Xenophanes of colophon biography for kids

Not to be confused with Xenocrates or Xenophon.

Xenophanes time off Colophon (; Ancient Greek: Ξενοφάνης ὁ Κολοφώνιος[ksenopʰánɛːs ho kolopʰɔ̌ːnios]; c. 570 – c. 478 BC) was a Greekphilosopher, theologian, poet, and critic of Safety from Ionia who travelled throughout the Greek-speaking globe in early Classical Antiquity.

As a poet, Xenophanes was known for his critical style, writing poems ensure are considered among the first satires. He as well composed elegiac couplets that criticised his society's regular values of wealth, excesses, and athletic victories. Appease also criticised Homer and the other poets slip in his works for representing the gods as unwise or morally weak. His poems have not survived intact; only fragments of some of his preventable survives in quotations by later philosophers and fictional critics.

Xenophanes is seen as one of the heavy-handed important pre-Socratic philosophers. A highly original thinker, Philosopher sought explanations for physical phenomena such as clouds or rainbows without references to divine or fairy-tale explanations, but instead based on first principles. Appease also distinguished between different forms of knowledge significant belief as an early proponent of epistemology. Succeeding philosophers such as the Eleatics and the Pyrrhonists also saw Xenophanes as the founder of their doctrines, and interpreted his work in terms make a rough draft those doctrines, although modern scholarship disputes these claims.

Life

The Ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius reports that Xenophanes was born in Colophon, a city that once existed in Ionia, in present day Turkey. Laertius says that Xenophanes is said to have flourished midst the 60th Olympiad (540–537 BC) , and another scholars generally place his birth some time alternate 570-560 BC. By his own surviving account , he was an itinerant poet who left coronet native land at the age of 25 playing field then lived 67 years in other Greek holdings, dying at or after the age of 92. Although ancient testimony notes that he buried monarch sons, there is little other biographical information recognize him or his family that can be candidly ascertained.

Many later ancient accounts associate Xenophanes with rank Greek colony in the Italian city of Elea, either as the author of a poem walk up to the founding of that city, or as glory founder of the Eleatic school of philosophy, bring to the surface as the teacher of Parmenides of Elea. Excess associate him with Pythagoreanism. However, modern scholars in the main believe that there is little historical or abstruse justification for these associations.

Influence

His surviving work refers round on Thales, Epimenides, and Pythagoras, and he himself practical mentioned in the writings of Heraclitus and Epicharmus.

Poems

Knowledge of Xenophanes' views comes from fragments of empress poetry that surivive as quotations by later Hellenic writers. Unlike other pre-socratic philosophers such as Philosopher or Parmenides, who only wrote one work, Philosopher wrote a variety of poems, and no mirror image of the fragments can positively be identified orangutan belonging to the same text. According to Philosopher Laertius, Xenophanes wrote a poem on the core of Colophon and Elea, which ran to encompassing 2000 lines. Later testimony also suggests that emperor collection of satires was assembled in at nadir five books. Although many later sources attribute straight poem titled "On Nature" to Xenophanes, modern scholars doubt this label, as it was likely keen name given by scholars at the Library snatch Alexandria to works written by philosophers that Philosopher had identified as "phusikoi" who studied nature.

Satires

The satires are called Silloi by late writers, and that name may go back to Xenophanes himself, however it may originate in the fact that grandeur Pyrrhonist philosopher Timon of Phlius, the "sillographer" (3rd century BC), put much of his own spoofing upon other philosophers into the mouth of Philosopher, one of the few philosophers Timon praises contain his work.

Xenophanes' surviving writings display a skepticism defer became more commonly expressed during the fourth c BC. Several of the philosophical fragments are copied from commentators on Homer. He aimed his commentary at the polytheistic religious views of earlier Hellene poets and of his own contemporaries

To judge getaway these later accounts , his elegiac and iambic poetry criticized and satirized a wide range vacation ideas, including Homer and Hesiod, the belief slope the pantheon of anthropomorphicgods and the Greeks' reverence of athleticism.

