by A. A. Long
But the anthropomorphic error strikes deeper, and instead of being merely ridiculous becomes morally corrupting and impious. Long before Plato was preaching the same lesson (Rep. II 377d ff.), Xenophanes condemned the storytelling of Homer and Hesiod, who:
have ascribed to the gods all deeds
which among men are a reproach and a disgrace:
thieving, adultery, and deceiving one another (B11).6
And in a sympotic poem, he denounces symposiasts who, after the customary libation to the gods, recount “fictions of the men of old” about the battles of savage divinities (B1). As for Xenophanes’ own conception:
God is one, greatest among gods and men.7
not at all like mortals in body or thought… (B23)
All of him sees, all of him thinks, all of him hears… (B24)
But without effort he shakes all things by the thought of his mind (B25).
Xenophanes also declared it no less impious to say that the immortal gods are born than that they die (Aristotle, Rhet. II.23 1399b6-9). And he said:
He always remains in the same state, moving not at all,
nor is it fitting that he go first here, then there (B26; tr. McKirahan [10]
with modifications).
A precise monotheism is not among Xenophanes’ innovations, although the doctrine has often been foisted upon him. As his language shows, the issue for him is not the numerical unicity of the divine, but its self-harmony. Whether we say god or gods (and Xenophanes says both), what matters is that the divine cannot conflict with the divine, be forced into subjection, even by the divine (cf. ps.-Aristotle, MXG977a3I); or be divisible into different cognitive functions that might give dissenting reports. However, Xenophanes takes a new step in stating that piety requires us not to think of gods as coming to be. This sets a standard of theological rigour unmatched even by Plato, who in the Timaeus (34b) speaks of the created universe as “a blessed god.” Attributing awareness to the deity would have been another striking innovation if, as seems not to be the case, Xenophanes had claimed this while theorizing about the fundamental principle of nature. The idea that mind is the best candidate for that theoretical role would have placed him ahead of the natural philosophers of his time. But it seems more likely that Xenophanes is invoking a prescientific notion of the “greatest god” as aware of all things. The thought itself goes back as far as Homer and Hesiod (Od. XX. 75; Il. VIII.51-2; Works and Days 267), although these poets could scarcely have conceived of Zeus as nothing but an all-controlling awareness, as perhaps Xenophanes does. Such a view would not, of course, commit Xenophanes to an incorporeal deity, and B23 (“not at all like mortals in body or thought”) definitely implies the contrary. Nor, apparently, does Xenophanes find it awkward to hold that one and the same being (a) is corporeal, (b) “shakes all things,” yet (c) is absolutely motionless (B25 with B26). In combining (b) and (c), he seems to approach the Aristotelian concept of the unmoved mover. For Xenophanes, though, the important point would surely be not that the divinity is motionless itself, but that it acts everywhere with effortless immediacy.
Xenophanes thought of himself as rendering great service to his fellows by the exercise of what he calls “our own [sc. kind of] wisdom [or: talent] (sophi),” which he says contributes to prosperity and the rule of law. Victories in the Olympic games bring the polis no such benefits, yet Olympic victors are rewarded with civic honours, “not being as worthy of them as I; for our talent is better than the strength of men and horses” (B2, following Lesher). Whatever the range of Xenophanean sophi – we have already seen samples – he compares it favourably to excellence of physique. Did Xenophanes note the correspondence between his and his god’s most important characteristic, the mind? And if so, did he construct the conception of god in accordance with what he valued most about himself, or was it the other way round? It is difficult to believe the affinity plays no part in Xenophanes’ proud claim to higher than Olympian honours. On the other hand, he also held that all things come from earth and return to it in the end (B27). The scope of “all things” is not clear: it cannot include god, but does it include the human mind? A passage making fun of the Pythagorean belief in the transmigration of souls (B7) suggests an affirmative answer. So does Aristotle’s report that, when asked by the citizens of Elea whether they should sacrifice to a certain sea nymph or mourn her, Xenophanes replied that they should not mourn if they considered her a goddess, nor sacrifice if they considered her human (Rhet. II.23 1400b5). Let there be no blurring of the line between the race of worshippers and the race of those they worship.
