Below are the seven thesis statements offered for the midterm exam. Each statement requires an image that illustrates your understanding of Xenophanes’ thinking. You can prepare for and defend the exam in groups of up to four, but each examine needs to be prepared to respond to any of the seven thesis statements. If you can, prior to your actual exam schedule, can you email a soft copy of your image (or a verbal description if you don’t plan to use an actual picture) and some brief notes on your thesis defense for each statement?

The best way, by far, to prepare for the midterm is to offer a mock defense of a self-chosen thesis statement in class during the scheduled review session. Your classmates will benefit from your efforts, and hopefully will be able to make valuable comments.

#1

Already there are sixty-seven years tossing my thought throughout the land of Greece. From my birth there were twenty-five in addition to these, if I know how to speak truly about these matters (7.1). Thesis Statement: Philosophical thinking is dialogical and non-dogmatic. Ironically, Xenophanes became a fixture of Greek thinking by being tossed around. Suggest an image which demonstrates this tension between fixity and flux. Explain how it illustrates Xenophanes' fragment.

Water's power is proverbial for the gentleness of the medium itself. Lifegiving liquid can become a deadly torrent. To focus on the example of surface tension, a force we can easily break with our fingers--can float an aircraft carrier.

In the same way, Xenophanes' philosophical thinking is gentle and thought provoking rather than authoritative. The force of his thinking is felt in the effect it has on others rather than dogmatic self-assertion. Unknowingness (agnosticism) is not ignorance but the way to understanding.

Primarily what Xenophanes does is to ask questions. In provoking questioning he becomes a reliable resource for our thinking. His uncertainty helps us challenge what we think we know ourselves.

#2

Give us no fights with Titans, no, nor Giants nor Centaurs—the forgeries of our fathers— nor civil brawls, in which no advantage is. But always to be mindful of the gods is good (7.2). Thesis Statement: Thoughtful examination would both dismiss and preserve doctrine. Bring an image that demonstrates critical appropriation.
Notice that we do not argue about things we don't care about. The dismissiveness--even the passion of an argument--demonstrates, not the irrelevance, but the vitality of the issue. We critique a point of view because we will make it our own.

In the same way, the protestant 'reformation' does not put an end to Christianity, but brings it forward in critical thinking. Unrooting the 'forgeries' of traditional thinking does not dismiss it out of hand, but thoughtfully appropriates it into the contemporary situation (cf. Being and Time 22-3).

A good example here might be a critical reading of the creation story in Genesis. A demythologization may serve to make its theological truth more explicit, rather than negating it.

# 3

All things that come into being and grow are earth and water (7.16). Thesis Statement: Xenophanes is the first to propose a plurality of material principles—ironic for the first ‘monist.’ Bring an image that demonstrates the way a unity emerges out of diversity.

Competition creates unity. On a team (or in a fan club) we become united by what we are not. Atenean culture is defined by not being La Salle, provincial, secular, etc.

But more generally still, unity emerges out of conflict. Ateneo probably has more in common with La Salle than any other school--precisely because of our rivalry.

It is this same almost-ironic inversion that Xenophanes, a monist, has in mind when he says that 'all things' are 'earth and water.' He envisions the whole of reality as a single substance--but one that emerges out of opposition (cf. 7.18 and 13).

#4

God is one, greatest among gods and men, not at all like mortals in body or thought (7.10). Thesis Statement: Monotheism describes a quality by way of quantity. Bring an image that demonstrates essential singularity by analogy to plurality.

Moses met with an incredulous phenomenon. Fire burned but did not burn up the bush. A symbol for impermanence came to represent what does not pass away.

In the same way, monotheism uses the language of plurality to describe something that is essentially one. God's unicity is not an accident of conquest, but inherit in the name.

In Exodus 3, God reveals himself to Moses as I AM WHO I AM. Yahwey (which sounds like the word for 'I am' in Hebrew) is not the most powerful among the category of gods. He cannot be identified with a particular nation or family of gods—he cannot even be given a name. He is irrevocably one.

We use the same sort of language to describe our love when we say things like "You're every woman in the world to me" or "I love you so much." The quantities in these descriptions serve to deny any possible reference to quantity; that is, they use the language of quantity to describe the quality of a relationship that is all consuming.

Xenophanes says that God is 'not at all like mortals in body or thought' to say that to think of God we must start from the category of God, without analogy to another sort of being. Every analogy only demonstrates that which God ineffably surpasses.

#5

He always remains in the same place, moving not at all, nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times (7.9). Thesis Statement: The king or queen sits enthroned, not do demonstrate lethargy, but power. "Fittingness" is a rational criterion for truth.

Aristotle says that it is natural for us to want to know (Metaphysics I.i.1). That is, when we look at something, we see it in terms of its cause/reason.

