Below are the seven thesis statements offered for the midterm exam. Each statement requires an image that illustrates your understanding of Xenophanes’ thinking. You can prepare for and defend the exam in groups of up to three, but each examine needs to be prepared to respond to any of the seven thesis statements. Prior to your actual exam schedule, please email a soft copy of your image (or a verbal description if you don’t plan to use an actual picture) and some brief notes on your thesis defense for each statement.
The best way, by far, to prepare for the midterm is to offer a mock defense of a self-chosen thesis statement in class during the scheduled review session. Your classmates will benefit from your efforts, and hopefully will be able to make valuable comments.
#1Already there are sixty-seven years
tossing my thought throughout the land of Greece.
From my birth there were twenty-five in addition to these,
if I know how to speak truly about these matters (7.1).
Thesis Statement: Philosophical thinking is dialogical and non-dogmatic. Ironically, Xenophanes became a fixture of Greek thinking by being tossed around. Suggest an image which demonstrates this tension between fixity and flux. Explain how it illustrates Xenophanes' fragment.
Water's power is proverbial for the gentleness of the medium itself. Lifegiving liquid can become a deadly torrent. To focus on the example of surface tension, a force we can easily break with our fingers--can float an aircraft carrier.
In the same way, Xenophanes' philosophical thinking is gentle and thought provoking rather than authoritative. The force of his thinking is felt in the effect it has on others rather than dogmatic self-assertion. Unknowingness (agnosticism) is not ignorance but the way to understanding.
Primarily what Xenophanes does is to ask questions. In provoking questioning he becomes a reliable resource for our thinking. His uncertainty helps us challenge what we think we know ourselves.
#2Give us no fights with Titans, no, nor Giants
nor Centaurs—the forgeries of our fathers—
nor civil brawls, in which no advantage is.
But always to be mindful of the gods is good (7.2).
Thesis Statement: Thoughtful examination would both dismiss and preserve doctrine. Bring an image that demonstrates critical appropriation.
Notice that we do not argue about things we don't care about. The dismissiveness--even the passion of an argument--demonstrates, not the irrelevance, but the vitality of the issue. We critique a point of view because we will make it our own.
In the same way, the protestant 'reformation' does not put an end to Christianity, but brings it forward in critical thinking. Unrooting the 'forgeries' of traditional thinking does not dismiss it out of hand, but thoughtfully appropriates it into the contemporary situation.
A good example here might be a critical reading of the creation story in Genesis. A demythologization may serve to make its theological truth more explicit, rather than negating it.
#3
He always remains in the same place, moving not at all,
nor is it fitting for him to go to different places at different times (7.9).
Thesis Statement: The king or queen sits enthroned, not do demonstrate lethargy, but power. "Fittingness" is a rational criterion for truth.
Ex: king/queen sit enthroned, not to demonstrate lethargy, but power.
Ex: child’s head on diver, etc. (‘fittingness’ is a rational criterion for truth)
#4God is one, greatest among gods and men,
not at all like mortals in body or thought (7.10).
Thesis Statement: Monotheism describes a quality by way of quantity. Bring an image that demonstrates essential singularity by analogy to plurality.
Moses met with an incredulous phenomenon. Fire burned but did not burn up the bush. A symbol for impermanence came to represent what does not pass away.
In the same way, monotheism uses the language of plurality to describe something that is essentially one. God's unicity is not an accident of conquest, but inherit in the name.
In Exodus 3, God reveals himself to Moses as I AM WHO I AM. Yahwey (which sounds like the word for 'I am' in Hebrew) is not the most powerful among the category of gods. He cannot be identified with a particular nation or family of gods—he cannot even be given a name. He is irrevocably one.
We use the same sort of language to describe our love when we say things like "You're every woman in the world to me" or "I love you so much." The quantities in these descriptions serve to deny any possible reference to quantity; that is, they use the language of quantity to describe the quality of a relationship that is all consuming.
