Information AboutXenophanes |
| CATEGORIES ABOUT XENOPHANES | |
| 570 bc births | |
| 480 bc deaths | |
| presocratic philosophers | |
| ancient greek poets | |
| SHOPPER'S DELIGHT | |
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Xenophanes rejected the idea that the gods resembled humans in form. One famous passage ridiculed the idea by claiming that, if Oxen were able to imagine gods, then those gods would be in the image of oxen. Because of his development of the concept of a "one god greatest among gods and men" that is abstract, universal, unchanging, immobile and always present, Xenophanes is often seen as one of the first Monotheists , in the Western philosophy of Religion . This vision is not undisputed; while it seems clear that Xenophanes differed markedly from the commonly held Cosmology of his contemporaries, it is less clear that his ideas were congruent with monotheism per se. Final resolution of this question is unlikely barring new texts coming to light. He also wrote that poets should only tell stories about the gods which were socially uplifting, one of many views which foreshadowed the work of Plato . Xenophanes also concluded from his examination of Fossil s that Water once must have covered all of the Earth 's surface. His Epistemology , which is still influential today, held that there actually exists a Truth of Reality , but that humans as mortals are unable to know it. Therefore, it is possible to act only on the basis of working Hypotheses - we may act as if we knew the truth, as long as we know that this is extremely unlikely. This aspect of Xenophanes was brought out again by the late Sir Karl Popper and is a basis of Critical Rationalism . Until the 1950s , there was some controversy over many aspects of Xenophanes, including whether or not he could be properly characterized as a philosopher. In today's philosophical and classics discourse, Xenophanes is seen as one of the most important Presocratic philosophers. It had also been common to see him as the teacher of Zeno Of Elea , the colleague of Parmenides , and generally associated with the Eleatic School , but common opinion today is likewise that this is false. BIBLIOGRAPHY EDITIONS
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