Medicine and philosophy - Classical Homeopathy Online

Aristotle on divine movement and human nature 247form of ‘divine concern’ ( ), but the theory of others that agod ‘sends’ () dreams to people does suppose divination in sleep tobe such, for ‘sending’ presupposes an active and purposive divine choice,whereas such a choice is for Aristotle, as we have seen, incompatible withthe fact that prophetic dreams are found among simple people and notamong the best and wisest. For this reason he uses three times the samedistribution argument as that in Eth. Eud. 1247 a 28–9.The second part of the solution is in that the movement of God is, inprinciple, not limited to the class of the ‘irrational’ () people, butextends to the ‘wise and intelligent’ ( ) as well. WhatAristotle has in mind here is a general and universal divine causality. Todemonstrate this I shall first summarise my interpretation of the passage1248 a 15ff.; then I shall give a detailed account of this interpretation andof my treatment of the various textual problems.Having established that eutuchia proceeds from natural desire (and ), Aristotle asks in turn for the starting-point of this desire,probably because it is not yet clear why this natural desire should be aimedin the right direction. He considers that this starting-point will also be theorigin of rational activity ( and ), and having disposed of‘chance’ () as an evidently unsatisfactory candidate for this functionhe argues that the starting-point wanted is in fact the starting-point ofmovement in the soul; then it is clear that this starting-point is God. ThusGod is the starting-point of all psychic activity, both of reasoning ()and of the irrational impulses () on which eutuchia is based. God iseven more powerful than the divine principle in man, the intellect (),and it is for this reason that people who are devoid of rational activity, too,can make the right choice: they succeed without reasoning because they stillhave God, although the wise people also have God and use his movementin their calculation of the future, either by experience or by habit: thus thereis a more rational form of divination as well. Both irrational and rationaldivination, then, ‘use’ God (who sees the future as well as the present),but God moves more strongly in those people whose reasoning faculty isdisengaged. Thus God’s movement is present both in the irrational peopledaimonia because it is beyond human control, as is indicated by the use of the word inSomn. vig. 453 b 23, where is presented as the opposite of what is done by human agencyand is subdivided into things that happen ‘naturally’ () and things that happen ‘spontaneously’( ). The individual human nature is further called daimonia because it works morestrongly when reason is inactive, and because it plays the part of intermediary between God andman, which Greek tradition assigned to demons. For this interpretation see van der Eijk (1994)292–6, and ch. 6 above.