In this episode, we delve into the life and philosophy of Xenophanes, an early Greek thinker who significantly advanced philosophical thought. Beginning with a review of previous episodes' discussions on early Greek philosophy and the pre-Socratic thinkers like Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, the conversation shifts to focus on Xenophanes' unique contributions. Notably, Xenophanes was the first to reject the traditional portrayal of Greek gods by Homer and Hesiod, arguing instead for a singular, morally superior deity. His work also laid foundational ideas in epistemology, questioning the nature of human knowledge and the possibility of true belief.

Also highlighted are Xenophanes' influence on later philosophical discourse, particularly his introduction of distinguishing knowledge from mere belief.

00:00 Introduction and Greetings

00:34 Setting the Context: Greek Philosophy

03:10 Early Greek Philosophers: Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes

06:50 Introducing Xenophanes

07:59 Xenophanes' Critique of Greek Gods

14:50 Xenophanes' Concept of God

18:34 Xenophanes and Epistemology

23:51 Conclusion and Next Episode Preview

All right.

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We're live.

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Daniel, how you doing?

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I'm doing great today.

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It's been a good week.

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Good.

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Good.

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Excited to get into our discussion today.

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What are we talking about?

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We're going to talk about the Greek gods

today, but through the lens of the next

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great philosopher, and that is Xenophanes.

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Xenophanes.

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Xenophanes.

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They have great names, don't they?

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They do have good names.

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That's the name of our next son.

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I like it.

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Yeah.

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I'm sure Abby will be down with that.

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So it's spelled X E N O P H A N E S.

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Sinophones.

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Sinophones.

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Gotcha.

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Okay.

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So as we get into discussing him

today, I was wondering if you could

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put us in context a little bit,

remind us of where we've been.

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Yeah, let's do that.

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So this is actually the fourth

episode in the history of philosophy.

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And the first one we talked about the

seedbed of Greek thought as it were,

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the intellectual atmosphere, the ideas

that would be in the air and that people

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would just kind of take for granted.

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Maybe they did not even

realize that these were.

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Ideas or arguments that you could

argue about or believe or disbelieve.

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There's an old joke that if you want to

know what water is, don't ask a fish.

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And that's kind of the idea that sometimes

there's these cultural motifs and ideas in

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our minds that we just take for granted.

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So we talked about that

in the first episode.

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Remind us again, what are some of

the pervasive philosophical thought

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that some of these early pre Socratic

philosophers are enveloped in?

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Yeah.

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So we talked about a few of them.

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One, is impersonal fate

rules the destiny of humans.

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It's not a creator god or providential

god who's overseeing all things.

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It's impersonal fate.

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The universe just is.

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There's no explanation.

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There's no creation of the universe.

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Individual things within

creation have origin stories,

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but not the universe itself.

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There seemed to be this idea, you've

probably heard of this before,

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that there are four elements.

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Water, air, fire, and earth.

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And yet there's also this idea that

somehow there's a oneness to all things.

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There is one reality that everything

else kind of blows out of and blows into.

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And we talked about that a little

bit, it's this shapeless stream.

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And that idea, that there is this current

of reality that's a oneness, And that

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every individual things, plants, humans,

whatever, arise out of that, take on

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existence for a while, and then go back

into that, goes all the way back to the

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Minoan civilization on Crete, which was

really the forebearers of Greek thought.

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And then maybe two more

things we can mention here.

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That the gods exist, the Olympian gods.

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And then more particularly, that

a multitude of gods exist as part

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of the furniture of the universe.

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Cheers.

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So, there's not one God who

exists, who creates the universe.

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The universe is here, and within

this universe there are these

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beings that they call the gods

that have these special powers,

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sometimes associated with different

aspects of nature or human society.

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That's, that's all in the air.

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Okay, yeah, that's helpful framework.

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And then some of the earliest

philosophers that we've looked at, the

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articulated philosophical systems that

have started on some of these premises

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were, what were some of their names?

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So the first three philosophers

we looked at were Thales,

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Anaximander, and Anaximenes.

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These were all Greeks.

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They were living on the, uh, west

coast of Turkey and Greek colonies.

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So a little bit across the

sea from the Greek mainland.

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They were all riding

relatively at the same time.

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There seems to be kind of a

chronology there at the least.

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And Xander and then and Xem, a little

bit unclear their dates, but for the

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most part, the late sixth century

bc, early southern century, at best.

