Xenophanes of Colophon (;"Xenophanes" entry in Collins English Dictionary.Sound file  ; c. 570 – c. 478 BC) was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and critic of religious polytheism.
Xenophanes is seen as one of the most important Pre-Socratic philosophers.
Eusebius quoting Aristocles of Messene says that Xenophanes was the founder of a line of philosophy that culminated in Pyrrhonism.
This line begins with Xenophanes and goes through Parmenides, Melissus of Samos, Zeno of Elea, Leucippus, Democritus, Protagoras, Nessos of Chios, Metrodorus of Chios, Diogenes of Smyrna, Anaxarchus, and finally Pyrrho.Eusebius, Praeparatio Evangelica Chapter XVII It had also been common since antiquity to see Xenophanes as the teacher of Zeno of Elea, the colleague of Parmenides, and generally associated with the Eleatic school, but common opinion today is likewise that this is false.Lesher, p. 102.
Xenophanes was born in the city of Colophon in Ionia.
He lived a life of travel after fleeing Ionia at the age of 25 when the Persians took over.
He continued to travel throughout the Greek world for another 67 years and ultimately ended up in the Greek colonies of what is now Italy and Sicily.Charles H. Khan "Xenophanes" Who's Who in the Classical World.
Ed. Simon Hornblower and Tony Spawforth.
Oxford University Press, 2000.
Oxford Reference Online.
Oxford University Press.
12 October 2011.
Some scholars say he lived in exile in Sicily."
Xenophanes of Colophon" The Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy.
Simon Blackburn.
Oxford University Press, 2008.
Oxford Reference Online.
Oxford University Press.
12 October 2011.
Knowledge of his views comes from fragments of his poetry, surviving as quotations by later Greek writers.
To judge from these, his elegiac and iambicEarly Greek philosophy By Jonathan Barnes Page 40  poetry criticized and satirized a wide range of ideas, including Homer and Hesiod, the belief in the pantheon of anthropomorphic gods and the Greeks' veneration of athleticism.
He is the earliest Greek poet who claims explicitly to be writing for future generations, creating "fame that will reach all of Greece, and never die while the Greek kind of songs survives."
See  p. 123.
Life
Xenophanes was a native of Colophon, a city in Ionia (now western Turkey).
Some say he was the son of Orthomenes, others the son of Dexius.Diogenes Laertius, ix.
18. He is said to have flourished during the 60th Olympiad (540–537 BC).Diogenes Laertius, ix.
20 His surviving work refers to Thales, Epimenides, and Pythagoras,Diogenes Laertius, ix.
18, i.
23, 111.
viii. 36 and he himself is mentioned in the writings of Heraclitus and Epicharmus.Diogenes Laertius, ix.
1; Aristotle, Metaphysics 4.1010a  In a fragment of his elegies, he describes the Median  invasion as an event that took place in his time, possibly referring to the expedition of Harpagus against the Greek cities in Ionia (546/5 BC).
He left his native land as a fugitive or exile and went to the Ionian colonies in Sicily, Zancle and Catana.
He probably lived for some time in Elea (founded by the Phocaeans in the 61st Olympiad 536–533 BC), since he wrote about the foundation of that colony.Diogenes Laertius, ix.
18, 20; comp.
Aristotle, Rhetoric 2.23.27
According to an elegy reputedly composed when he was 92 years old,Diogenes Laertius, ix.
19 he left his native land at the age of 25 and then lived 67 years in other Greek lands.
Poems
According to biographer Diogenes Laërtius, Xenophanes wrote in hexameters and also composed elegies and iambics against Homer and Hesiod.
Laertius also mentions two historical poems concerning the founding of Colophon and Elea, but of these, only the titles have been preserved.
There is no good authority that says that Xenophanes wrote a philosophical poem.Early Greek Philosophy by John Burnet, 3rd edition (1920): "The oldest reference to a poem Περὶ φύσεως is in the Geneva scholium on Iliad xxi.
196 (quoting fr. 30), and this goes back to Crates of Mallus.
We must remember that such titles are of later date, and Xenophanes had been given a place among philosophers long before the time of rates.
