Abstract

Here is the problem: Aristotle seems clearly to reject the traditional Olympian gods. His own conception of god seems to have no religious significance; for whatever else this god knows, it certainly does not know particulars, including humans and their characters, actions, and futures. Yet in the Politics, Aristotle includes priests as public officials and lands devoted to the traditional gods as necessary parts of his ideal polis, and he even seems to regard the Oracle of Delphi as an important institution. One solution to this problem, rarely attempted by scholars, is to argue that Aristotle in fact does not reject...