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And they're all in particular

from the city of Miletus, which

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was one of those Greek colonies.

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So this is also called the Miletian

school or the Miletian philosophers.

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They were okay with the ideas

I just mentioned, but they were

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asking, what is that one thing?

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If there is one thing, what is that?

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And for Thales, it was water.

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Everything is somehow

water in its various forms.

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For Anaximenes, it is air.

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A later thinker Heraclitus

says it's a fire.

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Earlier you said that an old joke

is if you want to know what water

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is, you shouldn't ask a fish.

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It sounds like if you want to

know what water is, you really

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probably should ask Thales.

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That's true.

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Sounds like he's your guy.

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Yeah, he was all about that.

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With an after that take.

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Now as far as I know, No one argued

that all things are Earth, maybe

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because Earth is the least changeable

of those four elements, right?

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Mm hmm.

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And Naxamander, we, we mentioned him.

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He also believed that there

is one fundamental thing

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in, the Greek word is arche.

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So it's not water, it's not

fire, it's not air for him.

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It was the infinite or the boundless or

the unlimited, this shapeless stream of

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life force or better existence force that

flows in and through all individual things

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into which they return after existing.

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Yeah.

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And I remember kind of exploring

how that almost feels like some

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philosophies that were developing in

the East as far as like pantheism goes

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and kind of some similarities there.

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Not exactly, but just a little bit.

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Yeah, there are very much similarities

between the pantheistic monism of the

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East and what these guys were proposing.

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And then I also remember you saying

that it's, it's not necessarily

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that their ideas were the bet, uh,

more about how they were, how they

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were thinking about them that, that

made them kind of stand out as early

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philosophers or the earliest philosophers.

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Right.

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What makes them philosophers and the

earliest philosophers, the ones who

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contribute to this great conversation?

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Yeah.

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Is not the answers they gave, but the

kind of questions they asked, first of

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all, and then second way, the way that

they tried to answer those questions,

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not through the received myths of

their culture or religious text.

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But through using the human mind now

implicit within that project, however,

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as we talked about last week, quite a

bit is a presupposition that the human

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mind autonomously that is unaided by

anything outside itself could give

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true answers to these questions that

was a presupposition because it was

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assumed and it wasn't argued for.

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But unless it's true, then the

whole project is in vain, right?

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Right.

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So that's good segue because today we're

going to be talking about xenophonies.

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And in reading something else here, he's

going to talk a little bit about that.

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So let's transition into that.

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Why don't you introduce us to xenophonies?

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Give us a little bit of background and

then we'll carry on with the conversation.

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So, he was a Greek, like Thales

and Anaximander and Anaximenes.

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He was an Ionian, that he was

living on these Greek colonies on

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the east part of the Aegean Sea,

what's now the west part of Turkey.

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Those three all lived in Miletus.

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He lived in Colophon, which is

about 40 miles off the coast.

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And we're told that when the Persian

Empire expanded into Ionia, all these

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Ionian colonies, that he fled and he lived

the rest of his life in Sicily, which is

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right off the toe of Italy, of course.

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And Sicily, like most of southern Italy

at that point, was colonized by Greek

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speaking people and Greek culture.

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And so why is he important to

intellectual and philosophical history?

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Well, this may be an overstatement,

but I feel like with him we come to

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the first great advance in philosophy.

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That's a big statement.

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Yeah, I guess it is.

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Okay, so help us understand that.

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How so?

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I say that because I think

he advances in three ways.

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First, he was the first to emphatically

reject the Greek gods as fictitious.

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That was important because the

Greek gods and all the myths

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around them were part of the very

fundamental nature of Greek society.

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Yeah, that's a big shift.

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Yeah, it is.

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And then second, because of

that, he was able to derive

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an idea of God by reasoning.

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So he's kind of like the first Greek

or the first in this flow of thought.

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That's developing their idea of

God that's not based on Homer

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and the other myth writers.

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So he's not an atheist.

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Yeah.

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We'll come back to that point.

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Okay.

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So he's going to argue for some

kind of God or something, but

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yeah, he rejects the pantheon.

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Yes.

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Okay.

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And then third, he was the first to

think critically about the ability

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of human reasoning and knowledge.

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So really he was the first one to deal

with one of the three main branches

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of philosophy, which is epistemology.

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Okay, cool.

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Cool.

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Yeah.

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So let's talk about each of these.

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So the first one, you said he

emphatically rejects the Greek gods.

