Epic sources of skepticism of Xenophanes of Colophon
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.12775/RF.2024.028Keywords
Xenophanes, skepticism, Homer, HesiodAbstract
The purpose of this article is to analyze the potential sources of scepticism of Xenophanes in the epics of Homer and Hesiod. The starting point is the hypothesis that the poet's philosophical doubts should be considered not in the perspective of the mature phase of the development of Greek skepticism, but in the context of typically epic complaints about human misery. It will be shown that in the epic and in the broader understood lyric, this misery has not only an existential dimension, but also a gnoseological one. An interpretation will also be proposed, according to which the epic sources of Xenophanes' skepticism are to be found not so much in the rift between divine and human knowledge, but in the conviction of epistemic impotence as to the possibility of achieving pure truth unmixed with falsehood. Thus, Colophon continues the tradition of epic heroes who, placed in the face of incomplete knowledge, must learn how best to conjecture.
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