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46 carlos fraenkel* * *Aristotle’s description of the highest good at the end of the EudemianEthics is only one striking example for the attitude to the divine thatGreek philosophers shared with medieval philosophers like Averroesand Maimonides. A visitor to Hellenistic Athens would, in fact, find thatmost major philosophical schools of the period—Platonists, Aristotelians,Epicureans, and Stoics—take “Godlikeness” to be the highest humanperfection and promote their philosophy as the path to attain it. 34 Thesecond main intellectual context that I will examine in this chapter isthe philosophical interpretation of Judaism and Christianity in ancientAlexandria. For this context, the most important Greek philosopher isPlato. It is clear that for Plato philosophy in some form is a religiouspractice. Let me only note that from the middle dialogues onwardsthe incorporeal forms which the philosopher studies and according towhich he orders his life are the highest constituent of the realm of thedivine. In the Republic the philosopher consorts “with what is divine andwell ordered” and consequently “becomes himself as divine and wellordered as a human being can be.” 35 In the Timaeus Plato asserts that“if a man has seriously devoted himself to the love of learning and totrue wisdom . . ., then there is absolutely no way that his thoughts canfail to be immortal and divine, should truth come within his grasp.” 36According to the Timaeus the realm of forms can be described as theintelligible order of nature. Plato assumes the existence of such an orderto explain nature’s recurrent patterns. The form e.g., of an animal speciesserves to explain the recurrent physical instantiation of that species.On this account the formula of the Theaetetus—“to become like God asmuch as possible”—which was adopted as the definition of the goal ofhuman perfection by the entire later Platonic tradition, must be takento include establishing the generic features of trees, fish, birds etc. andthe systematic connections between them. 37 When we turn from Athens34That this holds for Epicureans too, may surprise some. But see e.g., Diogenes ofOenoanda 1993 fr. 56 and 125. On this issue, see in general O’Meara 2003, 32–34.35Plato 1900–1907, Republic 500c; cf. 540a–b. English translations are based on Cooper1997.36Ibid., Timaeus 90b–c.37Ibid., Theaetetus 176a–b. Plato explains that becoming like God means becoming“just and pure (hosios), with wisdom ( phronêsis).” Being “just” in the Republic cancertainly be interpreted as devoting one’s life to the pursuit of knowledge. For a personis just if each of the soul’s three faculties performs the task appropriate to it (see435b–441c). Since “the intellectual faculty (to logistikon)” is the soul’s highest faculty,its task is to govern the lower faculties, as well as to carry out its natural activity, that
concept and history of philosophical religions 47to Alexandria we find that this is precisely what Moses did—at leastaccording to Philo of Alexandria whose work represents the culminationof the first encounter between Greek culture and Judaism. How isMoses’ interest in the generic features of trees, fish, and birds motivatedfor Philo? To begin with, Philo follows Plato in explaining the recurrentpatterns of nature as physical instantiations of incorporeal forms. 38 Butwhile the form of the bird, for instance, explains its physical instantiations,it does not explain the place of birds in relation to other classesof things. In other words: the order of nature itself requires explanation.Precisely for this purpose Plato in his late theology introduces God as“Reason (Nous)” described as divine Craftsman in the Timaeus, whoseactivity consists in ordering the physical world in view to what is best. 39Philo, however—like other later Platonists—goes beyond Plato whenhe makes the existence and order of the forms themselves dependenton divine Reason by interpreting them as God’s intellecta. Note thatPhilo calls divine Reason “Logos” or “Sophia” instead of “Nous,” the termcommonly used by pagan Platonist. Since Logos also means “speech,”this choice may reflect the biblical account of creation in which God’sspeech brings things into existence. 40 The use of “Sophia” on the otherhand is based on Prov. 8:22 where God is said to have created Wisdomat the “beginning of his work.” 41 Comparing God’s creative activity tothat of an architect who first conceives the city’s different buildings inhis mind, then puts the city’s plan together, and finally executes theplan “in stone and timber,” Philo writes:is, the apprehension of what exists (see 582c). For the scope of the world of forms,see Parmenides 130a–e where Plato suggests that the forms include general ontologicalcategories (e.g., likeness, one, and many), moral and esthetic norms (e.g., the just itselfand the beautiful itself ), and forms of physical objects (e.g., human being, fire, water).The last group seems to extend to things that at first seem “undignified and worthless”(e.g., hair, mud, and dirt). For Godlikeness in Plato, see Sedley 2000; on the adoptionof Godlikeness as the goal of human perfection in the early Platonic tradition,see Dillon 1977, 44. For the Neoplatonic ideal of “divinization,” see O’Meara 2003,in particular part 1.38See Philo 1929–1962, De specialibus legibus (On the Special Laws) 1.45–50; 327–329.References are to the Greek and English translation in the Loeb edition of Philo’sComplete Works.39See the account in Menn 1995.40Note that the Septuagint uses “eipein” and not “legein” in Genesis 1. But see SapientiaSalomonis (Wisdom of Solomon) 9:1–2.41See Philo 1929–1962, De ebrietate (On Drunkenness) 31 and Legum allegoriae (AllegoricalInterpretation) 1.43.
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