All we can say, therefore, is that the Pergamene librarians gave the title Περὶ φύσεως to some poem of Xenophanes."
The Neoplatonist philosopher Simplicius writes that he had never met with the verses about the earth stretching infinitely downwards (fr. 28), even though he had access to many philosophical works.
Several of the philosophical fragments are derived from commentators on Homer.Three fragments (27, 31, 33) come from the Homeric Allegories, two (30, 32) are from Homeric scholia.
It is thus likely that the philosophical remarks of Xenophanes were expressed incidentally in his satires.
The satires are called Silloi by late writers, and this name may go back to Xenophanes himself, but it may originate in the fact that the Pyrrhonist philosopher Timon of Phlius, the "sillographer" (3rd century BC), put much of his own satire upon other philosophers into the mouth of Xenophanes, one of the few philosophers Timon praises in his work.
Philosophy
Recent research has revealed the originality of his philosophical quests which were underestimated in previous years.
Of particular importance, Xenophanes casts doubt on Greek myths which portray the gods as petty and immoral and cites the fact that human beings create gods in their own image in an attempt to reform Greek religion.
Epistemology
Xenophanes denied that a criterion of truth exists.Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians Book I, Section 52 He is credited with being one of the first philosophers to distinguish between true belief and knowledge, which he further developed into the prospect that you can know something but not really know it.Osborne, Catherine.
"Chapter 4".
Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction.
Oxford UP.
66-67.
Print.
Due to the lack of whole works by Xenophanes, his views are difficult to interpret, so that the implication of knowing being something deeper ("a clearer truth") may have special implications, or it may mean that you cannot know something just by looking at it.Osborne, Catherine.
"Chapter 4".
Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction.
Oxford UP.
67. Print.
It is known that the most and widest variety of evidence was considered by Xenophanes to be the surest way to prove a theory.
His epistemology, which is still influential today, held that there actually exists a truth of reality, but that humans as mortals are unable to know it.
Hence his views are considered a precursor to Pyrrhonism and subsequent Western philosophical skepticism.
He summed up his view in these quotes:
The gods have not, of course, revealed all things to mortals from the beginning; but rather, seeking in the course of time, they discover what is better.Stephen M. Trzaskoma, R. Scott Smith, Stephen Brunet, Thomas G. Palaima; Anthology of Classical Myth: Primary Sources in Translation, p. 433.
Yet, with respect to the gods and what I declare about all things, no man has seen what is clear nor ever will any man know it.
Nay, for e’en should he chance to affirm what is really existent, he himself knoweth it not; for all is swayed by opining.Sextus Empiricus, Against the Logicians Book I Section 110
Karl Popper read Xenophanes as saying that it is possible to act only on the basis of working hypotheses—we may act as if we knew the truth, as long as we know that this is extremely unlikely.K. Popper, A. Friemuth Petersen, J. Mejer: The World of Parmenides, p. 46 Xenophanes' views then might serve as a basis of critical rationalism.
Xenophanes concluded from his examination of fossils that water once must have covered all of the Earth's surface.
This use of evidence was an important step in advancing from simply stating an idea to backing it up by evidence and observation.
There is one fragment dealing with the management of a feast, another which denounces the exaggerated importance attached to athletic victories, and several which deny the humanized gods of Homer.
Arguments such as these made Xenophanes infamous for his attacks on "conventional military and athletic virtues of the time" and well known to side with the intellectual instead.
Theology
Xenophanes' surviving writings display a skepticism that became more commonly expressed during the fourth century BC.
He satirized traditional religious views of his time as human projections.Johansen, Karsten Friis A history of ancient philosophy: from the beginnings to Augustine p.49 He aimed his critique at the polytheistic religious views of earlier Greek poets and of his own contemporaries: "Homer and Hesiod," one fragment states, "have attributed to the gods all sorts of things that are matters of reproach and censure among men: theft, adultery, and mutual deception."