A child's head sitting on top of a diver's body is immediately ironic because it doesn't 'fit.'

In the same way, Xenophanes says that it is unfitting to think of the gods as flitting in and out of the world of humans the way Homer and Hesiod portrayed them.


Like a king or queen, god's immobility is not a figure of lethargy or weakness, but of surpassing power.

#6

By no means did the gods reveal all things to mortals from the beginning, but in time, by searching, they discover better (7.21).

Thesis Statement: Revelation is never there from the beginning. It unfolds in a process of "searching." Bring an image that characterizes this time (lapse) of insight.

Ignatius Loyola was a man of action until he was injured in battle. With nothing better to do than read during his long convalescence, he suffered a conversion by reflecting on the lives of the saints (cf. the life of the Buddha).

There is no eliding the time of reflection for discovery. What Xenophanes objects to is the kind of religious tradition which takes authority as the end rather than the beginning of a search. Whether our authorities are scripture, church teachings, popular psychology, or rigorous science--they should be critically appropriated rather than thoughtlessly assumed.

# 7

Let things be believed as resembling the truth (7.20). Thesis Statement: There is no escaping the faith ("belief") connecting the universality of the "truth" with the perspectival grasp we have of the "things" in our world. Suggest an image that illustrates the chasm between what we "believe" and the "truth." How does your image mediate the gap it simultaneously emphasizes and necessitates?

Ronald McDonald is a good example of plasticity of truth. The point is not that advertising lies: fast food does not equal happiness. The point is that the truth is irrevocably linked with impressions.

Xenophanes' point is that there is no field of knowledge (religion vs. science) where the truth is not mediated by belief (cf. 7.19).

Class Objective: To familiarize ourselves with the Ionian challenge

The very first philosophers in Greece were primarily interested in understanding the world--how it came about and what it was fundamentally constituted of. In one conception, they were cosmologists. Their basic question was, What one substance accounts for all the other things in the world? Their answers were rash and quickly dismissed, but they were the foundation of Western science in at least two ways: having rational bases, they were open to rational critique. Their basic premise was that the world was rationally comprehensible, and that discourse was the best way to understand it.

Ionian Exercise: Match the following philosophers with the arche(s) they proposed:

Thales













Anaximander















Anaximenes













Xenophanes













Air
Apeiron
Earth and Water
God
Water

Aristotle Exercise

PART I: For the first six paragraphs of the Metaphysics, name each paragraph. Identify two or three key words. Explain Aristotle’s basic point in a sentence or two, and bring it home with an illustration/analogy to contemporary life.

1. All men naturally desire knowledge...
2. Now animals are by nature…
3. Thus the other animals…
4. Art is produced when…
5. It would seem that for practical purposes…
6. In general the sign of knowledge…

PART II: Identify and distinguish Aristotle's four levels of knowledge.

Plato Exercise:

Is it important to do good deeds because God commands them, or does God command them because they are good deeds for us to do? Explain.

More than for a correct answer, I am looking for an engagement with Plato's text. I'm more interested in why you think your answer is correct than in whether or not you agree with Plato/me.

Class Objective: To Read Plato's Euthyphro together.

Reading Plato between the lines always means understanding who the characters in the dialogues are. In this case, the distinction between Socrates and Euthyphro is instructive for the proper attitude for asking theological questions. It is not at all difficult to see the ways in which Xenophanes has influenced Socrates and the philosophical tradition after him.

This below is not an essay, and it would make lousy notes for a lecture--but it could have been either, and may be helpful for reading Plato between the lines:


Plato and the Beginning of Philosophy

1

The contrast in character between Socrates and Euthyphro could not be more to the point. Socrates approaches the indictment that will end in his execution with an attitude of both genuine inquisitiveness and sarcastic pluck; Euthyphro comes to court, not unlike Socrates’ accuser, Meletus, to strike a blow and stake a claim.

Euthyphro knows Socrates well enough—at least by reputation—to know that it is incredulous to think he has come to court to indict someone else. Socrates is a questioner, not an authority. He has every depth of concern about his compatriots’ understanding of the gods, but his response is not a knowing accusation, but a probing enquiry.

2

It is true that the Republic even emphasizes a brazen, absolute prohibition against entertaining but uncritical poets. But, at least in Plato, the saying always has priority over the said. The dialogues of Plato do not contain the content of his philosophy, but the situation where that content emerges. It is literally the case that nothing is ever said in Plato, but characters speak to one another in voice, inviting a response—from us, the readers, as much as from their conversation partners. The genuine content of a philosophical discourse is not on the page, but the thinking the written page elicits.

