Regarding the requirements for academic purposes, previous works on the theory of academic disciplines have either presupposed such requirements without argumentation or confined themselves to discussing the theory of research objects; no study has established the requirements for determining whether a given proposition qualifies as an academic purpose. Accordingly, this paper aims to establish the requirements for academic purposes based on original insight rather than inductive extraction from existing research. Upon examination, an academic purpose must satisfy the following affirmative requirements: ① possessing elements sufficiently distinctive to differentiate the discipline from others (specificity); ② defining the matters that the discipline is to realize through its own autonomous and active endeavors (autonomous and active realizability); and ③ delimiting the scope of research activities (scope-defining function). In addition, it must satisfy the following negative requirement: ④ it must not constitute an external effect, a wish or expectation directed at third parties, a use-value for third parties, mere self-satisfaction on the part of researchers, or a purpose of an individual and specific study (negative requirement). Furthermore, since the delimitation of the scope of research activities is substantially equivalent to the delimitation of the scope of research objects, teleology and the theory of research objects stand in an inseparable and integral relationship.

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