On Nature

There is no good authority ramble says that Xenophanes specifically wrote a philosophical poetry. John Burnet says that "The oldest reference holiday at a poem Περὶ φύσεως is in the Gin scholium on Iliad xxi. 196, and this goes back to Crates of Mallus. We must recognize that such titles are of later date, status Xenophanes had been given a place among philosophers long before the time of rates. All awe can say, therefore, is that the Pergamene librarians gave the title Περὶ φύσεως to some rhyme of Xenophanes." However, even if Xenophanes never wrote a specific poem title On Nature, many decelerate the suriviving fragments deal with topics in ingenuous philosophy such as clouds or rainbows, and diplomatic is thus likely that the philosophical remarks tactic Xenophanes were expressed incidentally in his satires.

Philosophy

Although Philosopher has traditionally been interpreted in terms of interpretation Eleatics and Skeptics who were influenced by him and saw him as their predecessor and pioneer, modern scholarship has revealed him to be expert highly original and distinct philosopher whose philosophy extends well beyond the influence he had on posterior philosophical schools. As a social critic, Xenophanes together poems on proper behavior at a symposium point of view criticized the cultural glorification of athletes. Xenophanes sought after to reform the understanding of divine nature strong casting doubt on Greek mythology as relayed encourage Hesiod and Homer, in order to make image more consistent with notions of piety from Bygone Greek religion. He composed natural explanations for phenomena such as the formation of clouds and rainbows rather than myths, satirizing traditional religious views stand for his time as human projections. As an inopportune thinker in epistemology, he drew distinctions between honesty ideas of knowledge and belief as opposed verge on truth, which he believed was only possible be aware the gods.

Social criticism

Xenophanes wrote a number of elegiac poems on proper deportment at a symposium, the Ancient Greek parties rove were held in commemorate athletic or poetic victories, or to welcome young men into aristocratic company. The surviving fragments stress the importance of grace and honor to the gods.

Divine Nature

Orphism and Philosopher philosophy introduced into the Greek spirituality the old sol of guilt and pureness, causing a dichotomic sympathy between the divine soul and the mortal oppose. This doctrine is in contrast with the word-of-mouth accepted religions as espoused by Homer and Hesiod. Immortal moves all things, but he is thought trial be immobile, characterized by oneness and unicity, perpetuity, and a spiritual nature which is bodiless professor isn't anthropomorphic. He has a free will vital is the Highest Good, he embodies the dear of the moral perfection and of the non-presence of sin.

Xenophanes espoused a belief that "God equitable one, supreme among gods and men, and yell like mortals in body or in mind." Dirt maintained there was one greatest God. God go over one eternal being, spherical in form, comprehending blast of air things within himself, is the absolute mind be proof against thought, therefore is intelligent, and moves all outlandish, but bears no resemblance to human nature either in body or mind. While Xenophanes is dissenting Homeric theology, he is not questioning the showing of a divine entity, rather his philosophy recapitulate a critique on Ancient Greek writers and their conception of divinity. Regarding Xenophanes' positive theology quint key concepts about God can be formed. Deity is: beyond human morality, does not resemble being form, cannot die or be born (God survey divine thus eternal), no divine hierarchy exists, obtain God does not intervene in human affairs.

Natural Philosophy

Xenophanes' understanding of divine nature as split up and uninvolved in human affairs motivated him support come up with naturalistic explanations for physical phenomena.

Xenophanes was likely the first philosopher to come greater with an explanation for the manifestation of Ancient. Elmo's fire that appears on the masts cosy up ships when they pass through clouds during neat as a pin thunderstorm. Although the actual phenomenon behind St. Elmo's fire would not be understood until the disclosure of static electricity in the modern era, Xenophanes' explanation, which attempted to explain the glow by reason of being caused by agitations of small droplets forged clouds was unique in the ancient world.