Xenophanes is quoted in Clement of Alexandria,Clement, Miscellanies V.110 and VII.22.
arguing against the conception of gods as fundamentally anthropomorphic:
But if cattle and horses and lions had handsor could paint with their hands and create works such as men do,horses like horses and cattle like cattlealso would depict the gods' shapes and make their bodiesof such a sort as the form they themselves have....Ethiopians say that their gods are snub–nosed [σιμούς] and blackThracians that they are pale and red-haired.Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, Xenophanes frr.
15-16.
Many other translations of this passage have Xenophanes state that the Thracians were "blond".
Other passages quoted by Clement of Alexandria that argue against the traditional Greek conception of gods include:
"One god, greatest among gods and humans,like mortals neither in form nor in thought."
Osborne, Catherine.
"Chapter 4".
Presocratic Philosophy: A Very Short Introduction.
Oxford UP.
62. Print.
"But mortals think that the gods are bornand have the mortals' own clothes and voice and form".
Regarding Xenophanes' theology five key concepts about God can be formed.
God is: beyond human morality, does not resemble human form, cannot die or be born (God is divine thus eternal), no divine hierarchy exists, and God does not intervene in human affairs.McKirahan, Richard D. "Xenophanes of Colophon.
Philosophy Before Socrates.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.
60-62.
Print.
While Xenophanes is rejecting Homeric theology, he is not questioning the presence of a divine entity, rather his philosophy is a critique on Ancient Greek writers and their conception of divinity.McKirahan, Richard D. "Xenophanes of Colophon.
Philosophy Before Socrates.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.
61. Print.
Xenophanes espoused a belief that "God is one, supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals in body or in mind."
Zeller, Vorsokrastische Philosophie, p. 530, n.
3. He maintained there was one greatest God.
God is one eternal being, spherical in form, comprehending all things within himself, is the absolute mind and thought, therefore is intelligent, and moves all things, but bears no resemblance to human nature either in body or mind.
God moves all things, but he is thought to be immobile, characterized by oneness (B23) and unicity, eternity (B26) and a spiritual nature which is bodiless and isn't anthropomorfic (B14, B15, B16).
He has a free will and is the Highest Good, he embodies the beauty of the moral perfection and of the absence of sin.
The Orphism religion and the Pythagorean philosophy introduced into the Greek spirituality the notions of guilt and pureness, causing a dichotomyic belief between the divine soul and the mortal body.
This doctrine is in contrast with the traditional religions as espoused by Homer and Hesiod.
The thought of Xenophanes was summarized as monolotraous and pantheistic by the ancient doxographies of Aristotle, Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, Sextus Empiricus, and Plutarch.
More particularly, the Methaphysics of Aristotle referred that for him "the All is God" (Metaph. 986b=A19).
Differently from the human creatures, God has the power to give "immediate execution" (in Greek: to phren) and make effective his cognitive faculty (in Greek: nous).Xenophanes' fragment B25, cited by:
Xenophanes is considered by some to be a precursor to Parmenides and Spinoza.
Because of his development of the concept of a "one god greatest among gods and men" that is abstract, universal, unchanging, immobile and always present, Xenophanes is often seen as one of the first monotheists, in the Western philosophy of religion, although the quotation that seems to point to Xenophanes' monotheism also refers to multiple "gods" who the supreme God is greater than.
Physicist and philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein specifically identified Xenophanes as one of the earliest pandeists.Max Bernhard Weinsten, Welt- und Lebensanschauungen, Hervorgegangen aus Religion, Philosophie und Naturerkenntnis ("World and Life Views, Emerging From Religion, Philosophy and Perception of Nature") (1910), page 231: "Pandeistisch ist, wenn der Eleate Xenophanes (aus Kolophon um 580-492 v. Chr.) von Gott gesagt haben soll: "Er ist ganz und gar Geist und Gedanke und ewig", "er sieht ganz und gar, er denkt ganz und gar, er hört ganz und gar."
Metaphysics
Xenophanes wrote about two extremes predominating the world: wet and dry or water (ὕδωρ) and earth (γῆ).McKirahan, Richard D. "Xenophanes of Colophon.
Philosophy Before Socrates.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.
65. Print.
These two extreme states would alternate between one another, and with the alternation human life would become extinct, then regenerate (or vice versa depending on the dominant form).McKirahan, Richard D. "Xenophanes of Colophon.
