Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals

Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals
Author: Richard Bodeus
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 394
Release: 2000-09-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791447284

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This book argues that Aristotle used "the most traditional Greek ideas about the gods" to develop and defend his physical, metaphysical, and ethical teachings. This revolutionary thesis stands in stark contrast to studies of Aristotle's texts that normally portray him as a "natural theologian" using rational tools to elaborate his own conception of God or the gods. Bodeus argues that Aristotle is more closely aligned with popular Greek religion than is usually thought, and attention to the ethical and political writings reveals more about Aristotle's resources for conceiving the gods than study of his theoretical works.

Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals

Aristotle and the Theology of the Living Immortals
Author: Richard Bodeus
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 404
Release: 2000-09-22
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0791491846

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This book argues that Aristotle used "the most traditional Greek ideas about the gods" to develop and defend his physical, metaphysical, and ethical teachings. This revolutionary thesis stands in stark contrast to studies of Aristotle's texts that normally portray him as a "natural theologian" using rational tools to elaborate his own conception of God or the gods. Bodeus argues that Aristotle is more closely aligned with popular Greek religion than is usually thought, and attention to the ethical and political writings reveals more about Aristotle's resources for conceiving the gods than study of his theoretical works. For Bodeus, Aristotle was a refined polytheist who held that the gods were living immortals and that one could attribute to them wisdom, goodness, and benevolent concern for human beings. The author's approach is at odds with the dominant interpretation, which holds that Aristotle's unmoved mover presents his true view of God. This leads to the argument that the philosopher's apparent endorsements of popular religious ideas should be taken seriously and that his inquiries about the unmoved mover belong strictly to theoretical philosophy, which is unable to study the gods. From this novel perspective, many of Aristotle's texts appear in a new light.

Aristotle on God's Life-Generating Power and on Pneuma as Its Vehicle

Aristotle on God's Life-Generating Power and on Pneuma as Its Vehicle
Author: Abraham P. Bos
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 342
Release: 2018-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438468296

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Proposes an innovative rethinking of Aristotle’s work as a system that integrates his theology with his doctrine of reproduction and life. In this deep rethinking of Aristotle’s work, Abraham P. Bos argues that scholarship on Aristotle’s philosophy has erred since antiquity in denying the connection between his theology and his doctrine of reproduction and life in the earthly sphere. Beginning with an analysis of God’s role in the Aristotelian system, Bos explores how this relates to other elements of his philosophy, especially to his theory of reproduction. The argument he develops is that in talking about the cosmos, Aristotle rejected Plato’s metaphor of artisanal production by a divine Demiurge in favor of a biotic metaphor based on the transmission of life in reproduction, in which pneuma—not breath as it is often interpreted but the life-bearing spirit in animals and plants—plays a key and sustaining role as the vital principle in all that lives. In making this case, he defends the authenticity of the treatises De Mundo and De Spiritu as Aristotle’s, and demonstrates Aristotle’s works as a unified system that sharply and comprehensively refutes Plato’s, and in particular replaces Plato’s doctrine of the soul with a theory in which the soul is clearly distinguished from the intellect. “Bos offers a fresh, interesting, and important perspective. His interpretation will be very controversial, but if he is right, the standard Anglo-American interpretation of Aristotle will have to change radically.” — Malcolm Wilson, author of Structure and Method in Aristotle’s Meteorologica: A More Disorderly Nature

Aristotle on Religion

Aristotle on Religion
Author: Mor Segev
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 201
Release: 2017-11-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1108248012

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Aristotle is a severe critic of traditional religion, believing it to be false, yet he also holds that traditional religion and its institutions are necessary if any city, including the ideal city he describes in the Politics, is to exist and flourish. This book provides, for the first time, a coherent account of the socio-political role which Aristotle attributes to traditional religion despite his rejection of its content. Mor Segev argues that Aristotle thinks traditional religion is politically necessary because it prepares the ground for what he considers the pinnacle of human endeavor: attaining the knowledge of first philosophy, whose objects are real beings worthy of being called gods. Developing this interpretation, Segev goes on to analyze Aristotle's references to the myths of traditional Greek religion, and to assess his influence on medieval Jewish and Christian theology and philosophy of religion.

