Zachary Taylor (University of Chicago)
When, in the Politics, Aristotle sketches the constitution of the city that “one would pray for” (Pol. 1325b38), he includes “priestcraft” (ἱερατείαν) as one of the necessary tasks of the city for it to qualify as such. He even accords priestcraft a certain priority, since while he names it fifth in his list of necessary political functions, he claims that it is “fifth, and first” (Pol. 1328b13). Yet why should priestcraft be one of the necessary tasks of the city, and what could priests have to do with politics? Mor Segev has recently explored these questions and proposed that priests’ necessary role in Aristotle’s ideal city corresponds with his conclusion in the Nicomachean Ethics that eudaimonia consists in contemplation (Segev 2017). Because the natural end of the city is eudaimonia for its citizens, the city must ensure the necessary conditions for citizens to pursue the contemplative life, which consists in intellectual apprehension and comprehension of the unmoved mover. On Segev’s interpretation, priests, whose task in the ideal city is to superintend matters that concern the divine (Pol. 1328b2-23), therefore help establish such conditions insofar as they elicit “wonder” (θαυμάζειν) in citizens at the divine. Such wonder is, for Aristotle, a first and necessary step toward the contemplative life (Met. 982b12-21).
While Segev offers the most coherent explanation for the inclusion of priestcraft in the ideal city of the Politics, he also claims that, for Aristotle, the best way to elicit wonder conducive to philosophical inquiry is by way of “anthropomorphic, mythical depictions of divinity,” and hence Aristotle’s priests would remain associated with the cults of traditional Greek divinities (Segev 2017). Given Aristotle’s critique of anthropomorphic depictions of divinity and his metaphysical assertions about the unmoved mover as pure intellection, I contend that Segev’s interpretation on this point is mistaken: it is most plausible that the priests of the ideal city would occupy some middle terrain between traditional priests of anthropomorphic deities and mere philosophers with public duties linked with the hypothetical cult of the unmoved mover. If this is true, then we must reassess Aristotle’s view of civil religion: not only does religion help the polis fulfill its natural end, but also its substantive content in the ideal city is not false, as Segev maintains.
To demonstrate this, I first survey Aristotle’s discussion in the Politics of the ideal city and briefly explain the symmetry between the end of the polis and contemplation. Following Segev, I then establish how priestcraft helps citizens pursue the contemplative life by instilling wonder at the divine. Next, I summarize why Segev believes that priests linked with the anthropomorphic deities of ancient Greek religion would best perform this function, and offer reasons drawn from Aristotle’s critique of anthropomorphic divinities and his metaphysics to question this conclusion. To conclude, I offer an alternative description of priests in the ideal city who superintend cults associated with the celestial spheres which, as eternal and immutable, closely resemble the one true divinity: the unmoved mover.