metadata
stringlengths 38
71
| text
stringlengths 1
156k
| category
stringlengths 2
35
|
|---|---|---|
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | The talk of generation Xenocrates reinterpreted as a mere pedagogical device; we hear about this technique from Aristotle, De caelo I 10. 279b32–280a2, and Simplicius’ commentary ad loc. (Heiberg 1893, 303.33–34) names Xenocrates in this connection, as does Plutarch (De animae procreatione in Timaeo 3. 1013a–b, Cherniss 1976, 168–171). Here it is a device for interpreting the creation story in the Timaeus; that Xenocrates also applied it to the generation of the formal numbers we learn from Aristotle, Metaphysics XIV 4. 1091a28–29 and the commentary on that passage in pseudo-Alexander (Hayduck 1891, 819.37–820.3). | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | In trying to understand what Aristotle tells us about formal numbers, it is necessary to bear in mind the fundamental distinction he draws between formal numbers and mathematical numbers: both are, according to Aristotle, composed of units, but formal numbers are composed of very strange units, such that those in one formal number cannot be combined with those in any other. The units of which mathematical numbers are composed can be added and subtracted freely. (See here Metaphysics XIII 6. 1080a15–b4.) And furthermore there is only one formal number for each of the numbers 2, 3, 4, etc., where there are indefinitely many instances of each among the mathematical numbers. (See here Metaphysics I 6. 987b14–18.) The mathematical numbers are the ones mathematicians work with, e.g. in performing arithmetical operations, and that is presumably why they are called ‘mathematical’. There is a corresponding division between types of geometrical figures, but we hear too little about this; most of what follows will be concerned with numbers. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | The position that there are both formal numbers and mathematical numbers Aristotle ascribes to Plato. Speusippus rejects the formal numbers (and the entire theory of forms along with them; see the entry on Speusippus). The position Aristotle ascribes to Xenocrates is a bit more elusive. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | In Metaphysics VII 2, Aristotle tells us, in 1028b19–21, that Plato accepted three sorts of entities: forms, mathematicals, and perceptibles; in this context that means formal numbers, mathematical numbers, and perceptibles. He then, in b21–24, talks about Speusippus’ views (see the entry on Speusippus). In both cases he gives us the names. Then, in b24–27 he says this: | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Asclepius’ commentary on this passage (Hayduck 1888, 379.17–22) tells us that it is dealing with Xenocrates. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | The core of Xenocrates’ view is that “the forms and the numbers have the same nature:” that is, the formal numbers and the mathematical numbers have the same nature. A series of half a dozen passages in the Metaphysics can, in consequence of this identification, be associated with Xenocrates (see XII 1. 1069a30–b2, XIII 1. 1076a20, 6. 1080b21–30, 8. 1083b1–8, 9. 1086a5–11, XIV 3. 1090b13–1091a5). From these passages it appears that he is saying that the distinction between formal and mathematical numbers (as well as the corresponding distinction among geometrical objects) is unnecessary; he does this by assimilating mathematical numbers to form-numbers and telling us that mathematics can be done entirely with formal numbers. In other words, since he thinks that mathematics can be done with formal numbers, he feels it acceptable to call formal numbers mathematical numbers. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | 1086a5–9 makes it sound as if some part of Xenocrates’ case for his position was based on the consideration that all that can be based on the two ultimate principles, the One and the Indefinite Dyad, is the series of formal numbers. Without some further comment, it is hard to see much of an argument here, but we may be able to piece together a little about the relationship of the numbers to the One. In Eudemian Ethics (I 8. 1218a24–33) Aristotle attacks an Academic ‘demonstration’ aimed at showing that The One is the good itself, i.e the Idea of the good. He calls it ‘tricky’ or ‘bizarre’ (translations of parabolos vary considerably), and it is indeed bizarre: from the premises that the numbers aim for unification and that “all the things that are aim for some one good” it concludes that the good itself must be the One. As it stands, this is gappy, but what is really bizzare is the first premise, that numbers strive to get their units to stick together; that is too much for Aristotle (and no doubt for the rest of us as well). | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | In the passage of Proclus’ Parmenides commentary cited above there appears a passage dealing with a view that makes the participants in an Idea ‘aim for’ that Idea, which in turn aims for that which ‘comes before’ it, which must be the One. So Xenocrates looks to be the source for the ‘bizarre’ demonstration, and if so he is invoking final causality in relating the forms (which are formal numbers) to the One. Aristotle himself has the heavenly spheres move as they do out of a desire to emulate the unmoved mover (Metaphysics XII 7. 1072a26-b4), and even says that the matter in a form/matter compound ‘aims at’ its form (Physics I 9. 192a16–25), so this use of final causality was, one supposes, Academic. But about Xenocrates’ ‘demonstration’ Aristotle is merciless: “one should … not without reason give any credit at all to things it is not easy to believe even with reason”. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | It may help a little, but not a lot, to notice that Xenocrates makes (see below) the soul is a self-moving number. In any case, the resulting position is possibly quite unstable: Aristotle certainly thinks so. For Plato and Speusippus, the addition of 2 and 3 is a matter of putting together a group of units that is a mathematical 2 with a disjoint group of units that is a mathematical 3 (that numbers are such collections of units is a view that can still be found later, perhaps most importantly, given his influence, in Euclid, Elements VII def. 2). Aristotle, too, understood addition in this way, although with a completely different take on the underlying ontology. We do not know how Xenocrates understood addition: perhaps as a sort of map telling you that if you are on the unique formal number 2 and you want to add the unique formal number 3 to it, you cannot, strictly speaking, do that, but taking three steps on in the series will get you to the unique formal number 5, and that is what ‘2 + 3 = 5’ really means. There is, as far as I know, no evidence to support this conjecture, but it has the advantage of explaining Aristotle’s complaint, voiced more than once in the passages cited (see 1080b28–30, 1083b4–6, 1086a9–11), that Xenocrates actually makes doing mathematics impossible: he ends up destroying mathematical number, and if the above guess should be correct about Xenocrates’ handling of addition, it is readily seen how someone of Aristotle’s persuasion might think that Xenocrates is not so much explaining addition as explaining it away. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Aristotle complains in 1080b28–30 that on Xenocrates’ view it is not so that every two units make up a pair, and also that on his view not every geometrical magnitude divides into smaller magnitudes. This has to do with Xenocrates’ acceptance of the idea that there are indivisible lines; this idea Aristotle ascribes to Plato in Metaphysics I 9. 