- Died:
- 314 bc, Athens
Xenocrates
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Who was Xenocrates?
Xenocrates was a Greek philosopher who lived from 396 to 314 BCE. He was a student of Plato and succeeded Speusippus as head of the Greek Academy after Plato's death.
Xenocrates' writings are mostly lost, but his doctrines resembled Plato's. He believed that all reality comes from the interaction of "the One" and "the indeterminate dyad," with the dyad causing diversity and the One causing unity. He divided reality into sensibles, intelligibles, and heavenly bodies and separated gods, men, and demons.
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What role did Xenocrates have in ancient Greek philosophy?
Xenocrates was a Greek philosopher and head of the Greek Academy. After Plato's death, Xenocrates, along with Aristotle, left Athens but returned in 339 B.C. to head the Academy until he died.
His doctrines, resembling Plato's, posited that all reality comes from the interaction of "the One" and "the indeterminate dyad." He divided reality into sensibles, intelligibles, and heavenly bodies, bridging sense experience and intellection. Xenocrates also separated gods, men, and demons, attributing popular religious elements to these beings. His demonology significantly influenced early Christian writers.
Xenocrates divided philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics, asserting its origin in resolving anxieties. He defined happiness as achieving human perfection, with enjoyment derived from natural elements, foreshadowing Stoic ethics.
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Which school of philosophy did Xenocrates lead?
Xenocrates led the Academy, the Greek school of philosophy founded by Plato around 387 BCE. He became head of the Academy in 339 BCE, succeeding Speusippus, and remained in that role until his death. Xenocrates' philosophical approach is considered part of the Old Academy, characterized by moral, speculative, and dogmatic thought. His doctrines, resembling Plato's, posited that all reality comes from the interaction of "the One" and "the indeterminate dyad," with the dyad causing diversity and the One causing unity. He also divided reality into sensibles, intelligibles, and the bodies of the heavens.
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What were some of Xenocrates’ main ideas or beliefs?
Xenocrates, a Greek philosopher and head of the Academy, succeeding Speusippus, had several notable ideas. He believed that all reality comes from the interaction of "the One" and "the indeterminate dyad," with the dyad causing diversity and the One causing unity.
He divided reality into sensibles, intelligibles, and heavenly bodies, bridging sense experience and intellection. Xenocrates also separated gods, men, and demons, attributing popular religious beliefs to these demons and instituting rituals to appease them. He saw philosophy as divided into logic, physics, and ethics, with its origin in resolving anxieties and happiness as achieving human perfection through natural things, foreshadowing Stoic views. Xenocrates identified forms and numbers and asserted that forms exist only for things in nature.
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How did Xenocrates influence later philosophers?
Xenocrates (396–314 BCE) was a Greek philosopher who headed Plato's Academy from 339 to 314 BCE. Although his writings are mostly lost, his doctrines, as reported by Aristotle, show Plato's influence. Xenocrates saw all of reality arising from the interplay of "the One" (responsible for unity and good) and "the indeterminate dyad" (responsible for diversity and evil).
His demonology, which divided gods, men, and "demons" (semi-human, semi-divine beings), significantly influenced early Christian writers who equated pagan deities with evil demons. Xenocrates' division of philosophy into logic, physics, and ethics also foreshadowed the Stoic emphasis on deriving ethical norms from the natural world. He also influenced those who came after him by identifying forms and numbers and asserting that forms exist only in things that exist in nature.
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What is known today about Xenocrates’ writings and teachings?
Although most of Xenocrates' writings are lost, his doctrines are known to resemble Plato's. He derived all reality from the interaction of "the One" and "the indeterminate dyad," with the dyad causing diversity and the One causing unity. Xenocrates divided reality into sensibles, intelligibles, and heavenly bodies, bridging sense experience and intellection.
Additionally, he separated gods, men, and demons, attributing popular religious beliefs to these semihuman, semidivine beings. Some consider Xenocrates to have originated the distinction between mind, body, and soul, as well as the concept of dying twice, with the mind separating from the soul on the Moon before ascending to the Sun. Xenocrates' philosophy was divided into logic, physics, and ethics, with its origin in resolving anxieties and happiness in achieving human perfection, foreshadowing Stoic views.
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Xenocrates (died 314 bc, Athens) was a Greek philosopher, pupil of Plato, and successor of Speusippus as the head of the Greek Academy, which Plato founded about 387 bc. In the company of Aristotle he left Athens after Plato’s death in 348/347, returning in 339 on his election as head of the Academy, where he remained until his death.
Xenocrates’ writings are lost except for fragments, but his doctrines appear to resemble Plato’s as reported by Aristotle. Among them is the “derivation” of all reality from the interaction of two opposite principles, “the One” and “the indeterminate dyad.” It is the dyad that is responsible for multiplicity, or diversity, evil, and motion, whereas the One is responsible for unity, good, and rest. Numbers and geometrical magnitudes are seen as the first products of this derivation. In addition Xenocrates divided all of reality into three realms: (1) the sensibles, or objects of sensation; (2) the intelligibles, or objects of true knowledge, such as Plato’s “Ideas”; and (3) the bodies of the heavens, which mediate between the sensibles and the intelligibles and are therefore objects of “opinion.” This tripartite division typifies the Academy’s tendency to bridge the gap between the two traditional modes of cognition, the mode of sense experience and the mode of intellection.
A second threefold division in Xenocrates’ thought separated gods, men, and “demons.” The demons represented semihuman, semidivine beings, some good and others evil. To these beings Xenocrates attributed much of what popular religion attributed to gods, and ritual mysteries were instituted to propitiate them, especially the evil ones. Though it is uncertain how literally Xenocrates viewed the demons, his demonology was highly influential, particularly on those early Christian writers who identified pagan deities with evil demons.
The classical distinction differentiating mind, body, and soul has been attributed by some to Xenocrates and by others to the Stoic philosopher Poseidonius. The same is true of the related doctrine that men die twice, the second time occurring on the Moon and consisting in the mind’s separation from the soul to make its ascent to the Sun. Sometimes considered an Atomist for his view that matter is composed of indivisible units, he held that Pythagoras, who stressed the importance of numbers in philosophy, was responsible for the Atomist view of acoustics, in which the sound perceived as a single entity actually consists of discrete sounds. The same Pythagorean influence on thinkers of the Academy can be seen in Xenocrates’ devotion to tripartite divisions. Yet another such division is found in his general view of philosophy, which he divided into logic, physics, and ethics. The origin of philosophy, he maintained, lies in man’s desire to resolve his anxieties. Happiness is defined as the acquisition of the perfection that is peculiar and proper to man; thus, enjoyment consists in being in contact with the things that are natural to him. This doctrine, which suggests the primacy of ethics over speculation in philosophy, foreshadows the Stoic view that ethical norms are to be derived from observation of the natural world. Xenocrates admitted, however, that external items are important for happiness, a notion that the Stoics rejected.