Xenophanes Against The Gods (The History of Philosophy, part 4)

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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,

321

: 00:16:29

like we were talking about earlier, if

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

322

: 00:16:34

Yeah.

323

: 00:16:34

And I'm glad you pointed that out.

324

: 00:16:36

I forget.

325

: 00:16:36

I think that was episode seven or eight.

326

: 00:16:38

We talked about that if anyone wants to go

into that term and the idea behind that.

327

: 00:16:43

Yeah.

328

: 00:16:43

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

329

: 00:16:45

And I think you're right to see

the distinction there quite a

330

: 00:16:49

bit different than where everyone

else in his culture was going to.

331

: 00:16:52

The interesting thing is that he's

using morality as a defining factor

332

: 00:16:56

that kind of separates the god,

uppercase G, from humans or any

333

: 00:17:01

kind of lesser lowercase g gods.

334

: 00:17:03

Yes.

335

: 00:17:04

Morality plus the idea that God would

not be able to be deceived or God would

336

: 00:17:09

not be tricked or God would not move

or act in a war or something like that.

337

: 00:17:14

Those things would be below him.

338

: 00:17:15

Hmm.

339

: 00:17:16

Okay.

340

: 00:17:17

Not simply below his morality or

even attention, but he's so far

341

: 00:17:21

exalted above all these things.

342

: 00:17:25

There's a couple of

things he says about God.

343

: 00:17:27

He doesn't need anything, so you can

stop sacrificing those animals, right?

344

: 00:17:31

And that's very similar to the idea

that would arise in the Hebrew and

345

: 00:17:35

Christian tradition of God's aseity,

that He has all things in Himself.

346

: 00:17:39

Oh, yeah.

347

: 00:17:40

I remember talking about that,

too, in an earlier episode.

348

: 00:17:42

Right.

349

: 00:17:44

And then He says about

this God, He sees all over.

350

: 00:17:48

He thinks all over.

351

: 00:17:50

He hears all over.

352

: 00:17:52

He remains always in the

same place without moving.

353

: 00:17:56

But without toil, He sets

all things in motion.

354

: 00:17:59

By the thoughts of his mind.

355

: 00:18:01

So this is very different than

the Greek God, some of whom would

356

: 00:18:05

actually be in battle, some of

whom were wounded in battle.

357

: 00:18:08

Uh, this guy doesn't like that.

358

: 00:18:10

This is super interesting 'cause

it's starting to, of course, using

359

: 00:18:13

anachronistic theological categories to

think through this, but it's starting

360

: 00:18:18

to sound a little bit like omniscience.

361

: 00:18:20

Yeah, in some ways, a little

bit like immutability, like he's

362

: 00:18:24

approaching certain conceptions

of God that seem pretty relevant.

363

: 00:18:28

And also, like you mentioned in

that Hebrew stream of thought.

364

: 00:18:32

Exactly.

365

: 00:18:33

Okay.

366

: 00:18:34

So you said the third advance of

Xenophanes is that he makes advances

367

: 00:18:38

in the area of epistemology.

368

: 00:18:41

Can you explain that,

define that a little bit?

369

: 00:18:43

Sure.

370

: 00:18:44

An easy definition of

epistemology would be the study.

371

: 00:18:48

of what we can know or not

know and how we can know it.

372

: 00:18:52

So what can we know and then the

methods of knowing it related to that.

373

: 00:18:56

What are the wars for believing something?

374

: 00:18:58

How would you discern truth from error?

375

: 00:19:01

That kind of thing.

376

: 00:19:03

Here's a statement of his

that's really quite remarkable.

377

: 00:19:06

He's talking about all these

ideas and that he's mentioned.

378

: 00:19:10

It says, The gods have not revealed all

things from the beginning to mortals.

379

: 00:19:14

So this isn't received from the

mortals like the Delvic Oracle

380

: 00:19:17

or the myths and traditions.

381

: 00:19:20

But, by seeking, men find

out, in time, what is better.

382

: 00:19:25

So, by seeking, and I think what he

means is reasoning, investigation,

383

: 00:19:31

we come to a better understanding.

384

: 00:19:33

And then he goes on, though.

385

: 00:19:34

He says this.

386

: 00:19:35

This is interesting.

387

: 00:19:37

No man knows the truth, nor will

there, nor will there be a man

388

: 00:19:42

who has knowledge about the gods.

389

: 00:19:45

And what I say about everything.

390

: 00:19:47

For even if he were to hit by chance

upon the whole truth, he himself

391

: 00:19:52

would not be aware of having done so.

392

: 00:19:54

But each forms his own opinions.

393

: 00:19:58

Let these things then be

taken as like the truth.

394

: 00:20:02

End quote.

395

: 00:20:04

Okay, interesting quote there.

396

: 00:20:05

What's he saying there?

397

: 00:20:06

Can you help us understand it?

398

: 00:20:07

Yeah.

399

: 00:20:08

Well, first, he explicitly lays

out a criteria for knowing.

400

: 00:20:13

And he's really the first,

I believe, to do so.