This is the voice of traditional piety, which can also be heard in these lines:
No man has seen nor will anyone know
the truth about the gods and all the things I speak of……
but [mere] belief is fashioned over all things [or: for all persons]
(B34).
Here Xenophanes answers any doubt we might have had about the singlemindedness of his rejection of anthropomorphism. The distinction between knowledge and mere belief, the human second best, bears out his description of the greatest god as not at all like us in body or in thought. Xenophanes’ new account of the divine never purported to give out the truth about god as god would see it. One who could comprehend that would stand in no need of chiding silloi, which are meant specifically for beings whose ways are capable of improvement (cf. B18), including their ways of thinking about the divine.
But it would be a mistake to suggest “traditional piety” as the only determinant of Xenophanes’ strict separation of the human from the divine. We must also take account of his decision (as it must have been) not to treat the greatest god as a principle of theoretical physics. Given his time, background, and interests, Xenophanes certainly knew the work of the Milesian philosophers, and it is plausible that their conception of the single physical arch helped inspire his of the greatest god. Xenophanes’ aim, however, was not to expound a fundamental theory of physics, but, as a matter of moral and civic leadership, to wean his public from whatever was degrading and irrational in traditional notions of the gods. It would have defeated this purpose to set his discussions of god in the esoteric framework of a physical treatise. Thus it came about that Xenophanes’ theology shows little trace of the pantheism implicit in Milesian philosophy and soon to be elaborated by Heraclitus.
3. HERACLITUS, PARMENIDES, EMPEDOCLES
Heraclitus
Heraclitus is an important figure in the history of early Greek theology, but since Chapter 5 of this book is devoted to him, our dealings here will be brief, and confined to comparison with Xenophanes.
Heraclitus inveighs against Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus, grouping them as “polymaths without insight” (DK 22 B40). The common factor may have been an interest in matters divine: the mythological approaches of Hesiod, versus the supposedly superior approaches of the three later figures. Pythagoras preached reincarnation and religious asceticism; Hecataeus’ writings included a work on genealogy apparently composed in a demythologizing spirit; Xenophanes, we know. We may suppose that Heraclitus saw himself as theologizing, and as doing it better than these others. Whether he dismissed them collectively for failing to see the truth as he saw it, or levelled specific complaints against each, we can only guess, but either way, we can see fundamental points of contrast between Xenophanes and himself.
Xenophanes had declared it sacrilege to associate the gods with strife and deceitfulness. For Heraclitus, however, it is not the nature of god to be straightforwardly known (B93; cf. B32, B123). Xenophanes had spoken as if there is a plain truth about the gods, only mortals cannot rise to clear knowledge of it; for Heraclitus, that is because no truth is plain. According to Aristotle (Eudemian ethics VII.1 1235a25), Heraclitus reproached Homer for saying “Would that conflict might vanish from among gods and men!” on the grounds that there would be no attunement without contrariety. So from Heraclitus’ perspective, Xenophanes is as blind as the Homer, whom he ca
stigates; for Xenophanes and Homer take it for granted that strife is evil. And while Xenophanes had excluded movement and change from the divine nature, and held that god can neither cease nor begin, Heraclitus says:
The god: day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger. It alters, as when mingled with perfumes it gets named according to the pleasure [hdon, which also means “flavour”] of each (B67, tr. Kahn [232])
and:
Immortal mortals, mortal immortals, living the death of the others and dying their life (B62).
There could hardly be a more aggressive denial of the conventional belief, unquestioned by Xenophanes, in the unbridgeable gulf between human and divine. And although Xenophanes would not have claimed to know god’s values, he could hardly have sanctioned even a mere opinion that “To god all things are beautiful and good and just, but humans have supposed some unjust and others just” (B102).8 No doubt Heraclitus thought that humans functioning humanly must, and should, insist on their human distinctions between the just and the unjust (cf. B33; B44). But on behalf of Xenophanes one might reply that when human beings apply those distinctions, that is, when they are operating in practical, not superhuman, mode, then it must be as if they have no inkling (as the Heraclitean philosopher thinks he has) of how things are to god. In other words, in the practical context, which is where Xenophanes pitches his messages, we are bound to carry on as if Xenophanes were right about the limits of human cognition.
