Aristotle, Oedipus, and Greek Religion
Mirroring the Divine
- Publisher
- University of Ottawa Press
- Initial publish date
- Aug 2025
- Category
- General, Ancient & Classical, Religious
-
eBook
- ISBN
- 9780776642451
- Publish Date
- Aug 2025
- List Price
- $31.99
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Description
Aristotle, Oedipus, and Greek Religion explores an important religious side to ancient Aristotelianism that has an impact on contemporary philosophical debates.
Louis F. Groarke shows how an exegetical perspective open to and respectful of Greek Pagan religion allows readers to discover a remarkably different Aristotle than the one to which we have grown accustomed.
To begin with, one must discover what Aristotle (and his school) taught, not by examining isolated passages, but by getting a sense of his philosophy as a whole. One has to make sense of the circumstantial evidence and carefully piece together a coherent technical case for the overall argument.
In each chapter, Groarke considers another aspect of Aristotelian thought; this is in opposition to mainstream opinion which often describes Aristotle as a secret atheist, an agnostic, or as something akin to a modern-day positivist or a reductionist.
The author goes on to show that Aristotle valued religious practice on a personal and social level, that his metaphysics are marked by intimations of the divine, that he provides an epistemological space for both science and religion, that his account of Greek tragedy has an inalienable moral and religious side, and that his account of the origins of cognition is not so far removed from religious scripture.
Aristotle, Oedipus, and Greek Religion is an analysis of universal themes from the viewpoint of an enormously influential ancient thinker, and an adventure into the history of ideas.
About the authors
Louis F. Groarke is full professor in the philosophy department of St Francis Xavier University and author of An Aristotelian Account of Induction and The Good Rebel.
Louis F. Groarke's profile page
William Sweet is a professor in the Department of Philosophy and the director of the Centre for Philosophy, Theology, and Cultural Traditions at St. Francis Xavier University.
Excerpt: Aristotle, Oedipus, and Greek Religion: Mirroring the Divine (by (author) Louis F. Groarke; series edited by William Sweet)
In Plato’s Symposium, the drunk Alcibiades compares Socrates to statues of Silenus “sitting among the shops of those carvers of herms […] which once being opened up reveal they have gods inside.” He describes Socrates’ arguments in the same way. Silenus was an ugly, pot-bellied, older companion of Dionysius who told the truth when drunk. Alcibiades is referring, then, to the difference between appearance and reality. Viewed from the outside, Socrates seems a ridiculous figure, just a drunken old fool, but there is an image of the divine locked up inside himself, hidden from view. This is a familiar theme: what is beautiful on the outside is often ugly on the inside, and what is ugly on the outside is sometimes beautiful on the inside. So, while Socrates and his arguments may sometimes appear vulgar and even foolish, on closer inspection, they reveal something of everlasting worth and beauty. (Indeed, Alcibiades is the reverse of Socrates: beautiful on the outside and ugly on the inside; he is also drunk and telling the truth like Silenus.)
