Philosophy of religion : Aristotle and his predecessors
Aristotle's theology as expounded in the Metaphysics is seen as radically distinct from his predecessors' and farther still from traditional religion. Contributing to this view are three apparently peculiar conceptual features of Aristotle's God: (i) that God is solely a final cause, who moves all other things as being loved or desired; (ii) that God is a self-thinking thinking; (iii) and that God is ontologically separate from the visible cosmos. Since no pre- Aristotelian philosopher has adduced (i)-(iii) in an argument to the existence and nature of God, this prompts the question of how Aristotle's theology stands to preceding thought. Here arose the main motivation for this thesis. But one could not hope to deal adequately with this question without a full exposition of preceding conceptions of god, traditional or philosophical. Incidentally, the orientation of the question enables us to be apprised of an answer to a prior question - whether the concept of ~god~ as it occurs in pre- Aristotelian philosophies is religious and theological. An answer to this preliminary question will supply a relevant cultural- historical perspective for the proper evaluation of the relation of Aristotle's God to preceding
Ackah, Emmanuel Kofi
Philosophy of religion : Aristotle and his predecessors. Aristotle's theology as expounded in the Metaphysics is seen as radically distinct from his predecessors' and farther still from traditional religion. Contributing to this view are three apparently peculiar conceptual features of Aristotle's God: (i) that God is solely a final cause, who moves all other things as being loved or desired; (ii) that God is a self-thinking thinking; (iii) and that God is ontologically separate from the visible cosmos. Since no pre- Aristotelian philosopher has adduced (i)-(iii) in an argument to the existence and nature of God, this prompts the question of how Aristotle's theology stands to preceding thought. Here arose the main motivation for this thesis. But one could not hope to deal adequately with this question without a full exposition of preceding conceptions of god, traditional or philosophical. Incidentally, the orientation of the question enables us to be apprised of an answer to a prior question - whether the concept of ~god~ as it occurs in pre- Aristotelian philosophies is religious and theological. An answer to this preliminary question will supply a relevant cultural- historical perspective for the proper evaluation of the relation of Aristotle's God to preceding
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