Aristotelian theology and the scholastic view of God have been influential in Western philosophy and intellectual history.
Aristotelian theology and the scholastic view of God have been influential in Western philosophy and intellectual history.
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In his first philosophy, later called the Metaphysics , (or “after the Physics”), Aristotle discusses the meaning of being. He refers to the unmoved mover (hyperagent), and assigns one to each movement in the heavens and tasks future astronomers with correlating the estimated 47 to 55 motions of the Eudoxan planetary model with the most current and accurate observations. According to Aristotle, the unmoved mover continuously contemplates its own contemplation; the planets and stars, which have their source of motion within themselves (by virtue of aether, Aristotle's fifth element) aspire to emulate the uniform circular motion of the unmoved mover. Thus captivated, their tireless performance is entirely the result of their own desire. This is one way in which the mover is said to be unmoved. Likewise, it must have no sensory perception whatsoever on account of Aristotle's theory of cognition: were any form of sense perception to intrude upon its thoughts, in that instant it would cease to be itself, because actual self-reflection is its singular essence, its whole being. Like the heavenly bodies in their unadorned pursuit, so the wise look, with affection, toward the star; and hence as a role model, they inspire those who look up to them, and by whom others still, will yet find themselves enthralled, and so on, creating the enduring natural order of aeon, season, animal and plant.
Aristotle concludes the unmoved mover is God. Metaphysics 12 1072b. "Hence it is actuality rather than potentiality that is held to be the divine possession of rational thought, and its active contemplation is that which is most pleasant and best. If, then, the happiness which God always enjoys is as great as that which we enjoy sometimes, it is marvellous; and if it is greater, this is still more marvellous. Nevertheless it is so. Moreover, life belongs to God. For the actuality of thought is life, and God is that actuality; and the essential actuality of God is life most good and eternal. We hold, then, that God is a living being, eternal, most good; and therefore life and a continuous eternal existence belong to God; for that is what God is."
In the Metaphysics , Aristotle discusses actuality ( energeia , Greek: ενέργεια) and potentiality ( dynamis , Greek: δύναμις). The former is perfection, realization, fullness of being; the latter imperfection, incompleteness, perfectibility. The former is the determining, the latter the determinable principle. The unmoved movers are entirely actual, Actus Purus , because they are unchanging, eternal, immaterial substance.
All material beings have some potentiality. The Physics introduces matter and form and the four causes—material, formal, efficient and final. For example, to explain a statue, one can offer:
Contrary to the later so-called "traditional" view of prime matter ( prima materia in Latin), Aristotle asserts that there can be no pure potentiality without any actuality whatsoever. All material substances have unactualized potentials.
Aristotle argues that, although motion is eternal, there cannot be an infinite series of movers and of things moved. Therefore, there must be one, which is not the first in such a series, that inspire the eternal motion without itself being moved "as the soul is moved by beauty". Because the planetary spheres each move unfalteringly for all eternity in uniform circular motion with a given rotational period relative to the supreme diurnal motion of the sphere of fixed stars (or First Heaven), they must each love and desire to mimic the one unmoved mover corresponding to the given periods.
Because they eternally inspire uniform motion in the celestial spheres, the unmoved mover must itselve be eternal and unchanging. Because it is eternal, it has already had an infinite amount of time in which to actualize any potentialities and therefore cannot be a composition of matter and form, or potentiality and actuality. It must always be fully actual, and thus immaterial, because at all times in history it has already existed an infinite amount of time, and things that do not actually come to fruition given unlimited opportunities to do so cannot potentially do so.
The life of the unmoved mover is self-contemplative thought ("νοήσεως νόησις (noeseos noesis )", i.e. "thought of thought"). [1] [2] According to Aristotle, the gods cannot potentially be distracted from this eternal self-contemplation because, in that instant, they would cease to exist.
