ABSTRACT
The ethical problem of teleology is no more confined to a lineal series of ends than the ontological problem of causality is to a lineal series of causes. The finalistic determination struggles for the upper hand, for its own control of the causal series. A man may find himself confronted with different tasks which his own valuational consciousness imposes upon him. Every narrower community rests upon this kind of interweaving, although generally the whole is bound together by identical interests. Indeed, for all valuational consciousness, for the sensing of values and for their moral contents, this boundary encircles the whole realm of ends. It constitutes a metaphysical problem concerning the realm of values. Responsibility and accountability, conscience and the sense of guilt, approval and disapproval, find in it a barb which entangles and complicates immeasurably their problem, the root-problem of morality.
