Noos and Mortal Enquiry in the Poetry of Xenophanes and Parmenides

Methodos

关键词: intelligence;    mind;    Homer;    Hesiod;    Xenophanes;    Parmenides;   

DOI  :  10.4000/methodos.4326

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Noos, noein and their derivatives are of central importance to the development of epistemological conceptions in Presocratic philosophy. Already in Homer the terms indicate a special form of cognition, resembling sense perception in its non-inferential nature, which consists in discovering the truth beyond mere appearance. In this article, I focus on the role which noos and noein play in the poetry of Xenophanes and Parmenides, whose characterizations of noetic cognition, I argue, depend on their response to the problems stemming from the contrast between humans' epistemic limitations and divine omniscience, as traditionally depicted in Archaic Greek poetry. In particular, I consider Hesiod's poems and the implications of his claim to be able to “speak the mind (noos) of Zeus” (Op. 661), which hints at the universal truth he wants to convey through his poetry. However, Hesiod's dependence on the Muses, who can speak both false and true things (Th. 27-28), renders his poetry inevitably ambiguous, as he and his audience cannot know whether what they learn from the divinity is actually true. Xenophanes appropriates the motif of humans' epistemic limitedness by describing mortals as inevitably confined to opinion, and contrasting their condition with the all-powerful noetic capacities of the greatest god. However, I argue, despite mortals' belief-formation ultimately relies on divine disclosure, humans are not condemned to complete ambiguity as in the past poetic tradition, since Xenophanes' very conception of god's noos provides a reliable basis for mortal enquiry which guarantees the actual improvement of humans' opinions over time. Even in Parmenides' poem human noos is repeatedly described as wandering astray, but error is not conceived as an ineluctable human condition. In fact, by stipulating that the correct path of enquiry which mortals' noos ought to follow to attain truth consists in the logical deduction of the attributes of What-Is, Parmenides allows for the actual possibility that humans achieve that universal and absolute truth to which traditionally they could not have access. Thus, by introducing innovations to the traditional notion of divine and mortal noos, Xenophanes and Parmenides respectively assigned to critical enquiry and logical argumentation that essential role which they maintained in the following development of philosophy.

【 授权许可】

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