The Formation of Christendom, Volume IIAllies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Religion
The Formation of Christendom, Volume II
Allies, T. W. (Thomas William)
Christianity; Christianity -- Miscellanea
motion which arises from sensitive desire, and that which proceeds from
the divine intelligence dwelling in the soul. Necessity arises on both
sides, from the things which determine the passive understanding, and from
the divine intelligence.(412) Thus his physical theory, as in the case of
Plato noted above,(413) prevents a clear conception of the human
personality. His notion of man in this point corresponds to his notion of
God: he does not concern himself with questions respecting the goodness,
justice, and freedom of God, inasmuch as his God is not really
personal:(414) so with regard to man we find in him no elucidation as to
the question of moral freedom, nor of the origin and nature of wickedness
in man. Wickedness is with Aristotle the impotence to hold the mean
between too much and too little: it presents itself therefore only in this
world of contingency and change, and has no relation to God, since the
first or absolute good has nothing opposed to it. He has not the sense of
moral perversion with regard to evil. In accordance with which the end of
all moral activity with him is happiness, which consists in the well-being
arising from an energy according to nature; as virtue is the observing a
proper mean between two extremes. And the highest happiness is
contemplative thought, the function of the divine in man, the turning away
from everything external to the inner world of the conceptions.
The religious character, which belongs conspicuously to Plato’s
philosophy, fails, it will be seen, in that of Aristotle. Whereas Plato
strove to purify the popular belief, and urged as the highest point of
virtue to become like to God by the conjunction of justice and sanctity
with prudence,(415) Aristotle divides morality from religion as his God is
separated off from the world.(416) His scientific inquiries have not that
immediate relation to the personal life and the destiny of man in which
the religiousness of Platonism most consists. His whole view of the world
goes to explain things as far as possible from their natural causes.(417)
Thus he admits in the whole direction of the world the ruling of a divine
power, of a reason which reaches its purpose; he believes in particular
that the gods care for men, take an interest in him who lives in
accordance with reason; that happiness is their gift; he contradicts the
notion that the godhead is envious, and so could withhold from man
knowledge, the best of its gifts; but this divine providence coincides for
him entirely with the working of natural causes. In his view the godhead
stands in solitary self-contemplation outside the world, the object of
admiration and reverence to man. The knowledge of it is the highest task
for his intellect. It is the good to which in common with everything that
is finite he is struggling; whose perfection calls forth his love: but
little as he can expect a return of love from it, so little does he find
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