Aristotle on Divine and Human Contemplation

Abstract

Aristotle’s theory of human happiness in the Nicomachean Ethics explicitly depends on the claim that contemplation (theôria) is peculiar to human beings, whether it is our function or only part of it. But there is a notorious problem: Aristotle says that divine beings also contemplate. Various solutions have been proposed, but each has difficulties. Drawing on an analysis of what divine contemplation involves according to Aristotle, I identify an assumption common to all of these proposals and argue for rejecting it. This allows a straightforward solution to the problem and there is evidence that Aristotle would have adopted it.

Keywords: Aristotle, intellect, nous, thinking, intentionality, imagination, soul, function argument, unmoved mover, celestial motion

1. Is Contemplation Proper to Human Beings?

In the Nicomachean Ethics Aristotle argues that we can infer the nature of human happiness by identifying some activity that is proper (idion, oikeion) to human beings. His celebrated ‘function argument’ in NE 1. 7 relies on such an inference, and there he rejects as candidates for happiness activities like self-nourishment, growth, and perception on the grounds that they are shared by beings other than humans. In NE 10. 7–8 he argues that human happiness is “a type of contemplation” (θεωρία τις) for the reason that the life characterized by contemplative activity is most proper to a human being. Aristotle is relying on the claim that only human beings are capable of contemplation. But many scholars have thought that his recognition that divine beings contemplate creates a problem. Their worry is expressed by the following argument:

If this conclusion holds, then Aristotle will be committed to saying that contemplation is and is not proper to human beings. Many commentators have addressed the argument from divine contemplation.[1] Some accept (5) of the argument, attributing various degrees of inconsistency in thought or expression to Aristotle. Those who wish to reject (5) on his behalf have standardly denied premise (1). I will discuss these interpretations and their shortcomings in Section 2. In Section 3 I will survey the most relevant apparent evidence for premise (3), the texts that describe divine contemplation. Section 4 contends that the argument from divine contemplation is invalid because it equivocates on ‘contemplation.’ According to Aristotle, divine and human contemplation cannot be type-identical activities.[2] This way of responding to the argument from divine contemplation closely parallels Aristotle’s explicit response to a structurally similar argument dealing with animals, as Section 5 argues. There is, then, some reason to believe that he would have adopted the strategy that I elaborate if he had been confronted with the argument from divine contemplation. That argument thus gives us no reason to disbelieve Aristotle’s claim that contemplation is proper to human beings.

2. The Views of Other Commentators

Three sets of responses have been offered to the argument from divine contemplation. The brief arguments that I offer against them, some of which have been given before, are not meant to show that they are unworkable, but rather to indicate that they are sufficiently controversial to motivate the solution to the problem that I will advocate in Section 4.

3. Divine Contemplation

Having discussed existing responses to the argument from divine contemplation, I will survey the most relevant apparent evidence for premise (3) of that argument. There are two main texts that might appear to suggest that human and divine contemplation are type-identical. In this section I will contend that these texts are inconclusive and are most conservatively interpreted as saying merely that human and divine contemplation are similar in certain respects that are important for Aristotle’s arguments in each context.[12] In the next section I will argue that Aristotle cannot intend to describe human and divine contemplation as type-identical.

T1: NE 10. 8, 1178^b7–32[13]

According to what I shall call an ‘identity reading,’ T1 commits Aristotle to the claim that human and divine contemplation are type-identical. On a ‘similarity reading,’ it commits him only to the claim that they are similar. If one has an identity reading, one might suppose that Aristotle argues roughly as follows, deducing the general nature of happiness from the nature of divine happiness as contemplation:

1. The gods are happy, alive, and active, but they do not engage in morally virtuous activities.
2. If the gods are happy, alive, and active, but do not engage in morally virtuous activities, then the only activity remaining for them would be contemplation.
3. So, the only activity for gods is contemplation.
4. If happiness is an activity, it is that of contemplation.
5. Happiness is an activity.
6. Therefore, happiness is contemplation.

The idea that human and divine contemplation are type-identical is supposed to gain support from Aristotle’s argument thus interpreted. However, there is a problem: Either happiness for gods and happiness for humans are type-identical or they are not. If they are not, then the passage licenses no inference to the claim that divine and human contemplation are type-identical. We would have to assume that gratuitously. If happiness for gods and happiness for humans are type-identical, however, it would be completely superfluous to mention that animals do not share in happiness or contemplation. That is because Aristotle would need only the following argument to show that human happiness is contemplation: Divine happiness is contemplation. If divine happiness and human happiness are type-identical, then human happiness is contemplation. Divine happiness and human happiness are type-identical. Therefore, human happiness is contemplation.

