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| Empedocles | |
|---|---|
| Empedocles, 17th-century engraving | |
| Born | c. 494 BC[1] Akragas, Magna Graecia |
| Died | c. 434 BC[1] (aged around 60) unknown[a] |
| Era | Pre-Socratic philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Pluralist school |
| Main interests | Cosmogenesis, ontology, epistemology |
| Notable ideas | All things[3] are made up of four elements: fire, air, earth and water Change and motion[4] are due to the corporeal substances[5] Love[6] (Aphrodite)[6] and Strife[6] The sphere of Empedocles Theories about respiration (the clepsydra experiment) Emission theory of vision |
| showInfluences | |
| showInfluenced |
Empedocles (/ɛmˈpɛdəkliːz/; Greek: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς [empedoklɛ̂ːs], Empedoklēs; c. 494 – c. 434 BC, fl. 444–443 BC)[7] was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas,[8][9] a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles’ philosophy is best known for originating the cosmogonic theory of the four classical elements. He also proposed forces he called Love and Strife which would mix and separate the elements, respectively.
Influenced by Pythagoras (died c. 495 BC) and the Pythagoreans, Empedocles challenged the practice of animal sacrifice and killing animals for food. He developed a distinctive doctrine of reincarnation. He is generally considered the last Greek philosopher to have recorded his ideas in verse. Some of his work survives, more than is the case for any other pre-Socratic philosopher. Empedocles’ death was mythologized by ancient writers, and has been the subject of a number of literary treatments.
Life
The temple of Hera at Akragas, built when Empedocles was a young man, c. 470 BC.
Empedocles (Empedokles) was a native citizen of Akragas in Sicily.[8][9] He came from a rich and noble family.[8][10][11] Very little is known about his life. His grandfather, also called Empedokles, had won a victory in the horse-race at Olympia in [the 71st Olympiad] OL. LXXI (496–95 BC).[8][9][10] His father’s name, according to the best accounts, was Meton.[8][9][10]
All that can be said to be known about the dates of Empedocles is, that his grandfather was still alive in 496 BC; that he himself was active at Akragas after 472 BC, the date of Theron’s death; and that he died later than 444 BC.[7]
Empedocles “broke up the assembly of the Thousand. perhaps some oligarchical association or club.”[12] He is said to have been magnanimous in his support of the poor;[13] severe in persecuting the overbearing conduct of the oligarchs;[14] and he even declined the sovereignty of the city when it was offered to him.[15]
According to John Burnet: “there is another side to his public character … He claimed to be a god, and to receive the homage of his fellow-citizens in that capacity. The truth is, Empedokles was not a mere statesman; he had a good deal of the ‘medicine-man’ about him. … We can see what this means from the fragments of the Purifications. Empedokles was a preacher of the new religion which sought to secure release from the ‘wheel of birth’ by purity and abstinence. Orphicism seems to have been strong at Akragas in the days of Theron, and there are even some verbal coincidences between the poems of Empedokles and the Orphicsing Odes which Pindar addressed to that prince.”[12]
His brilliant oratory,[16] his penetrating knowledge of nature, and the reputation of his marvelous powers, including the curing of diseases, and averting epidemics,[17] produced many myths and stories surrounding his name. In his poem “Purifications” he claimed miraculous powers, including the destruction of evil, the curing of old age, and the controlling of wind and rain.
Empedocles was acquainted or connected by friendship with the physicians Pausanias, and with various Pythagoreans; and even, it is said, with Parmenides and Anaxagoras.[18] The only pupil of Empedocles who is mentioned is the sophist and rhetorician Gorgias.[19]
Timaeus and Dicaearchus spoke of the journey of Empedocles to the Peloponnese, and of the admiration, which was paid to him there;[20] others mentioned his stay at Athens, and in the newly founded colony of Thurii, 446 BC;[21] there are also fanciful reports of him travelling far to the east to the lands of the Magi.[22]
The contemporary Life of Empedocles by Xanthus has been lost.
