Xenophanes

Xenophanes of Colophon (Greek Ξενοφάνης Xenophanes; * around 570 BC in the colophon; † 470 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and poet. He is counted among the pre-Socratics.

Life

Born in Asia Minor, Colophon, Xenophanes led a restless, wandering life: At 25 he was expelled from his hometown and wandered 67 years by the Greek land, possibly even to Egypt. He moved to Elea in southern Italy and was probably as rhapsodist, that is, as a reciter of ancient epics (especially Homer ) and presumably also operate their own works (which are gone, however, be lost). His philosophical works he wrote always in lyrical form bound: Elegies and Silloi.

Importance, teaching, effect

As a representative of a time of change, the dawn of classical Hellas, Xenophanes lifts in the spirit of Hegel on the legacy of the pre-classical world; he is the first to do so on a tangible systematic way, who anticipates, " Petrel of the Greek Enlightenment" of the ideas of religious criticism and rationalism of the Enlightenment. Not by chance is Xenophanes, as Werner Jaeger says, " the first Greek thinker who is tangible as a personality ."

Xenophanes ' doctrine was already Plato and Aristotle rather unclear. Already Heraclitus had said about him that getting to know many things have not taught him understanding, and Aristotle thought it was something simple. From ancient times we have hardly ever testimonies; also to his philosophy, there are few individual comments. In the modern debate that changed significantly when this was also performed complex and controversial and sometimes still is. The fascination of the fragmentary increases the opportunity for creative interpretation with all its dangers.

Xenophanes wrote analytically and satirical among other things, the variety and human similarity of the Greek gods. This way he made criticizing the gods idea of Homer and Hesiod and was therefore also referred to by Albert Regenfelder as "anti - homer in the garb of the Homeric singer ". According to him, the gods did not create people, but the people the gods ( "If the horses had gods, they looked like horses "), a sociology of religion approach ( anthropomorphism ). In his major philosophical work ( On the Nature ), he represents a monotheism, whose God is eternal, uniform, stationary and of perfect shape, the Pantheon remains the ( original and pre-Homeric quite local ) deities.

From Karl Popper Xenophanes is seen as a precursor of critical rationalism (see epistemology ). Human knowledge consists, according to him from guess ( opinion ) that truth is not recognizable as such. At the same time it is possible, the truth gradually approach: "Not from the beginning the gods to mortals shown all that is hidden, but gradually they find searching the better. "

This view leads then in Parmenides of Elea to the strict distinction between the true, not perceptible by the senses world and the world of phenomena (Way of opinion ). Xenophanes ' rationalism led him to a quasi agnostic position with respect to the gods. Although he did not realize its existence in question, but ruled that the man could never know anything about Secured the gods.

Until the 1950s into was - assumed Xenophanes was an Eleatic philosopher, as he also in Elea (Roman: Velia ) - due to incorrect doxographischer tradition since ancient times, including Aristotle to the western Greek coast of Lucania ( Under Italy) worked. With the Eleatics but is not directly related to today's matching view, not even with Parmenides ( or even Zeno of Elea ) - such as Friedrich Nietzsche had already recognized the presence in the same place is not sufficient as proof.

Xenophanes inferred from the fossil record on a mountain, that the water must have once covered the whole earth (see Neptunism ). He said that everything was out of water and earth emerged ( primal mud ) and finally pass away back in the water. The earth will be washed away by the water and then re- arises again. The sea is also the origin of the clouds; Sun and stars would arise again from these clouds. The rainbow was a special kind cloud.

Source collections

• Hermann Diels, Walther Kranz (ed.): The fragments of the Presocratics. 6th edition, reprint Georg Olms Verlag, 2004, ISBN 3-615-12201-1 ( digital copy: 1st edition, Berlin 1903, pp. 38-58 PDF metadata, DK 21)
• Laura Gemelli Marciano (eds. ): The pre-Socratic philosophers. Volume 1, Artemis & Winkler, Dusseldorf 2007, ISBN 978-3-7608-1735-4, pp. 222-283 ( Greek source texts with German translation, notes and introduction to the life and work )
• Bruno Gentili, Carlo Prato (Ed.): poetarum Elegiacorum Testimonia et Fragmenta. Bd 1 Teubner, Leipzig, 1988, ISBN 3-322-00457-0 (best Greek text)
• Ernst Heitsch (ed.): Xenophanes: Fragments. Munich 1983 ( bilingual edition with detailed commentary )
• James E. Lesher (ed.): Xenophanes of Colophon: Fragments. University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1992, ISBN 0-8020-5990-2 (bilingual edition with detailed commentary )