English Explanatory Dictionary

counterfinality

English dictionary entry

Meanings

noun
  1. A set of circumstances in which one phenomenon (such as a group of people) opposes or undermines another phenomenon that produces or sustains it (for example, peasants deforesting hillsides in order to expand cultivatable land, resulting in flooding and the loss of the same).
  2. The tendency to increase ones value of or commitment to something when it involves unanticipated negative side effects.

Word forms

counterfinality counterfinalities counter-finality

Etymology

Coined by Jean-Paul Sartre.

This entry uses open data from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA/GFDL). Word forms are used for search and are not indexed as separate pages.
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