god — love — revelationwhich different approaches enter into relation with each other. The
ancient Greek experience is an exemplary case: the gods populate
mythology as protagonists and continue to exercise a central role in
the age of tragedy in the fifth century B.C., which is nevertheless by
then critical of “the false gods.”^3 Parallel with mythological and tragic
poetry, philosophical rationality absorbs or rejects divinity in accord-
ance with its own structures. Plato’s dialogues regard the mythological
stories as ways to access truth, recognizing the didactic and allegoric
value of myths.^4 Aristotle’s philosophy elaborates an alternative con-
cept to that of popular polytheistic religion, but maintains the neces-
sity of traditional polytheism in ethical and political spheres. How-
ever, Aristotle configures the idea of a divinity that retains the typical
traits of the mythological gods: eternity and the condition of happi-
ness derive from the incorruptible nature of the being of theòs.^5 These
two examples already indicate that in the history of thought the inves-
tigation of the divine allows philosophy and theology to touch each
other and opens up a comparison between the philosophical way of
- Dante Alighieri, Divina commedia, Inferno, I canto, v. 72 (“al tempo delli dei fasi e
bugiardi”). - As examples of the importance myths have in Plato’s dialogues one recalls the
myth of Theuth in the Phædrus or the myth of Eros in the Symposium, or equally
the mythological figure of Demiurge in the Timæus. For an analysis of the relation-
ship between philosophical and mythological knowledge and the role of the myth
in Plato’s thought cf. the works of Luc Brisson, Platon, les mots et les mythes, Paris:
La Découverte, 1995 second edition, and Introduction à la Philosophie du mythe,
Paris: Vrin, 2005 second edition, as well as the remarkable study of Kathryn Mor-
gan, Myth and Philosophy from the Presocratics to Plato, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2000. - There is however an essential difference between Aristotle’s conception of theòs
and the polytheistic vision. The gods of the polytheism of ancient Greece are in
their immortality in a similar condition to humans, because they have the same
feelings, emotions, passions, psychological states. They are the result of an anthro-
pomorphic conception of divinity, while the Aristotelian god as unmoved mover
is free of human traits, and its condition of happiness, which appears in Met. XII,
is more the cipher of a descriptive metaphor than a subjective state of the soul as
it is (exists) for humans. For a confrontation between Aristotle’s conception of
the divine and the popular polytheistic theology in its presence within Aristote-
lian speculation cf., Barbara Botter, Dio e divino in Aristotele, Sankt Augustin:
Academia Verlag, 2005.