Telos

Telos was made popular by the ancient Greek Philosopher Aristotle. He believed that everything has a purpose that he called
telos. Telos is a Greek word that can mean purpose, intent, end or goal. However, Aristotle put it in more specific and delicate sense;
he defined telos as the inherent purpose of each thing, the final cause of each thing or the ultimate reason for each thing being the way
it is, whether created that way by human beings or nature. Human-created artifacts, living things, historical trends, actions; everything
has a telos. The purposes of human-created artifacts; i.e. books are for reading, chairs are for sitting, etc. The purposes of the natural
features of living things; i.e. wings are for flying, ears are for hearing. The telos of a human being is happiness, or  eudaimonia, which
means something more like “fulfillment”; fulfillment of our potential for excellence, or “virtues” in English translations of Aristotle.
The idea that historical processes have a telos became popular in the late 19  century, especially through Hegel’s dialectic and Karl
th

Marx’s theories (see Hegel’s and Marx’s theories). Telos is a central concept in the philosophy of human actions; actions are only
those behaviors which have a telos – those that are intentional; thus we hesitate to refer to accidental behaviors, such as tripping, as
“actions.” Telos is also the root of the term teleology, roughly the study of purposiveness or the study of objects with a view to their
aims, purposes or intentions.

“For all things that have a function or activity, the good and the well thought to reside in the function”.

The quotation is also about telos and it basically says that in achieving the telos, an object achieves also its own good. As
simple as that, everything has a function, and a thing is good to the extent that it fulfills its function and bad to the extent that it
doesn’t. This is easy to see in objects created by humans; a function of a knife is to cut, so a dull knife is a bad knife and, of course, a
sharp knife is a good knife; the function of a flower is to grow and reproduce, so a flower that doesn’t do that is just bad at being a
flower. The same goes for humans – we’re animals – so all the stuff that would indicate proper functioning for an animal holds true
for us as well – we need to grow and be healthy and fertile, but we’re also the rational animal, and a social animal, so our function
also involves using reason and getting along with our pack.

Golden Mean

‘We must be neither cowardly nor rash, but courageous (too little courage is cowardice, too much of it is rashness); neither
miserly nor extravagant, but liberal (not liberal enough is miserly, too much liberal is extravagant)’. It is the golden mean; doing the
right thing, at the right time, in the right way, in the right amount, toward the right people. Aristotle thought of all virtue works like
this. The write action is always a midpoint between extremes, which Aristotle called vices. Virtue is just the right amount – the
midpoint between the extreme of excess ant the extreme of deficiency.
Imagine a person who always knows what to say; can diffuse a tense situation; deliver tough news gracefully; confident
without being arrogant; brave but not reckless; and generous but not extravagant. This is the type of person that everybody wants to be
around; and to be like, someone who seems to have mastered the art of being a person. Aristotle rejected all the forms of imbalance.
He had lived today he might have said that a person who only develops his body, lives a life that is just as unbalanced as someone who
only uses his head. Both extremes are an expression of a warped way of life. Only by exercising balance and temperance will we
achieve ‘eudaimonia’; a happy or harmonious life.