992a20–22, and Alexander’s commentary on that passage adds the name Xenocrates, in a way that suggests that Xenocrates’ acceptance of indivisible magnitudes was even better known than Plato’s (Hayduck 1891, 120.6–7; see also Simplicius on De caelo, Heiberg 1894, 563.21–22 and many other passages in the commentators in which this ascription occurs: frs. 41–49H, 123–147IP). As Proclus understood Xenocrates’ position, it applied to the Form of the line rather than to geometrical or physical magnitudes (see Diehl 1904, 245.30–246.4), but this is very much a minority view: Porphyry is quoted by Simplicius in the latter’s commentary on the Physics (Diels 1882, 140.9–13) as saying that, according to Xenocrates, what is: | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | This suggests that Xenocrates might have thought he could do with the notion of a line what Aristotle was prepared to do with notions such as man. Aristotle is prepared to say that a man is indivisible, and so a suitable unit for the arithmetician’s contemplation, in the sense that if you divide a man into two parts what you get is not two men (see Metaphysics XIII 3. 1078a23–26). Xenocrates may have thought the notion of a line could be made to work in the same way: beyond a certain point, divisions will no longer yield lines. It is difficult to think how he could have made this plausible; once again, one can see why Aristotle might have regarded Xenocrates’ position as unmathematical. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Xenocrates’ espousal of indivisible magnitudes has led to the conjecture that the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise On Indivisible Lines is at least in part an attack on him, and that the arguments recounted in its first chapter in favor of the claim that there are indivisible lines, which are rebutted in the sequel, might come from Xenocrates. Unfortunately, those arguments are quite obscure, and the text itself is not in very good shape (an admirably concise summary of the first four of these arguments may be found in Furley 1967, 105). But some of the arguments owe a lot to Zeno of Elea: that Xenocrates was influenced by Zeno is only what one would expect, and is confirmed elsewhere (see esp. the passage from Porphyry cited in part above, apud Simplicius on the Physics, Diels 1882, 140.6–18). | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | In the passage of Metaphysics VII 2 quoted above, after we get the identification of formal and mathematical numbers, with the formal numbers actually carrying the weight, there is a brief description of the rest of the universe: “while the others, lines and planes, come next, {and so on} down to the substance of the heavens and to the perceptibles.” It appears that Xenocrates pictured the universe as unfolding in the sequence: (1) forms = numbers; (2) lines; (3) planes; (4) solids; (5) solids in motion, i.e. astronomical bodies; …; (n) ordinary perceptible things. Solid shapes aren’t mentioned in this sentence, but they were earlier, in 1028b17–18, and they are a standard stage in this sequence. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | There is here an implicit contrast between Xenocrates and Speusippus, whose universe was to Aristotle discontinuous or disjointed: Xenocrates’ universe is at least a more orderly one (see the entry on Speusippus). And something like this rather faint praise is echoed in Theophrastus’ Metaphysics. Theophrastus complains that Pythagoreans and Platonists fail to give us a full story about the construction of the universe: they just go so far and stop (6a15–b6). Then he says (6b6–9): | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | So we have it from Aristotle that Xenocrates’ universe showed continuity, and from Theophrastus that it covered everything. Of course, we do not know how. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Exactly what Theophrastus means by ‘the divine things’ is hard to say. There are two candidates: the objects of astronomical studies, which would connect with Aristotle’s account, or those of theological studies, about which Xenocrates also had much to say. These are not exclusive candidates. A passage in Aëtius (Diels 1879, 304b1–14) tells us that Xenocrates took the ‘unit and the dyad’ to be gods, the first male and the second female, and also thought of the heavenly bodies as gods; in addition he supposed there were sublunary daimones. These latter were beings intermediary between gods and men, also mentioned in Plato, Symposium 202d–203a. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | We hear more about the gods, daimones, and men from Plutarch, who tells us (De defectu oraculorum 416c–d, Babbitt 1936, 386–387) that Xenocrates associated them with types of triangle: gods with equilateral ones, daimones with isosceles ones, and men with scalene triangles: as isosceles triangles are intermediate between equilateral ones and scalene ones, so daimones are intermediate between gods and men. According to Plutarch (417b, De Iside et Osiride 360d–f: in Babbitt 1936, 390–391 and 58–61, respectively.), Xenocrates’ daimones come in good and bad varieties: they may have had something to do with the explanation of the existence of evil. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | In addition, there are isolated snatches of other views of Xenocrates that might fall under the heading ‘metaphysics’. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Simplicius, in his commentary on Aristotle’s Categories (Kalbfleisch 1907, 63.21–24) tells us that Xenocrates objected to Aristotle’s list of ten categories as too long: he thought all that was needed was the distinction, visible in Plato, between things that are ‘by virtue of themselves’ and things that are ‘relative to something’ (see, e.g., Sophist 255c, and Dancy 1999). The standard examples help clarify this: the terms man and horse are of the first sort, whereas large, relative to small, good relative to bad, etc., are of the latter type. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | There was, it appears from a text also preserved by Simplicius (in his commentary on the Physics, Diels 1882, 247.30–248.20, from Hermodorus, an early associate of Plato’s), an internal connection between these ‘old academic categories’ and the One and the Indefinite Dyad. The One was the heading over the category of things that are ‘by virtue of themselves’: such things are standalone entities, one thing. The Indefinite Dyad was the heading over the category of relatives: such a term refers to an indefinite continuum pointing in two directions. All this is referred to Plato, not Xenocrates, but if Xenocrates accepted Plato’s later theory, or at least some of it, he presumably accepted this as well, and saw in Aristotle’s proliferation of categories a threat to the basic two principles he shared with Plato. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | A text preserved in Arabic (see Pines 1961) has Alexander of Aphrodisias criticizing Xenocrates for saying that the (less general) species is prior to the (more general) genus because the latter, being an element in the definitions of the former, is a part of them (and wholes are subsequent to parts). | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | A long passage in Themistius’ commentary on Aristotle’s De anima (Heinze 1899, 11.18–12.33) seems to stem from Xenocrates’ On Nature (in 11.37–12.1 Themistius says “It is possible to gather all these {things} from the On Nature of Xenocrates”). This is a discussion of a story about the composition of the soul from the formal numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 (although 1 was not normally considered a number), mentioned in De anima 408b18–27. The motivation for this account of the soul, in both Aristotle and Themistius, is the explanation of how we can know things about the universe: the universe is derivative from those numbers, and so, if the soul is similarly derivative, the soul can know things under the principle that like things are known by like. This cognitive sort of account is contrasted with another motivic type of account, that takes as the primary thing to be explained the fact that the soul can initiate motion. