Comment by acephal

>One very common error people make is to believe that ethics - at least epistemically and for the most part - is sectarian. This view seems to stem from an ultimately nihilistic presupposition that morality is a fiction supplied by the fiction of religion. But that is not the natural law view and thus a view alien to both Aristotle and to Christianity.

I didn’t make that claim in any implied way, I asserted, correctly, that Aristotle is not an Abrahamic thinker.

> The natural law view is that human beings have a nature, which is most centrally to be a rational animal with the freedom to choose between alternatives apprehended by the intellect. Thus, Man has moral responsibility, because he plays a part in choosing what he does. Accordingly, because human nature defines what is good or bad for human beings (that which actualizes human potential in accord with reason vs. that which frustrates or opposes reason and the actualization of potential in accord with it), we bear responsibility for how we exercise our powers. Aristotle wasn't completely, but the core principles in the Metaphysics or his ethical works or in epistemology are - in my view - spot on.

The Nichomachean Ethics doesn’t discuss ethics within any context of absolute free will even, it is a very qualified doing. Aristotle explicitly points out that the actions of slaves are entirely disqualified from being considered ethical. Most Christian theologies would vehemently disagree precisely because having the supra-knowledge of the Mystery imparted upon one necessarily brings one's being into the dimension of revealed universality. That's not what Aristotle is talking about.

> What Christianity does or claims to do is supplement what is knowable by unaided reason with revealed knowledge - the object of faith - which, of course, does have ethical import, but it does not negate or supplant what is knowable by unaided reason.

All three of the Abrahamic theologies were infected by Neoplatonism, which . The Europeans revived their Neoplatonism through the Muslims even. The Middle Ages Christian theology of the "chain of being" is a riff on Neoplatonist "ladder of being".

Aristotle was describing in Metaphysics a cosmology concerned with unpacking the notion of motion as the actualization of potentiality, hence, "First Mover", which is not at all an Abrahamic idea.

> FWIW, Aquinas drew heavily from Aristotle and had such enormous respect for Aristotle, he referred to him as simply "the Philosopher".

This doesn’t interact with my point since it requires us first to ask how he read Aristotle, whom was not an Abrahamic thinker. An aside, but the Muslims called Aristotle “The Philosopher” (Ibn Rashud, Ibn Sina), and that tradition was received through the Muslims by their European readers.