An autotelic is someone or something that has a purpose in, and not apart from, itself.
Origin
The word "autotelic" derives from the
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
''αὐτοτελής'' (''autotelēs''), formed from ''αὐτός'' (''autos'', "self") and ''τέλος'' (''telos'', "end" or "goal").
The ''
Oxford English Dictionary
The ''Oxford English Dictionary'' (''OED'') is the first and foundational historical dictionary of the English language, published by Oxford University Press (OUP). It traces the historical development of the English language, providing a c ...
'' cites the word's earliest use in 1901 (Baldwin, ''Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology'', I 96/1), and also cites a 1932 use by
T. S. Eliot .
Use
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
Mihaly Robert Csikszentmihalyi (, hu, Csíkszentmihályi Mihály Róbert, ; 29 September 1934 – 20 October 2021) was a Hungarian-American psychologist. He recognized and named the psychological concept of "flow", a highly focused mental ...
describes people who are internally driven, and who as such may exhibit a sense of purpose and
curiosity
Curiosity (from Latin '' cūriōsitās'', from ''cūriōsus'' "careful, diligent, curious", akin to ''cura'' "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human ...
, as autotelic. This is different from being externally driven, in which case things such as comfort, money, power, or fame are the
motivating force. Csikszentmihalyi writes:
An autotelic person needs few material possessions and little entertainment, comfort, power, or fame because so much of what he or she does is already rewarding. Because such persons experience flow
Flow may refer to:
Science and technology
* Fluid flow, the motion of a gas or liquid
* Flow (geomorphology), a type of mass wasting or slope movement in geomorphology
* Flow (mathematics), a group action of the real numbers on a set
* Flow (psyc ...
in work, in family life, when interacting with people, when eating, even when alone with nothing to do, they depend less on external rewards that keep others motivated to go on with a life of routines. They are more autonomous and independent because they cannot be as easily manipulated with threats or rewards from the outside. At the same time, they are more involved with everything around them because they are fully immersed in the current of life.
A. Bartlett Giamatti
Angelo Bartlett Giamatti (; April 4, 1938 – September 1, 1989) was an American professor of English Renaissance literature, the president of Yale University, and the seventh Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
Giamatti served as Commis ...
characterizes sports, such as baseball, as autotelic activities: "that is, their goal is the full exercise of themselves, for their own sake".
Yvor Winters quotes from Eliot's aesthetic theory including ''autotelic'', and criticizes:
Art, then, is about itself, but this information does not help me to answer my questions, for I do not understand it. What, for example, would Pope or Dante have understood if this statement had been made to them regarding the poems which I have just mentioned? Or what can we understand with regard to these poems? About all we can deduce from such a passage is that the artist does not really know what he is doing; a doctrine which we shall find suggested and elucidated elsewhere, and which leads directly to the plainest kind of determinism.[Yvor Winters, In Defense of Reason, p460 and thereafter.]
See also
*
Egregore
Egregore (also spelled egregor; , ) is an occult concept representing a non-physical entity that arises from the collective thoughts of a distinct group of people. Historically, the concept referred to angelic beings, or watchers, and the specif ...
*
End in itself
In moral philosophy, instrumental and intrinsic value are the distinction between what is a ''means to an end'' and what is as an ''end in itself''. Things are deemed to have instrumental value if they help one achieve a particular end; intrinsi ...
*
Flow (psychology)
In positive psychology, a flow state, also known colloquially as being in the zone, is the mental state in which a person performing some activity is fully immersed in a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and enjoyment in the process ...
*
Ikigai
is a Japanese concept referring to something that gives a person a sense of purpose, a reason for living.
Meaning and etymology
The Oxford English Dictionary defines as "a motivating force; something or someone that gives a person a sense o ...
*
Intrinsic motivation
*
Teleology
Teleology (from and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology" In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Appleton ...
References
External links
* {{wiktionary-inline, autotelic
Personality traits
Words and phrases describing personality