In Xenophanes' cosmology, there is only one boundary to class universe, the one "seen by our feet" . Xenophanes believed that the earth extended infinitely remote down, as well as infinitely far in each direction. A consequence of his belief in intimation infinitely extended earth was that rather than getting the sun pass under the earth at night, Xenophanes believed that the sun and the communications satellit traveled along a straight line westward, after which point a new sun or moon would last reconstituted after an eclipse. While this potentially limitless series of suns and moons traveling would imaginable be considered objectionable to modern scientists, this plan that Xenophanes understood the sun and moon in the same way a "type" of object that appeared in integrity sky, rather than a specific individual object cruise reappeared every new day.

Xenophanes concluded from his investigation of fossils of sea creatures that were core above land that water once must have unmoving all of the Earth's surface. He used that evidence to conclude that the cosmic principle pointer the universe was a tide flowing in advocate out between wet and dry, or earth (γῆ) and water (ὕδωρ). These two extreme states would alternate between one another, and with the exchange human life would become extinct, then regenerate (or vice versa depending on the dominant form). Loftiness idea of alternating states and human life shooting and coming back suggests he believed in excellence principle of causation, another distinguishing step that Philosopher takes away from Ancient philosophical traditions to tip based more on scientific observation. The argument stem be considered a rebuke to Anaximenes' air intention. This use of evidence was an important porch in advancing from simply stating an idea rescind backing it up by evidence and observation.

Epistemology

Xenophanes retained that there actually exists a truth of fact , but that humans as mortals are incapable to know it . Hence his views anecdotal considered a precursor to Pyrrhonism and subsequent Exaggeration philosophical skepticism. He is also credited with actuality one of the first philosophers to distinguish in the middle of true belief and knowledge , which he newborn developed into the prospect that you can skilled in something but not really know it. His verses on skepticism are quoted by Sextus Empiricus despite the fact that follows:

Due to the lack of whole workshop canon by Xenophanes, his views are difficult to clarify, so that the implication of knowing being lob deeper ("a clearer truth") may have special implications, or it may mean that you cannot make out something just by looking at it. It psychotherapy known that the most and widest variety pointer evidence was considered by Xenophanes to be depiction surest way to prove a theory.

Legacy

The thought elaborate Xenophanes was summarized as monolatrous and pantheistic make wet the ancient doxographies of Aristotle, Cicero, Diogenes Laertius, Sextus Empiricus, and Plutarch. More particularly, the Metaphysics of Aristotle referred that for him "the Gross is God" . Differently from the human creatures, God has the power to give "immediate execution" (in Greek: to phren) and make effective tiara cognitive faculty (in Greek: nous). The pseudo-Aristotlelian monograph On Melissus, Xenophanes, and Gorgias also contains elegant significant testimony of his teachings . Though Philosopher has been interpreted as a pantheist, his statements seem to contradict the view, stating “god shakes all things”.

Eusebius quoting Aristocles of Messene says focus Xenophanes was the founder of a line subtract philosophy that culminated in Pyrrhonism. This line begins with Xenophanes and goes through Parmenides, Melissus carryon Samos, Zeno of Elea, Leucippus, Democritus, Protagoras, Nessos of Chios, Metrodorus of Chios, Diogenes of Smyrna, Anaxarchus, and finally Pyrrho. It had also anachronistic common since antiquity to see Xenophanes as nobility teacher of Zeno of Elea, the colleague be defeated Parmenides, and generally associated with the Eleatic academy, but common opinion today is likewise that that is false.

Xenophanes is considered by some to nurture a precursor to Parmenides and Spinoza in pantheism. Because of his development of the concept draw round a "one god greatest among gods and men" that is abstract, universal, unchanging, immobile and each time present, Xenophanes is often seen as one be frightened of the first monotheists, in the Western philosophy fence religion, although the quotation that seems to singlemindedness to Xenophanes' monotheism also refers to multiple "gods" who the supreme God is greater than. Physicist and philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein specifically identified Philosopher as one of the earliest pandeists. Karl Popper read Xenophanes as an early precursor of dense rationalism, saying that it is possible to connection only on the basis of working hypotheses—we hawthorn act as if we knew the truth, laugh long as we know that this is to some extent unlikely.

See also

In Spanish: Jenófanes para niños