Aristotle

10. COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY

10 COSMOLOGY AND THEOLOGY 10.1 META-PHYSICS The original, Homeric image the Greeks had of the gods was anthropomorphic; it was refined by philosophical influence in two ways. The natural philosophers Thales (c. 600 B.C.E.), Anaximander, and Anaximenes (sixth century B.C.E.) discarded the Homeric myths altogether, developing a cosmology instead. Xenophanes (c. 500 B.C.E.), on the other hand, undertook a sublimation of the image. The many gods were replaced by one god distinguished by perfection, and no longer by the immorality chastized in fragment B 11: “Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods whatever is ignominious and reproachable among men: stealing , adultery and defrauding each other.” Xenophanes followed the cosmological turning point insofar as he considered God an unmoved being that moves everything by the power of its mind (Diels-Kranz 21B 23–26). Book XII of the Metaphysics, also referred to as “book lambda,” follows this form of monotheism with cosmological intent (on Aristotle’s theology, cf. Krämer 19672 , Elders 1972, Owens 19783 , Oehler 1984). This homogeneous treatise realizes Aristotle’s program of fundamental philosophy more clearly than any other. In accordance with the conditions set up in Metaph. I 2 and Metaph. VI 1 (cf. XI 7, 1064b1 ff. and EN VI 7, 1141a34 ff.), it treats of the highest-ranking subject, the eternal (aei on), unmoved (akinêton), and independent (chôriston), as well as of the divine and what the god does. According to the first conditions, what is later called “metaphysics” proves to be a chapter of ontology, and according to the last two conditions, as philosophical theology; by this combination metaphysics becomes onto-theology. One expects theological treatises to provide discussions of the characteristics of God, such as his omnipotence, infinite goodness, and omniscience as well as a proof of his existence, that is, a proof of God. Both expectations are fulfilled only in a limited way by book lambda because the Aristotelian god does not possess the characteristics mentioned here. Besides, the book contains much more than a mere doctrine of God; it offers a résumé of Aristotle’s theoretical philosophy. The first chapter names substance (ousia) as its subject matter and then goes on to introduce three types of substance, or three spheres of being. The genuine subject 103 matter of mathematics, numbers and geometrical figures, is absent because— according to Aristotle’s theory of mathematics (see ch. 7.4)—substances do not feature in it (cf. XII 8, 1073b7 f.). Within the framework of the perceptible (aisthêton), the (1) transient substances of the world this side of the moon (the sublunar world) are distinguished from the (2) eternal substances, that is, the stars. The former are subject to birth and death, inconsistency and decay, while the latter know only the perfection of circular motions. These first two kinds of substances belong to nature (they are physikai: XII 6, 1071b3) but they also differ radically from each other; one could therefore term the former, that is, the theory of transient natural objects, “physics 1” and that of eternal natural objects “physics 2.” Aristotle distinguishes both spheres from (3) the substance that is neither visible nor moved, the unmoved mover who takes the place of Plato’s Demiurge. Even here theology plays only a small part. Instead, Aristotle confronts Plato’s “metaphysics” of ideas, refuting the hypostasizing of the general. However, he remains a Platonist insofar as he recognizes a substance that is beyond perception. By taking its departure from physics (1 and 2), book lambda represents itself as meta-physics in the literal sense, that is, as reflections about something beyond physics which can be perceived only in passing through physics. At the same time it states the principle of the latter: the object transcending the visible world, the transcendent, is the condition for the existence of the sensible world. In this respect metaphysics is not a rigorously autonomous scientific discipline, but a liminal reflection pertaining to a coherently conducted physics. Surprisingly, because of this connection between the first part, belonging to natural philosophy, and the second, metaphysical, part there is no caesura distinguishing physics as “second philosophy” from first philosophy. Although the genuinely metaphysical part of lambda constitutes the highest degree of knowledge, it is dependent upon other steps and is not given any attention extending markedly beyond natural philosophy. The first five chapters deploy the natural objects by which one is led toward the super-natural object. Conversely, the...