Death
According to Aristotle, he died at the age of sixty (c. 430 BC), even though other writers have him living up to the age of one hundred and nine.[23] Likewise, there are myths concerning his death: a tradition, which is traced to Heraclides Ponticus, represented him as having been removed from the Earth; whereas others had him perishing in the flames of Mount Etna.[24]
According to Burnet: “We are told that Empedokles leapt into the crater of Etna that he might be deemed a god. This appears to be a malicious version of a tale set on foot by his adherents that he had been snatched up to heaven in the night. Both stories would easily get accepted; for there was no local tradition. Empedokles did not die in Sicily, but in the Peloponnese, or, perhaps, at Thourioi. It is not at all unlikely that he visited Athens. … Timaios refuted the common stories [about Empedokles] at some length. (Diog. viii. 71 sqq.; Ritter and. Preller [162].). He was quite positive that Empedokles never returned to Sicily after he went to Olympia to have his poem recited to the Hellenes. The plan for the colonisation of Thourioi would, of course, be discussed at Olympia, and we know that Greeks from the Peloponnese and elsewhere joined it. He may very well have gone to Athens in connexion with this.”[2]
Works
A piece of the Strasbourg Empedocles papyrus in the Bibliothèque nationale et universitaire, Strasbourg
Empedocles is considered the last Greek philosopher to write in verse. There is a debate[25] about whether the surviving fragments of his teaching should be attributed to two separate poems, “Purifications” and “On Nature”, with different subject matter, or whether they may all derive from one poem with two titles,[26] or whether one title refers to part of the whole poem. Some scholars argue that the title “Purifications” refers to the first part of a larger work called (as a whole) “On Nature”.[27] There is also a debate about which fragments should be attributed to each of the poems, if there are two poems, or if part of it is called “Purifications”; because ancient writers rarely mentioned which poem they were quoting.
Empedocles was undoubtedly acquainted with the didactic poems of Xenophanes and Parmenides[28]—allusions to the latter can be found in the fragments—but he seems to have surpassed them in the animation and richness of his style, and in the clearness of his descriptions and diction. Aristotle called him the father of rhetoric,[29] and, although he acknowledged only the meter as a point of comparison between the poems of Empedocles and the epics of Homer, he described Empedocles as Homeric and powerful in his diction.[30] Lucretius speaks of him with enthusiasm, and evidently viewed him as his model.[31] The two poems together comprised 5000 lines.[32] About 550 lines of his poetry survive.
Purifications
In the old editions of Empedocles, only about 100 lines were typically ascribed to his “Purifications”, which was taken to be a poem about ritual purification, or the poem that contained all his religious and ethical thought. Early editors supposed that it was a poem that offered a mythical account of the world which may, nevertheless, have been part of Empedocles’ philosophical system. According to Diogenes Laërtius it began with the following verses:
Friends who inhabit the mighty town by tawny Acragas
which crowns the citadel, caring for good deeds,
greetings; I, an immortal God, no longer mortal,
wander among you, honoured by all,
adorned with holy diadems and blooming garlands.
To whatever illustrious towns I go,
I am praised by men and women, and accompanied
by thousands, who thirst for deliverance,
some ask for prophecies, and some entreat,
for remedies against all kinds of disease.[33]
In the older editions, it is to this work that editors attributed the story about souls,[34] where we are told that there were once spirits who lived in a state of bliss, but having committed a crime (the nature of which is unknown) they were punished by being forced to become mortal beings, reincarnated from body to body. Humans, animals, and even plants are such spirits. The moral conduct recommended in the poem may allow us to become like gods again. If, as is now widely held, this title “Purifications” refers to the poem “On Nature”, or to a part of that poem, this story will have been at the beginning of the main work on nature and the cosmic cycle. The relevant verses are also sometimes attributed to the poem of “On Nature”, even by those who think that there was a separate poem called “Purifications”.