The Republic, then, invites us to think about the acculturation of justice in ourselves. In order to provide both a critical distance and caricature scale, Socrates proposes that we build an imaginary model city state, asking the question, “What will best promote the development and maintenance of justice in its citizens?” The hope is that, seeing the macro letters of justice ‘writ large’ in a city’s constitution will help us better recognize its subtleties in the soul (368c-369a).

3

After deciding that the city will need at least three kinds of people: soldier-guardians, laborers, and thinkers, Socrates asks which of these three would best govern the others. The different types of citizens represent different parts of the human soul: laborers correspond to the appetitive part of the soul; soldiers correspond to the violent part of the soul; and thinkers correspond to the philosophical part. It should be underscored that Socrates is explicitly not referring to a special kind of person called a “philosopher.” He addresses the reasoning, deliberative part in each of us. Socrates is far from setting himself up as an elite specialist and asking to be crowned philosopher-king. In fact, he underscores that the thinkers would have to be conscripted to serve as administrators, because it does not serve any private interest of theirs.

4

It is obvious, though, setting things up in this way, that we should choose the deliberative part of our souls to govern our course of action. We will best develop as virtuous persons if we do not make decisions based on our appetites or our sheer force. Instead, we should decide rationally what is in our best interests.

5

It is with our appetitive part that “theology” becomes involved. The word itself, Werner Jaeger emphasizes repeatedly (The Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers 4), is coined in this context by Plato to distinguish between the mythical and rational approaches to the characterization of God. He is concerned that deities who share our weaknesses and absurdities only license irrational behavior. Thus, he establishes a stricter criterion for characterizations of the divine as a way to benefit the city/soul. Compelling and palliative narratives of unjust and irrational actions by gods and heroes only serve to promote these same states in the subject who is influenced by them. Recall that Hesiod has nearly bragged about his skill with words, to convince us of what is patently false; Plato here demands that the poets/theologians take responsibility for the impact their doctrines have.

This is the same theme we have already seen from Xenophanes: Fragment 7.2 comes at the end of a longer poem that is (perhaps) attributable to Xenophanes. The following is Paul Feyerabend’s translation in the Kenyon Review (1987, Volume 9, Number 4), “Reason, Xenophanes and the Homeric Gods,” 13:

Clean is the floor, clean are the hands and the cups; and the garlands
freshly now woven, are put on the heads by the boy.
Redolent balsam preserved in the phial is brought by another,
exquisite pleasure lies waiting for us in the bowl;
and a different wine, with the promise not ever to bring disappointment,
soft tasting and sweet to the smell stands here in the jar.
And in the center the incense dispenses the holy perfume;
cool water is there, full of sweetness and clear to the eye.
Behold the goldyellow loaves and, on the magnificent tables,
overflowing abundance of cheese and rich honey.
And in the center an altar fully covered with flowers
and festive songs sounding all over the house.
But first it is proper for well disposed men to the god to pay tribute
with words which are pure and stories that fit the occasion;
then, after the common libations and the prayer for strength to act wisely
(the most important concern, preceding all others)
it is not hybris to fill the body with drink—provided
only the old ones need later a slave to get home.
And I praise the man who, having imbibed, can still remember
how much he achieved and how he followed the virtues.
Let him not tell us of battles conducted by Titans and Giants
or even Centaurs—the fantasies of our fathers;
or of civic dissension—not useful are these events..
But one should always pay respect to the gods.

6

Strikingly congruent between the approach of Xenophanes and that of Socrates is the dual insistence on a) a practical/critical examination of our theologies, and b) an open questioningness toward what those theologies ought to be. Xenophanes only says that “always to be mindful of the gods is good” (McKirahan’s translation). Socrates, too, comes to court concerned vitally with the question of God, but with a radical openness to learn what he does not know.

7

This characteristic could not be more poignantly foiled in the character of Euthyphro. He comes to court not to question, but to accuse. This inversion of the philosophical attitude is accentuated by the fact that the man he is indicting is his father.

Socrates probes the issue with his satirical praise of his own accuser, Meletus. “It’s no small thing for a young man to have knowledge of such an important subject” (). Meletus’ relative youth is no barrier to insight, but it makes his hybris in setting himself up as an authority over the seasoned Socrates all the more obvious. Euthyphro, too, may very well be right in his accusation against his father—what Socrates asks him is, “Euthyphro, you think that your knowledge the divine, and of piety and impiety, is so accurate that when those things happened as you say, you have no fear of having acted impiously in bringing your father to trial?” ()
Socrates’ own fear of being wrong is patent. It is the veritable trademark of his investigations. What he isn’t afraid of—being laughed at—is what so chafes at Euthyphro. Euthyphro wants very much to be taken seriously, while Socrates is more than happy to be instructed if it means he can engage someone in an investigation.

