Science Doesn’t Show that Life is Meaningless

The collapse of Western teleology and the rise of aesthetic humanism

Image by Victoria from Pixabay

To the extent that those of us living in liberal societies suffer from a special sense of alienation and ennui, there’s a ready historical explanation.

In a nutshell, this has to do with how science whittled down the Christian Aristotelianism that had held up medieval European culture.

The collapse of Aristotelian teleology

Aristotle had posed four causal questions you could ask about some event: How does it happen? Why does it happen? What’s the thing’s form or structure? And what’s the thing’s material basis?

Christendom incorporated Aristotle’s philosophy into its religious message that was supposed to have been divinely revealed. Thus, the Church treated Aristotle’s teleological perspective as practically sacrosanct, to match Christianity’s deference towards the Bible and Church tradition. It was as if the Church had only two modes of interpretation: demonization of something or incorporation of it by giving credit to God for whatever isn’t demonic. If Aristotle’s philosophy that happened to survive through the Middle Ages wasn’t heresy, it must have been harmonious with the gospel. Thus, Aristotle’s philosophy became de…