Empedocles
Based on fragmentary evidence, outside of the many legendary stories told about Empedocles, he was likely born in Acragas in Sicily, modern day Agrigento, in the middle of the 5th century BC. His family may have participated in the Olympics and was active in politics. “He is said to have been an ardent democrat, to have broken up some otherwise unknown organization called the Thousand, and to have refused the kingship of his city…His fame as a doctor, which is suggested by his own words, is proved by the numerous references to him in later medical writings.” In terms of what are likely to be tall tales, “Empedocles did not commit suicide by leaping into Mount Etna; he did not live to be 109 years old, that story being transferred to him from the similar tale told about Gorgias, his alleged student; he did not ‘found’ the study of rhetoric; he did not study under Pythagoras personally.” So much of what can be gleaned about Empedocles has to come from his own writings where influences can be seen from Xenophanes, Parmenides and Anaxagoras.
On Nature
There is a coming to be of not a single one of all mortal things, nor is there any end of deadly death, but only mixture, and separation of what is mixed, and nature is the name given to them by humans ~ Plutarch
It’s unknown if he wrote two separate poems On Nature and Purifications, or if they were part of the same poem, but they show how theories about the physical world can be used as a guide for how to live life. “On Nature is primarily concerned to give a physical explanation of the universe and its contents, and in the process seems to leave no room for an immortal soul, the Purifications is based upon the Pythagorean belief in transmigration. The resulting conflict between the two poems has been resolved, in modern times, in a variety of ways. While some scholars, including both Zeller and Burnet, are content to conclude that Empedocles held simultaneously beliefs that are not only incompatible but actually contradictory, others have argued that the two poems must belong to separate stages of Empedocles’ life.”
Empedocles took up the theory that there is no void and that everything is filled with “four eternally distinct substances, Zeus, Hera, Aidoneus and Nestis, or Fire, Air, Earth and Water…All things consist of these elements, or irreducible forms of matter, in various proportions. When a thing is said to come into existence or to perish, all that has really happened is that one temporary combination of these indestructible elements has been dissolved and another been established. Change in fact is nothing but a rearrangement; and to account for motion in space which alone could effect such a reshuffling, two motive forces, Love and Strife, take their place along with the elements as the only ultimate realities…’None of the whole is either empty or over-full.’ This never-ending cycle would seem to have four stages, two polar stages represented by the rule of Love and the rule of Strife, and the other back again from the rule of Strife towards the rule of Love. The rule of Love itself, in which ‘all things unite in one through Love’, is of course the Sphere described in the fragments in the last section. It is a uniform mixture of the four elements—so uniform that nothing whatever can be discerned in it. Before we proceed to follow the cosmic cycle through the other three stages, it will be as well to pause at this first stage (for though the cycle is never-ending and has therefore no chronologically first stage, the rule of Love is still the logical starting-point of the process), and consider in more detail the various ingredients in the mixture…Love and Strife are not, therefore, mere mechanical forces disguised under mythical or allegorical names. Empedocles believes, that sexual love and cosmic Love are one and the same self-existent external force which acts upon the person or the thing that loves. At the same time he is still unable to imagine any form of existence other than spatial extension, and in consequence his Love and Strife are still represented as if they too were material.”
By these 4 elements and 2 material forces, Empedocles was able to explain movement and change while keeping everything interdependent as per that of Parmenides. He also felt that his use of observation was more fruitful than relying on hearsay. “…He instruct[ed] his readers to make full but discriminating use of [the senses], taking care to employ each sense for the appropriate purpose.” Some senses also provide more information than others as food for thought. “…Think on each thing in the way by which it is manifest…Eyes are more accurate witnesses than ears.”
Empedocles’s theories quickly became more complicated as they had to explain worldly phenomena. “Air being the first of the elements to be separated out of the sphere, took up a position surrounding the world, and its outermost margin solidified to form a firmament. When, however, fire followed air upwards, it seems to have displaced the air enclosed in the upper half of this solid firmament, and the air thereupon sank, taking a little fire with it, into the lower half. The two hemispheres are thus formed inside the firmament, the diurnal and the nocturnal, and when the concentration of fire in the upper hemisphere somehow upsets the balance of the sphere as to start a circular motion, the result is the alternation of day and night.”
As earth and water settle down below air and fire, Empedocles was able to come up with his own theory on the genesis of life. Like the 4 elements, there are 4 stages of development. In the first stage, “solitary limbs wandered about seeking for union.” In the second stage, “monsters and deformities [manifested]…Those creatures that were accidentally fitted to survive did so, while the rest perished.” The surviving forms continue in the third stage as “‘whole-natured forms’ without distinction of sex…[They] are the outcome of the tendency of fire ‘to join its like’; and that tendency in turn is the outcome of the influence of Strife, the function of which is to break up the uniform mixture of the elements, the work of Love, into four separate masses. As the process of separation continues, the sexes are eventually distinguished.” Finally, there was a differentiation of species where “plants were the first things to appear, being, like the ‘whole-natured forms’ of temporary combinations of fire moving upwards from beneath the earth to join its like in the firmament, and earth moving downwards under the same impulse…Plants are not yet sexually differentiated, but, combining the two sex in one, reproduce themselves by bearing ‘eggs’…Male children are conceived in the warmer part of the womb and contain a greater proportion of the hot than do female. ‘The substance of the child’s limbs is divided’ between the parents.”
