Xenophanes: A Forerunner of Critical Rationalism?

Abstract

Xenophanes belongs to that delightful group of authors for whom “serious thinkers” rarely show any great enthusiasm. Aristotle called him “a little crude”¹ and modern authors regularly place him next to Parmenides as the “Lesser figure”.² He is a widely travelled artist and dilettant. He knows his Homer and recites. With keen awareness he follows the new developments in the arts, in poetry, economics (invention and influence of money), technology (Eupalinus’ tunnel, Mandrocles’ bridge, Theodoros’ artemision, improvement in ship construction), cosmology and astronomy (reception and improvement of Babylonian thought, Ionian “Naturalism”), as well as the contemporary changes in the general attitude toward life (the gradual replacement of heroic morality with the morality of the city state). He is aware of the voyages of discovery that took place at his time or just before it and writes about all these things in versified aphorisms. The aphorisms are often derisory; in fact, one is sometimes not sure if he believes an eccentric idea he presents, or whether he wants to ridicule it by exaggeration. But the aphorisms also contain serious warnings and critical comments on contemporary phenomena. (These warnings betray a certain megalomania and anticipate the later, institutionalized tyranny of the intellectuals.)

Translated from the German by Dr. John Krois (Ed.).