It remains possible that this is Aristotle’s argument in the passage, with the result that he is committed to human and divine contemplation being type-identical. But attributing such a commitment to him should be an interpretation of last resort since, as we have seen already, Aristotle is elsewhere committed to contemplation being proper to human beings. Fortunately, ‘similarity readings’ of the passage are possible, and these do not commit Aristotle to the type-identity of human and divine contemplation. One interpretation of his argument in this passage that would involve a similarity reading construes the argument as an appeal to the best explanation of various opinions of others: People say that all gods are happy, some humans are, and no animals are. But gods engage in no morally virtuous activities, which we might have been tempted to identify with happiness. The best explanation for these claims is that—and now we move to Aristotle’s official view rather than the imprecise terms of the opinions[14]—all gods are happy in a way peculiar to them because they all engage in a sort of contemplation peculiar to them, some humans are happy in a way peculiar to them because they engage in a sort of contemplation peculiar to them but similar to that in which the gods engage, and no animal is happy since no animal engages in any sort of contemplation. If this is right, Aristotle can then make both the extensional claim and the causal claim that, for human beings, happiness extends just as far as (human) contemplation does and the happiness is because of the contemplation. This makes human happiness similar to the happiness of the gods. The nexus of similarity is that both kinds of happiness are what they are because of the contemplation. The happiness of the gods is what it is because of divine contemplation, and the happiness of humans is what it is because of human contemplation. Contemplation of whatever sort plays a similar role in happiness of whatever sort. In this way of interpreting the argument of T1, (20) and (21) apply only to human happiness, and no premise in the argument asserts the type-identity of human and divine contemplation. Rather, Aristotle means to say only that human contemplation is “most akin” to divine contemplation (16) and that happy humans must engage in “some semblance of this sort of activity” (18), namely, some semblance of divine contemplation. It is preferable to adopt an interpretation of T1 that has these features if at all possible since Aristotle elsewhere is committed to the claim that contemplation is proper to human beings.[15]

T2: Metaph. 12. 7, 1072^b13–30

The motivation for an identity reading of T2 comes mostly from sentence (2). On such a reading, Aristotle’s point in this passage would be that human and divine contemplation are the same in type and differ only with respect to continuity and duration: human contemplation is intermittent and of finite duration, whereas divine contemplation is continuous and of eternal duration. Sentence (2) considered in its own right is ambiguous between an identity reading and a similarity reading, so it could mean this. However, sentences (7)–(8), at least on one plausible interpretation, disambiguate (2) in favor of the similarity reading.[16] The god’s activity is of a type that is better than, and therefore distinct from, the human activity. Sentence (4) opens up the possibility that the distinction might have something to do with differences in object of thought.[17] The god’s thinking is always and necessarily directed at the highest object, whereas our thinking is apt to be diverted in a variety of ways. Even sentence (3) can be interpreted as foreshadowing the claim in (7)–(8) that human and divine contemplation are merely similar. It depends on what Aristotle means in (3) by “we cannot be.” He could mean that we cannot be perpetually engaged in the same activity as the god is, or that we cannot be engaged in the same activity at all. The identity reading requires the first of these two options. The reasons why human and divine contemplation are distinct in type will be clearer when we come to Aristotle’s more substantive description of divine contemplation in Metaph. 12. 9. For now it is enough to note that there is a way of reading T2 that has this result.

On the similarity reading of T2, how are human and divine contemplation similar? At the very least, both have an intelligible object (sentences (5)–(6)) and are, or are associated with, the highest pleasure that each sort of being can experience and are the best activities in which each can engage, as Aristotle argues in sentences (3), (4), and (6). Further respects in which they are similar or different are difficult to describe precisely on any interpretation of T2.

We have seen that T1 and T2 can both be interpreted as saying that human and divine contemplation are similar in certain respects (being that which principally constitutes the happiness of each, having an intelligible object, and being or being associated with the highest pleasure that each can experience) rather than that they are type-identical. In the next section I will argue that Aristotle cannot consistently think that they are type-identical.

