Xénophane , wire of Dixios, or, according to Apollodore, of Orthomène de Colophon, is a philosophical , poet, born with Colophon (Ionie) (current Turkey) and scientific Greek. Exiled of Colophon fallen under the Persian domination, it seems to have emigrated in Sicily and to be itself taken refuge initially in Zancle and Catane, before going to Élée (City founded by Phocéens into -536) or it created the school of Elée. It is not known if it died there, or if it turned over finally to Colophon. It appears to have lived strong old man, if one believes of them the few worms which remained of him.

Biography

The dates relating to the period when he lived remain very discussed, and the majority of the works which he would have writing were unfortunately lost. One must be satisfied, to try to approach Xénophane, of some texts for any base of studies, of which the irreplaceable treaty of Aristote entitled: " De Mélissus, of Xénophane, and Georgias" , which proves to be on the matter the most complete work, the most important base, and undoubtedly even the only one which is able to clearly expose the whole of the doctrines of Xénophane, and to thus hope to better be able to seize the thoughts of this philosopher.

Although the work and the thought of Xénophane are difficult to still apprehend fault of text written by itself in our possession, Xénophane perhaps for neglected as much by the history of philosophy, would be this only because it passes for the founder of the school of Elée (Even if Plato in his book " Sophiste" , makes go up the creation of the school of élée quite front him), and that Parménide was most probably its disciple (see Aristote Métaphysique, liv. I).

Philosophical doctrines

It would have followed, or at the very least listened, the teaching of Anaximandre and appears to be informed of the cosmology of the milésiens. One as knows by Diogène de Laërte, as Xénophane fought with strength the system of Pythagore, as well as resourcefulnesses Epimide and of Thalès, and that it was especially known for its violent criticisms concerning anthropomorphic descriptions that Hésiode and Homère made gods.

Clément of Alexandria quotes Xénophane:

If the oxen and the lions had hands and could paint as the men do it, they would give the Gods whom they would draw of the very similar bodies with their, horses putting them under the figure of horses, oxen under the ox figure.

It rents then the philosopher to have made incorporeal God and to have said:

Single and very powerful, sovereign of strongest, God resembles us neither of spirit nor of body. The human ones, by making the Gods with their image, Their their thoughts, their voices and their faces lend. |(, V, p. 601)

After so high and so right ideas on God, one conceives best the irritation of Xénophane against the poets who lowered the divine majesty, and which “like Homère and Hésiode did not hesitate to allot to the Gods all that is dishonouring among the men: flight, adultery, the lie, treason. |(Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhon. Hypotyp. liv. I, CH. 33, page 99, edict. from 1842; Adversus Mathem. Physicos, liv. IX, page 612, and Grammaticos, liv. I, page 112)

Aristote speaks as for him about the opinions about Xénophane; and in its Poetic, he recalls that the philosopher blamed the ideas that the vulgar one was made gods.

Xénophane thus affirmed the existence of a single, spherical, motionless god. At the same time he recalls that this ultimate reality cannot be known with certainty by the human beings whose knowledge of reality is limited to the conjectures or opinions. At the same time, he affirms that it is possible to approach the truth gradually: “The gods did not reveal with the mortals the things hidden as of the beginning, but while seeking, those with time find the best” (Fragment 18, according to Diels). It thus introduces the fundamental epistemological distinction between the world of appearance and reality, distinction taken again and accentuated in particular by Parménide.

Xénophane in addition opened new, and very important, topic of reflection by noting that: ″ if God had not created honey, the men would find figs more sweetened much ″. it thus posed by this sentence a doubt about what we see and what we hear, it said, in this coloured way, that our feelings vary according to the moment, according to whether we tasted honey before or not, and finally that they also vary from one observer to another, one finding hot a water that another which has fever, will find cold.

It seems thus that for Xénophane it there has of each one of our feelings share of relative which invites man to distinguish thing in it even from feeling that one of has, and thus to operate necessary distinction between science and opinion, and beyond this reflection, poses question to know if the world that I perceive and who surrounds me and well such as my directions describe it to me, question which will be in the beginning many later philosophical debates…

Scientific doctrines and beliefs

In antiquity, a thinker was a philosopher as much that a “scientist”. Xénophane, like the other Greek thinkers, thus proposed to him also its own design of the world, a cosmology, explanations of the phenomena of nature. For Xénophane indeed, the Earth punt was infinite and floated neither on water as Thalès claimed it, neither in the vacuum like wanted it Anaximandre, it had limits, neither on the sides, nor in lower part and extended in all the directions. Stars: Sun, Comets, Planets were incandescent clouds. The movement of the stars was rectilinear, therefore the stars which one saw were not never the same ones. Each evening, they died out in the sea or the desert and there was, by the fact even, an infinity of different Suns. According to him, the world resulted from the Earth and would turn over one day to the Earth. For the moment, it was made of a mixture of Ground and Water with intermediate mud states made up. To prove the overlaps of one of these elements in the other, it had the idea to make reference to the fossils of plants, shells and fish found close to Syracuse. Xénophane allotted the presence of the petrified shells which one finds far from the sea and of the fish prints of the careers of Sicily so that the sea had covered the continents formerly.

Obviously these considerations should not be under consideration under the only angle of their scientific values, which is important, here, it is more nature of the problem than Xénophane was posed than the explanations than he proposes as an answer.