The Development Of Teleology And Marxism's Theory Of End

With its long history and diverse forms, teleology is affluent in content of ideology. The richness of content however, is the reason why people have different and disputable opinions towards the theory. This article tidied up teleology on the perspective of its evolution, and re-elucidated the thinking about the theory in Marxism-Leninism Classics. The author believed the writers of the Classics did not absolutely oppose the theory. In contrast, they were only against the traditional teleology of universe in which people always try to apply the theoretical paradigm to every corner, whereas the limited teleology, which adequately confines the application within the life cycle, was well sustained.The article consisted of four sections. Section one saw the origins of teleology and the theory's ancient and medieval forms as well. The author believed that the theory had been continuing and evolving since its birth from the primitive and personated values of nature, but all forms can be dated back to two sources: Plato's extrinsic teleology and Aristotle's intrinsic one. In section two, the author discoursed upon the "declination" of the theory due to criticizing, but suggested the theory had been inherited and never interrupted as shown in several typical ideas. Section three discussed different explanations of the "end" in diverse branches of systematic science all of which, with a holistic viewpoint of the world, described an evolutionary scenario of universe, full of tension and vigor and bound with an inherent end. In the last section, the author pointed out the deficiency of Marxists when they tried to elucidate the thinking about the theory from the writers of the Classics, and reflected on the development of Marxist teleology based on the research achievements about "neo-teleology".