On Nature
There are about 450 lines of his poem “On Nature” extant,[29] including 70 lines which have been reconstructed from some papyrus scraps known as the Strasbourg papyrus. The poem originally consisted of 2000 lines of hexameter verse,[35] and was addressed to Pausanias.[36] It was this poem which outlined his philosophical system. In it, Empedocles explains not only the nature and history of the universe, including his theory of the four classical elements, but he describes theories on causation, perception, and thought, as well as explanations of terrestrial phenomena and biological processes.
Philosophy
Empedocles as portrayed in the Nuremberg Chronicle
Although acquainted with the theories of the Eleatics and the Pythagoreans, Empedocles did not belong to any one definite school.[29] An eclectic in his thinking, he combined much that had been suggested by Parmenides, Pythagoras and the Ionian schools.[29] He was a firm believer in Orphic mysteries, as well as a scientific thinker and a precursor of physics. Aristotle mentions Empedocles among the Ionic philosophers, and he places him in very close relation to the atomist philosophers and to Anaxagoras.[37]
According to House (1956)[38]
Another of the fragments of the dialogue On the Poets (Aristotle) treats more fully what is said in Poetics ch. i about Empedocles, for though clearly implying that he was not a poet, Aristotle there says he is Homeric, and an artist in language, skilled in metaphor and in the other devices of poetry.
Empedocles, like the Ionian philosophers and the atomists, continued the tradition of tragic thought which tried to find the basis of the relationship of the One and the Many. Each of the various philosophers, following Parmenides, derived from the Eleatics, the conviction that an existence could not pass into non-existence, and vice versa. Yet, each one had his peculiar way of describing this relation of Divine and mortal thought and thus of the relation of the One and the Many. In order to account for change in the world, in accordance with the ontological requirements of the Eleatics, they viewed changes as the result of mixture and separation of unalterable fundamental realities. Empedocles held that the four elements (Water, Air, Earth, and Fire) were those unchangeable fundamental realities, which were themselves transfigured into successive worlds by the powers of Love and Strife (Heraclitus had explicated the Logos or the “unity of opposites”).[39]
The four elements
Empedocles established four ultimate elements which make all the structures in the world—fire, air, water, earth.[29][40] Empedocles called these four elements “roots”, which he also identified with the mythical names of Zeus, Hera, Nestis, and Aidoneus[41] (e.g., “Now hear the fourfold roots of everything: enlivening Hera, Hades, shining Zeus. And Nestis, moistening mortal springs with tears”).[42] Empedocles never used the term “element” (στοιχεῖον, stoicheion), which seems to have been first used by Plato.[43] According to the different proportions in which these four indestructible and unchangeable elements are combined with each other the difference of the structure is produced.[29] It is in the aggregation and segregation of elements thus arising, that Empedocles, like the atomists, found the real process which corresponds to what is popularly termed growth, increase or decrease. Nothing new comes or can come into being; the only change that can occur is a change in the juxtaposition of element with element.[29] This theory of the four elements became the standard dogma for the next two thousand years.
Love and Strife
Not to be confused with the Greek deities of love and strife.Empedocles cosmic cycle is based on the conflict between love and strife
The four elements, however, are simple, eternal, and unalterable, and as change is the consequence of their mixture and separation, it was also necessary to suppose the existence of moving powers that bring about mixture and separation. The four elements are both eternally brought into union and parted from one another by two divine powers, Love and Strife (Philotes and Neikos).[29][44] Love (φιλότης) is responsible for the attraction of different forms of what we now call matter, and Strife (νεῖκος) is the cause of their separation.[45] If the four elements make up the universe, then Love and Strife explain their variation and harmony. Love and Strife are attractive and repulsive forces, respectively, which are plainly observable in human behavior, but also pervade the universe. The two forces wax and wane in their dominance, but neither force ever wholly escapes the imposition of the other.
According to Burnet: “Empedokles sometimes gave an efficient power to Love and Strife, and sometimes put them on a level with the other four. The fragments leave no room for doubt that they were thought of as spatial and corporeal. … Love is said to be “equal in length and breadth” to the others, and Strife is described as equal to each of them in weight (fr. 17). These physical speculations were part of a history of the universe which also dealt with the origin and development of life.”[5]