4. Why Divine and Human Contemplation Cannot Be Type-Identical Activities

In this section I will contend that the argument from divine contemplation, which I presented in Section 1, is invalid because it equivocates on ‘contemplation.’ There are two type-distinct kinds of contemplation at issue in the argument, one human and one divine. Furthermore, as I will argue in Section 5, there is evidence that Aristotle would prefer this way of responding to the argument from divine contemplation if he had been presented with it. Parts of my argument that divine and human contemplation are different in type have been given, at least in cursory form, in literature on Metaphysics and De anima.[18] However, this literature does not argue, as I will, on the basis of a consideration internal to Aristotle’s ethical theory, the context in which type-identity would generate the problem with which I began. My argument is that human and divine contemplation must be distinct in type because only the former is a manifestation of theoretical wisdom (sophia) as Aristotle describes it in his ethical works. This distinctive way of arguing permits an otherwise unavailable response to a powerful objection that I will discuss in Section 5. Furthermore, the arguments in the existing literature tend to focus on the differences between the unmoved mover and human beings, leaving largely unexplored whether divine beings other than the unmoved mover might contemplate in the way that we can.[19] Finally, the existing considerations have not been directed toward addressing the argument from divine contemplation.[20] Indeed, there has not been much interaction between the literature that addresses that argument and the literature that discusses in detail the nature of divine contemplation. This is unfortunate since, as will emerge in what follows, consideration of both issues together promotes a more accurate understanding of each.

5. An Aristotelian Parallel: The Argument from Animal Activities

One may wonder how likely Aristotle would be to respond to the argument from divine contemplation in this way if he had been explicitly confronted with it. We can get some insight into this by considering the fact that Aristotle already makes a very similar move to address a parallel argument, the argument from animal activities:

1. If practically wise and morally virtuous activities are proper to human beings, only human beings are capable of practically wise and morally virtuous activities.
2. If some animals are capable of practically wise and morally virtuous activities, then it is false that only human beings are capable of practically wise and morally virtuous activities.
3. Some animals are capable of practically wise and morally virtuous activities.
4. So, it is false that only human beings are capable of practically wise and morally virtuous activities.
5. Therefore, practically wise and morally virtuous activities are not proper to human beings.

If Aristotle accepts this conclusion, then he cannot argue as he does either in NE 1. 7 or 10. 8, for both of those arguments explicitly depend on the claim that practically wise and morally virtuous activities are proper to human beings. Aristotle clearly accepts (iii), for he attributes practically wise and morally virtuous activities to some animals (HA 8. 1, 588^a18–^b3, Metaph. 1. 1, 980^b21–22, NE 6. 7, 1141^a26–28). But he does not accept the conclusion; he says that mature humans alone can have virtues, and animals cannot (NE 7. 1, 1145^a25–26). Aristotle’s position is consistent because he thinks that ‘practically wise and morally virtuous activities’ is predicated equivocally of humans and animals (NE 7. 6, 1149^b31–32). He thinks that some animals perform activities that he is willing to call practically wise or morally virtuous (e.g., courageous), but in a sense that differs from that in which human beings can perform practically wise and morally virtuous activities. He distinguishes between attributing type-identical virtues and attributing merely analogous virtues, and says that we attribute the latter but not the former to humans and animals (HA 8. 1, 588^a18–^b3).

Kraut (1979: 472–474) anticipates in broad outline the strategy of responding to the argument from divine contemplation by saying that human and divine contemplation differ in type (though not for my reason for saying that they do, namely that the former but not the latter is a manifestation of theoretical wisdom), as well as its parallel with Aristotle’s response to the argument from animals’ practically wise and morally virtuous activities. He gives two arguments against it. Here is the first, quoted in full:

I share Kraut’s reluctance to believe that Aristotle is committed to this position, but that is because Aristotle himself says that scenarios like the one that Kraut envisions amount to imagining oneself away (NE 8. 7, 1159^a5–12, 9. 4, 1166^a19–22).[45] Kraut invites us to imagine that we could engage in the unmoved mover’s sort of contemplation, which Kraut is granting for purposes of this argument is distinct in type from human contemplation. But since the unmoved mover and its contemplation are strictly identical, the only way to engage in that sort of contemplation is to be that sort of contemplation. So, we are invited to imagine that we are not human, but rather the unmoved mover. Kraut’s counterfactual claim that if we were the unmoved mover then the human function would not be applicable to us is obviously correct, since its antecedent and consequent are both necessarily false, and my argument contains nothing that would contravene it.

