From brant_reiter@hotmail.com Sun Jan 27 07:18:49 2002 Received: from mailscan6.cac.washington.edu (mailscan6.cac.washington.edu [140.142.33.14]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with SMTP id g0RFImw6129078 for ; Sun, 27 Jan 2002 07:18:48 -0800 Received: FROM mxu3.u.washington.edu BY mailscan6.cac.washington.edu ; Sun Jan 27 07:18:37 2002 -0800 Received: from hotmail.com (f240.law8.hotmail.com [216.33.241.240]) by mxu3.u.washington.edu (8.12.1+UW01.12/8.12.1+UW02.01) with ESMTP id g0RFIaWn031681 for ; Sun, 27 Jan 2002 07:18:36 -0800 Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; Sun, 27 Jan 2002 07:18:36 -0800 Received: from 24.190.163.78 by lw8fd.law8.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; Sun, 27 Jan 2002 15:18:36 GMT X-Originating-IP: [24.190.163.78] From: "Brant Reiter" To: classics@u.washington.edu Subject: "The gods" vs. "God" in Aristotle Date: Sun, 27 Jan 2002 15:18:36 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/html Message-ID: X-OriginalArrivalTime: 27 Jan 2002 15:18:36.0654 (UTC) FILETIME=[E437F8E0:01C1A745]
Hello. I'm a layman reading Aristotle in translation, so I'm pretty much at the mercy of my translators when it comes to trying to make sense of the text.  I've been reading the Penguin translations, which are very helpful in terms of footnotes and explanatory notes, but I've come up against one recurring problem that I haven't been able to figure out just by reading the books, so I'm hoping that perhaps some real scholars out there might be able to help me out.
 
In 1178b7 - 29 (p. 333 of J.A.K. Thomson's translation) of the Nichomachean Ethics, in the space of one paragraph I get: "The gods in our conception of them are truly happy and blessed" and then later, in the same paragraph, "It follows, then, that the activity of God, which is supremely happy, must be a form of contemplation."   Reference to a singular, Capitalized "God" is also made in Hugh Lawson-Tancred's translation of the Metaphysics (Lambda 7), but again we get the plural, non-capitalized "the gods" in Trevor Saunders' translation of the Politics ("Just as men imagine gods in human in shape, so they imagine their way of life to be like that of men" [1252b15]).  So, um...what's going on here?  Are there two different words in Greek for "the gods" and "God"?  Is Aristotle indicating a monotheistic "God," or is this just an artifact of the translation?
 
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
Many thanks,
Brant Reiter

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