The concept of ‘End’ in the depth-psychology corpus refuses any single valence, operating simultaneously as telos, terminus, finality, and eschatological horizon. Jung’s experimental metaphysics frames the end as intrinsic to any meaningful process: an experiment without an end is a static condition, not a living movement toward individuation. Heidegger’s phenomenological analysis, which permeates Jungian ontological thinking, insists that death as Dasein’s ‘end’ cannot be assimilated to ordinary modes of ending such as ripening, exhaustion, or simple cessation—death is ontologically sui generis, a structural possibility, not a biographical conclusion. Hillman complicates teleology further by identifying active imagination’s ‘paradoxical limit of endlessness’ as coextensive with the Heraclitean infinity of psyche itself; here the end is precisely what cannot be reached, and self-understanding remains uroboric. The Stoic tradition, mediated through Nussbaum and Long-Sedley, treats the ‘end’ (telos) as the supreme ethical criterion—living in agreement with nature—while Derrida’s Kantian analysis exposes the aporia whereby an unconditioned moral end can only be exemplified by the very human being it supposedly transcends. In eschatological registers, Edinger reads the Apocalypse as the archetypal image of the world’s end as collective individuation. Across these voices, ‘End’ functions as the organizing tension between process and closure, purposiveness and openness, death and transformation.
an experiment is meant to come to an end; otherwise, it is no experiment, but a static condition. An experiment only makes sense when there is an end in sight.
Jung argues that purposive vitality requires an end as its orienting horizon, without which any process collapses into mere stasis rather than meaningful experiment.
, Nietzsche’s Zarathustra: Notes of the Seminar Given in 1934-1939, 1988thesis
death as Being-at-an-end, were understood in the sense of an ending of the kind we have discussed, then Dasein would thereby be treated as something present-at-hand or ready-to-hand.
Heidegger distinguishes death from all ordinary modes of ending—ripening, consumption, completion—insisting that Dasein’s end is an existential structure irreducible to objective termination.
, Being and Time, 1962thesis
active imagination foregoes an end result in a physical product, but more because its intention is Know Thyself, self-understanding, which is as well its limit—the paradoxical limit of endlessness that corresponds with the Heraclitean endlessness of psyche itself.
Hillman posits that psychological self-understanding constitutes an end that is simultaneously its own endless limit, aligning the soul’s telos with infinite recursive self-inquiry.
, Healing Fiction, 1983thesis
determine the end in itself (as an un-conditioned principle of morality), independently of any anthropological givens. One cannot think the purity of the end on the basis of man.
Derrida’s reading of Kant exposes the structural tension whereby the unconditioned moral end must be thought apart from humanity while remaining exemplified only through the human being.
, Margins of Philosophy, 1982thesis
This book is the Western psyche’s classic example of the archetype of the end of the world. Other terms for this same archetype would be ‘cosmic catastrophe’ and ‘las[t Judgment].’
Edinger identifies apocalyptic eschatology as the collective-psychological archetype of ending, equating world’s end with the activation and conscious realization of the Self.
, Transformation of the God-Image: An Elucidation of Jung’s Answer to Job, 1992supporting
his end in power was his beginning in wisdom… Milk as ‘beginning, middle, and end’ connects our polarities of senex and puer.
Hillman reads the alchemical formula of prima materia as beginning, middle, and end to articulate how the senex archetype transmutes terminal exhaustion into renewed wisdom.
, Senex & Puer, 2015supporting
the final good is a life in which one applies knowledge of t[he natural law]… the accounts of the end attributed to Chrysippus’ successors introduce AN things (indifferent but in accordance with nature) within a formulation of the end.
Long and Sedley document the Stoic telos debate, showing how successive philosophers progressively complicated the formula of the end to accommodate preferred indifferents within the supreme good.
, The Hellenistic Philosophers, 1987supporting
deliberation and choice are concerned not with ends, but with the means to the end… the things with which choice concerns itself, including the major values that go to make up a good human life, must, after all, be seen as (comparable) means to something beyond themselves.
Nussbaum interrogates Aristotle’s distinction between ends and means, arguing that collapsing plural goods into a single commensurable end impoverishes the ethical world.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986supporting
No matter under Heaven is ever without an end or ever without a flaw, but neither is any ever denied a Dao [path or process] that allows it to [continue].
Wang Bi’s commentary affirms that every process entails an end and an inherent flaw, yet the Dao always provides a continuing path, making ending and renewal structurally inseparable.
, The Classic of Changes: A New Translation of the I Ching as Interpreted by Wang Bi, 1994supporting
As a writer he knows their story must end and wants it to end. So, too, as readers we know the novel must end and want it to end. ‘But not yet!’ say the readers to the writer.
Carson reads the paradox of narrative ending as structurally homologous to erotic desire, where the consummating end is simultaneously craved and deferred.
, Eros the Bittersweet: An Essay, 1986supporting
The end of every therapy is not nece[ssarily straightforward]… At the very last session, even farewell statements, handshakes, or hugs by the therapist can become important technical questions.
Sedgwick treats the termination of therapy as a technically and relationally complex moment whose concrete gestures carry disproportionate psychological weight.
, An Introduction to Jungian Psychotherapy: The Therapeutic Relationship, 2001aside
because of the disciplined, precise, and teachable character of these practices, they are unhesitatingly awarded the title of techne… surveying the full range of the fifth-century arts in the light of their underlying corporate aim, the elimination of tuche.
Nussbaum situates the concept of internal ends within the philosophy of techne, noting that arts aimed at activity rather than product complicate simple means-end schemas.
, The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy, 1986aside