Greek Philosophy as a Religious Quest for the Divine

Abstract

Philosophy has always been parasitic on other bodies of knowledge, especially religious thought. Greek philosophy in Italy emerged as a purification of Orphic religious traditions. Orphic votaries adopted various disciplines in the attempt to become divine, which led Pythagoras and Empedocles to define philosophy as a path to divinity. According to Plato and Aristotle, the goal of philosophy is to become “as much like a god as is humanly possible.” Classical Greek philosophy is not the study of the divine but the project of becoming divine, a project which it shares with Christianity. Greek philosophy and Christianity have different paths to the divine, but they share a common aspiratio

Published
2023-06-30
How to Cite
Murphy, J. B. (2023). Greek Philosophy as a Religious Quest for the Divine. Forum Philosophicum, 28(1), 85-97. https://doi.org/10.35765/forphil.2023.2801.05