La componente volizionale del noos divino e umano in Senofane

The paper aims to examine the volitional value of the term noos in Xenophanes’ fragments. The term is clearly used in this semantic value in fr. 25 D.-K., where a volitional noos is manifestly recognized as a characteristic of the divine nature. The fragment suggests that the specificity of the theos lies in its ability to cause effects on everything, and this without effort. It is less clear whether the term noos is used by Xenophanes in this sense also about humans. To ascertain this, the analysis cannot rest upon explicit statements available in the fragments; therefore, it turns to the exam of Xenophanes’ fragments concerning the theme of knowledge and the description of the divine nature. The contrast between the absolute nature of the divine and the merely comparative human dimension – a contrast that emerges evidently when the all-encompassing knowledge of the theos is opposed to the human dokos in fr. 24 – suggests that the inferiority of the humans with respect to the theos marks their limits but at the same time does not exclude a relative autonomy and efficacy of a conjectural and comparative way of knowing at disposal of the mortals. The same may be true on the side of volitional noos, which, if exerted by humans, can produce its effects in a way not comparable to the divine power, but nevertheless effective within certain limits. Xenophanes’ usage of the rhetorical device of the “inverse analogy” as a means to determine the profile of the theos in comparison with the human nature helps to show that a volitional noos is presumably attributed by the Presocratic also to humans. Xenophanes’ notion of sophie and arete as well as his portrait of his own intellectual activity are coherent with the interlacement of the cognitive and volitional values of the term noos in the usage made by this thinker.