401

: 00:20:15

What is it?

402

: 00:20:17

It's by seeking and investigating

and reasoning that we come to

403

: 00:20:20

know, and so he's laying out

that methodology for knowing.

404

: 00:20:25

Second, he's also the first to

state that we cannot know the

405

: 00:20:29

truth, or at least all the truth.

406

: 00:20:32

And this position is

usually called skepticism.

407

: 00:20:36

So in philosophy, skepticism is not

doubting or denying some particular

408

: 00:20:40

belief, for example the existence of God.

409

: 00:20:43

But rather, it's doubting whether

we can have true beliefs at all.

410

: 00:20:48

He's thinking primarily the things

he's talking about, that is the nature

411

: 00:20:51

of reality and the nature of God.

412

: 00:20:53

And he said, we can't

really know the truth.

413

: 00:20:57

Now two problems arise, though, when

you start down the skeptical road.

414

: 00:21:02

First, it becomes difficult to know

where you stop being a skeptic.

415

: 00:21:09

For example, can we not have knowledge

of mathematical or geometric truths?

416

: 00:21:14

Or can we not have knowledge of

the direct evidence of our senses?

417

: 00:21:19

Now, to say no to that would be

the position of radical skepticism.

418

: 00:21:25

And most skeptics would reject that.

419

: 00:21:27

But it's difficult to

know on what grounds.

420

: 00:21:29

Where's the rationale for saying

that we can have true knowledge

421

: 00:21:31

about some things, but not others?

422

: 00:21:33

Where's the line involved?

423

: 00:21:35

That's a difficult question to answer.

424

: 00:21:37

And then the second problem

with skepticism is that

425

: 00:21:40

it seems self defeating.

426

: 00:21:42

Where it's making a truth claim

that you can't know the truth,

427

: 00:21:45

while denying the validity of

truth claims, as Plato pointed out.

428

: 00:21:50

So he's foundational in this philosophical

category of skepticism, but you've

429

: 00:21:56

said in the past, Okay, he can make

this claim, but he doesn't have

430

: 00:22:01

philosophical grounds to really make it.

431

: 00:22:03

Yeah, he can make this claim, and I think

what's important here is that, as far as

432

: 00:22:07

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

433

: 00:22:10

Okay.

434

: 00:22:10

So your point is just that he's a

pillar in philosophical understanding.

435

: 00:22:16

Yeah.

436

: 00:22:17

So he is the one who really

introduces a lot of deep questions

437

: 00:22:20

that we're still wrestling with.

438

: 00:22:22

He's kind of the first one to say just

by his own stance that these are things

439

: 00:22:27

we're going to have to wrestle with.

440

: 00:22:29

So did he himself recognize these

problems and respond to them?

441

: 00:22:35

From what we have of his writings,

he did not address these problems,

442

: 00:22:40

but we probably don't have all

his writings, so it's possible.

443

: 00:22:43

He did, but, but no, based on

the historical record, but his

444

: 00:22:47

skeptical stance will introduce

them into this great conversation.

445

: 00:22:51

As I mentioned, now, one other thing he

does here related to this, that's the last

446

: 00:22:56

thing I want to mention for it's also.

447

: 00:22:58

important for philosophy, in particular

epistemology, he's going to introduce a

448

: 00:23:03

distinction between knowledge and belief.

449

: 00:23:07

So he said, if you remember that

quote, we cannot know these things,

450

: 00:23:11

but quote, they should be taken

as like the truth, end quote.

451

: 00:23:17

Oh yeah, I remember unpacking

this in previous episodes.

452

: 00:23:20

Yeah, we talked about this

in episodes four and five.

453

: 00:23:23

Plato's going to develop this contrast

between knowledge and belief more fully

454

: 00:23:27

and then Haunt and Kierkegaard will also

make much of this distinction and I think

455

: 00:23:33

very importantly I think a lot of people

don't realize the importance of this

456

: 00:23:37

distinction and how Actually helpful it

can be to live out a philosophy of life

457

: 00:23:43

But so anyway, Aphanese is the first

one that I know of that introduces this

458

: 00:23:47

distinction Between belief and knowledge.

459

: 00:23:51

So it sounds like Xenophanes is

an outlier in Greek philosophy.

460

: 00:23:56

Yeah, he really is.

461

: 00:23:58

And because of that, he advances

philosophy as a whole in ways

462

: 00:24:03

that we're going to see in

most of the episodes ahead.

463

: 00:24:07

Yeah, wow.

464

: 00:24:09

That's going to be great.

465

: 00:24:09

So speaking of episodes

ahead, what's next for us?

466

: 00:24:14

Well, in the next episode, we're going

to look at one of the, arguably, two

467

: 00:24:19

most important pre Socratic Greek

philosophers, a man who started a movement

468

: 00:24:24

that lasted a thousand years, the man

with the golden thigh, Pythagoras.

469

: 00:24:30

Sounds good.

470

: 00:24:31

Yeah.

471

: 00:24:31

Until then.