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He says that they're fictitious.

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So what does he have

against the Greek gods?

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Right, and maybe I overstated, it's

not so much the gods himself, but how

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they were portrayed by the two great

Greek poets, Hesiod and Homer, and

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therefore how they were understood and

conceived by the people as a whole.

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He argues that these pictures of the

gods is unworthy and reproachable.

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Here's a quote from him.

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Homer and Hesiod have attributed to

the gods All those things which in men

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are a matter of reproach and censure,

stealing, adultery, and mutual deception.

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And that's true.

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I mean, if you look at Homer's gods,

morally they are no better than

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the band of ruthless warrior barons

that they're probably modeled after.

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Let me give you an

example story from Hesiod.

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Hesiod and Homer are

the great Greek poets.

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They're the ones who set the

stage for all that we know about,

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pretty much, Greek mythology.

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Their works were kind of like the

Bible was in the Middle Ages, it was

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just the foundation of their culture.

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And Hesiod has a story of

how things are created.

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One of the great stories he mentions

is Kronos, who's the father of

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Zeus, and he goes to his father and

castrates him because he's taken the

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side of his mother in a, in a dispute.

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And so he castrates him and, and this

is all part of this larger story, which

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Zeus eventually gains his supremacy.

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And then Zeus himself, of course, has

all kinds of affairs and really rapes.

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If you look at it through modern

eyes, I think you would call it that.

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But he's also a deceiver

and can be deceived.

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For example, have you ever read the Iliad?

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No, I haven't.

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Well, get educated, boy.

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Yeah.

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So, it's a story of the Greek

gods working in this Trojan War.

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Ostensibly, it's about

the Greek attack on Troy.

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But really, it's more the gods

working through these men.

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So it's almost like they're an

extension of the gods, as it were.

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But for various reasons, different gods

take different sides of the complex.

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Some like the Greeks,

some like the Trojans.

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He wants to protect Hector, who was

the great prince of the Trojans.

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And so he's giving him his strength and

his power and giving him aid in this.

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And Hera, his wife, doesn't like

that she's on the other side.

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She wants the Greeks to be victorious.

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So she works with Aphrodite's

with the other gods.

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And Hera seduces Zeus, and then he

falls into this deep post coital sleep.

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And while doing that, then, while his

attention is away, because first sex

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and then sleep, that's when Hector

gets wounded in this, all right?

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And then Zeus wakes up,

and he lambasts her, and he

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threatens to whip her, you know?

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And that's just one example.

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There are dozens, if not

hundreds, of examples of the gods.

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Committing adultery, deceiving

each other, being dishonest.

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And so basically what he's saying

is, Hey guys, is this really what

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we want to base our society on?

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I mean, this isn't really good

optics for the kids, right?

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That's interesting that he recognized

that they weren't moral exemplars.

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No, no, far from it.

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We talked about last time.

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I'm pretty sure that if you put

an average Greek person next to

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Zeus himself, the Greek person

would be more moral than he was.

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You know, the Greek person at that time.

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Um, so that, that was his first critique.

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Okay.

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So he really pushes back against Homer's

and Hesiod's portrayal of the gods.

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And so he basically says

what, that they don't exist.

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Basically.

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Yeah.

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He views Homer and Hesiod as

inventing all these stories.

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And he argues that all that they're doing

and all we've done in following them.

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Is make these gods in our own image.

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So, were their stories figments of the

creative imaginations, or were they

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cultural stories passed down through

oral tradition that they just recorded?

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Yeah, that's a question that

people are still debating.

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Okay.

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Especially with Homer, because

we don't really know the

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date that Homer was written.

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Some people argue that the Iliad

and the Odyssey weren't even

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written by the same author.

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Other people would say that the stories

of the Iliad and the Odyssey have

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been framed by tribudors and poets

through oral tradition and then written

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tradition through many centuries.

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So there is not one Homer.

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So when we're talking about this, we're

basically talking about the texts that we

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have right now that which were presumably

written before Xenophonies, right?

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Oh, yeah much much earlier.

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Okay.

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Okay, so they've so they've shaped culture

and Xenophonies is just upright rejects it

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because they're morally horrible They're

not the kinds of people or persons that

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you want to base your society on, right?

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And that's kind of his next criticism is

that these guys are made in man's image

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Not that we are made in God's image.

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So, sometimes you hear someone who

thinks they're very clever, Oh, I

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don't think we're made in God's image.

