A quotation from Xenophanes
Quotation
The clear truth no man has seen, nor will there be anyone who knows about the gods; for even if one should happen to say what is right, still he himself does not know it.
Xenophanes
He noticed that the gods of each people look exactly like that people, and drew the obvious conclusion.
Xenophanes wandered the Greek world for sixty-seven years, and he left behind something sharper than most settled thinkers: the observation that Ethiopians say their gods are dark and flat-nosed, while Thracians say theirs are red-haired and blue-eyed. If horses could draw gods, he added, they would draw them as horses. Behind the joke was a genuine claim: God (one, not many) is nothing like a human body. It does not travel, does not feel anger, does not change. It perceives the whole by mind alone. The nature of things, meanwhile, is not water or fire but earth and water mixed. He doubted that humans can ever achieve certainty, only better and better opinion. That combination of critique and humility, aimed at both religion and knowledge, makes him the first philosopher of human limits.
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What does Xenophanes mean by this quotation?
He noticed that the gods of each people look exactly like that people, and drew the obvious conclusion. Xenophanes wandered the Greek world for sixty-seven years, and he left behind something sharper than most settled thinkers: the observation that Ethiopians say their gods are dark and flat-nosed, while Thracians say thei…
What was the context or school of thought behind this idea?
Xenophanes articulated this thought in Fragments. Around forty verse fragments survive from Xenophanes' satires and elegies, preserved as quotations in later authors. In them he mocks the human habit of making gods in our own image, proposes one grea…