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | However, it is quite clear that, even if the story about the reduction of the soul to numbers stems from Xenocrates’ On Nature, the numerical reduction was supposed by Themistius not to be Xenocrates’, but (perhaps) Plato’s. Aristotle and Themistius both give separate mention to the account of the soul that is traditionally ascribed to Xenocrates: that it is a self-moving number (De anima 408b32–33; Themistius in 12.30–33; the ascription to Xenocrates is supported by a large number of texts gathered as frs. 60H, 165–187IP: e.g., Alexander of Aphrodisias on Aristotle’s Topics, Wallies 1891, 162.17). Both Aristotle and Themistius characterize this account as an attempt to combine the cognitive and the motivic ways of thinking about the soul; as Themistius puts it (12.30–33): | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Themistius does not here tell us that this is Xenocrates’ account, but he does later on (see esp. 32.19–34, which refers expressly to Xenocrates’ On Nature book 5). | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | As already noted, this heading comes under ‘logic’ in Sextus Empiricus. No one reports anything for Xenocrates about what we would think of as pure logic; Sextus (Adversus mathematicos vii 147–149) gives us a scrap about epistemology. Xenocrates is supposed to have divided the substances or entities into three groups: perceptible, intelligible, and believable (also referred to as ‘composite’ and ‘mixed’). The intelligible ones were objects of knowledge, which Xenocrates apparently spoke of as ‘epistemonic logos’ or ‘knowing account’, and were ‘located’ outside the heavens. The perceptible ones were objects of perception, which was capable of attaining truth about them but nothing that counted as knowledge; they were within the heavens. The composite ones were the heavenly objects themselves, and objects of belief, which is sometimes true and sometimes false. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | This scheme descends from that in Plato, Republic V ad fin., where the objects of knowledge were differentiated from those of belief, and from Republic VI ad fin., where that division is portrayed on a divided line. In the latter passage, Plato seems actually to have four divisions of types of cognition and their objects, but this is notoriously difficult (see Burnyeat 1987), and Xenocrates appears to have rethought it. His tripartite division of objects looks like that in Aristotle, Metaphysics XII 1. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | The phrase ‘epistemonic logos’ is one Sextus (145) also assigns to Speusippus; it also recalls discussions in Aristotle (e.g. Metaphysics VII 15) and the end of Plato’s Theaetetus. An ‘epistemonic logos’ is the sort of account that carries knowledge with it. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | The intelligible domain must have included the formal numbers dealt with above, which was also, as mentioned, the domain of mathematics, while the special place for the heavens accords with the fact that one of the items in D.L.’s bibliography is “On Astronomy, 6 books”. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | This picture seems to square with Aristotle’s exempting Xenocrates from the charge, leveled against Speusippus, of producing a discontinuous universe, and with Theophrastus’ comment to the effect that Xenocrates’ universe encompassed everything. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Here again we encounter Xenocrates the theologian: Sextus tells us (149) that Xenocrates associated the three fates with his three groups of substances: Atropos with the intelligible ones, Clotho with the perceptible ones, and Lachesis with the believable ones. This sounds a Xenocratean touch: it connects with the interpretation of Plato (see Republic X 620d–e) and takes mythology very seriously. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Here we are very much in the dark: we have only disconnected snippets to consider. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Aristotle names Xenocrates in the Topics in connection with two ethical views: at II 6. 112a37–38 he ascribes to him the view that a happy man is one with a good soul, along with (perhaps) the claim that one’s soul is one’s daimon, whatever that means; at VII 1. 152a7–9 he ascribes to him an argument to the effect that the good life and the happy life are the same, employing as premises the claims that the good life and the happy life are both the most choosable (a little later, in 152a26–30, Aristotle objects to this argument). | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Plutarch claims (De communibus notitiis adversus Stoicos 1069e–f) that Xenocrates made happiness turn on living in accordance with nature; since this may derive from Antiochus of Ascalon, whose project it was to assimilate the Academy to Stoicism, it is suspect. Clement (Stromateis II 22) ascribes to him the view that happiness is the possession of one’s own excellence in the soul. This view bears a family resemblance to Aristotle’s (NE I 7. 1098a16–17, 9. 1099b26). The negative emphasis in Xenocrates’ evaluation of philosophical activity as “stopping the disturbance of the affairs of life” ([Galen], Historia philosophiae 8, in Diels 1879 605.7–8) sounds like a step in the direction of the Hellenistic goal of undisturbedness. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | The available collections of fragments are Heinze 1892 and Isnardi Parente 1982. | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | [Please contact the author with suggestions.] | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | -->Academy, Plato’s--> | Alexander of Aphrodisias | Aristotle | doxography of ancient philosophy | Plato | Plutarch | Porphyry | Proclus | Sextus Empiricus | Simplicius | Speusippus | -->Themistius--> | Theophrastus | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Copyright © 2021 by Russell Dancy <rmdancy@fsu.edu> | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | View this site from another server: | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2021 by The Metaphysics Research Lab, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenocrates/ | Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054 | xenocrates |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Xenophanes of Colophon was a philosophically-minded poet who lived in various parts of the ancient Greek world during the late 6th and early 5th centuries BCE. He is best remembered for a novel critique of anthropomorphism in religion, a partial advance toward monotheism, and some pioneering reflections on the conditions of knowledge. Many later writers, perhaps influenced by two brief characterizations of Xenophanes by Plato (Sophist 242c–d) and Aristotle (Metaphysics 986b18-27), identified him as the founder of Eleatic philosophy (the view that, despite appearances, what there is is a changeless, motionless, and eternal ‘One’). In fact, the Xenophanes who emerges from the surviving fragments defies simple classification. He was a travelling rhapsode who criticised the stories about the gods told by the poets, and he defended a novel conception of the divine nature. But he was also a reflective observer of the human condition, a practitioner of the special form of ‘inquiry’ (historiê) introduced by the Milesian philosopher-scientists, and a civic counselor who encouraged his fellow citizens to respect the gods and work to safeguard the well-being of their city. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | In his Lives of the Philosophers (Diels-Kranz, testimonium A1), Diogenes Laertius reports that Xenophanes was born in the small Ionian town of Colophon and flourished during the sixtieth Olympiad (540–537 BCE). Laertius adds that when Xenophanes was “banished from his native city” he “joined the colony planted at Elea” (in Italy), and also lived at Zancle and Catana (two Greek communities in Sicily). He credits Xenophanes with composing verses “in epic meter, as well as elegiacs and iambics attacking Hesiod and Homer and denouncing what they said about the gods”, with reciting his own works, and with composing poems on the founding of Colophon and Elea. Later writers add that “he buried his sons with his own hands”, was sold into slavery, and later released from it. By Xenophanes’ own account (B8) he “tossed about the Greek land” for sixty-seven years, starting at the age of twenty-five. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Diels-Kranz (DK) provides 45 fragments of his poetry (although B4, 13, 19, 20, 21 and 41 would be more accurately classified as testimonia), ranging from the 24 lines of B1 to the single-word fragments of B21a, 39, and 40. A number of the ‘sympotic poems’ (poems for drinking parties) (B1–3, 5, 6, 22, and the imitation in C2) were preserved by Athenaeus, while the remarks on the nature of the divine were quoted by Clement (B14–16 and 23), Sextus Empiricus (B11, 12, and 24), and Simplicius (B25 and 26). Other snippets survive in the accounts by Diogenes Laertius and Aëtius, or as marginal notes in our manuscripts of various authors, or as entries in later rhetorical summaries and dictionaries. Seventy-four selections, of which the most extensive is the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise On Melissus, Xenophanes, Gorgias (MXG), make up the collection of testimonia in DK. Laertius’ statement (A1) that Xenophanes “wrote in epic meter, also elegiacs, and iambics” is confirmed by extant poems in hexameters and elegiac meter, with one couplet (B14) a combination of hexameter and iambic trimeter. Ancient writers referred to a number of his compositions as silloi—‘squints’ or satires, and a critical tone pervades many of the surviving fragments. Three late sources credit Xenophanes with a didactic poem under the title Peri Phuseôs (“On Nature”) but not every allusion to an earlier author’s views “on nature” represented a reference to a single work on that subject. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Fragments B11 and B12 describe, and implicitly criticize, the stories about the gods told by Homer and Hesiod. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | The basis for Xenophanes’ unhappiness with the poets’ accounts is not explained, but we may infer from the concluding call to pay due honor to the gods in Xenophanes’ B1 that an attribution of scandalous conduct would be incompatible with the goodness or perfection any divine being must be assumed to possess (cf. Aristotle Meta. 1072b; Plato, Rep. 379b.) | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | In the well-known fragments B14-16, Xenophanes comments on the general tendency of human beings to conceive of divine beings in human form: | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | B15 adds, probably in a satirical vein, that if horses and oxen had hands and could draw pictures, their gods would look remarkably like horses and oxen. B17, “…and bacchants of pine stand round the well-built house” may represent a criticism of the common ancient belief that a god could assume possession of a physical object so as to offer protection to its possessor. The ridiculing of Pythagoras’ claim to have recognized the soul of a departed friend in the voice of a barking dog (B7), together with the attacks on divination credited to Xenophanes in A52, reflect the broader denial of knowledge of divine attributes and operations set out in B34. Xenophanes is prepared to offer a positive account of the nature of the deity (see the following section) but his position appears to be that while no mortal being will ever know about the gods with any degree of certainty, we can at least avoid adopting beliefs and practices clearly at odds with the special nature any divine being must be assumed to possess. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | So far as is known, Xenophanes was the first Greek thinker to offer a complex and at least partially systematic account of the divine nature. We have already noted how an implicit assumption of divine perfection may underlie his criticisms of Homer, Hesiod, and the tendency to imagine the gods in human form. Of the positive characterizations of the divine made in B23–26, perhaps the most fundamental is B23: | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Although the remark has often been read as a pioneering expression of monotheism, this reading is made problematic by the nearby reference to ‘gods’ in the plural in the first line and the possibility that Xenophanes sought to highlight not the one god but rather the one greatest god (cf. Homer, Iliad 12, 243 for the use of ‘one’ (Greek heis) reinforcing a superlative). The relevant measures of divine ‘greatness’ are not specified, but the two most obvious choices would be greatness in honor and power, with honor perhaps the more basic of the two (cf. Iliad 2, 350; 2, 412; 4, 515; Od. 3, 378; 5,4; Hesiod, Theogony 49, 534, 538, etc.). Greatness in power would in turn explain the characterizations of the divine as perceptive and conscious in all its parts (B24), able to shake all things by the exercise of his thought (B25), and able to accomplish everything while remaining forever in the same place or condition (B26). It is unclear, however, how far Xenophanes himself realized the interconnections among the different divine attributes or sought to exploit those connections for didactic purposes. At least as they have come down to us, none of the remarks on the divine nature (B23–26) contains any of the inferential particles (gar, epei, oun, hoti, etc.) one would normally expect to find in a piece of reasoned discourse. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Some later writers (A28.6, 31.2, 34–36) report that Xenophanes identified his ‘one greatest god’ with the entire physical universe—often termed ‘the whole’ or ‘all things’, and some modern accounts portray Xenophanes as a pantheist. But this understanding of Xenophanes’ doctrines seems inconsistent with his assertion that “god shakes all things” (B25) that “all things are from the earth and to the earth all things come in the end” (B27), and that “all things which come into being and grow, are earth and water” (B29). On the whole, Xenophanes’ remarks on the divine nature are perhaps best read as an expression of a traditional Greek piety: there exists a being of extraordinary power and excellence, and it is incumbent on each of us to hold it in high regard. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Five fragments touch on traditional subjects of Greek sympotic verse—on proper conduct at symposia (drinking parties), the measures of personal excellence, and the existence of various human foibles or failures. Xenophanes appears to have been particularly interested in identifying and discouraging conduct that failed to pay due honor to the gods or posed a risk to the stability and well-being of the city (or perhaps both). Although these passages may be insufficiently abstract and demonstrative in character to count as ‘philosophical teachings’, they do represent an important bridge between Greek poetry of the archaic period and the kind of moral theorizing practiced by many 5th and 4th-century thinkers. Xenophanes’ disparagement of the honors accorded to athletes (B2), his call to censor the stories the poets tell about the gods (B1), and counsel to live a life of moderation (B3 and 5, and perhaps B21) all anticipate views expressed in Plato’s Republic (cf. 607a, 378b, 372b.) His criticism of the pursuit of useless luxuries (B3) also anticipates Socrates’ rebuke of his fellow citizens for caring more about wealth and power than about virtue (cf. Apology 30b.) His cautionary remarks about knowledge (B34) and reminder of the subjectivity of human taste (B38: “If god had not made yellow honey, they would think that figs were far sweeter”) also reflect a traditional view of human judgment as limited and conditioned by personal experience. In each of these areas, Xenophanes’ social commentary represents a continuation of the Greek poetic tradition as well as a step toward explicit philosophical theorizing. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | We may reasonably conclude from several surviving fragments and a large number of testimonia that Xenophanes was well aware of the teachings of the Milesian philosopher-scientists (Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes), and sought to improve on them. While many of the details of his own ‘scientific’ views remain obscure, the range and interconnectedness of his interests make him an important figure in the development of Ionian scientific theory. Theodoretus, Stobaeus, and Olympiodorus (all in A 36) credit him with a view of earth as the archê or “first principle” of all things. Yet Galen (also in A36) rejects this attribution, and B29 equates “all things which come into being and grow” with “earth and water”. A two-substance archê would, moreover, be compatible with the many references to physical mixtures. A33 credits Xenophanes with a view of the sea as containing many mixtures, while B37 notes the presence of water in rocky caves, and A50 reports a view of the soul as earth and water. Insofar as some natural bodies are described as consisting entirely of water (or of a part of water, as in A46 where “the sweet portion” of the water is drawn up from the sea and separated off), it would be best to understand Xenophanes’ “two-substance theory” in a distributed sense: all things are either earth, or water, or earth combined with water. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Xenophanes appears to have explored many of the same phenomena studied at an earlier date by the Milesians. B28 presents a view of the nature and extent of the earth’s depths; B30 identifies the sea as the source of clouds, wind, and rain; B32 comments on the nature of Iris (rainbow); B37 notes the presence of water in caves; B39 and 40 mention “cherry trees” and “frogs”; A38–45 discuss various astronomical phenomena, and A48 indicates an interest in periodic volcanic eruptions in Sicily. Hippolytus (A33) credits Xenophanes with a theory of alternating periods of world-wide flood and drought that was inspired, at least in part, by the discovery of fossilized remains of sea creatures at inland locations. Whether or not Xenophanes himself traveled to Syracuse, Paros, and Malta where these remains were found, his use of this information as the basis for a broad explanation of phenomena is an implicit testimonial to the heuristic value of information gained through travel and observation. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Many testimonia credit Xenophanes with an interest in meteorological and astronomical phenomena. Not only are these comments of interest in their own right, they also present us what was arguably his single most important scientific contribution--his contention that clouds or cloud-like substances play a basic role in a great many natural phenomena. The term nephos (“cloud”) appears only twice in the fragments of his work (in B30 and 32) but many testimonia either bear directly on the nature of clouds or make use of clouds in order to explain the nature of other phenomena. To cite an example of the first type, according to Diogenes Laertius “he says…the clouds are formed by the sun’s vapor [i.e. vapor caused by the heat from the sun’s rays] raising and lifting them to the surrounding air” (A1.24–5). Aëtius (A46) provides a similar account: | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | B30 gives us essentially the same view in Xenophanes’ own words: | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Having accounted for the formation of clouds in mechanistic terms through processes of vaporization and compression Xenophanes proceeds to make use of clouds to explain a large number of meteorlogical and astronomical phenomena. The general claim appears in the pseudo-Plutarch Miscellanies: “he says that the sun and the stars come into being from the clouds” (A32), and Aëtius gives us many specific applications: | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | The sort of fires that appear on ships--whom some call the Dioscuri [St. Elmo’s fire]--are tiny clouds glimmering in virtue of the sort of motion they have (A39). | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | The sun consists of burning clouds…a mass of little fires, themselves constructed from the massing together of the moist exhalation (A40). | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | The moon is compressed cloud (A43). | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | All things of this sort [comets, shooting stars, meteors] are either groups or movements of clouds (A44). | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Flashes of lightning come about through the shining of the clouds because of the movement (A45). | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | As it happens, clouds are natural candidates for the explanans in a scientific account. Since they are midway in form between a solid and gaseous state they are easily linked with solids, liquids, and gases of various kinds. And since they occupy a region midway between the surface of the earth and the upper regions of the heavens, they are well positioned to link the two basic substances of earth and water with many astronomical phenomena. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Another important feature of Xenophanes’ cloud-based approach to understanding natural phenomena is the application of this theory to a set of phenomena closely linked with traditional religious belief. We have already seen this in the thoroughly naturalistic accounts given of the “great sea”, sun, moon, and stars, but nowhere is the contrast of the old and new ways of thinking more evident than in his comments on “Iris”--rainbow: | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | For the members of Xenophanes’ audience “Iris” referred to the messenger goddess of Homer’s Iliad (2, 686) and Hesiod’s Theogony (780) and a set of atmospheric phenomena (halos, coronae, and cloud iridescence) commonly considered portents or signs of the intentions of divine beings. As the daughter of Thaumas (“marvel”) Iris was the natural marvel par excellence. Yet for Xenophanes, ‘she’ is really an ‘it’ and a ‘this’ (the Greek neuter demonstrative touto), by nature a purple, red, and greenish-yellow cloud. It is, moreover, something that is there for us ‘to behold’ or ‘to look at’ (idesthai). Perhaps nowhere in presocratic philosophy can we find a clearer expression of the character of the Ionian ‘intellectual revolution’—a decision to put aside an older way of thinking about events grounded in a belief in divine beings in favor of an approach to understanding the world that employs wide-ranging inquiry and direct observation and resorts to strictly physical causes and forces. Having deprived the gods of human form and clothing and removed the divine to some permanent and distant location, Xenophanes proceeds to strip a wide range of natural phenomena of all vestiges of religious or spiritual significance. His de-mythologized account of natural phenomena is, in short, the logical complement to his thoroughly de-naturalized account of the divine nature. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Despite its several virtues, Xenophanes’ physical theory appears to have had little impact on later thinkers. Anaxagoras followed his lead on the nature of the rainbow (cf. DK 59 B19) and Empedocles knew (but repudiated) his claim of the earth’s indefinitely extended depths (DK 31 B39). But both Plato and Aristotle appear to have ignored Xenophanes’ scientific views or assigned them little importance. One factor that may have contributed to this chilly reception was the absence of any expression by Xenophanes of the kind of commitment to teleology that both Plato and Aristotle regarded as essential to a proper understanding of the cosmos. Xenophanes’ universe is controlled by a set of forces, but it is never described as “heading toward the best” nor is it directed toward some best result by a controlling intelligence. (Xenophanes’ divine does “shake all things” by the thought of his mind (alone), but he is never described as in any way directing or controlling particular events.) It is also obvious that Xenophanes’ heavenly bodies would have fallen far short of the level of perfection that, with Aristotle, became a hallmark of classical astronomical theory. Not only are Xenophanes’ heavenly bodies not divine beings, they undergo creation and destruction at regular intervals. Only from the perspective of a much later period can the merits of Xenophanes’ scientific views be fairly appreciated. Many centuries would have to pass before an emphasis on direct observation and the use of entirely natural causes and forces would become the scientific orthodoxy. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Five surviving fragments and roughly a dozen testimonia address what might be termed ‘epistemological questions’—“How much can any mortal being hope to know?”, “Does truth come to us through our own efforts or by divine revelation?”, and “What role do our sense faculties play in the acquisition of knowledge?” Unfortunately, the picture that emerges from many of the testimonia largely contradicts what appear to be the views Xenophanes himself expressed. According to the summary in the pseudo-Plutarch Miscellanies, Xenophanes “declares that the senses are deceptive and generally rejects reason along with them” (A32.) Similarly, in his Concerning Philosophy Aristocles reports that “…since they think that sense perceptions and appearances must be rejected and trust only reason. For at one earlier time Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, and Melissus said something of this sort” (A49). Similarly, Aëtius declares that “Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Xenophanes (say that) sense perceptions are deceptive” (A49). Yet, as we have noted, B28 refers without qualification to “the upper limit of the earth that is seen (horatai) here at our feet” and B32 appears to encourage those in Xenophanes’ audience to ‘look at’ or ‘observe’ (idesthai) the multi-colored cloud that is the rainbow. The realistic description of the sumptuous banquet in B1 and the wide range of Xenophanes’ reported geographical and geological interests all sit poorly with an Eleatic “rationalism” that would dismiss all information gained through our faculties of sense and construct on the basis of reason alone a view of “what is” as a motionless, changeless and eternal unity. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Xenophanes’ most extended comment on knowledge is B34: | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Portions of these remarks were quoted, and thereby preserved for posterity, by the ancient skeptics who hailed Xenophanes as the founder of their particular variety of philosophical skepticism. Recent interpretations of B34 reject the skeptical interpretation in favor of other less extreme readings. On some accounts, B34 is concerned to deny only a direct perceptual awareness. Others find in his comments a distinction between natural science, where only probabilities can be achieved, and theology, where certainty is possible. Still others read Xenophanes’ remarks as a blanket endorsement of “fallibilism”—the view that while each individual is free to express his or her opinion, the possibility of error can never be completely excluded. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Since B34 opens with the phrase “and indeed…” it is likely that we do not have the whole of the remark, or all the premises from which its main conclusion was intended to follow. However, the use of the term saphes (“clear”, in the first line of the fragment) by Xenophanes’ Ionian contemporary, the historian Herodotus, provides a helpful clue to the logic of the argument. At several points in his History Herodotus speaks of what is saphes, or what can be known in a sapheôs manner, as what can be confirmed to be the case on the basis of first-hand observation: | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Since the gods were believed to inhabit a realm far removed from that of mortal beings, it would be natural for Xenophanes to hold that no account of their nature and activities could possibly be confirmed on the basis of first-hand observation, hence known for certain to be correct. And since the pioneering cosmological accounts put forward by his Milesian predecessors held that a single material substance underlay phenomena in all places and times it would be equally impossible for any individual to confirm such a universal claim on the basis of first-hand observation, hence know for certain that it was true—even if in fact it was true. The sentiments expressed in lines three and four can be read as reinforcing this cautionary sentiment. Their point would be that no one (moreover) should be credited with knowledge (of the certain truth concerning the gods or the nature of all things) simply on the basis of having correctly described, perhaps even predicted, individual events as they take place (perhaps a reference to self-styled paragons of wisdom and predictors of events such as Epimenides and Pythagoras). The overall message of B34, from its opening reference to “no man” to its concluding phrase “fashioned for all” would have been that there never has been nor ever will be anyone who has the capacity to achieve certainty with respect to these important matters. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Xenophanes’ reference to a second-best level of comprehension or awareness—‘opinion’ or ‘conjecture’ (dokos) should not be read as inherently negative or dismissive. By Platonic standards, opinion—even when correct—would be an inferior possession, unstable and subject to removal through persuasion. But we have no reason to assume that Xenophanes shared Plato’s view on this topic. And in fact B35, quoted by Plutarch in connection with encouraging a bashful speaker to express his views, appears to present what one ‘opines’ or believes in a fairly positive light: | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | The similarity between the verbal dedoxasthô of B35 and the nominative dokos of B34 permits us to combine the two fragmentary remarks into a single coherent view: of course there can be no knowledge of the certain truth concerning the gods and the basic principles governing the cosmos, but dokos—opinion or conjecture—is available and should be accepted when it corresponds with how things really are. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | The full sense of B36, however, may never be determined. Neither its context (a grammatical treatise of Herodian) nor its wording (“…however many they have made evident for mortals to look upon”) provides definitive guidance. Perhaps Xenophanes was seeking to set an upper limit to the range of things that can be known by human beings (i.e. to caution others that they could know only as many as things as the gods had made available to them to experience). But it is equally possible that the remark was intended (as B32 above) to encourage the members of his audience to explore and inquire on their own (i.e. to encourage them to investigate “however many things” the gods have made available to them to experience). | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | B18 has often been hailed as an expression of an optimistic outlook or “faith in human progress”—the conviction that humankind has made and will continue to make improvements in the arts and conditions of life generally. Yet none of the other surviving fragments reflects such an optimism and several (e.g. B2 and 3) suggest that Xenophanes was not at all optimistic about his city’s prospects for survival. In the light of his reported repudiation of divination (A52), de-mythologizing of various natural phenomena (B30 and 32), and evident enthusiasm for inquiry into a wide range of subjects, B18 is perhaps best read as an expression of faith in the value of ‘inquiry’ or ‘seeking’ as the preferred approach to gaining knowledge of ‘all things’. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | To sum up: Xenophanes’ attitude toward knowledge appears to have been the product of two distinct impulses. While he believed that inquiry in the form of travel and direct observation was capable of yielding useful information about the nature of things, he remained sufficiently under the influence of an older piety to want to caution others against seeking to understand matters that lay beyond the limits of all human experience. Here, as in other aspects of his thought, Xenophanes stands with one foot in the world of the archaic poet and the other in the “new science” of the late 6th and early 5th centuries BCE | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Many later writers identified Xenophanes as the teacher of Parmenides and the founder of the Eleatic “school of philosophy”—the view that, despite appearances, what there is is a motionless, changeless, and eternal ‘One’. This view of Xenophanes is based largely on Plato’s reference to “our Eleatic tribe, beginning from Xenophanes as well as even earlier” (Sophist 242d) and Aristotle’s remark that “...with regard to the whole universe, he says that the one is the god” (Meta. A5, 986b18), along with some verbal similarities between Xenophanes’ description of the “one greatest, unmoving god” and Parmenides’ account of a “motionless, eternal, and unitary being”. But the Xenophanes who speaks to us in the surviving fragments is a combination of rhapsode, social critic, religious teacher, and keen student of nature. Euripides’ Heracles 1341 ff. echoes his attack on the stories told about the gods by Homer and Hesiod (B11–12) and a passage of Euripides’ Autolycus quoted by Athenaeus (C2) repeats portions of the attack on the honors accorded to athletes delivered in B2. In the Republic, Plato shows himself the spiritual heir of Xenophanes when he states that the guardians of his ideal state are more deserving of honors and public support than the victors at Olympia, criticizes the stories told about the gods by the poets, and calls for a life of moderate desire and action. A pronounced ethic of moderation, sometimes bordering on asceticism, runs through much of ancient Greek ethical thought, beginning with Solon and Xenophanes and continuing through Socrates and Plato to the Epicureans and Cynics. Xenophanes’ conception of a “one greatest god” who “shakes all things by the thought (or will) of his mind” (noou phreni) may have helped to encourage Heraclitus’ belief in an ‘intelligence’ (gnômê) that steers all things (B41), Anaxagoras’ account of the nous that orders and arranges all things (B12), and Aristotle’s account of a divine nous that inspires a movement toward perfection without actually doing anything toward bringing it about (Metaphysics Lambda.) | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | In his Dictionnaire historique et critique (1697) Pierre Bayle began the modern philosophical discussion of the problem of evil by quoting Xenophanes’ remark (as reported in Diogenes Laertius 9.19) that “most things give way to mind” (ta polla hêssô nou). Accepting the conjecture proposed by the classical scholar Méric Casaubon, Bayle took Xenophanes to be asserting that God was unable to make all things conform to his benevolent will. Bayle then assembled a set of texts in support of the view that in fact the amount of evil in the universe far exceeds the amount of good. Bayle’s article sparked a reply from Leibniz (in his Théodicée of 1710). In his Candide (1759), Voltaire supported Bayle’s view by ridiculing Leibniz’s contention that this is the best of all possible worlds. Although there may be no direct line of influence, we may also consider Feuerbach’s critique of religious belief as a ‘projection’ of human attributes, and Freud’s analysis of religious belief as an instance of ‘wish-fulfillment’, as two modern successors to Xenophanes’ observation of the general tendency of human beings to conceive of divine beings in terms of their own attributes and capacities. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Xenophanes’ most enduring philosophical contribution was arguably his pioneering exploration of the conditions under which human beings can achieve knowledge of the certain truth. The distinction between knowledge and true opinion set out in B34 quickly became an axiom of ancient Greek accounts of knowledge and survives in modern garb as the ‘belief’ and ‘truth’ conditions of the ‘standard’ or ‘tripartite analysis’ of knowledge. It can be plausibly argued that every later Greek thinker, at least until the time of Aristotle, undertook to respond to the basic challenge posed in Xenophanes’ B34—how, given the severely limited character of human experience, anyone can plausibly claim to have discovered the truth about matters lying beyond anyone’s capacity to observe first-hand. Xenophanes may also be credited with expanding the range of topics considered appropriate for philosophical inquiry and discussion. His Ionian predecessors had initiated the study of phenomena “above the heavens and below the earth” but, so far as we know, they did not turn their critical fire against the leading poets of ancient Greece nor did they seek through their teachings to correct or improve the conduct of their fellow citizens. Although many aspects of his thought remain the subject of scholarly debate, Xenophanes was clearly a multi-dimensional thinker who left his mark on many aspects of later Greek thought. | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Anaxagoras | -->Anaximander--> | -->Anaximenes--> | Aristotle | doxography of ancient philosophy | Empedocles | Heraclitus | Parmenides | Plato | Presocratic Philosophy | Pythagoras | -->Thales--> | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Copyright © 2019 by James Lesher <jlesher@email.unc.edu> | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | View this site from another server: | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is copyright © 2021 by The Metaphysics Research Lab, Department of Philosophy, Stanford University | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/xenophanes/ | Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054 | xenophanes |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | Count Hans Ludwig Paul Yorck von Wartenburg (1835–1897) was a German philosopher. He is primarily known for his long collaboration with his friend Wilhelm Dilthey (1833–1911) and for his impact on Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) and Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900–2002). Together with Dilthey, Yorck was the first philosopher to elaborate the specific concept of historicity [Geschichtlichkeit] as a defining characteristic in the ontology of human beings. In particular, Yorck emphasized the generic difference between the ontic and the historical, i.e., the difference between what is seen or conceptualized (and aesthetically contemplated) as permanent nature, or essence, or idea, and the felt historical rhythm of life, i.e., life's immersion in and belonging to the overarching and always changing waves of history. In contradistinction to Dilthey's epistemological endeavors to clarify the foundations of the historical sciences vis-à-vis the natural sciences, Yorck aimed exclusively at the ontology of historical life, particularly the historical band (syndesmos) and effective connection (virtuality) that unites generational life. Based on the primacy of historical life, Yorck adopted a decidedly anti-metaphysical stance, rejecting all claims of knowledge sub specie aeternitatis. He combined this with a Christian, particularly Lutheran, conception of a historical and personal but entirely transcendent God, relative to whom each individual person, in inescapable singularity, defines his or her own life story. Yorck's ideas were first made public in the form of a posthumous volume of his Correspondence with Dilthey in 1923 (Yorck 1923). Through this publication he influenced not only Heidegger (see Farin 2016 and Ruin 1994) and Gadamer (1990), but also Misch, Rothacker, Scholem, Bultmann, Marcuse, and others. Between 1956 and 1970 various unfinished fragments of Yorck's writings were published (see Bibliography). They contain the outline of Yorck's systematic psychology of history and history of philosophy, as well as extensive reflections on the partial negation or suppression of temporality in thought and metaphysics (due to the inherently spatial character of representation and thought as such). These later works have not received as much attention as his earlier views in his Correspondence with Dilthey. | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | Count Paul Yorck von Wartenburg was born in Berlin on March 1, 1835. His grandfather was the famous Field Marshal Hans David Ludwig Yorck von Wartenburg. (The Field Marshal's courageous signing of the Convention of Tauroggen, originally unauthorized by the king and thus in effect treasonous, started the Prussian War of Liberation against Napoleon in 1813. It made the Field Marshal Yorck a national hero.) Paul Yorck's father, Ludwig David Yorck von Wartenburg, managed the family's estate at Klein-Oels in Silesia (near Breslau, today Wrokław) where Paul Yorck grew up. Paul Yorck's parents were well-connected to a number of literary, philosophical, and artistic circles in Berlin and elsewhere. They were acquainted with Friedrich Schleiermacher, Ludwig Tieck, Bettina von Arnim, Alexander von Humboldt, Karl August Varnhagen, Johann Gustav Droysen, Karl Friedrich Schinkel, and Ernst von Wildenbruch, to name but a few. The family