Empedocles described respiration in humans and animals as being well regulated to allow air in and out while at the same time keeping liquids like blood inside the body. This also extends to perception. “[It is] due to an element (here including Love and Strife) in the body of the perceiver meeting with the same element outside. ‘All things that have come into existence are continually giving off effluences; and when these effluences are of the right size to fit into the pores of the sense organ, then the required meeting takes place and perception arises.'” Blood takes on the important role as well in consciousness. “Everything has a share of thought, which in man, resides in the blood around the heart. But blood is a temporary combination of the four elements; indeed it is just because the four elements are most evenly proportioned in the blood, and blood is therefore equally perceptive of all four elements outside, that it is the chief seat of perception.”
Some confusion arises regarding the functions of love and strife and where they would appear as forces alongside the elements. “It is perhaps legitimate to imagine four concentric spheres, with the lighter elements, fire and air, outside, and the heavier, earth and water, nearer to the centre. And in that case, Love would now be excluded, while Strife presumably pervaded each of the four separated elements.” Then Love returns in a cycle. “When Strife had reached to the lowest depth of the whirl, and Love was in the middle of the eddy, under her do all these things come together so as to be one, not all at once, but congregating each from different directions at their will. And as they come together, Strife began to move outwards to the circumference. Yet alternating with the things that were being mixed many other things remained unmixed, all that Strife, still aloft, retained; for not yet had it all retired from them, blamelessly, to the outermost boundaries of the circle, but while some parts of it had gone forth, some still remained within. And in proportion as it was ever running forth outwards, so a gentle immortal stream of blameless Love was ever coming in. And straightway what before had attained to immortality became mortal, what had been unmixed before was now mixed, each exchanging its path. And as these things mingled, countless tribes of mortal things were spread abroad, endowed with shapes of every kind, a wonder to behold.”
Purifications
Aphrodite is represented by Empedocles as the symbol of Love and Ares that of Strife. This was like a state of innocence at the beginning before the primal sin. “Before man’s fall ‘the altar did not reek with pure bull’s blood.’ The primal sin seems to have been rather bloodshed and meat-eating in general.” As sins are committed, punishment awaits through Transmigration of the Souls. “The Fallen Soul…banished from its proper abode [for] 30,000 seasons…The soul pays a penalty for its sin in this world—a world of opposites; and its objective throughout its successive incarnations is to escape again from the wheel of birth back to the state of bliss from which it has fallen…The return is accomplished by the gradual ascent up the scale of lives. [From bushes to] ‘prophets, bards, doctors and princes.’ Having climbed so far, he is at last on the eve of escape from the cycle and will be reincarnated no more…’Of these I too am now one, a fugitive from the gods and a wanderer.’ He calls by the name of god, that is to say, the One and its unity, in which he himself dwelt before he was snatched thence by Strife and born into this world of plurality which Strife has organized.” By becoming a vegetarian and refraining from violence, presumably Empedocles felt that love would prevent rebirth as one merged with love. By being violent, even through meat eating, one would be trapped in rebirth until the lesson was learned.
The major contradiction that researchers are still puzzled over is how Empedocles could have a soulless physical world with a need to square that with a rebirth theory and the transmigration of souls. From this point on, researchers have to find justifications for a soul to exist in Empedocles’s physics or to support a belief that individual souls vanish into a collective “sacred mind” ultimately. Because blood was considered the seat of consciousness, “for blood round the heart in humans is thought,” and because it’s the most mixed and balanced of the 4 elements, Aristotle asked if Love was the proportion of the elements in more or less balance or if it was something else instead. Plutarch in his interpretation goes for the latter. “Not just he himself but all of us, from himself on, are wanderers here, strangers, and exiles. For, he says, O men, neither blood nor blended spirit provided us with the substance and principle of our souls, but the body is shaped from these, being earth-born and mortal, and as the soul has come here from elsewhere he calls birth a journey abroad, using the gentlest of names as a euphemism. But the profoundest truth is that the soul is in exile and wanders, being driven by divine decrees and laws.” This then allows one to deduce from there on why one should refrain from eating animals, and it is because they house souls that have been brought down by strife related to past transgressions, and it may also mean that sexual relations and the birth of new lives is also a process that attracts souls to take on a new host.
Multiplicity, fighting for ownership, consuming others, is hell on earth and unity is a renunciant attitude aiming at harmony that is like a heaven. Fasting from carnal food as well as emotional food leads one away from evil. A feast is a form of cannibalism. “Will you not cease from harsh-sounding murder? Do you not see that you are devouring each other in the carelessness of your thoughts?…A father lifts up his own dear son who has changed form, and, praying, slaughters him, committing a great folly. And they are at a loss, sacrificing him as he entreats them. But he, refusing to hear the cries slaughters him and attends an evil feast in his halls. Likewise a son seizes his father and children their mother and tearing out their life devour the dear flesh…Fast from evil.”
The Presocratic Philosophers – Kirk & Raven: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780521274555/
Parmenides and Empedocles: The Fragments in Verse Translation – Stanley Lombardo: Paperback: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780912516660/
A Presocratics Reader: Selected Fragments and Testimonia – Richard D. Mckirahan: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781603843058/
The Poem of Empedocles A Text and Translation – Brad Inwood: Paperback: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780802083531/
Philosophy: https://psychreviews.org/category/philosophy03/