Daniel Lorenzo C.

Sarte 143657 Replacement PH 103 Paper

PH 103 – U

The Emergence of Xenophanes’ God through Homer’s Iliad

As Xenophanes was the main viewpoint for us to philosophically inquire, the paper

would discuss the emergence of Xenophanes’ idea of God through Homer’s Iliad and its

bountiful of gods.

The Iliad by Homer described the lives of the gods as they constantly interfered with

the lives of the mortals, especially regarding the war between the Trojans and the Greeks, for

example when Aphrodite was favoring the Trojans by denying Menelaus victory in the

battlefield (Van Erp Taalman Kip, 2000, p.388). Additionally, it also depicted the

anthropomorphism of the gods, as they had showcased their human traits such as emotion and

neglect, such as when Zeus hated the actions committed by both Helen of Troy and Achilles

(Snider, 1883, p. 84). However, in the end, the gods of Homer had to give way to the judgment

of Zeus, the supreme God, despite some gods such as Neptune questioning the decision (Snider,

1888, p.91).

Xenophanes was a man who regularly traveled. As such, he was someone who enjoyed

the constant interactions he had with other people, as seen in this fragment “tossing my thought

throughout the land of Greece” (7.1). His engagements with other people asked him to rely

solely on his capacity to critically think (Granger, 2007, p.45). He routinely questioned the

reason nature of things, as he constantly tried to improve his own knowledge, as seen in this

fragment “By no means did the gods reveal all things to mortals from the beginning, but in

time, by searching they discover better” (7.21). Through this, he critically examined supposed

facts of the time as when he criticized the gods of the time as seen in fragment 7.2.

The Homeric gods were subjugated by human emotion, such as lust. For example, in

page nine of the Xenreader, Zeus, a god, had sexual desires as he was seduced by his wife,
Hera (180-190). And yet, Xenophanes disagreed with such claim, as he reasoned out that god

cannot experience human emotions as seen in fragment 7.10 “God is one, greatest among gods

and [humans], not at all like mortals in body or thought.” He reasoned this out in 7.8 as god

cannot be under anything or anyone, as it is impious to think otherwise. As such, Xenophanes

criticized the tradition of the anthropocentric gods, with fragment 7.2.

In this instance, we observe the conflicting ideas of Homer and Xenophanes in terms

of the nature of a god, and yet, due to their conflict, Xenophanes was able to reason out and

emerge the idea of monotheism, a single and supreme god, as he was motivated to critique the

polytheism of the Greek gods (Freeman, 1953, p. 94-95).

Homer, however, did mention in the Iliad that there is a god that is supreme among all

the gods, as seen in page 24 of the Xenreader, “we think we can be near him, and restrain

him…But there he sits apart from us, careless of us, forever telling us he is quite beyond us all

in power and might, supreme among the gods (130-136). As such, Zeus was the divine among

all the divine, and other mortals (Snider, 1883, p.378).

Again, this is in-accordance with Xenophanes’ monotheistic argument. Specifically, he

mentioned that lower beings cannot duplicate nor compete against the omnipotent nature of the

supreme god, as seen in this fragment “but without effort he shakes all things by the thought

of his mind (7.12). Granted, Xenophanes didn’t explicitly argue that Zeus was the supreme

god, the nature of the all-powerful deity, in the form of Zeus, was developed from Homer’s

Iliad.

In conclusion, Xenophanes and Homer clearly disagreed with each other, as Homer

stuck with the polytheistic tradition of the time, which gave emergence to Xenophanes’

argument for a monotheistic god. However, Homer already had ideas such as the supreme god

concept that Xenophanes elaborated further.

References:
A. Maria van Erp Taalman Kip. “The Gods of the ‘Iliad’ and the Fate of Troy.” Mnemosyne,
vol. 53, no. 4, 2000, pp. 385–402.

Freeman, K. (1953). The Philosophies of the Sixth and Fifth Centuries. In The pre-socratic
philosophers: A companion to Diels "Fragmente der Vorsokratiker"(Third ed). Oxford:
Blackwell.

Granger, H. (2007). Poetry and Prose: Xenophanes of Colophon. Transactions of the

American Philological Association, 137(2), 403-433.

Snider, D. J. “Homer’s Iliad.” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 22, no. 1/2,
1888, pp. 84–94.

Snider, D. J. “A study of the ‘Iliad’’” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy, vol. 17, no. 4,
1883, pp. 367–382.

Xenreader