Yorck von Wartenburg belonged to the dominant elite in Prussia and the German Empire. Yorck's life-long enthusiasm for history and historical reality must be seen against this biographical background. | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | In 1855 Paul Yorck began his university studies in law at Bonn, but soon moved to the university at Breslau where he also enrolled in philosophy courses. After passing the second law exam, Yorck published his exam essay “The Catharsis of Aristotle and Sophocles’ Oedipus of Colonus” (Yorck 1866), the only publication by him during his lifetime. When his father passed away in 1865 Yorck took over the management of the family estate at Klein-Oels. He also assumed his father's hereditary seat in the Prussian Upper Chamber [Herrenhaus] where he participated in political debates. He took part in the Franco-Prussian war (1870–1871); and he was present at the Proclamation of the German Empire in the Hall of Mirrors at the Palace of Versailles in 1871. | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | In the same year Yorck met Dilthey, who had been called to the University at Breslau. They quickly became friends and Dilthey was a frequent guest at Klein-Oels, often staying for prolonged working holidays. The posthumously published Dilthey–Yorck Correspondence (Yorck 1923) is an impressive testimony to this friendship. | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | From the early 1890s Yorck worked on a manuscript on Heraclitus (Yorck 1896/97) and a book about the Stances of Consciousness and History (Yorck 1892–1897).[1] Before his death, Yorck declared the two works unfinished and not ready for publication. Published only posthumously, they are, in the words of Karlfried Gründer (1970, 55), “sketches” of first drafts for “great philosophical books.” Paul Yorck died at Klein-Oels, September 12, 1897. His grandson, Count Peter Yorck, who had studied Yorck's unfinished works, was a leading member of the Kreisauer Circle, the German resistance cell responsible for the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944. | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | When in 1923 the Correspondence between Yorck and Dilthey (Yorck 1923) (abbreviated hereafter as CR) was published as “a memorial” to their philosophical friendship (CR, VI), it established Yorck not only as an equal to Dilthey and a faithful interlocutor and eager co-worker on Dilthey's project(s),[2] but also as a philosopher and keen observer of his times in his own right. | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | In 1892 Yorck writes to Dilthey: | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | Our time portends something of an end of an epoch. A token of this is the disappearance of the elemental pleasure in historical realities. The feeling that everything passes [Gefühl der Vergänglichkeit] haunts the world once again. (CR, p. 140) | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | Dilthey clearly shares this sentiment. In a more extensive note about the same topic Yorck writes: | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | It is my growing conviction that today we stand at a historical turning point similar to the one of the 15th century. In contradistinction to the scientific-technological progress, which consists in increased abstraction and isolation, a new formation comes into being because the human being in his entirety [der ganze Mensch] once again takes a stand and faces the problems of life. Every time it is a new stance towards life [Lebensstellung] and a new conception of it that ushers in a new epoch, not any old discovery or invention, even if it is of the greatest import. The thread on which science hangs has become so long and spun ever so thin, that now it is snapping in the face of the impetuous question: What is truth? (CR, p. 128) | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | In yet another letter, Yorck claims that, since the Renaissance, science and knowledge—abstracted from feeling and volition—have followed an eccentric trajectory, in which they have lost sight of man, resulting in profound self-alienation: | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | The ripple effects caused by the eccentric principle, which ushered in a new age more than four hundred years ago, seem to me to have become exceedingly broad and flat; knowledge has advanced to the point of nullifying itself, and man has become so far removed from himself that he no longer catches sight of himself. ‘Modern’ man, that is, man since the Renaissance, is fit for the grave. (CR, p. 83) | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | The general thrust of these reflections and the language used are reminiscent of Nietzsche's descriptions of the “uncanniest of all guests,” nihilism. In fact, it is the usually so cautious Dilthey who, in one of his last letters to Yorck, remarks that the true but “horrible word about the age has been announced” by no one other than Nietzsche (CR, p. 238). There is no reason to believe that Yorck would have disagreed. | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | Yorck's and Dilthey's awareness of an epochal shift, written some twenty years before World War I, could not fail to impress the generation of students who, in the aftermath of this European catastrophe, their predicament exacerbated by continued economic hardship and hyperinflation, returned to studying philosophy in the early 1920s. This may explain why, much later, in the 1980s, Gadamer would still speak of the enormous significance of the publication of the Dilthey–Yorck correspondence in 1923, calling it an “epoch-making moment” in its own right (Gadamer 1995, p. 8). | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | According to Yorck, the analysis and evaluation of the contemporary intellectual-historical situation is integral to philosophy—all the more so if philosophy self-reflexively grasps its ineluctably historical nature, which in itself is one of Yorck's main philosophical objectives. The basic idea for the historicity of philosophy is straightforward. For Yorck, as for Dilthey, philosophy is “a manifestation of life” [Lebensmanifestation] (CR, p. 250), a product or an expression in which life articulates itself in a certain way. But all life is intrinsically historical. Life is inconceivable without its historical development. Yorck writes: | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | The entire given psycho-physical reality is not something that is, but something that lives: that is the germ cell of historicity. And self-reflection, which is directed not at an abstract I, but the entirety of my own self, will find that I am historically determined, just as physics grasps me as determined by the cosmos. Just as I am nature, I am history. And in this decisive sense we have to understand Goethe's dictum of [our] having lived [Gelebthaben] for at least three thousand years. Conversely, it follows that history as a scientific discipline exists only as psychology of history. (CR 71/72) | yorck |
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/yorck/ | For Yorck, as for Dilthey, human life is incorrectly understood if it is subsumed under the generic catch-all category of “existence.” The first point is that human life is inconceivable without temporal and historical development, movement, and change; life always transcends itself, hence it never simply “is.” The mode of being for humans is “life,” not “existence.”[3] And life, unlike existence, is intrinsically historical. Precisely this distinction is brought home by Yorck's demand to always observe “the generic difference between the ontic and the historical” (CR, p. 191). The ontic is what is simply “there” without inner life, temporality, or history. It includes the physical entities in the world, as well as abstract objects, numbers, essences, ideas, etc. The “ontic” is toto caelo other than “the historical.” Yorck's second point is that all history is a development of human powers or human psychology, where psychology does not mean some inert or fixed “nature,” but the constant play of forces, the ever shifting configurations between understanding, affectivity, and volition. (See Section 3.1 below.) | yorck |