Empedocles

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For the volcano, see Empedocles (volcano).

Empedocles (Greek: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς, ca. 490–430 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek colony in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for being the origin of the cosmogenic theory of the four classical elements. Much of Empedocles' work still survives today, more so than in the case of any other Presocratic. Empedocles' death was well recorded by his contemporaries, and has been the subject of both legend and a number of literary treatments.

1 Philosophy
2 Death and literary treatments
3 References
4 Further reading
5 External links

[edit] Philosophy

Diogenes Laertius preserves a tradition, going back to the historian Timaeus that Empedocles was a lapsed initiate into the esoteric doctrines of Pythagoras. Such conjectures as this, as found in Diogenes' account of Empedocles in his Lives of Philosophers, VIII ^[1] provide most of our information. Empedocles delivered his philosophy in the form of epic verse. He maintained in Pythagorean fashion that all matter is made up of four elements: water, earth, air and fire. Empedocles called these the four "roots"; the term "element" (στοιχεῖον), was used only by later writers.

Apart from these four roots, Empedocles postulated something called Love (φιλία) to explain the attraction of different forms of matter, and of something called Strife (νεῖκος) to account for their separation. These ideas should not be confused with the four elements: if the elements are the content of the universe, then Love and Strife explain their variation and harmony. He was also one of the first people to state the theory that light travels at a finite (although very large) speed, a theory that gained acceptance only much later.

Though having much in common with Parmenides's ontology (to which his own poem is often read as a response), Empedocles is considered softer and more tolerant in his outlook. Plato, in the famous Sophist dialogue, described Empedocles as a "gentle muse":

Then there are Ionian, and in more recent times Sicilian muses, who have arrived at the conclusion that to unite the two principles is safer, and to say that being is one and many, and that these are held together by enmity and friendship, ever parting, ever meeting, as the-severer Muses assert, while the gentler ones do not insist on the perpetual strife and peace, but admit a relaxation and alternation of them; peace and unity sometimes prevailing under the sway of Aphrodite, and then again plurality and war, by reason of a principle of strife. (Plato, Soph.).

Empedocles was also a mystic and a poet, and Aristotle considered him the inventor of the study of rhetoric.^[2] Gorgias of Leontini was his student, and it is probably from Empedocles that Gorgias developed the notion of rhetoric as magic.^{[citation needed]}

Empedocles' life, as recorded by Diogenes Laertius, was based partly on Timaeus' lost Histories and other sources, and seems at points to confuse him with other men of the same name. As a person he was reported by Diogenes as somewhat arrogant, that he "imitated the pompous demeanour, and way of life, and gestures of one master" Anaxagoras, dressing himself in purple and claiming that by the virtue of the knowledge he possessed he had become divine and could perform miracles, as in the case of a dead woman's body, that he notoriously preserved from corruption, exclaiming in verses that Diogenes quotes:

I, an immortal God, no longer mortal,

Now live among you well revered by all,

As is my due, crowned with holy fillets

And rosy garlands.

Yet his actions and teaching betrayed an egalitarian streak, as in his opposition to a monument to Akron the physician, he fought to preserve Greek democracy and allowed that through his teaching others could also become divine^{[citation needed]}. He even went so far to suggest that all living things were on the same spiritual plane, indicating he was influenced by Pythagorean spirituality. Like Pythagoras, he believed in the transmigration of souls between humans and animals and followed a vegetarian lifestyle^{[citation needed]}. He also propounded a theory of struggle in the animal kingdom that prefigures Darwin's theory of natural selection.^[3] Aristotle discussed this proto-Darwinian theory in his Physics, Book II, and rejected it:

A difficulty presents itself: why should not nature work, not for the sake of something, nor because it is better so, but just as the sky rains, not in order to make the corn grow, but out of necessity? . . . Similarly if a man's crop is spoiled on the threshing-floor, the rain did not fall for the sake of this . . .but that result just followed. Why then should it not be the same with the parts in natures, e.g., that our teeth should come up of necessity--the front teeth sharp, fitted for tearing, the molars broad and useful for grinding down the food--since they did not arise for this end, but it was merely a coincident result; and so with all other parts in which we suppose 'that there is purpose?' Wherever then all the parts came about just what they would have been if they had come about for an end, such things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish, as Empedocles says his 'man-faced ox-progeny' did.

His theory of effluences is also one of the first to speak of the distinct objects of perception. He believed that different objects could only be perceived by their respective parts (a bell ringing by the ear) because the object being perceived gave off certain effluences. These effluences were a certain size and shape and only the correct sized passageways could perceive them.

Empedocles is considered the last Greek philosopher to write in verse and the surviving fragments of his teaching are from two poems, Purifications and On Nature.

[edit] Death and literary treatments

Diogenes Laertius records the legend that he died by throwing himself into an active volcano (Mount Etna in Sicily), so that people would believe his body had vanished and he had turned into an immortal god; however, the volcano threw back one of his bronze sandals, revealing the deceit. The legend is likely to have little truth within it; there is evidence that he actually died in Greece^{[citation needed]}.

Another legend has it that he threw himself in the volcano to prove to his disciples that he was immortal. He genuinely seemed to believe he would come back as a god among man after being devoured by the fire.

In Icaro-Menippus, a comedic dialogue written by the second century satirist Lucian of Samosata, Empedocles’s final fate is re-evaluated. Rather than being incinerated in the fires of Mount Etna, he was carried up into the heavens by a volcanic eruption. Although a bit singed by the ordeal, Empedocles survives and continues his life on the moon, surviving by feeding on dew.

Empedocles' death has inspired two major modern literary treatments. Empedocles's death is the subject of Friedrich Hölderlin's play Tod des Empedokles (Death of Empedocles), two versions of which were written between the years 1798 and 1800. A third version was made public in 1826. In Matthew Arnold's poem Empedocles on Etna, a narrative of the philosopher's last hours before he jumps to his death in the crater first published in 1852, Empedocles predicts:

To the elements it came from

Everything will return.

Our bodies to earth,

Our blood to water,

Heat to fire,

Breath to air.

In 2006, a massive underwater volcano off the coast of Sicily was named after Empedocles [1].

[edit] References

^ Diogenes Laertius, Life of Empedocles, VIII (on-line text)
^ In Aristotle's Sophist, according to Diogenes Laertius.
^ Template:Citation

[edit] Further reading

Bakalis, Nikolaos (2005). Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics. Victoria, B.C.: Trafford. ISBN 1-4120-4843-5.
Burnet, John [1892] (2003). Early Greek Philosophy. Whitefish, Mont.: Kessinger. ISBN 0-7661-2826-1.
Gottlieb, Anthony (2000). The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance. London: Allen Lane. ISBN 0-7139-9143-7.
Guthrie, W. K. C. [1965] (1978). in A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 2: The Presocratic Tradition from Parmenides to Democritus. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-29421-5.
Inwood, Brad (2001). The Poem of Empedocles, rev. ed., Toronto: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 0-8020-4820-X.
Kingsley, Peter (1995). Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition. Oxford: Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-814988-3.
- Review by John Bussanich
- Review by John Opsopaus
Kirk, G. S.; J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield (1983). The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History, 2nd ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-25444-2.
Long, A. A. (1999). The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-44122-6.
Russell, Bertrand (1945). A History of Western Philosophy, and Its Connection with Political and Social Circumstances from the Earliest Times to the Present Day. New York: Simon and Schuster.
Wright, M. R. (1995). Empedocles: The Extant Fragments, new ed., London: Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 1-85399-482-0.
Bibliography: http://empedocles.acragas.googlepages.com/bibliographie