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Philosophy Paper

Philosophy has a grand history with the development of ideas throughout time.

Philosophers, from Xenophanes to Plato, expanded and produced similar ideology. Overall,

Xenophanes, Parmenides, Socrates, and Plato shared the ideas that contemplation and abstract

thinking were more powerful than physical culture, and that thinking is being. Abstract thinking

is thinking about deeper ideas that are not concrete, such as God, justice, good, bad, etc. Power

implies that it is more than, or stronger. Physical culture was the world of Ancient Greece. To

understand the connection between the Greek philosophers and their ideologies, the society that

they lived in must first be evaluated.

Holding physical perfection, sex, war and physical prowess to high esteem, the ancient

people believed in the Greek Gods, such as Zeus and Achilles. The people believed that

knowledge was a divine prerogative, reserved only for the gods. Humans were thought to be

powerless and ignorant, living in hopes to please the gods. Not looking past the physical form,

people idolized strength. Strength meant power and war was noble. Xenophanes, Parmenides,

Socrates, and Plato all disagreed with this view of the society which they lived in.

“Xenophanes was a was a wandering poet born circa 570 B.C. in Ionia. He is one of the

earliest Greek philosophers, and proposes investigation into the natural world. Through thought

and observation, we can come to know the world better. This is, at the time, a hugely novel

suggestion”1. Although not much is recorded form Xenophanes, some of his fragments remain.

In his writing, Xenophanes critiques the strength that the people worship.

“Even if he won with horses, he would get all this,

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Xenophanes Fragments
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But would not merit it as I: for better than the strength

Of men and horses is our wisdom.

But most vain is the present custom: it is wrong

To prefer strength to noble wisdom”2

Xenophanes believes that wisdom is above strength, and that wisdom is not a divine

prerogative. If people had chosen wisdom over their physical culture, their city would have been

better governed. Later in his fragments, Xenophanes also critiques the gods. “Expressed as many

unholy deeds as possible of the gods: stealing, committing adultery, deceiving each other. But

mortals think gods are begotten, and have the clothing, voice, and bodies of mortals”2.

Xenophanes later goes on to say that there is only one god, greatest above gods and men. His

philosophy critiques the idea of anthropomorphism, the personification of human characteristics

or behavior to a god they worship. Xenophanes challenges the idea that they worship false gods

who do unholy deeds and that the people created them, as well as the idea that wisdom is more

noble and preferable to strength.

Parmenides expounds on Xenophanes ideology of wisdom. Parmenides was an early

philosopher who is named the father of metaphysics. He also presented his philosophy in the

form of poems. “On Nature recounts how a goddess revealed ‘the whole truth’ to him. In this

poem, a goddess identifies three possible ‘paths’ of study and understanding and indicates that

only one is true. Parmenides’ reasoning is based on two key premises: ‘What is, is’ and ‘What is

not, is not.’ ‘What is not’ equals ‘not being’ - nothing, or not anything at all”3. Parmenides

ideology is that nothing cannot exist, only leaving what is. What is, is thinking. Thinking is

always of being/what is, and being is always thinkable. Parmenides also believes that the world

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Xenophanes Fragments

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Douglas J. Soccio, Archetypes of Wisdom, (Massachusetts, Wadsworth, 2016), 66.
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is only an appearance, an illusion. Finding what is what-is like only comes to be an illusion, A

world of seems. Therefore, everything is unified and everything is one. “Parmenides associated

being with correct thinking and not-being with illusion. Correct thing is always about being

because we can only think about subjects that exist, that are: ‘In fact is the same thing to think

and to be’”3.

Socrates believed in ignorance and his human wisdom, claiming that ‘I know nothing’.

“The combined portraits of Plato and Xenophon reveal Socrates as a master teacher, a man of

unusual intellectual force, possessing an integrated self, whose charisma and personal power

sprang from more than either mere intellect or personality. Socrates believed that the truth was

somehow in each of us”4. He believes that his human wisdom does not compare to a single God.

“This inquisition [that I asked myself whether I would like to be as I was, nether having

their knowledge nor their ignorance, or like them in both; and I made answer to myself

and to the oracle that I was better off as I was.] has led me to having many enemies…

And I am called wise, for my hearers always imagined that I possess the wisdom which I

find wanting in others; but the truth is, O men of Athens, that God only is wise; and by

his answer he intends to show that the wisdom of men is worth little or nothing”5.

Socrates believes that he is ignorant and is only limited to his human wisdom. In

comparison to the wisdom of God, his wisdom is nothing. “For Socrates, human excellence is a

special kind of knowledge… He believed that the ‘real person’ is not the body, but the psyche“6.

Socrates’ pupil, Plato spent his days seeing that Socrates would be avenged after

Socrates’ execution through the means of philosophy. “Plato [was convinced] that a corrupt state

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Douglas J. Soccio, Archetypes of Wisdom, (Massachusetts, Wadsworth, 2016), 100-104.
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Douglas J. Soccio, Archetypes of Wisdom, (Massachusetts, Wadsworth, 2016), 113.

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Douglas J. Soccio, Archetypes of Wisdom, (Massachusetts, Wadsworth, 2016), 124.
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produces corrupt citizens. He thus attempted to develop a theory of knowledge that could refute

sophistic skepticism and moral relativism. Plato believed that if he could identify and articulate

the difference between mere opinion and genuine knowledge, it would then be possible to

identify the structure of an ideal state based on knowledge and truth- rather than the mere

appearance of truth and personal whim”7. Plato challenged the idea of government that was

focused on more of a physical culture rather with wisdom and genuine knowledge. Plato had two

ideologies: the nature of reality and the nature of morality. He created forms. The idea that real

ideas have essences or natures, and that they don’t have to have physical essence to be real, like

the concept of justice or good.

Xenophanes, Parmenides, Socrates and Plato aimed to show that society’s physical

culture was no mightier than wisdom. Each of them did not agree with the concept of the Greek

Gods, and that there was a single being whose wisdom and knowledge was above their own, yet

wisdom could be obtained and was not solely reserved for the divine. They also expanded on

each other’s idea of thinking and being, and that knowledge can be learned. Thinking was

essence of being and that was above physical prowess. They all had challenged the society which

they lived in and its culture.

The thoughts of these four philosophers connected the idea ultimate reality, or the idea of

a higher being, a god was present. They all agreed that there was not many, such as the Greek

Gods, but that there was only one, who is omnipotent, omnipresent, and omniscient. There is

‘what-is’ and nature of society. They also shared the idea that morality or goodness could be

achieved through wisdom, and that the state which they lived would be better governed if those

who ran it would seek after knowledge. Xenophanes, Parmenides, Socrates, and Plato all thought

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Douglas J. Soccio, Archetypes of Wisdom, (Massachusetts, Wadsworth, 2016), 133.
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that contemplation and abstract thinking were more powerful than physical culture, and that

thinking is being.
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Bibliography

Soccio, Douglas J. Archetypes of Wisdom: An Introduction to Philosophy. Vol. 9. Australia:

Wadsworth, 2016.

Xenophanes. Fragments.