Chapter 1: Xenophanes on the nature of the gods
Random number: 02
Our story starts with the Greek poet Hesiod, thought to be active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer. By writing the cosmogony (a model concerning the creation of the world) Theogony, Hesiod made an early attempt to systematize the manifold deities of legend by deriving them from common ancestors. In Theogony, Hesiod outlines the genealogy (the family history, who was the parent to whom) of the Gods, and makes the claim that the first being was Chaos, then Gaia, Tartarus, and Eros were created from nothing, from which all other gods were born.
It was in Ionia (and mainly the city Miletus) that the first really rational attempts to describe the nature of the world took place. Miletus produced Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, who suggested instead that there existed a single primary material of which everything was constructed, respectively: Water, Apeiron [an unlimited primordial mass], Air. (Although not an Ionian, it is worthy to remember Heraclitus, who suggested that Fire is the primary material) Their work is seen as a break from understanding the world by mythological explanations, instead utilising reason.
Xenophanes was born in Ionia, and was evidently influenced by the Ionian thought produced by philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes. Writing in verse, he is known for his rejection of the anthropomorphism of the Gods present in works such as the Theogony by Hesiod:
- Homer and Hesiod have attributed to the gods everything that is a shame and reproach among men, stealing and committing adultery and deceiving each other.
- But mortals consider that the gods are born, and that they have clothes and speech and bodies like their own.
- The Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black, the Thracians that theirs have light blue eyes and red hair.
- But if cattle and horses or lions had hands, or were able to draw with their hands and do the works that men can do, horses would draw the forms of the gods like horses, and cattle like cattle, and they would make their bodies such as they each had themselves
The criticisms are clear enough. In the Theogony, the Gods are often presented as being immoral, being born, wearing clothes, and having speech and bodies like humans have; but there are no grounds for this anthropomorphic thinking. For example, members of different races, like the Ethiopians or the Thracians, would describe their Gods in light of their own appearance. The conclusion is that such assessments are subjective and without value, and that the Hesiodic picture that Gods are anthropomorphic should be abandoned.
- One god, greatest among gods and men, in no way similar to mortals either in body or in thought.
- Always he remains in the same place, moving not at all; nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times, but without toil he shakes all things by the thought of his mind.
- All of him sees, all thinks, and all hears.
In light of this rejection of the anthropomorphism of the Gods, Xenophanes describes his own conception of what a God should be like. In Xenophanes view, there is only one God, who does not move because it is not fitting of him, and who, unlike mortal beings, is able to influence the physical world with only the power of his thought. Clearly this one God is completely removed from our day-to-day experiences, and Xenophanes has completely stripped the anthropomorphic idea from the Gods.