GOD AND ARISTOTLE

To summarize what was said in the third part of the previous entry, actuality is fulfilled potentiality. In other words, the Platonic process of becoming can be explained as the process of "self-actualization" of potentiality, ideally resulting in the state of “self-actualization,” alias the permanent state of being. The flaws of this theorizing are easy to discern, but what is most pertinent to the subject of this entry, any discussion of how potentiality becomes actuality involves a process in time. The state of “being” is a result of the process of “becoming.” In other words, God must be left out of it. Being pure eternal Being, there can be no becoming in God. Needless to say, the process of Creation must be outside God, in order to make sense, for the simple fact that there can be no process inside God, as any kind of process temporalizes God and diminishes His eternity, thus constituting blasphemy.

But let us now get to the subject of the present entry.

In promoting the idea of philosophical monotheism, I have argued elsewhere, on several occasions, that all Greek philosophers, although living in a polytheistic society, were, necessarily, adherents of philosophical monotheism, whereas polytheism has never amounted to a serious religion, but was primarily popular mythology, a sacred cultural tradition, rather than a legitimate religion, taken seriously enough as such by the Greeks, and somewhat frivolously by the Romans. (Gaston Boissier.)

In the light of this discussion, Aristotle’s monotheism stands out as a fine example. The question however remains, how serious Aristotle was in his philosophical conception of the Deity? In his characterization of Aristotle’s attitude to religion, Bertrand Russell writes in an already quoted passage: He is not passionate, or in any profound sense religious. But soon thereafter, he retreats from this statement, now writing this: I said that Aristotle was not by temperament deeply religious, but it is only partly true. One could, perhaps, interpret one aspect of his religion, somewhat freely, as follows:

--God exists eternally, as pure thought, happiness, complete self-fulfillment, without unrealized purposes. The sensible world, on the contrary, is imperfect, but it has life, desire, thought of an imperfect kind, and aspiration. All living things are in a greater or lesser degree aware of God, and they are moved to action by admiration and love of God. Thus God is the final cause of all activity. Change consists in giving form to matter, but, wherever sensible things are concerned, a substratum of matter always remains. Only God consists of form without matter. The world is continually evolving towards a greater degree of form, and thus becoming progressively more like God. But the process cannot be completed, because matter cannot be wholly eliminated. This is a religion of progress and evolution, for, God’s static perfection moves the world only through the love that finite beings feel for Him. Plato was mathematical, Aristotle, biological; this accounts for the differences in their religions.

(There are, obviously, Aristotelian echoes in Hegel’s phenomenology of the Spirit, and as an idealist, Hegel is thus much closer to Aristotle than he is to Plato, in this respect.)

Aristotle’s God (quoting from his Theology, which was the original name of the work now famously known under the general post-Aristotelian title Metaphysics) is “Eternal and unmovable, and separate from sensible things. This substance cannot have any magnitude, but it is without parts and indivisible… It is (also) impassive and unalterable; for all the other changes are posterior to change of place (1073^a)… Life also belongs to God, for the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and God’s self-dependent actuality is the life most good and eternal. We say, therefore, that God is a living being, eternal, most good, so that life and duration continuous and eternal belong to God; for this is God” (1072^b). As the reader may have noticed, I am putting the two Aristotelian excerpts out of order, as such an arrangement makes more sense to me, for my particular purpose.)

God is the First Cause of the All, and he is also the teleological Final Destination. He is not, however, the active mover, which makes him different from the Christian God. The progress toward God is a one-way street. The world goes on because of its own love for God, but God is indifferent in this relationship, as He is Perfect Thought, and thus cannot think of anything but Himself, being the only Perfection there is. Here we can see Aristotle’s affinity with (I stop short of saying “influence on”) Spinoza, who, likewise, asserted that while people must love God, it was impossible for God to love them back.

And lastly, the question of the immortality of the soul is an extremely tricky one, in Aristotle. Apparently, there is a portion of the human soul, the rational mind, which is the only part partaking of immortality; as for the irrational part of the soul, at death, it goes the way of all flesh. Thus, go figure, if people are mortal on account of their mortal personal component, or immortal, on account of their immortal, but impersonal rational “chip.”

As the reader may already have figured out, I strongly disagree with Aristotle’s treatment of irrationality as some inferior and mortal component, beneath the dignity of God. I am convinced that God carries both the rational and the irrational elements within Him, as irrationality is by no means a deficiency, but a requisite complement of rationality, and without both of these elements present, God’s perfection would have been sorely incomplete.