Parmenides
In antiquity, the greatest god of Xenophanes came to be identified with Parmenidean Being. Xenophanes was portrayed as an Eleatic monist, Parmenides as a metaphysical theologian. The distortion of Xenophanes was worse than that of Parmenides, but distortion of Parmenides there was. Whoever accepts that spurious linkage of the two philosophers will naturally assume that Parmenidean Being is god. After all, the Way of Truth ascribes to Being many attributes of divinity: it is ungenerated, imperishable, immutable, whole, all-inclusive, and eternally present. Yet Parmenides himself, it seems, never calls his Being divine. If one accepts the identity with Xenophanes’ god, one will conclude that Parmenides was silent on this one point because he took it for granted that Being is divine and expected his audience to do so too. We, however, are free to consider whether Parmenides might not have had reason for the silence. The solemnity of the Way of Truth, and the fact that the entire discourse is presented as divine revelation, make it unlikely to be accidental that Being itself is never described as god or godlike. The reason for this, presumably, is that Parmenides thereby signals that the Way of Truth is a very different enterprise from any that traditionally treated of divine things. In particular, the audience is not to mistake it for cosmology. Calling its topic “god” would have suggested that topic to be the origin or principle of the cosmos, in which case the account of it should respect the requirements of physical explanation. Instead, of course, Parmenides here launches the enterprise of pure metaphysics, with its own method of pure logic independent of physical assumptions. Only in the Way of Mortal Opinion does a deity explicitly figure in the subject matter:9 a cosmic deity, as befits the cosmological Way of Opinion (DK 28 B12.3).
But what of the unnamed goddess, the source of revelation of both the Ways (B1.22ff.; B8.50 ff.)? Parmenides depends on divine illumination in broaching the untraditional material of the Way of Truth (and in demoting the cosmological Way to the level of Mortal Opinion). Is it that he appeals to divine authority because the Way of Truth’s self-evident logic seems insufficient guarantee of its veracity? This would be a strange position. There is no sign that Parmenides has placed himself in a state of Cartesian doubt extending to the eternal truths. And from such a state to take refuge in divine authority without mustering (as Descartes tried to do) reasons to believe that god exists, would be naive to the point of absurdity. No, Parmenides’ divinity signifies, rather, that one cannot seek truth by the Way of Truth, that is, by relying on reason alone, without having first placed oneself in the hands of the gods. For the Way of Truth is “far from the beaten paths of humans” (B1.27). It is a truth that is simply not credible to mortals attached to the mortal point of view. So Parmenides must abandon his human outlook before he can reach the gateway where the hierophantic goddess receives him and from which she ushers him to the Way of Truth. He must be transported to the gateway, and through it, in a chariot guided by subsidiary divinities, the “daughters of the sun” (B1.8). For suppose instead that while still undistanced from ordinary beliefs he had stumbled, as one might, on the logically self-evident premises of the Way of Truth. And suppose he had then, under his own recognisance, started down the Way, step by logical step. He would have encountered its conclusions about reality: conclusions intolerable to mortal minds. He would then have had to reject something logically compelling: either a starting point or a step. Alternatively, he would have stayed bound by these cogencies, while a different sort of compulsion, the force of “habit, born from much experience” (B7.3), would have caused him to reject the conclusion, thereby affirming in effect that the necessarily true entails the false or the meaningless. In any event, Parmenides would have brought reason into contempt and desecrated the “unshaken heart of well-rounded truth” (B1.29). The Way of Truth cannot be used to refute those who stand for common sense; for truth that is evident in its rational entirety to reason is not thus evident to those whom reason does not entirely control. So how are mortals to approach the level where mortal opinions have lost their power and rational insight holds sway? Not by means of their own rational insight! Hence the divine chariot-ride, in which the Parmenides-figure, most un-Olympically, appears as wholly passive (see especially B1.4: “Along the road I was being borne, along it wise mares were bearing me,” after McKirahan [10]).