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I think we make God in

our image, you know.

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I think that's a very

new and profound thought.

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Yeah, that goes back about 2, 500 years

ago, and he was the first to make that

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critique, and he wrote it this way.

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Ethiopians made their

gods snub nosed and black.

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The Thracians made theirs gray

eyed and red hair like themselves.

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And if oxen and horses had hands

and could draw, horses would draw

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their gods in the shape of horses,

and oxen in the shape of an ox.

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I see, so he's just mocking.

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Yeah, it's a pretty good line though.

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Yeah, it's pretty clever, I like it.

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Yeah.

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But earlier we were talking about how

he still uses the language of God, but

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he's, so he's not a polytheist per se, or?

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He's, but he's not atheist or

how would you kind of categorize

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his perspective about God?

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If that's all we knew of him, or if we

just stopped there, we'd probably say,

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Oh, the guy's an atheist, you know, but

in fact more of the opposite is true.

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And that brings us to kind of the

second point that he believed in

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God and formulated his conception

of God by reasoning about what God

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would be like if he really is so much

greater than us and not being content

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with these stories of many guys

that have been handed down to him.

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He wrote this, There is one God, greatest

among gods and men, in no way similar

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to mortals in either body or mind.

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That's remarkable.

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As far as I know, he is the first

Greek to argue for something

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that could be called monotheism.

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And this God is radically

different than we are.

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So he's not just like us, but with some

superpowers, like the Olympian gods.

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It's ambiguous if he believed that

there were lesser gods as well.

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In one of his poems, he says, poets

should devote pious hymns to the gods

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and not speak of war or the clash

between giants and titans as gods.

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He's got homework we're wanting to do.

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So it's a little bit ambiguous, but he

seems to argue that there's primarily one

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God who's different than us in every way.

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And so he goes against the

cultural presupposition there.

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Very deeply.

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And is beginning to use reason above

the culturally inherited stories.

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Yes.

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Exactly.

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Okay.

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That's super interesting.

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So he's starting to highlight the use of

the mind and reason and thinking, okay,

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if, if we're this way and we're starting

to sound like cataphatic theology,

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like we were talking about earlier, if

I'm good, then God would be the best.

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Yeah.

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And I'm glad you pointed that out.

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I forget.

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I think that was episode seven or eight.

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We talked about that if anyone wants to go

into that term and the idea behind that.

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Yeah.

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And that's where he's going with this.

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And I think you're right to see

the distinction there quite a

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bit different than where everyone

else in his culture was going to.

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The interesting thing is that he's

using morality as a defining factor

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that kind of separates the god,

uppercase G, from humans or any

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kind of lesser lowercase g gods.

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Yes.

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Morality plus the idea that God would

not be able to be deceived or God would

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not be tricked or God would not move

or act in a war or something like that.

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Those things would be below him.

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Hmm.

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Okay.

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Not simply below his morality or

even attention, but he's so far

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exalted above all these things.

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There's a couple of

things he says about God.

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He doesn't need anything, so you can

stop sacrificing those animals, right?

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And that's very similar to the idea

that would arise in the Hebrew and

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Christian tradition of God's aseity,

that He has all things in Himself.

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Oh, yeah.

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I remember talking about that,

too, in an earlier episode.

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Right.

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And then He says about

this God, He sees all over.

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He thinks all over.

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He hears all over.

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He remains always in the

same place without moving.

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But without toil, He sets

all things in motion.

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By the thoughts of his mind.

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So this is very different than

the Greek God, some of whom would

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actually be in battle, some of

whom were wounded in battle.

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Uh, this guy doesn't like that.

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This is super interesting 'cause

it's starting to, of course, using

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anachronistic theological categories to

think through this, but it's starting

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to sound a little bit like omniscience.

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Yeah, in some ways, a little

bit like immutability, like he's

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approaching certain conceptions

of God that seem pretty relevant.

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And also, like you mentioned in

that Hebrew stream of thought.

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Exactly.

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Okay.

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So you said the third advance of

Xenophanes is that he makes advances

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in the area of epistemology.

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Can you explain that,

define that a little bit?

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Sure.

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An easy definition of

epistemology would be the study.

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of what we can know or not

know and how we can know it.

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So what can we know and then the

methods of knowing it related to that.

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What are the wars for believing something?

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How would you discern truth from error?

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That kind of thing.

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Here's a statement of his

that's really quite remarkable.

