Comment by Razengan
8 hours ago
You know I always found it odd/unfair how religions were founded around Jesus, Muhammed etc but not for Aristotle, Socrates etc.
8 hours ago
You know I always found it odd/unfair how religions were founded around Jesus, Muhammed etc but not for Aristotle, Socrates etc.
I've thought about this. Aristotle doesn't draw as hard of a line between right and wrong behavior or advocate for specific actions, with the right action depending on circumstance, and to finding the middle path. Traditional religions might be a bit more hardline, with specific rules or commandments. It's easier to identify with belonging to a particular group when the line between belonging and not belonging is more crisp and defined by particular practices.
Would love to know if others have takes.
These come from my own musings not someone else's - but bearing sycophancy in mind, I asked Claude and it told me this is basically the "strict church thesis" from sociology of religion, and linked me this paper, I think it lines up with my takes written from someone who has had this idea before: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/230409
The Greek philosophers were more wise, humble, and didn’t think they’re deities.
It's a category mistake. People try to naturalize Jesus as a "great teacher", but the one thing you cannot do is frame Jesus as another wise man and good teacher! The man claimed to be God. Anyone who makes a claim like is either insane, a liar, or, in fact, God. "Greater teacher, full stop" is simply not an option.
Which is to say that the founding of the Church by Jesus is not rooted in some wise teachings, but in claims about his identity. If his claim of Godhood is false, then the Church and the Christian faith are total charlatanism.
There actually were religions founded around the philosophers. The mathematikoi were a cult of followers of Pythagoras that believed everything was Number, and they believed they could purify their souls by learning theorems. And the Neoplatonists founded a religious school based on the works of Plato (with significant elaboration by Plotinus). Christianity ultimately incorporated many Neoplatonic beliefs, along with Stoic beliefs that stemmed from Heraclitus, who argued everything was Logos, which has one translation as Word, which is an opening statement in the Bible’s book of John. Aristotle’s works also went on to have a transformative impact on Judaism, Christianity, and Islam through Maimonides, Aquinas, and Averroes, who all interpreted his works.
I agree it’s still interesting that major religions were not founded at the time of the early philosophers — maybe it’s because religion as we conceive of it today depends on a type of bureaucracy that wasn’t achievable in the classical era?