The Political Dimensions of Aristotle's Ethics

The Political Dimensions of Aristotle's Ethics
Author: Richard Bod??s
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 1993-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791416099

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A study in the best tradition of classical scholarship, showing mastery of commentary and scholarship in eight languages, this book argues that the Ethics is integral to a series of politically oriented philosophical addresses aimed at morally mature political leaders. Bodeus's critical review of the major approaches to Aristotle's texts is an excellent introduction to the subject.

Aristotle's Theology

Aristotle's Theology
Author: Aristotle
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2022-11-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1647920930

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"Even those already familiar with Aristotle may be surprised to learn that discussions of theological topics can be found in so many of his works. Reeve's idea of packaging these texts sequentially along with commentary and notes is brilliant. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in Aristotle's theology." —S. Marc Cohen,Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, University of Washington

Aristotle's Physics and Its Medieval Varieties

Aristotle's Physics and Its Medieval Varieties
Author: Helen S. Lang
Publisher: SUNY Press
Total Pages: 336
Release: 1992-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780791410837

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This book considers the concepts that lay at the heart of natural philosophy and physics from the time of Aristotle until the fourteenth century. The first part presents Aristotelian ideas and the second part presents the interpretation of these ideas by Philoponus, Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, John Buridan, and Duns Scotus. Across the eight chapters, the problems and texts from Aristotle that set the stage for European natural philosophy as it was practiced from the thirteenth to the seventeenth centuries are considered first as they appear in Aristotle and then as they are reconsidered in the context of later interests. The study concludes with an anticipation of Newton and the sense in which Aristotle's physics had been transformed.

Political Theology for a Plural Age

Political Theology for a Plural Age
Author: Michael Jon Kessler
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 282
Release: 2013-06-20
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0199769273

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Political Theology for a Plural Age provides historic and contemporary understandings of political engagement in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, engaging political theologies not merely as a set of theoretical concepts but as religious beliefs and principles that motivate specific political action.

The Greek Concept of Nature

The Greek Concept of Nature
Author: Gerard Naddaf
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 278
Release: 2012-02-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0791483673

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In The Greek Concept of Nature, Gerard Naddaf utilizes historical, mythological, and linguistic perspectives to reconstruct the origin and evolution of the Greek concept of phusis. Usually translated as nature, phusis has been decisive both for the early history of philosophy and for its subsequent development. However, there is a considerable amount of controversy on what the earliest philosophers—Anaximander, Xenophanes, Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras, Leucippus, and Democritus—actually had in mind when they spoke of phusis or nature. Naddaf demonstrates that the fundamental and etymological meaning of the word refers to the whole process of birth to maturity. He argues that the use of phusis in the famous expression Peri phuseos or historia peri phuseos refers to the origin and the growth of the universe from beginning to end. Naddaf's bold and original theory for the genesis of Greek philosophy demonstrates that archaic and mythological schemes were at the origin of the philosophical representations, but also that cosmogony, anthropogony, and politogony were never totally separated in early Greek philosophy.

Aristotle

Aristotle
Author: Richard Kraut
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 540
Release: 2002
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780198782001

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This book presents a wide-ranging overview of Aristotle's political thought that makes him come alive as a philosopher who can speak to our own times. Beginning with a critique of subjectivist accounts of well-being, Kraut goes on to assess Aristotle's objective and universalistic account ofeudaimonia and excellent activity. He offers a detailed interpretation of Aristotle's conception of justice in the Nicomachean Ethics, and then turns to the major themes of the Politics: the political nature of human beings, the city's priority over the individual, the justification of slavery, thedefence of the family and property, the pluralistic nature of cities and the need for their unification, the distinction between good citizenship and full virtue, the value and limits of popular control over elites, the corrosive effects of poverty and wealth, the critique of democratic conceptionsof freedom and equality, and the radically egalitarian institutions of the ideal society. Aristotle's political philosophy, as Kraut reads it, provides a model of the way in which a rich understanding of human well-being can guide the amelioration of a world in which agreement about the human goodis rarely, if ever, achieved.