Xenophanes
Influenced by Plato and Aristotle, Xenophanes was known to be the founder of Eleatic philosophy which views that despite appearances, what there is a changeless, motionless, and eternal ‘One’. He is best remembered for a novel critique of anthropomorphism in religion. Xenophanes advocates the existence of one god and makes mockery of the idea that gods resemble humans:
"God is one, supreme among gods and men, and not like mortals in body or in mind."
"The whole [of god] sees, the whole perceives, the whole hears."
"But without effort he sets in motion all things by mind and thought."
Some of his fragments show him as a natural philosopher who tries to explain the nature of all things without invoking a god.
· "This upper limit, of earth at our feet is visible and touches the air, but below it reaches to infinity."
· "For all things come from earth, and all things end by becoming earth."
"All things that come into being and grow are earth and water."
"For we are all sprung from earth and water."
He was a reflective observer of the human condition, a practitioner of the special form of ‘inquiry’ (historiê) introduced by the Milesian philosopher-scientists, and a civic counselor who encouraged his fellow citizens to respect the gods and work to safeguard the well-being of their city. Xenophanes comments on the general tendency of human beings to conceive of divine beings in human form.
Xenophanes is prepared to offer a positive account of the nature of the deity but his position appears to be that while no mortal being will ever know about the gods with any degree of certainty, we can at least avoid adopting beliefs and practices clearly at odds with the special nature any divine being must be assumed to possess.
Social criticism
Xenophanes identified his ‘one greatest god’ with the entire physical universe—often termed ‘the whole’ or ‘all things’, and some modern accounts portray Xenophanes as a pantheist. But this understanding of Xenophanes' doctrines seems inconsistent with his assertion that “god shakes all things” that “all things are from the earth and to the earth all things come in the end”, and that “all things which come into being and grow, are earth and water”. On the whole, Xenophanes' remarks on the divine nature are perhaps best read as an expression of a traditional Greek piety: there exists a being of extraordinary power and excellence, and it is incumbent on each of us to hold it in high regard.
To sum up, Xenophanes' attitude toward knowledge appears to have been the product of two distinct impulses. While he believed that inquiry in the form of travel and direct observation was capable of yielding useful information about the nature of things, he remained sufficiently under the influence of an older piety to want to caution others against seeking to understand matters that lay beyond the limits of all human experience. Here, as in other aspects of his thought, Xenophanes stands with one foot in the world of the archaic poet and the other in the “new science” of the late 6th and early 5th centuries BCE
Reference:
http://en.nkfu.com/xenophanes-quotes/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenophanes
http://www.abu.nb.ca/courses/grphil/xenophanes.htm