Xenophanes says that God is 'not at all like mortals in body or thought' to say that to think of God we must start from the category of God, without analogy to another sort of being. Every analogy only demonstrates that which God ineffably surpasses.
# 5
All things that come into being and grow are earth and water (7.16).
Thesis Statement: Xenophanes is the first to propose a plurality of material principles—ironic for the first ‘monist.’ Bring an image that demonstrates the way a unity emerges out of diversity.
Ex: sporting jersey. Team colors unite as much as they divide.
Ex: 300 (Xerxes unites an entire empire by collecting symbols of obedience)
# 6
Let things be believed as resembling the truth (7.20).
Thesis Statement: There is no escaping the faith ("belief") connecting the universality of the "truth" with the perspectival grasp we have of the "things" in our world. Suggest an image that illustrates the chasm between what we "believe" and the "truth." How does your image mediate the gap it simultaneously emphasizes and necessitates?
Ronald McDonald (we all get it, because plasticity is as effective as it is obvious).
#7
By no means did the gods reveal all things to mortals from the beginning,
but in time, by searching, they discover better (7.21).
Thesis Statement: Revelation is never there from the beginning. It unfolds in a process of "searching." Bring an image that characterizes this time (lapse) of insight.
Ignatius Loyola was a man of action until he was injured in battle. With nothing better to do than read during his long convalescence, he suffered a conversion by reflecting on the lives of the saints.
There is no eliding the time of reflection for discovery. What Xenophanes objects to is the kind of religious tradition which takes authority as the end rather than the beginning of a search. Whether our authorities are scripture, church teachings, popular psychology, or rigorous science--they should be critically appropriated rather than thoughtlessly assumed.
In the same way, monotheism uses the language of plurality to describe something that is essentially one. God's unicity is not an accident of conquest, but inherit in the name.
In Exodus 3, God reveals himself to Moses as I AM WHO I AM. Yahwey (which sounds like the word for 'I am' in Hebrew) is not the most powerful among the category of gods. He cannot be identified with a particular nation or family of gods—he cannot even be given a name. He is irrevocably one.
We use the same sort of language to describe our love when we say things like "You're every woman in the world to me" or "I love you so much." The quantities in these descriptions serve to deny any possible reference to quantity; that is, they use the language of quantity to describe the quality of a relationship that is all consuming.
Xenophanes says that God is 'not at all like mortals in body or thought' to say that to think of God we must start from the category of God, without analogy to another sort of being. Every analogy only demonstrates that which God ineffably surpasses.
# 5All things that come into being and grow are earth and water (7.16).
Thesis Statement: Xenophanes is the first to propose a plurality of material principles—ironic for the first ‘monist.’ Bring an image that demonstrates the way a unity emerges out of diversity.
Ex: sporting jersey. Team colors unite as much as they divide.
Ex: 300 (Xerxes unites an entire empire by collecting symbols of obedience)
# 6Let things be believed as resembling the truth (7.20).
Thesis Statement: There is no escaping the faith ("belief") connecting the universality of the "truth" with the perspectival grasp we have of the "things" in our world. Suggest an image that illustrates the chasm between what we "believe" and the "truth." How does your image mediate the gap it simultaneously emphasizes and necessitates?
Ronald McDonald (we all get it, because plasticity is as effective as it is obvious).
#7By no means did the gods reveal all things to mortals from the beginning,
but in time, by searching, they discover better (7.21).
Thesis Statement: Revelation is never there from the beginning. It unfolds in a process of "searching." Bring an image that characterizes this time (lapse) of insight.
Ignatius Loyola was a man of action until he was injured in battle. With nothing better to do than read during his long convalescence, he suffered a conversion by reflecting on the lives of the saints.
There is no eliding the time of reflection for discovery. What Xenophanes objects to is the kind of religious tradition which takes authority as the end rather than the beginning of a search. Whether our authorities are scripture, church teachings, popular psychology, or rigorous science--they should be critically appropriated rather than thoughtlessly assumed.
