METAPHYSICS The different grades of objectification of the will are identified by Schopenhauer with the Ideas of Plato These too, like the will itself, are outside space and time Those different grades of the will’s objectification, expressed in innumerable individuals, exist as the unattained patterns of these, or as the eternal forms of things Not themselves entering into time and space, the medium of individuals, they remain fixed, subject to no change, always being, never having become The particular things, however, arise and pass away; they are always becoming and never are (WWI 129) The combination of Platonic idealism with Indian mysticism gives Schopenhauer’s system a uniquely metaphysical quality However much they admired his style, or admitted his influence, few philosophers felt able to follow him all the way There has never been a school of Schopenhauerians as there have been schools of Kantians and Hegelians The one person who was willing to declare himself a disciple of Schopenhauer was the Wagner of Tristan und Isolde Metaphysics and Teleology It is a far cry from Schopenhauer’s mystical idealism to Darwin’s evolutionary naturalism, and indeed it may seem odd to mention a biologist at all in a chapter on metaphysics But Darwin’s theories had implications, which went beyond his immediate interests, for the general theory of causation Aristotle, who was the first to systematize metaphysics, did so in terms of four kinds of causes: material, formal, efficient, and final The final cause was the goal or end of a structure or activity Explanations in terms of final causes were called ‘teleological’ after the Greek word for end, telos For Aristotle teleological explanations were operative at every level, from the burrowing of an earthworm to the rotation of the heavens Since Darwin, many thinkers have claimed, there is no longer any room at all for teleological explanation in any scientific discipline Aristotelian teleological explanations of activities and structures have two features: they explain things in terms of their ends, not their beginnings, and they invoke the notion of goodness Thus, an activity will be explained by reference not to its starting point but to its terminus; and 174