The second of Kraut’s arguments, again quoted in full, is this:

The problem with this second argument is that Kraut simply assumes that human and divine contemplation are manifestations of a faculty that they share. But as I have argued, whereas human contemplation is a manifestation of theoretical wisdom, divine contemplation could not be a manifestation of any such thing. The unmoved mover could not share either the sort of nous or the sort of epistêmê that theoretical wisdom involves, and so could not have theoretical wisdom of the same type that human beings can possess. As for celestial objects, even if they have rational souls at all and we insist with no textual grounding on describing their thought as theoretical rather than practical, they still would not share with humans the sort of nous or epistêmê required for theoretical wisdom. In short, Kraut’s argument does not take account of the reason for saying that human and divine contemplation are type-distinct, which, as I have argued, is that whereas human contemplation is a manifestation of theoretical wisdom, divine contemplation cannot be.

6. Conclusion

I began by introducing the argument from divine contemplation as a threat to Aristotle’s claims in NE 1. 7 and 10. 7–8 that contemplation is proper to human beings. Those claims are threatened if humans and divine beings engage in the same type of contemplation. Section 2 surveyed existing responses to the argument from divine contemplation, all of which assume that human and divine contemplation are type-identical, and argued that another solution would be preferable to these. Section 3 contended that the principal apparent textual evidence for the type-identity of human and divine contemplation is inconclusive and is interpreted more conservatively as suggesting that human and divine contemplation are merely similar. Section 4 argued that the divine beings recognized by Aristotle, namely the unmoved mover and celestial objects, cannot engage in the same type of contemplation as human beings can. That is because human contemplation is a manifestation of theoretical wisdom, a virtue that includes the further virtues of epistêmê and nous (of a particular kind), but Aristotle’s divine beings cannot possess or manifest theoretical wisdom because they cannot possess or manifest epistêmê or nous of the relevant kind. The argument from divine contemplation is invalid because it equivocates on two different uses of ‘contemplation,’ one designating a human activity, the other a divine activity. Section 5 showed that such a response to the argument from divine contemplation closely parallels a response that Aristotle gives to a similar argument from animals’ practically wise and morally virtuous activities: such activities are proper to human beings because the activities ascribed to animals are not of the same type, but rather are called practically wise and morally virtuous by analogy to human activities. The upshot is that we can take Aristotle at his word: contemplation, at least of the type that is a manifestation of theoretical wisdom, is proper to human beings.

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank David Charles, Brad Inwood, Mark Schiefsky, Mor Segev, Harald Thorsrud, two anonymous reviewers, and the Area Editor for this journal, as well as audiences in October 2018 at the Bryn Mawr Classics Colloquium and a conference on Happiness and Ethics in the Aristotelian Tradition sponsored by Providence College and the University of Notre Dame, for feedback that improved this paper. I am also grateful for the generous support of Harvard University’s Center for Hellenic Studies, the John and Daria Barry Foundation, and the University of Chicago.

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Notes

1. Among those who have discussed this problem, but without arguing for the solution that I will advocate, are Ackrill (1997: 193), Aufderheide (2015: 54), Bush (2008: 65), Charles (2017a) and (2017b), Curzer (1990: 426–428), Curzer (2012: 411–412), Dahl (2011: 78), Joachim (1951: 50), Keyt (1983: 385), Kraut (1979) and (1989: 312–319), Lear (2004: 189–193), Nagel (1972: 255), and Whiting (1988: 37–38). Lawrence (2001: 445) mentions the problem but does not offer a solution. Wilkes (1978: 557–566) argues that Aristotle does not have a solution and his theory of happiness is therefore internally inconsistent.

2. This directly contradicts the assumption of several of the commentators mentioned above, as well as that of certain interpreters who discuss divine and human contemplation without explicitly addressing the problem with which I am concerned. These include Bodéüs (1992: 46), Bordt (2006: 116), Burnyeat (2008: 43), Lear (1988: 297–298), and Norman (1969: 67). Gauthier and Jolif (1970: 897) are not explicitly addressing the argument from divine contemplation or the problem that underlies it, though they say, as I do, that divine and human contemplation are type-distinct. See Footnote 20 and the section of the main text to which it refers for three differences between their comment and my proposal.