John Burnet (1892) noted [3]
Aristotle's principles of being (see section above) influenced Anselm's view of God, whom he called "that than which nothing greater can be conceived." Anselm thought that God did not feel emotions such as anger or love, but appeared to do so through our imperfect understanding. The incongruity of judging "being" against something that might not exist, may have led Anselm to his famous ontological argument for God's existence.
Many medieval philosophers made use of the idea of approaching a knowledge of God through negative attributes. For example, we should not say that God exists in the usual sense of the term, all we can safely say is that God is not nonexistent. We should not say that God is wise, but we can say that God is not ignorant (i.e. in some way God has some properties of knowledge). We should not say that God is One, but we can state that there is no multiplicity in God's being.
Aristotelian theological concepts were accepted by many later Jewish, Islamic, and Christian philosophers. Key Jewish philosophers included Samuel Ibn Tibbon, Maimonides, and Gersonides, among many others. Their views of God are considered mainstream by many Jews of all denominations even today. Preeminent among Islamic philosophers who were influenced by Aristotelian theology are Avicenna and Averroes. In Christian theology, the key philosopher influenced by Aristotle was undoubtedly Thomas Aquinas. There had been earlier Aristotelian influences within Christianity (notably Anselm), but Aquinas (who, incidentally, found his Aristotelian influence via Avicenna, Averroes, and Maimonides) incorporated extensive Aristotelian ideas throughout his own theology. Through Aquinas and the Scholastic Christian theology of which he was a significant part, Aristotle became "academic theology's great authority in the course of the thirteenth century" [4] and exerted an influence upon Christian theology that become both widespread and deeply embedded. However, notable Christian theologians rejected [5] Aristotelian theological influence, especially the first generation of Christian Reformers [6] and most notably Martin Luther. [7] [8] [9] In subsequent Protestant theology, Aristotelian thought quickly reemerged in Protestant scholasticism.
A cosmological argument, in natural theology, is an argument which claims that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, explanation, change, motion, contingency, dependency, or finitude with respect to the universe or some totality of objects. A cosmological argument can also sometimes be referred to as an argument from universal causation, an argument from first cause, the causal argument, or prime mover argument. Whichever term is employed, there are two basic variants of the argument, each with subtle yet important distinctions: in esse (essentiality), and in fieri (becoming).
Process philosophy, also ontology of becoming, or processism, is an approach to philosophy that identifies processes, changes, or shifting relationships as the only true elements of the ordinary, everyday real world. It treats other real elements as abstractions from, or ontological dependents on, processes. In opposition to the classical view of change as illusory or accidental, process philosophy posits transient occasions of change or becoming as the only fundamental things of the ordinary everyday real world.
Scholasticism was a medieval school of philosophy that employed a critical organic method of philosophical analysis predicated upon the Aristotelian 10 Categories. Christian scholasticism emerged within the monastic schools that translated scholastic Judeo—Islamic philosophies, and thereby "rediscovered" the collected works of Aristotle. Endeavoring to harmonize his metaphysics and its account of a prime mover with the Latin Catholic dogmatic trinitarian theology, these monastic schools became the basis of the earliest European medieval universities, and scholasticism dominated education in Europe from about 1100 to 1700. The rise of scholasticism was closely associated with these schools that flourished in Italy, France, Portugal, Spain and England.
Hylomorphism is a philosophical theory developed by Aristotle, which conceives every being (ousia) as a compound of matter and form, with the generic form as immanently real within the individual. The word is a 19th-century term formed from the Greek words ὕλη hyle, "wood, matter", and μορφή, morphē, "form".
Aristotelianism is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics. It covers the treatment of the social sciences under a system of natural law. It answers why-questions by a scheme of four causes, including purpose or teleology, and emphasizes virtue ethics. Aristotle and his school wrote tractates on physics, biology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, and government. Any school of thought that takes one of Aristotle's distinctive positions as its starting point can be considered "Aristotelian" in the widest sense. This means that different Aristotelian theories may not have much in common as far as their actual content is concerned besides their shared reference to Aristotle.
Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature is the philosophical study of physics, that is, nature and the physical universe. It was dominant before the development of modern science.
Thomism is the philosophical and theological school that arose as a legacy of the work and thought of Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the Dominican philosopher, theologian, and Doctor of the Church. In philosophy, Aquinas' disputed questions and commentaries on Aristotle are perhaps his best-known works.
The Condemnations at the medieval University of Paris were enacted to restrict certain teachings as being heretical. These included a number of medieval theological teachings, but most importantly the physical treatises of Aristotle. The investigations of these teachings were conducted by the Bishops of Paris. The Condemnations of 1277 are traditionally linked to an investigation requested by Pope John XXI, although whether he actually supported drawing up a list of condemnations is unclear.
Christianity and Hellenistic philosophies experienced complex interactions during the first to the fourth centuries.
On the Heavens is Aristotle's chief cosmological treatise: written in 350 BC it contains his astronomical theory and his ideas on the concrete workings of the terrestrial world. It should not be confused with the spurious work On the Universe.
In philosophy, potentiality and actuality are a pair of closely connected principles which Aristotle used to analyze motion, causality, ethics, and physiology in his Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, and De Anima.
Metaphysics is one of the principal works of Aristotle, in which he develops the doctrine that he refers to sometimes as Wisdom, sometimes as First Philosophy, and sometimes as Theology. It is one of the first major works of the branch of western philosophy known as metaphysics.
The unmoved mover or prime mover is a concept advanced by Aristotle as a primary cause or "mover" of all the motion in the universe. As is implicit in the name, the unmoved mover moves other things, but is not itself moved by any prior action. In Book 12 of his Metaphysics, Aristotle describes the unmoved mover as being perfectly beautiful, indivisible, and contemplating only the perfect contemplation: self-contemplation. He equates this concept also with the active intellect. This Aristotelian concept had its roots in cosmological speculations of the earliest Greek pre-Socratic philosophers and became highly influential and widely drawn upon in medieval philosophy and theology. St. Thomas Aquinas, for example, elaborated on the unmoved mover in the Quinque viae.
Nous, or Greek νοῦς, sometimes equated to intellect or intelligence, is a concept from classical philosophy for the faculty of the human mind necessary for understanding what is true or real.
The Quinque viæ are five logical arguments for the existence of God summarized by the 13th-century Catholic philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas in his book Summa Theologica. Five ways of St. Thomas Aquinas for the existence of God managed to prove the existence of God through nature. They are:
The active intellect is a concept in classical and medieval philosophy. The term refers to the formal (morphe) aspect of the intellect (nous), in accordance with the theory of hylomorphism.
Neo-scholasticism is a revival and development of medieval scholasticism in Roman Catholic theology and philosophy which began in the second half of the 19th century.
A theory of substantial forms asserts that forms organize matter and make it intelligible. Substantial forms are the source of properties, order, unity, identity, and information about objects.
Ancient, medieval and Renaissance astronomers and philosophers developed many different theories about the dynamics of the celestial spheres. They explained the motions of the various nested spheres in terms of the materials of which they were made, external movers such as celestial intelligences, and internal movers such as motive souls or impressed forces. Most of these models were qualitative, although a few of them incorporated quantitative analyses that related speed, motive force and resistance.
Medieval philosophy is the philosophy that existed through the Middle Ages, the period roughly extending from the fall of the Western Roman Empire in the 5th century until after the Renaissance in the 13th and 14th centuries. Medieval philosophy, understood as a project of independent philosophical inquiry, began in Baghdad, in the middle of the 8th century, and in France, in the itinerant court of Charlemagne, in the last quarter of the 8th century. It is defined partly by the process of rediscovering the ancient culture developed in Greece and Rome during the Classical period, and partly by the need to address theological problems and to integrate sacred doctrine with secular learning.
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