Von alien Geistern, die verneinen,
1st mir der Schalk am wenigsten zur Last.
J. W. Goethe, Faust
A book on Greek philosophy would not be complete without a chapter on Greek religion, be it on ‘‘the theology of the early Greek philosophers,’’ on ‘‘God and Greek philosophy,’’ on ‘‘rational theology’’ or on ‘‘philosophy and religion.’’ But it is much less clear whether a volume on Greek religion would be similarly incomplete without a chapter on Greek philosophy or on ‘‘philosophical religion.’’ This is because, from at least the early fifth century onwards, theological thinking formed an integral part of philosophical thinking for some of the most influential early, Presocratic philosophers. By contrast, it is doubtful whether the religion of the many, i. e. that of the non-philosophers, was influenced in any substantial way by philosophical speculation concerning the divine in the classical or even the hellenistic period.
From a different perspective, few individuals in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries are affected by the Greek gods in their everyday life, but no one in the Western world of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries is unaffected by Greek philosophy. The reason for both these aspects of the modern predicament are, of course, historical, and they are bound up with the history of the Christian Church in antiquity and especially in medieval and early modern times. For it was the Christian Church that released Western philosophy, which it had guarded for a thousand years, and Western philosophy shapes the life and the world-view of modern man. At the same time, many of the beliefs of followers of present-day monotheistic religions are informed by theological speculation initiated by the ancient Greek philosophers, while they are largely unaffected by the practice of ancient Greek religion.
These are the parameters for this treatment of an aspect of Greek philosophical theology. The philosopher with whose god, whose views of the divine, whose religion I shall be concerned is Plato. What came before him - in particular, for our purposes, the books by Xenophanes, Heraclitus, and Empedocles - is available to us in fragmentary form only. This may be no accident. For all we know, the scope and depth of Plato’s philosophical argument as well as those of his speculation about god, the gods, and religion are unprecedented. And no later thought, no later thinker, is unaffected by Plato. This is true of Aristotle above all, whose books have had such a fascinating influence on Western thinking in general and that of the Christian Church in the West in particular.
World History