3. Proponents of this view include Ackrill (1997: 193), Bush (2008: 65), Charles (2017a) and (2017b), Curzer (1990: 426–428), Joachim (1951: 50), Keyt (1983: 385), and Nagel (1972: 255).

4. Whiting (1986: 88–90) inveighs against a position that she calls “the transcendental account,” the view that Aristotle is interested in the human good in the function argument, but in a good that transcends the human good in NE 10, on the grounds that such an account threatens the coherence of the NE (particularly since, as she points out, NE 10. 5, 1176^a3–4 seems to refer to the function argument). Thorsrud (2015: 355–356) highlights this threat with reference to NE 1. 6, 1096^b31–35, which suggests that the object of investigation in the NE is a good that human beings are capable of achieving. Unlike Whiting, Thorsrud thinks that Aristotle’s account does not escape the threat, and that is because Aristotle is genuinely pulled in two different directions and is honest about this.

5. Charles (2017a) and (2017b), which articulate a particularly nuanced version of transhumanism, would presumably contravene the common interpretation according to which the human good ought to count as the human good in virtue of being proper to those beings whose good it is. Charles thinks that what is proper to human beings is a whole pattern of life activities, considered as a whole, and that only some of these activities, including contemplation, are part of the human function. Contemplation, considered as an activity in its own right, is not proper to human beings, according to Charles. Interpreters will disagree with Charles if they think that the answer to Aristotle’s question, “What, then, would this characteristic activity (ergon) [of a human being] be?” (NE 1. 7, 1097^b33), is constrained by his claim in the next line that “we seek what is proper (idion) [to a human being]” (1097^b34), and is given first in general form as “a kind of active life of the part that has reason” (1098^a3–4) and then more specifically as “activity of the soul in accordance with virtue, and if there are multiple virtues, then in accordance with the best and most complete/final/perfect” (1098^a16–18). An interpreter who takes this to be Aristotle’s pattern of reasoning will think that there is no room for Charles’s distinction between the set of proper life activities of a human being described in this passage and the human function.

6. The idea that in the function argument Aristotle appeals to a composite set of activities that is proper to a human being, even though individual activities in that set might not be, echoes Irwin (1980: 49): “If x can do A, B, and C, and nothing else can do C, but other things can do A and B, we might describe x’s peculiar function either as ‘doing A, B, and C’ or as ‘doing C.’ Now it is fairly clear that Aristotle understands the peculiar activity of man in the first, inclusive way.”

7. I do not want to argue here that the very idea of a composite essence is problematic, but rather that a notion of composite essence that is of the appropriate shape to address the argument from divine contemplation, that is to say, one that entails that contemplation is proper to human beings only insofar as it is part of a package of activities that expresses the human essence, will require controversial interpretations of Aristotle’s remarks about what psychic powers and activities are most proper to humans. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for urging clarity on this point.

8. Bush (2008: 65 n. 23) thinks that there is a different dialectical problem. He complains that the composite essence view assumes inclusivism, the view that happiness essentially includes morally and intellectually virtuous activities, and should therefore be rejected if inclusivism should be. Since Lear (2004: 189–193) claims to follow Whiting’s (1988: 37–38) composite essence view, but is not an inclusivist according to Bush or to me, either Bush is mistaken or the composite essence view is unavailable to Lear. Charles mentions in his (2017a: 107) and (2017b: 96) yet another dialectical problem for the composite essence view: that view gives no principled way of including contemplation in the composite essence without also including perception, although Aristotle excludes perception from our function (NE 1. 7, 1098^a1–3). A proponent of the composite essence view might respond that the human essence is restricted to the rational soul and excludes perceptual capacities for that reason, but Charles presumably regards such a response as unprincipled.

9. For a detailed analysis of Aristotle’s argument in these chapters see Reece (2020).

10. An anonymous reviewer wonders whether this problem could be addressed by distinguishing two levels of analysis, such that at one level the capacities are all equally part of the human essence and at another, finer level a primary/secondary distinction is discernible. I worry that even if such a distinction in levels of analysis of a composite human essence could be derived from the function argument and NE 10. 7–8, and if some suitable ground for the distinction that is compatible with the composite essence view could be specified, the argument from divine contemplation would reemerge at the finer level of analysis. If divine beings contemplate, it will be at least as problematic to say, at whatever level of analysis, that contemplation, rather than morally virtuous activity, is proper to humans in a primary way (as Aristotle says in NE 10. 7–8) as it is to say that contemplation, rather than morally virtuous activity, is proper to humans. In short, I worry that the composite essence proponent’s ability to respond to the argument from divine contemplation depends on the impossibility of isolating contemplation in its own right as being proper (or proper in a primary way) to humans at any level of analysis, but the possibility of such isolation is central to the most plausible interpretations of NE 10. 7–8.