Socrates has no confidence in his ability to hold the floor in the debate (); he comes to court hoping to learn what he does not know. On the other hand, Euthyphro, speaking to a charge he doesn’t even know because it’s hypothetical, says he is confident his rhetorical skills would turn the tide against Meletus, shaming rather than distinguishing him. “If he should try to indict me, I think I would find his weak spots and the talk in court would be about him rather than about me” (). His confidence is not even in the justice of his case, but in his capacity to twist the situation to his advantage.

8

Whatever Euthyphro’s verbal skills, he is none too discerning a listener—because he totally misses the sarcasm in Socrates’ praise of Meletus. So Socrates includes Euthyphro in it saying, “It is indeed most important, my admirable Euthyphro, that I should become your pupil” (). It is not ironic that Socrates would make himself Euthyphro’s student; he is totally in earnest about wishing to lean both from Euthyphro and Meletus. The irony becomes clear when he proposes to offer Euthyphro as his authority in religious matters, saying that if Meletus continues to be displeased with his theology, he should prosecute Euthyphro instead of him (). Even Euthyphro’s ready agreement with his characterization as “far advanced in wisdom” () and superior to everyone else () is not as ironic as the idea that Socrates would accept someone else, however wise and superior, as an authority in knowledge about the gods.

When Socrates met Parmenides he found him to be venerable, almost holy ()—so he grilled him with questions. His own approach in influencing others is not to indoctrinate them with his beliefs, but to question them in such a way that they examine their own beliefs. So to imagine him sitting studiously at the feet of the upstart Euthyphro taking notes to read back to Meletus—is an image for a cartoon strip. If Euthyphro has something to teach Socrates, then it is something Socrates can learn for himself, becoming just as much an authority in it as Euthyphro himself. Esoteric knowledge is a euphemism for stupidity.

9

It may be helpful to point out here that this negative dialectic demonstrates the profound influence that Xenophanes will have had on Socrates. It is not only that they are in substantial agreement in their criticism of populist theology:

Homer and Hesiod have ascribed to the gods all deeds
which among men are a reproach and a disgrace:
thieving, adultery, and deceiving one another (7.3).

And Xenophanes is not only the first philosopher to use satire didactically; it is also that, after him, philosophy generally has taken a turn toward system and prose. Socrates’ negative dialectic harks back almost singularly to the satirist from Colophon:

If oxen and horses and lions had hands
and were able to draw with their hands and do the same things as men,
horses would draw the shapes of gods to look like horses
and oxen to look like oxen, and each would make the
gods’ bodies have the same shape as they themselves had (7.6).

More than a common content, what Socrates shares with Xenophanes is a dialogical species of thinking: there are sixty-seven years / tossing my thought throughout the land of Greece (7.1).

10

In general, we say that an attribute of something belongs to it “accidentally.” Something that is being carried, Socrates says, is not something-that-is-being-carried; it is first something—which subsequently comes to be carried. Thus, a good deed would not seem to have its commendability in itself, but to receive it by [approbation], social or divine. Something we love does not have lovability somehow intrinsic to itself—but beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, with the pious—or commendable; it is not that a certain action is inherently commendable, but that it comes to be commendable because it is approved.

Euthyphro tries to define the pious as what is loved by (all) the gods. But Socrates demonstrates that, methodologically, this cannot be a definition for piety—because what the gods love, even if we concede they should all love the same thing, has not its loveliness somehow in itself, but imputed to it by their loving. Thus, even if all the gods should happen to love what is pious, their love would not for that reason make it pious, but would be added onto a pious action in the way of an attribute or accident. In Plato’s language, it is not the form of the pious.

We should not mistake the Euthyphro here for promulgating a doctrine. What Socrates is doing is simply unseating Euthyphro’s easy identity of justice with an esoteric knowledge of the divine will. It may very well be that Euthyphro has some privileged insight into what is pleasing to the gods—but he is not, for that reason, right to prosecute his father. On the other hand, he may very well be right to prosecute his father on the charge of murder—but he is not any more right, on that basis, to claim special knowledge of the holy.

11

Suggestions for Further Reading:
• Plato tells the story of The Death of Socrates in four dialogues, beginning with Euthyphro, followed by Apology, Crito, and Phaedo. The principle dialogues where he takes up theology as a major theme are his two largest dialogues: The Republic and The Laws.

Class Objective: To discuss questions 7 & 8 of the Xenophanes exercise

Both of these questions have the theme of presenting the limits of human knowing.

For the images used in class and attendant reflections see the "Picturing Xenophanes" blog (either at the link list to the right or at http://www.xenpics.blogspot.com/)

Class Objective: To discuss questions 3-6 of the Xenophanes exercise

These questions have the common theme of Xenophanes' confidence in human reason to investigate and understand the divine person.