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He's talking about all these

ideas and that he's mentioned.

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It says, The gods have not revealed all

things from the beginning to mortals.

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So this isn't received from the

mortals like the Delvic Oracle

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or the myths and traditions.

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But, by seeking, men find

out, in time, what is better.

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So, by seeking, and I think what he

means is reasoning, investigation,

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we come to a better understanding.

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And then he goes on, though.

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He says this.

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This is interesting.

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No man knows the truth, nor will

there, nor will there be a man

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who has knowledge about the gods.

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And what I say about everything.

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For even if he were to hit by chance

upon the whole truth, he himself

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would not be aware of having done so.

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But each forms his own opinions.

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Let these things then be

taken as like the truth.

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End quote.

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Okay, interesting quote there.

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What's he saying there?

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Can you help us understand it?

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Yeah.

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Well, first, he explicitly lays

out a criteria for knowing.

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And he's really the first,

I believe, to do so.

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What is it?

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It's by seeking and investigating

and reasoning that we come to

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know, and so he's laying out

that methodology for knowing.

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Second, he's also the first to

state that we cannot know the

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truth, or at least all the truth.

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And this position is

usually called skepticism.

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So in philosophy, skepticism is not

doubting or denying some particular

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belief, for example the existence of God.

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But rather, it's doubting whether

we can have true beliefs at all.

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He's thinking primarily the things

he's talking about, that is the nature

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of reality and the nature of God.

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And he said, we can't

really know the truth.

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Now two problems arise, though, when

you start down the skeptical road.

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First, it becomes difficult to know

where you stop being a skeptic.

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For example, can we not have knowledge

of mathematical or geometric truths?

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Or can we not have knowledge of

the direct evidence of our senses?

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Now, to say no to that would be

the position of radical skepticism.

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And most skeptics would reject that.

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But it's difficult to

know on what grounds.

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Where's the rationale for saying

that we can have true knowledge

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about some things, but not others?

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Where's the line involved?

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That's a difficult question to answer.

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And then the second problem

with skepticism is that

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it seems self defeating.

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Where it's making a truth claim

that you can't know the truth,

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while denying the validity of

truth claims, as Plato pointed out.

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So he's foundational in this philosophical

category of skepticism, but you've

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said in the past, Okay, he can make

this claim, but he doesn't have

430

philosophical grounds to really make it.

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Yeah, he can make this claim, and I think

what's important here is that, as far as

432

I know, he's the first one to make it.

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Okay.

434

So your point is just that he's a

pillar in philosophical understanding.

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Yeah.

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So he is the one who really

introduces a lot of deep questions

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that we're still wrestling with.

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He's kind of the first one to say just

by his own stance that these are things

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we're going to have to wrestle with.

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So did he himself recognize these

problems and respond to them?

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From what we have of his writings,

he did not address these problems,

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but we probably don't have all

his writings, so it's possible.

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He did, but, but no, based on

the historical record, but his

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skeptical stance will introduce

them into this great conversation.

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As I mentioned, now, one other thing he

does here related to this, that's the last

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thing I want to mention for it's also.

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important for philosophy, in particular

epistemology, he's going to introduce a

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distinction between knowledge and belief.

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So he said, if you remember that

quote, we cannot know these things,

450

but quote, they should be taken

as like the truth, end quote.

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Oh yeah, I remember unpacking

this in previous episodes.

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Yeah, we talked about this

in episodes four and five.

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Plato's going to develop this contrast

between knowledge and belief more fully

454

and then Haunt and Kierkegaard will also

make much of this distinction and I think

455

very importantly I think a lot of people

don't realize the importance of this

456

distinction and how Actually helpful it

can be to live out a philosophy of life

457

But so anyway, Aphanese is the first

one that I know of that introduces this

458

distinction Between belief and knowledge.

459

So it sounds like Xenophanes is

an outlier in Greek philosophy.

460

Yeah, he really is.

461

And because of that, he advances

philosophy as a whole in ways

462

that we're going to see in

most of the episodes ahead.

463

Yeah, wow.

464

That's going to be great.

465

So speaking of episodes

ahead, what's next for us?

466

Well, in the next episode, we're going

to look at one of the, arguably, two

467

most important pre Socratic Greek

philosophers, a man who started a movement

468

that lasted a thousand years, the man

with the golden thigh, Pythagoras.

469

Sounds good.

470

Yeah.

471

Until then.