Henrique Azevedo

This text represents our first attempting to offer a Metaphysic model to interpret the late modernity (which emerges in the middle of the 18th century and goes along until the end of the IIWW) through the concept of Teleontology. Thus, Teleontology means the procedure of the spirit of the late modern age to shift its paradigms from ontology (an investigation about the being as being, in which existence means an attribute) to teleology, in which essence must be conquered and revealed in the final of a progressive process. Instead of Being, Man became the main object of this investigation; the question of the being as being has given way as to an enlightened concept of being-man (never reached) as also to the task to achieve this in order to satisfy what reason designed to human species. However, as this project of achieving the concept of Being-Man advanced, its true nature became clear: a unilateral and arbitrary colonial expansion, which forced everyone to follow Teleontological paradigms. Teleontology can demonstrate that Greek-Christian metaphysics means a particular element (never universal) submitted to a specific culture and, in this case, expresses the structure of Eurocentric thought that became global by way of the expanding of capitalism/colonialism. Specifically, in this text, we propose to investigate: 1 - what is Teleontology; 2 - what are its objects; 3 - what are its origins.

This article intends to identify how the cognitive procedure of Kant’s critical philosophy is related to the enlightened principle of expanding the world. My hypothesis is that the task of the critical philosophy on knowing “how is it possible the synthetic a priori judgements?” takes to the enlargement of the faculty of judgment and the possession of objects by the intellect. Notions such as Copernican Revolution, Experience, and Space-Time are forms which cannot be seen as bare principles for knowing objects but also as elements that allow to have the world through judgments; this expresses a model of modernization as well. That was noted by the young Benjamin and the elders Adorno & Horkheimer, which, despite to have different views on Kant’s philosophy, realized its strength in a way that these principles could still be observed at the social domain in the first half of 20th century.