Peeters’ collection Aristote. Traductions et Études has published a reworked version of B.’s Ph.D. dissertation. The book consists of three parts. The first examines how physics structures Aristotle's discourse on the divine, conceived as a principle of movement (pp. 21–106); the second considers divinity as a substance through an ‘ousiological’ investigation based on Metaphysics Λ (pp. 107–286); and the third, by far the shortest (pp. 287–301), focuses on the relation between Aristotle's views on the gods and the more traditional theological representations. It is still unclear to me what is the precise question that B. seeks to answer. But I presume it is somewhat similar to the one that E. Berti (2006) was asking some time ago and that B. takes up in the first line of her introduction: ‘Y a-t-il une théologie d'Aristote?’ (p. 7).

B. maintains that, in the absence of a theology in charge of studying God and its attributes, there is, in Aristotle, a conception of the ‘divine’ which presents a powerful ‘theological interest’, and that the science which studies it ‘can be called theological’, since its object – the separate and immutable substances – ‘surpasses the hierarchy of beings’ (p. 12). It is, she says, using paradoxical language, ‘a non-theological theology’ or ‘a theological science which is not a theology’ (pp. 304–5). B.’s main argument is that this science treats divinity as a primary principle. Thus, she suggests calling it an ‘archology’, and asks us to excuse this neologism (p. 13). This so-called ‘archology’ would consist of the ‘three main developments’ devoted to ‘the divine realities’ and ‘the knowledge of principles’ (p. 10), that is, On the Heavens 1–2, Physics 8 and Metaphysics Λ.

It is impossible for me to follow B. on this path. Focusing as she does on the ‘divine’ rather than on the gods may allow her to explore how the notion of ‘principle’ plays out in various contexts – although a careful look at the philosophical complexity and linguistic polysemy of the notion itself is nowhere to be found. Yet my hesitations are essentially due to the fact that B.’s inquiry into ‘the question of the divine in Aristotle’ seems compromised from the outset by a lack of serious reflection on what Aristotle means by the adjective ‘divine’. Surely, the term always relates to the gods in one way or another. But is it always in the same way? After all, according to Aristotle, the divine is present everywhere, even in nature. It is therefore urgent to distinguish, among all the things labelled as ‘divine’, those which are part of the gods and those which are external to them, human intelligence, for example, ‘the divine within us’ (Eth. Nic. 10.7.1177a15–16).

So, first, what can be ‘the divine things’ (ta theia) which are part of the gods? Depending on the context, it could either be their bodies or their souls. It is therefore surprising that B. sees the expression ‘the philosophy about the divine things’ (ê peri ta theia philosophia, Part. An. 1.5.645a4) as ‘not particularly problematic’ (p. 10). Because even assuming that ta theia ought to be read here as ta theia [zôia], and thus as referring to ‘the divine [living beings]’, bodies and souls, the expression still raises the question of whether ‘the philosophy’ that concerns them is a single science or, on the contrary, combines two distinct disciplines. Physics exclusively considers ‘bodies and magnitudes’ (Cael. 1.1.268a1–2): so it may well study ‘the divine bodies’ (ibid.), but it can say nothing about the corresponding divine souls. Curiously, B. does not even consider this hypothesis.

Now what can be ‘the divine things’ that are separate from the gods? This category may include all the things and events that the deities generate or are responsible for, including those enjoyed by humans – even though Aristotle does not place too much hope in divine gifts (theosdota) (but see the case of happiness, Eth. Nic. 1.10.1099b9–18, 10.9.1179a24–29) and definitely rules out the divine punishments that Plato envisions for the impious (Laws 10.910a–b). Obviously, Aristotle also rejects the ‘divine’ principles that Plato conceives as separate from the gods, namely, the Idea of God, the Idea of an Eternal Living and all the other Ideas in which these partake. As we all know, Aristotle holds that Plato's Ideas unnecessarily duplicate reality (Metaph. Α.9). In his opinion, the intelligible form of the god, which for Plato has neither body nor soul (since the soul, according to the Timaeus, is ‘intermediary’ between the intelligible and the sensible), cannot be separated from the eternal living beings that are the gods: it is the form common to each of them. Under these conditions, the only thing that can be separated, not from the gods, but from their body, is their activity of thought, given that it functions without the help of the imagination (as the human intelligence relies on images and, consequently, on a sensitive soul and bodily sense-organs). And yet, it is precisely on this kind of separate divine things, which are not gods but ‘causes of the gods’ (p. 13, cf. pp. 97–106), that B. focuses all her attention, thus placing Aristotle among those he fights.

This troubling error of interpretation affects B.’s reading of the disputed passage in Metaphysics Ε (1026a15–21), which evokes the possibility of a ‘theological science’ devoted to separate and unmovable substances. In this text, the nature of these substances is said to be a fortiori (malista) divine if they are ‘causes of the divinities which are visible’ (aitia tois phanerois tôn theiôn). Yet, instead of understanding that the visible divine entities in question are the celestial bodies revolving in the heavens, B. imagines that Aristotle speaks of the astral gods, bodies and souls; instead of understanding that the causes ascribable to these divine bodies in motion are immobile realities of a psychic order, she pictures a superior divine principle, placed, as a cause, above the star-gods; and, finally, instead of understanding that the task of the ‘theological science’ that Aristotle alludes to is to spell out why astral bodies are not only bodies, but animated bodies, she conceives this science as an ‘archology’ in search of principles which, replacing Plato's Ideas, would causally explain the astral gods. Indeed, according to Plato, a pure Intelligence doubles the intelligence of the stars and, in the ‘archology’ that B. attributes to Aristotle, a pure Thought now doubles the thought of the very same stars. This mistake could have been avoided, I think, if B. had paid more attention to the status of the celestial souls and to the issues that Aristotle takes with Plato's astral theology.