Purity of thought: Dualism and divinization in Greek philosophy

Despite their disagreements, many ancient Greek philosophers agree that thought is divine. To Aristotle, indeed, God just is a kind of thought---the kind that actively thinks itself (Metaph. 12.9). In the conclusion of Nicomachean Ethics (10.6--8), Aristotle enjoins us to live a life of pure thought (nous), since such a life is divine in comparison with a merely human one. Although this injunction has embarrassed some commentators, who see it as inconsistent with his naturalistic anthropocentrism, this dissertation concludes that it represents the very heart of his philosophy.; Aristotle, it is argued, inherited a program of purification and divinization from Plato. This program has three main tenets: (i) God is pure thought; (ii) the human is a hybrid of divine thought and mortal nature; (iii) the goal of philosophy is to purify thought of its mortal entanglements, and thus to divinize the philosopher. Plato, in turn, appropriates this program from the Pythagoreans, but synthesizes it with four contributions from other Presocratics: (i) the purity of thought exalted by Anaxagoras; (ii) the self-intellection of the divine articulated by Parmenides; (iii) the divinity of thought proposed by Xenophanes and Heraclitus; and (iv) the correspondence between cosmos and soul introduced by the Milesians.; Beginning with these Milesians, then, this dissertation tells a history of Greek philosophy from Thales to Aristotle, tracing the origins, development, and refinement of its persistent program of purification and divinization. Special attention is paid to Plato and Aristotle, focusing on the following topics: the importance of contemplation in their ethics; the role of images---especially the metaphors of light and vision---in their epistemologies; and finally, the picture of selfhood that emerges from their psychologies. According to this picture, we are distinct from our humanity. The pure thought we really are, claim Plato and Aristotle, must be separated from our bodies, and from the imagination, emotion, and appetite these bodies produce. Until death, philosophy is the means of this separation. In compensation for this painful process, though, Plato and Aristotle promise us the consolation of divinity.