WORDS SAY WHAT WE HAVE BECOME
What is happening to us?
At this point we can take some of Xenophanes' most famous 'sayings' without the need to do a great exegetical exercise, because if we put them in the framework we have so far urged, raised, suggested, they speak for themselves, now we understand, we do not judge, but we understand and we assist, I would say, amazed, we assist amazed at our birth.
All this is allowed by writing, orality does not allow it, because orality continues and we are inside this wave of the word, we are this wave, so we have no critical detachment, we are not critical subjects but we are mythical subjects, which does not mean we are less true, less important, we are something else, we are mythical subjects. Instead, through writing we become critical subjects, the question is transferred here before us from time immemorial, here they are again, here again are the words of Xenophanes and we have to make do with the translation, it would be nice to have the pleasure of being able to read them in his language, in their language, every translation is dubious.
Here we have the opportunity to witness our birth, as if we were watching the film of when we were born, we would say, look how I was, I already looked a little like myself.
And yes, we do look a lot like ourselves when we read these words, but not because they are more true than others, mind you, understand, don't cheer, but because they are our autobiography, of the figure of humanity that we have traced in history, which will change again, or rather which is changing a lot, and it will take another Xenophanes, perhaps not a European one, to say in adequate words what is happening to all of us. Huh?
Let's read, I translate as best I can, this is how our rhapsodic poet writes, imagine him alone, brave, proud, wandering all over Greece, presumably accompanied by a few disciples who then passed on his deeds, thus he writes:
"Homer and Hesiod attributed to the gods everything that among men is an object of shame and blame, stealing, committing adultery, deceiving one another. But mortals believe that the gods were born, that they have dress, language and appearance like them, because they all learned from Homer from the beginning".
Gentlemen, here, I would not know how to give an adequate example. For me, being Italian, it is like us saying, well Dante Alighieri told a lot of bullshits, when we all come from Dante Alighieri, huh? But that is less sensitive than saying, all the Greeks came from Homer, from Hesiod, you know, uh? The whole archaic Greek culture is an endless commentary of the mouth and the ear, of those memorable verses, to be remembered by heart, of Homer, therein lay the cipher of their civilisation, their culture, their beliefs.
Well, this man, this single man of flesh and blood, like everyone else, whom a single fist could kill, has the courage to raise his voice and say: you all come to Homer, but you don't realise what Homer says, what Hesiod says, are these the gods? Nothing but the caricature of the human being? Thieves, cheats, swindlers, violents? Are we to believe these things?
Well, you understand that so much must have happened for this to become comprehensible to a humanity that, before, in front of Homer and Hesiod bowed down as if in front of absolute truth.
He continues:
"Mortals believe that the gods are with noses, mouths, etc., as their statues are. But if oxen and horses and lions had hands and could draw and do what, precisely, men do, horses would draw figures of gods similar to horses and oxen similar to oxen and would make bodies shaped as each of them is shaped.
For the Ethiopians say that their gods are snub and black, the Thracians, that they are cerulean of eyes and red of hair".
Here is the denunciation, the famous denunciation of the anthropomorphism of ancient religion.
Question to see if we understand each other.
So were men anthropomorphic before Xenophanes?
No, that is the great lesson, the answer is NO.
They become like this in Xenophanes' great revolution, he sees them like this, and he can only see them like this because the gods have become false and liars, because they no longer have life in the community, because the sacred tales that once accompanied them no longer have any hold on the lives of men.
And so, sure, from that point of view they become false and liars, and they become anthropomorphic, but they didn't know anything about it, it's not like you could just go up to them and say, you know, you're all anthropomorphic, that was impossible, you know, uh? It could only happen when it could happen, when things had changed, and so they could fertilise man's mind so that man's mind could say: those were anthropomorphs, I wasn't, and it makes me laugh to think that the Thracians make them all red and the Ethiopians make them all black, so that if the horses had hands, etc...
This could not have been said 150 years before, it could not have been said, a man could not have emerged who would say that, realise, for this to judge is not enough, it would be like thinking that the Egyptian pharaoh would say to his wife, who was then his sister, imagine, and that for us would be a horror, that the Egyptian pharaoh would say to his wife: how neurotic you are, or hysterical. No, he could not use that language, he did not have it, things were not like that in his world. In his world, modern medicine, modern psychology, Dr Freud could not come and explain that the relationship between Tutankhamun and his family was Oedipal, cause Oedipus was unknown.
So in every time, in every way of culture words say what we have become, with Xenophanes we have become that none of us believe in gods any more, it is a fact.
None of us believe in the gods any more not because there are no gods, that is a truism for us, certainly for us there are no gods, that is because in our lives we no longer meet the gods, there is no point in talking about 'gods', from a polytheistic point of view and besides, mind you, Xenophanes does not criticise polytheism but criticises anthropomorphic superstition, but he remains an ancient polytheist, let us be clear, it is the Christian fathers who deluded themselves into reading in him a kind of anticipation of monotheism, but certainly the myth is completely destroyed.
We move on and find it stated explicitly:
"A god among gods and among men, the greatest, not for appearance similar to mortals, nor for intelligence, but because, god, the whole sees, the whole thinks, the whole hears, but without effort, with the force of thought he shakes everything, always in the same place he remains without moving at all, nor does it suit him to go now this way and now that".
This is the irony of the Sillis, because the Olympian gods, the Homeric gods, are constantly on the move and go down and come back up, they have sex with mortals because they want to influence the battle between the Greeks and the Trojans, etc... these divine specks are always on the move.
No, god is thought, here, the revolution of the mind, we have it in front of our eyes, god is thought, with thought everything shakes, with thought everything moves. He does not need to move, he is motionless, that is why we think of Parmenides, certainly it is the same revelation of that time that imposes itself, it is thought, it is intelligence, the virtue of intelligence.
Now, we come to the longest of quotations.