{"_index":"sire","_id":"748","_score":null,"_source":{"id":748,"authors_free":[{"id":1113,"entry_id":748,"agent_type":null,"is_normalised":null,"person_id":113,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Finkelberg, Aryeh","free_first_name":"Aryeh","free_last_name":"Finkelberg","norm_person":{"id":113,"first_name":"Aryeh","last_name":"Finkelberg","full_name":"Finkelberg, Aryeh","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1124815007","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Studies in Xenophanes","main_title":{"title":"Studies in Xenophanes"},"abstract":"Here, our reconstruction of Theophrastus' account can be regarded as complete: we have determined his general approach to Xenophanes' twofold teaching and dwelt on the main points of his report on Xenophanes' monistic doctrine. The examination of Xenophanes' cosmological conception, however interesting and desirable, is a separate task which should be left for another opportunity. After such a lengthy discussion, one should perhaps briefly recapitulate the results arrived at, and the best way to do this seems to be to present the Theophrastean account in the form of the ordered series of statements reconstructed above. In this list, the sources from which a given statement is excerpted or on the basis of which it is formulated are referred to by the name of the author and the page and line(s) of the Diels-Kranz edition. Statements and parts of statements that are purely conjectural are italicized.\r\n\r\n [Ps.-Plut.; 122.15-18] Xenophanes of Colophon, who pursued a certain way of his own different from [that of] all those spoken of beforehand [i.e., the Milesians], allows neither coming-to-be nor destruction but says that the whole is eternally selfsame.\r\n [Simpl.; 121.28] He says that this One and Whole is God, saying thus (fr. 23).\r\n [Simpl.; 121.27-28] The mention of this Xenophanean opinion rather belongs to a study other than that concerned with natural philosophy [that is, in that concerned with first philosophy].\r\n He says that God is ungenerated and eternal, which he proves as follows: [on the basis of Ps.-Plut.; 122.18-20] had it [the Whole or God] come to be, it is necessary for it not to be before this; but not being, it can never come to be: neither nought can produce anything nor can anything come to be by the agency of nought.\r\n That God is one, he proves so: [on the basis of Ps.-Plut.; 122.23-24] among gods, there can be no supremacy, for it does not suit the divine holiness that God should be under lordship; but were there many gods, there would be lords and subjects among them (perhaps also: or all of them would be lords of each other).\r\n [on the basis of Simpl.; 121.24-25; 122.3-6] He does not say whether God is finite or infinite.\r\n Nor does he say [on the basis of Simpl.; 121.25; 122.3-6] whether he is moved or unmoved.\r\n But [on the basis of Simpl.; 122.6-9] actually, he conceives of God as unmoved, for he calls him eternally selfsame and says (fr. 26).\r\n He says that God is thoroughly seeing, hearing, and thinking (fr. 24). He demonstrates this in the following way: [on the basis of Ps.-Plut.; 122.25-26] God is altogether free from any want; but had he seen, heard, and thought only in one part of him, he would be in want of these in another part; hence he sees, hears, and thinks wholly and not in one or another part of himself.\r\n [on the basis of Simpl.; 122.13-14] And he says that God governs all things by his mind, saying (fr. 25).\r\n [on the basis of Ps.-Plut.; 122.20-21; Aristocles; 126.6-8] Thus he throws out sense-perceptions while trusting logos alone.\r\n [on the basis of Ps.-Plut.; 122.15-18; Theophr. ap. Alex.; 219.31-33] The other way, that of accounting for the coming-to-be of existing things, he dismisses, declaring such accounts to be no more than opinion deprived of any certainty, saying this in such words (fr. 34).\r\n Nevertheless, he proposes some such opinion which he himself seems to adjudge plausible, as his own words show (fr. 35).\r\n [Theophr. ap. Alex; 219.31-33] But Parmenides, who came after him, took both ways [i.e., that of Xenophanes and that of the Milesians, cf. (1)]. For indeed, he both says that the whole is eternal and tries to account for the coming-to-be of existing things, not however thinking about both [ways] alike, but according to truth assuming the whole to be one, ungenerated, and spherical, while according to the opinion of the many, accounting for the coming-to-be of perceptible things by positing two principles: fire and earth, etc.\r\n\r\nThis reconstructed account represents that of the first book of the Physical Opinions. Indeed, (1) is the counterpart of (14), which is explicitly related by Alexander to the first book. (2)\u2013(10) also belong there, for they either come from Simplicius' report or correct and complement it where it is wrong or incomplete, while this report itself comes from the first book of the Physical Opinions.\r\n\r\nIf Theophrastus' account was as I suggest, it seems to have been of great accuracy. True, it misrepresents Xenophanes' position in that his epistemic approach is interpreted in terms of the contrast logos:aistheseis, but this is the only major misinterpretation I can find in the account. On the whole, this is a precise report that moreover does not show any tendency to assimilate Xenophanes' teaching to that of Parmenides.\r\n\r\nYet it would be hard to point out even one important Parmenidean doctrine which is not, in one way or another, rooted in Xenophanes' teaching. Such is, first and foremost, the Parmenidean idea of the intelligible unity of the sensible manifold, which in Xenophanes himself was, as we have suggested, the development of one of the facets of Anaximander's Apeiron. This is the view of unity as one of two aspects\u2014true, the most essential, significant, and sublime\u2014but nevertheless one aspect only of reality, complementary to its other aspect, that of the manifold.\r\n[conclusion p. 163-167]","btype":3,"date":"1990","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/H8YttvfJXlsVkrJ","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":113,"full_name":"Finkelberg, Aryeh","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}}],"book":null,"booksection":null,"article":{"id":748,"journal_id":null,"journal_name":"Harvard Studies in Classical Philology","volume":"93","issue":"","pages":"103-167"}},"sort":["Studies in Xenophanes"]}