11. Curzer (1990: 427 n. 17) replies to Kraut as follows: “If Aristotle wanted the reader to take idion [proper] as relative to something, then he would have specified which something. Since he did not do so, we must take idion in an absolute sense.”

12. This conclusion about the passages’ status agrees with that of Herzberg (2013: ch. 4), though my analyses of the passages, particularly of the first, differ in detail from his.

13. Translations are mine.

14. Bodéüs (1992: 239) thinks that this passage is Aristotle’s only exposition of theology. This is surprising. What is not surprising is that Bodéüs also thinks that this passage says that divine and human contemplation are type-identical (1992: 46). Gauthier and Jolif (1970: 897) have a sharply contrasting view: Aristotle’s remarks in this passage about the gods are “ad hominem.”

15. I take it that if one adopts a similarity reading of T1, one can do so also for NE 10. 7, 1177^b31–34 and 10. 8, 1179^a22–32. The first of these enjoins us as humans to “immortalize ourselves to the extent possible for us” and the second leverages the popular opinions that there are providential gods who most love those humans who contemplate—Aristotle does not believe that these opinions are literally true, as I will discuss in Section 4, though Bodéüs (1992) disagrees—to argue that contemplation is the noblest activity and the one most characteristic of happiness. Neither passage suggests type-identity (rather than mere similarity) between human and divine contemplation.

16. This is also argued by Herzberg (2013: 147) and (2016: 164, 174–175), as well as by Laks (2000: 233).

17. Laks (2000: 234) suggests something similar.

18. The following either state that, according to Aristotle, human and divine contemplation are distinct in type or give arguments on the basis of which this can be concluded: Aquinas (1950: 2613–2615), Averroes (1984: 1700–1708), Beere (2010: 27–30), Brunschwig (2000: 296–301), Cohoe (2014: 599), Cohoe (in press), Gerson (1990: 127 and 284 n. 87), Herzberg (2013: ch. 4) and (2016), Kosman (2000: 311), Menn (2012: 446–447), Modrak (1991: 770), Ross (1953: 379), Segev (2017: 109), Silverman (2010: 92–93), and Wedin (1988: 229–245).

19. Cohoe (in press) and Segev (2017: ch. 3) are partial exceptions. Cohoe focuses not on whether divine beings other than the unmoved mover contemplate in the way that we can, but rather on demonstrating that such beings are alive but lack souls. His argument has implications for certain issues that I discuss, such as whether celestial bodies have phantasia. Segev more directly discusses the relationship between the cognitive activities of humans and of divine beings, but is more hospitable than I am to the conclusion that these activities possess “essential commonality” (2017: 120).

20. Each of these three descriptions of remarks in existing literature applies to the comment by Gauthier and Jolif (1970: 897), which I have already mentioned as being broadly similar to the view that I adopt in denying that divine and human contemplation are type-identical.

21. I take distinctness in species to be sufficient for distinctness in type.

22. This need not mean that practical wisdom is concerned with the same universals as epistêmê and theoretical wisdom are, but only that it differs from those because it is concerned not only with some universals or other, but also with particulars. That is to say, practical wisdom is concerned with more kinds of things.

23. For a detailed account of formal differences between, and material substrata of, activities, see Reece (2019).

24. Some advocate a more liberal view of what contemplation involves, according to which it can in some cases be fully virtuous inquiry, including Guthrie (1981: 396–398), Roochnik (2009), and Walker (2017). Such a view, or the proposal that contemplation can in some cases be a manifestation of practical wisdom, would make my argument in this section easier. That is because Aristotle’s divine beings clearly do not engage in inquiry or possess practical wisdom (see T1 above). I address the harder case of whether or not they have theoretical wisdom and manifest it in a comprehensive grasp rather than an inquiry, and so I assume the more conservative view of what contemplation involves.

