Xenophanes of Colophon (or Colophon) was one of the leading philosophers pre-Socratic belonging to Eleatic School. A wandering thinker, he spent much of his life wandering around the Mediterranean Sea and proposed a cosmology that, at the same time that it placed itself as Philosophy, criticized dogmatic themes of polytheistic religion Greek.
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Life
Xenophanes was born in the Ionic city of Colophon in 570 BC. Ç. His hometown currently belongs to Turkish territory. The thinker has become a rhapsode, who was a kind of reciter of poems who went around the cities singing the verses without the accompaniment of instruments. Most of Xenophanes' life was wandering, without a fixed establishment for a long time, always wandering in Greek cities near the Mediterranean Sea.
Having lived over ninety years, the philosopher settled for a time in the City of He was, where he formed, together with Parmenides and Zeno, what historians of philosophy today call the Eleatic School, in the context of Pre-Socratic Philosophy.
pre-Socratics
Like other philosophers who lived before Socrates (a thinker who marks a central point in Ancient Greek Philosophy), Xenophanes not only lived before, but also developed a philosophical production similar to that of other thinkers, such as Parmenides, heraclitus, Pythagoras and tales.
The first philosophers who began to develop their theories from Thales of Miletus sought to establish a possible rational origin for the Universe from a movement of observation of the nature. Such work was known by the term cosmology. To learn more about the Presocratics, read Pre-Socratics: ideas, goals and philosophers.
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Cosmology
THE cosmology of the pre-Socratics aimed to establish a probable origin rational for the entire Universe, avoiding falling into the fables of mythological narratives. Greek myths provided answers to the question about the origin of the Universe that refer to the cosmogonies, which were stories that presented the genesis of the Universe based on stories about gods and titans. Presocratic cosmology tried to go further, presenting more plausible and rationally elaborated theories.
Each of the pre-Socratic philosophers observed and speculated on the possible origin of everything, each presenting his thesis. For Xenophanes, the origin would be in the unity that makes up the entire Universe, a thesis that is linked to his theological conception, as we will see below. To learn about the subject, read Cosmology: meaning and relationship with Philosophy.
Xenophanes Theory
Xenophanes was against the anthropomorphism of the Greek religion. The ancient Greeks conceived of their gods as human figures. Not only in physical attributes, the psychological characterization of the Greek deities was also essentially human: they felt and behaved like humans, showing jealousy, anger, envy and desire of revenge. Xenophanes pointed out that this desire to mirror their own characteristics in the gods was natural, but it was wrong.
Another point that Xenophanes criticized in Greek religion, and which is directly related to his cosmological philosophy, and the polytheism: the philosopher believed that there could not be a multiplicity of component gods in the Universe, as this was one. Unity was the beginning and end of everything, only in unity would there be a strictly plausible conception to speak of generation. The idea of a single, immortal and unchanging god was, then, the beginning of everything.
arche
For Xenophanes, the beginning of everything would be in the unity and on immutability. If we conceived beings as essentially mutable, there could not be, according to the thinker, a unity that restores and creates everything.
The restorative and creative unity was his divine conception: a single and immutable being, who would have created everything and accompanied all transformations. Based on this idea, it was possible to think that changes were just appearances and that everything, in the end, would be impregnated with only one essence that would define all correlated existences.
Unlike other pre-Socratics and in agreement with the other Eleatics, Xenophanes did not present a solid element as the beginning of everything. He conceived that the origin was, precisely, the permanence and unity contained in a one and immutable god. Therefore, some strands of historical study of Philosophy prefer not to classify Xenophanes as a pre-Socratic philosopher, but as a reformer of Ancient Philosophy.
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Parmenides, Zeno and heraclitus
The Eleatic School is made up of Parmenides, Zeno and Xenophanes. Parmenides identified the Universe as a whole immutable. The change was just the result of deceptive human senses. Zeno, his disciple, formulated paradoxes to prove his master's theses correct, such as Achilles' paradoxes and the archer's paradox. Xenophanes seems to complete the work of these two philosophers, as their idea of immutability is expressed by the divine and infinite unity of God.
Already heraclitus, Ionian philosopher before the Eleatic School thinkers, believes that movement is the essence and principle of all compositionuniversal. The Heraclitus flow of the Universe would be in everything that exists, and the generating element of everything (arche) was fire, as it guarantees the mutability and movement of everything that exists.
by Francisco Porfirio
Philosophy teacher