Philosophy Before Socrates.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994.
66. Print.
The idea of alternating states and human life perishing and coming back suggests he believed in the principle of causation, another distinguishing step that Xenophanes takes away from Ancient philosophical traditions to ones based more on scientific observation.
The argument can be considered a rebuke to Anaximenes' air theory.
A detailed account of the wet and dry form theory is found in Hippolytus' Refutation of All Heresies.
He also holds that there is an infinite number of worlds, not overlapping in time.
See also
On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias
Notes
Bibliography
Editions
E. Zeller, Die Philosophie der Griechen, 1st Volume, p. 378-395, Tübingen, 1856
A. Fairbanks, The First Philosophers of Greece, p. 65-85, New York, 1898 (cf. Hanover Historical Texts)
H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds.), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, pp.
38–58, 1st Edition, Berlin, 1903 (6th Ed. is considered standard work and reprinted unaltered; much superior to Kirk/Raven)
G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, Chapter 5, 2nd Edition, Cambridge, 1983
M. R. Wright, The Presocratics - the main fragments in Greek, Bristol, 1985 (cf. Xenophanes of Colophon by Giannis Stamatellos)
B. Gentili and C. Prato (eds.), Poetarum Elegiacorum Testimonia et Fragmenta 1, Leipzig 1988 (best Greek text available)
J.H. Lesher (ed.), Xenophanes.
Fragments, Toronto 1992 (best English edition and translation)
Secondary scholarship
J. Lesher, Presocratic Contributions to the Theory of Knowledge, 1998
U. De Young, "The Homeric Gods and Xenophanes' Opposing Theory of the Divine", 2000
W. Drechsler and R. Kattel, "Mensch und Gott bei Xenophanes", in: M. Witte, ed., Gott und Mensch im Dialog.
Festschrift für Otto Kaiser zum 80.
Geburtstag, Berlin – New York 2004, 111-129
H. Fränkel, "Xenophanesstudien", Hermes 60 (1925), 174-192
E. Heitsch, Xenophanes und die Anfänge kritischen Denkens.
Mainzer Akademie der Wissenschaften und der Literatur, Abh.
d. Geistes- und Sozialwiss.
Kl., 1994, H. 7
W. Jaeger, The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers, Gifford Lectures 1936, repr.
Westport, Ct.
1980
K. Jaspers, The Great Philosophers 3, New York etc. 1993
R. Kattel, "The Political Philosophy of Xenophanes of Colophon", Trames 1(51/46) (1997), 125-142
O. Kaiser, "Der eine Gott und die Götter der Welt", in: Zwischen Athen und Jerursalem.
Studien zur griechischen und biblischen Theologie, ihrer Eigenart und ihrem Verhältnis, Berlin - New York 2003, 135-152
Richard D. McKirahan, Xenophanes of Colophon.
Philosophy Before Socrates.
Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1994
K. Ziegler, "Xenophanes von Kolophon, ein Revolutionär des Geistes", Gymmasium 72 (1965), 289-302
Further reading
Classen, C. J. 1989.
"Xenophanes and the Tradition of Epic Poetry".
In Ionian Philosophy.
Edited by K. Boudouris, 91–103.
Athens, Greece: International Association for Greek Philosophy.
Graham, D. W. 2010.
The Texts of the Early Greek Philosophers: The Complete Fragments and Selected Testimonies of the Major Presocratics.
Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ.
Press.
Granger, H. 2007.
"Poetry and Prose: Xenophanes of Colophon".
Transactions of the American Philological Association 137:403–433.
Granger, H. 2013.
"Xenophanes’ Positive Theology and his Criticism of Greek Popular Religion".
Ancient Philosophy 33:235–271
Mansfeld, J. 1987.
"Theophrastus and the Xenophanes Doxography".
Mnemosyne 40:286–312.
Warren, J. 2007.
Presocratics.
Stocksfield, UK: Acumen.
External links
Xenophanes of Colophon by Giannis Stamatellos
Xenophanes of Colophon - Primary and secondary resources (link broken, June 9, 2019,   archived page)
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