25. Metaph. 12. 8 raises the question of how many divine unmoved movers there might be. Aristotle’s view about this is notoriously unclear. I will assume that any divine unmoved movers other than the first unmoved mover would share at least some of the features of the first unmoved mover that I argue are individually sufficient for type-distinctness from human contemplation.

26. This is argued at length by Segev (2017: chs. 1 and 3). Contrast Bodéüs (1992: ch. 5).

27. Johnson (2005: 262) and Segev (2017: 18) cite the Metaph. 12. 8 passage in support of the idea that Aristotle does not believe in the popular Greek deities, but rather sees popular beliefs as pointing to the truth that there are divine celestial objects.

28. Parts of the arguments that follow can be found in Beere (2010: 27–30), Brunschwig (2000: 296–301), Herzberg (2013: ch. 4), Herzberg (2016), Menn (2012: 446–447), Modrak (1991: 770), and Wedin (1988: 229–245).

29. A change from thinking to not thinking would also be a change for the worse since Aristotle supposes the unmoved mover’s thinking to be the best activity. That is why, as Thorsrud (2015: 352) mentions, human contemplation can be engaged in intermittently whereas the unmoved mover’s contemplation cannot. The difference in duration of divine and human contemplation thus depends on a difference in type.

30. This is mentioned by Burnyeat (2008: 27–28), who adds that the sort of nous required for theoretical wisdom must involve grasping principles as principles of demonstrations, which of course the unmoved mover’s thinking could not do. Burnyeat infers from this that nous in general (whether human or divine) could not be about something lacking distinguishable parts. He draws the astonishing conclusion that, in spite of the evidence of Metaph. 12. 9, the unmoved mover’s thinking is of something composite. This view is also held by Kahn (1981: 412–414), Lear (1988: 295) and Silverman (2010: 92–93). Beere (2010: 28 n. 47) argues that such a proposal faces grave difficulties. It would do far less violence to the text to conclude, as I do, that the unmoved mover’s thinking does not involve the sort of nous required for theoretical wisdom. It is surprising that Silverman does not do so since he eventually embraces the view that immediately follows from this that human and divine contemplation are distinct not merely in duration and continuity but also in type (2010: 93).

31. This is mentioned by Herzberg (2016: 167), Modrak (1991: 770–771), Ross (1953: 379), Segev (2017: 109), and Wedin (1988: 244–245) as a reason why the unmoved mover’s thinking cannot feature nous considered as grasping first principles.

32. Cohoe (2016: 352) argues that the unmoved mover’s thinking cannot involve images. His paper as a whole discusses in detail the extent to which, and reasons why, human thinking does involve images.

33. The OCT marks a lacuna here. Laks (2000: 219) thinks that we need not take there to be a lacuna since the transmitted text gives all that is needed to make the argument work. My translation of sentence 3 follows his.

34. This point is made forcefully by Caston (1999: 217).

35. Simplicius reports in his commentary on DC 2. 2, 285^a27–30 that certain respectable but unnamed ancient commentators attributed to Aristotle the view that celestial objects do not have rational souls (388.16–19) and therefore cannot think about anything. Blyth (2015: 429 n. 5) thinks that Theophrastus and Alexander of Aphrodisias had this interpretation. For the long and complicated history of debate among Greek, Arabic, and Latin commentators on Aristotle about what sorts of psychic capacities, if any, celestial objects have, see Wolfson (1973). Among recent commentators, Broadie (1993: 406) argues that the unmoved mover does not cause the movement of any celestial object by literally being an object of thought for it. According to her, this is because the unmoved mover is related to the outermost celestial sphere as soul is related to body, and its causality of the movement of this sphere is efficient rather than final. Roughly this view is also articulated by Bodéüs (1992: ch. 2). Blyth (2015: 455–463) contends that no celestial object contemplates the unmoved mover because no celestial object has a rational soul. His conclusion is thus similar to that of Broadie and Bodéüs, but derived from premises several of which are incompatible with theirs. Blyth thinks that T3, within its context in Metaph. 12. 7, suggests only that the unmoved mover is an object of desire and thought for the thinking that is its essence (2015: 456–459). The outermost celestial sphere does not have a soul at all, let alone a rational soul, but is moved because the aithêr of which it is composed naturally (not intentionally) responds to the unmoved mover by rotating, a response that Aristotle describes in erotic terms in Metaph. 12. 7 (2015: 460–462). Roughly this view was taken in antiquity to be supported by Aristotle’s remarks about aithêr in DC 1. 2, as is noted not only by Blyth (2015: 441), but also by Wolfson (1973: 23–24).

