"A world of purposes only is a world of cross-purposes"

"What happens when end is reduced to purpose and consequence becomes visible in the films of Quentin Tarentino, which picture a 'world' in which there are only the purposes of human beings, a 'world without ends.'  In such a world there cannot be any congruity or incongruity of purposes with ends.  There being no ends by which purposes can be measured, all purposes are in themselves incommensurate and incongruous with one another.  This is a world in which everything is violent, because there is no natural way for anything to move. . . ."
"A world of purposes only is a world of cross-purposes, the definition of fiasco."

Francis Slade, "On the ontological priority of ends and its relevance to the narrative arts," in Beauty, art, and the polis, ed. Alice Ramos (Washington, DC: American Maritain Association, 2000), 67-68 (58-69).