Empedocles
The amazing theories of Empedocles are rich in material for the history of theology. The present reconstruction will focus on the interplay of cosmogonic and transcendent aspects of divinity in Empedocles’ philosophy of nature.10
Each cosmic cycle of Empedocles’ universe begins with the disruption of an original wholeness, the unity of the Sphere. Under the stress of Hate (or Strife), one of two primal forces, the four “roots” separate out so as to constitute the regions we know as earth, sea, air, and fiery aither. The roots are called by the names of gods (DK 31 B6); Love, the other primal force, is identified with the goddess Aphrodite (also known as Cypris; see, for example, B17.24; B22.5; B73). So Hate, too, is a divinity, for it is as fundamental as Love. Empedocles stresses that the four roots and the two forces are “equal and coeval” (B17.19-20, B17.27, for example). Next, Love sets going a multistage zoogonic process culminating in the emergence of viable creatures capable of reproducing in kind. Thus Love, when she first begins to act, does not seek directly to undo the separation effected by Hate. Instead, she exploits the distinct natures of the elements by creating from them, through mixture, an array of new beings, the living forms. So far, then, Love has manifested herself in two very different ways: in the production of innumerable compound beings within the cosmos, and, as a limiting case, in the precosmic unity of the Sphere. (The limiting case will recur, as Love in each world-cycle prevails more and more until finally all is merged again in the Sphere.)
Empedocles says of the Sphere: “No twin branches spring from its back, it has no feet, no nimble knees, no fertile parts… it was a sphere.” He also calls it a “god,” and describes it as, “held fast in the close obscurity of Harmonia, a rounded sphere rejoicing in its joyous [or: circular] solitude [or: rest]” (B29, B31, B27, tr. KRS). This last passage draws attention to a traditional divine attribute, one that we would not expect to meet in a purely cosmological context: the condition of blessedness. The Sphere’s solitude (or motionlessness), and its consequent bliss, set it apart from the cosmogonic divinities, Love, Hate, and the roots. The Empedoclean cosmos is full of deity, but not of blessedness. It is true that cosmogonic Love is also called “joy” by mortals (B17.24), but nature
is equally the domain of Hate. And the joy that mortal creatures experience in virtue of cosmogonic Love is only a limited delight. The isolated bliss of the Sphere signifies divine transcendence, a concept scarcely available to Empedocles except through some such imaginative symbolism. It is not simply that the Sphere is not part of the natural order. This much is obvious, given its cosmogonic function as source of the cosmos. But the Sphere’s joy shows it to be more than that. For the joy is not in its role as source, but in the solitary perfection which had to be shattered for that role to be actually played: as came to pass at the allotted time when “mighty Hate sprang to its prerogatives” and “one by one all the limbs of the god began to quiver” (B30, B31, tr. KRS).
Aristotle complained that Empedocles failed to explain the disruption (Metaph. III.4 1000b12 ff.). From Aristotle’s undividedly scientific point of view, the complaint is justified. Empedocles, however, must have known that he was courting a heavier charge of incoherence when he spoke of the quivering limbs of the armless, legless, Sphere. The problem is not simply that the Sphere-notion is too weak to explain how the cosmos arose (a weakness barely concealed by talk of an appointed time and the prerogatives of Hate). If the Sphere-notion fails from the point of view of rational cosmogony, this is due to a positive cause, namely Empedocles’ sense that whatever is source of the cosmos is also divinely transcendent, together with the fact that he conceptualizes transcendence as self-sufficient blessedness. Thus the cosmos exists through a Fall. Here Empedocles’ cosmology points in a direction which he follows out in mythical, personal, and religious detail in his poem called Purifications. That story of a daemon exiled from heaven for sin and condemned to a thirty thousand year cycle of reincarnation has its seed in mortal “intimations of immortality.” Perhaps the (also) very scientific Empedocles took our propensity for such intimations to be a natural fact about us, and not less indicative of something fundamental about our world than the facts of respiration, sensation, and reproduction – works of Love which he tried in detail to explain (e.g., B65, 67, 84, 100).