36. See Laks (2000: 221).

37. One might think that it is inappropriate to appeal to Aristotle’s remarks about desire and thought in DA 3. 10 to understand what sort of cognitive activity (if any) is characteristic of celestial objects for the reason that the cognitive activity of superlunary beings is so different from that of humans that his remarks in DA cannot be supposed to apply to such beings. If that is correct, then my conclusion of this section follows.

38. Laks (2000: 220, 223–224) thinks that T3 offers a “condensed version” of parts of DA 3. 10.

39. Bonitz (1848: 496) proposes that this passage can help us understand what may have filled the lacuna in T3, sentence 3.

40. This disjunction requires some clarification in the case of celestial spheres other than the outermost, which is the only one mentioned in T3, the principal source of putative textual evidence that any celestial object contemplates. The movement of the outermost sphere is comparatively easy to understand, for it simply rotates. To describe the movements of the spheres nested within the outermost sphere, Aristotle in Metaph. 12. 8 introduces his own version of the cosmology developed by Eudoxus and refined by Callipus: The spheres nested within the outermost sphere have their proper movement, which, as in the case of the outermost sphere, is continuous, simple, unvarying rotation. However, since the spheres are nested with no void between them, they are attached, but at different angles. This means that the movement of each sphere further out will affect the movement of each sphere further in. So, as Aristotle notes in DC 2. 12, spheres other than the outermost will have multiple movements. Nonetheless, its proper movement is rotation, and this rotation (but not whatever influences may be transmitted by spheres further out) is directly explained with reference to an unmoved mover. So, the only movement of any celestial object that an unmoved mover is supposed to explain directly is continuous, simple, unvarying rotation. Judson (2015) provides a detailed discussion of these and other aspects of Aristotle’s account.

41. See Cohoe (in press), Segev (2017: ch. 3), and Wolfson (1973: 34–40) for general discussion about debates concerning the psychic capacities (or lack thereof) of celestial objects.

42. One might think that there would still be a reason to suppose that the outermost celestial sphere has theoretical thought if it has any sort of thought: the sphere is divine and we are not, so its activity should be better than ours is. But if we can contemplate and the sphere cannot, but rather engages only in another sort of thought, then its activity would not be better than ours is. I reply as follows. First, Aristotle gives us no reason to suppose that a divine being’s thought (of whatever sort) could not be better than a human’s theoretical thought unless we assume that divine and human contemplation are type-identical. Second, the sphere’s activity could be better than ours in virtue of being continuous, uninterrupted, and unforced (given that, if it is composed of aithêr, it does not have to exert effort the way that beings composed of the other four elements do). Being theoretical is not the only applicable determinant of being better.

43. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting discussion of why this chapter is unproblematic for my view.

44. Broadie (2012: 66) offers the suggestion that Aristotle’s unmoved mover could be in view here if it thinks about itself as cause of eternal things and so do humans. This suggestion has the following weaknesses. First, there is no positive evidence that Aristotle understood the unmoved mover’s thinking in this way. Second, even if human sophia concerns the unmoved mover as cause of eternal things, the chapter indicates that human sophia is concerned with other things about which the unmoved mover would not be thinking, such as the material causes of celestial bodies. Third, it is unlikely that Aristotle would countenance such a description of the unmoved mover’s thought. That is because, as we have seen, he believes that the unmoved mover must think about what is best and nothing else. According to Broadie’s suggestion, both humans and the unmoved mover would think about the unmoved mover not as an entity in itself, but rather as related to its principal effects. But if thinking of the unmoved mover as related to its principal effects is sufficiently different from thinking of it as an entity in itself to accommodate, as Broadie wants to do, the plurality of first principles and causes with which human sophia is concerned, then the unmoved mover, in thinking of itself as related to its principal effects, would not be thinking of what is best, namely, itself as an entity in itself. That is because if something is thought of qua related to something else, it is thought of as having an essence mutually dependent on that to which it is related (Cat. 7, 8^a31–32). But, as we have seen, one of Aristotle’s reasons for thinking that the unmoved mover is best is that its essence depends on nothing else.

45. Thorsrud (2015: 358), Walker (2018: 96), and Whiting (1988: 47 n. 19) remark and explain the incoherence of wishing that oneself or one’s friend were divine.