, originally a means to better living, becomes an end in itself. Education, originally a means for personal development, becomes a means for increasing job market opportunities—which then become the goal. Thus arises empty self-reference: Means justify themselves and replace meaning.
Attempts to ascribe meaning to purpose are thus viewed with suspicion. Today, anyone speaking of “goals” feels compelled to justify them with “objective” reasons: efficiency, sustainability, resilience, innovation. Yet all these terms are not goals themselves but means disguised as goals. We no longer justify what we want but merely how we implement it efficiently.
A universally recognized non-quantifiable purpose does not seem to exist, as it cannot be verified. There is no method of proving that such a purpose leads to something measurably good—and simultaneously excludes the bad. What cannot be calculated is regarded as an opinion.
A Possible Way Forward
A possible way out could be to think not in the dualism of community and society but to speak of a common good encompassing both forms. And the greatest conceivable common good is humanity as a whole. In this horizon, market logic loses its position as the highest instance. It is dethroned because it must subordinate itself as a means to the purpose of preserving, promoting, and protecting humanity.
Yet with the enthronement of humanity as the ultimate purpose, a new danger arises: humanity as an ideology. And so the old question returns—but on a different level: What does it mean to be human? Anyone attempting to define this term once and for all will miss it. Humanity is not static—it grows, it errs, it questions. And it bears responsibility. Therefore, those who speak in the name of humanity should always keep humanity in mind—not as an idea but as a living counterpart.
Imagine an alien came to Earth—a completely unfamiliar third party—and you were tasked with explaining what it means to be human. You couldn’t present numbers, formulas, or profit calculations. You would have to tell what it means to hope, to err, to love, to suffer—and to take responsibility. Perhaps this is the touchstone for every purpose: whether you could explain it to a stranger who knows nothing of this world.
And perhaps every newborn child is just such a stranger—a completely unfamiliar third party who comes into the world from the world. And whom we should welcome not with theories, but with humanity.
