GOD divine’ in the neuter singular Because of the intimate link between the celestial motions and the motionless mover(s) postulated to explain them, he seems to have regarded the question of the number of movers as a matter of astronomy rather than theology, and he was prepared to entertain the possibility of as many as forty-seven (1074a13) This is far distant from the reasoned monotheism of Xenophanes Like Xenophanes, however, Aristotle was interested in the nature of the divine mind A famous chapter (K 9) addresses the question: what does God think of? He must think of something, otherwise he is no better than a sleeping human; and whatever he is thinking of, he must think of throughout, otherwise he will be undergoing change, and contain potentiality, whereas we know he is pure actuality Either he thinks of himself, or he thinks of something else But the value of a thought is dictated by the value of what is thought of ; so if God were thinking of anything else than himself, he would be degraded to the level of what he is thinking of So he must be thinking of himself, the supreme being, and his thinking is a thinking of thinking (noesis noeseos) (1074b) This conclusion has been much debated Some have regarded it as a sublime truth about the divine nature; others have thought it a piece of exquisite nonsense Among those who have taken the latter view, some have thought it the supreme absurdity of Aristotle’s theology, others have thought that Aristotle himself intended it as a reductio ad absurdum of a fallacious line of argument, preparatory to showing that the object of divine thought was something quite diVerent.6 Is it nonsense? If every thought must be a thought of something, and God can think only of thinking, then a thinking of a thinking would have to be a thinking of a thinking of, and that would have to be a thinking of a thinking of a thinking of ad inWnitum That surely leads to a regress more vicious than any that led Aristotle to posit a motionless mover in the Wrst place But perhaps it is unfair to translate the Greek ‘noesis’ as ‘thinking of’; it can equally well mean ‘thinking that’ Surely there is nothing nonsensical about the thought ‘I am thinking’; indeed Descartes built his whole philosophy upon it So why should God not be thinking that he is thinking? Only, if that is his only thought, then he seems to be nothing very grand, to use Aristotle’s words about the hypothetical God who thinks of nothing at all See G E M Anscombe, in Anscombe and P T Geach, Three Philosophers (Oxford: Blackwell, 1961), 59 301