Empedocles Revisited - (1995) (original) (raw)
Related papers
Poetry and Philosophy in Empedocles : two poems, one project
Museum Sinicum, 2018
I argue that Empedocles’s philosophical thought and his choice to compose poetry participate in a unified and consistent project, which is both aesthetic and intellectual. The medium Empedocles chose is part of his philosophical message, and the relationship that he constructs between poetry and philosophy is by nature one of necessity. Empedocles reforms the conception of poetry, by intertwining it with his original theories on cosmology, biology, and on the divine. He thus draws an essential connection between poetry and the philosophical thought that is expressed in his poem. This has effects on how he adapts traditional composition techniques of dactylic poetry to his original intent. He thus corrects the earlier dactylic poetic tradition from the inside. Furthermore, Empedocles reflects on the role of his philosophical knowledge in the Greek world, which is apparent from a study of his addressees (both internal and external). I argue, finally, that Empedocles’s project is unified through the poems On nature and the Purifications: the latter interprets the former as a counterpart to the crime that was committed by the daimon when he put his trust in Strife—at the expense of all the other gods or divine principles.
2004
1. The Single-Work Hypothesis 2. The Framework: Proem and Doctrine 3. Interpreting the Framework 4. The Persuasion of Empedocles 5. Conclusion
Empedocles: A Synopsis - (2005)
in: Frühgriechisches Denken, ed. Georg Rechenauer, 2005, p. 316-342. , 2005
Empedocles was an unusual gure in his life as in his philosophy. We may, or may not, believe the story relayed by Diogenes Laertius (VIII 73), that he appeared in public dressed in royal purple, a Delphie crown on his owing locks and accompanied by a retinue of sen/ants. But we know, from his own words (fr. l 12, 7-12), that, as he passed from city to city, he was followed by >>men and women, in their tens of thousands, some of them desiring oracles, others anxious to hear the word that would cure them of their diseases<<. The amboyant lifestyle was matched by ideas that would have been, at the time, no less unconventional. For Empedocles not only expounded, in considerable detail, an account of cosmic change designed to rival the theories of his predecessors, notably Parmenides and Anaxagoras; he also spoke of life after death in a way that was totally at odds with the traditional view of the underworld to be found in the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Simplicius on Empedocles: A note on his commentary in Phys. 157.25–161.20
Steps, 2024
The present study attempts to show what influence a commentary can have on the formation of ideas about a preceding philosophical tradition. A case in point is Simplicius’ commentary on Aristotle’s “Physics” and on fragments of Empedocles’ poem. The selected passage, though small in size, is quite remarkable in terms of content and the way Simplicius deals with it. With regard to content, we are dealing here with one of the fundamental problematic plots of Empedocles’ philosophy about the alternate rule of Love and Strife. But Simplicius adds to this his own view of Empedocles’ philosophy, dictated by his desire to harmonize the views of all the pagan philosophers and place them within a single consistent scheme. Simplicius wanted to counterpose something to Christianity, which was gaining in strength, and to show that all Greek philosophy developed along a certain path and contains no internal disagreements. On the one hand, Simplicius has preserved for us very valuable material — fairly lengthy sections of the text of Empedocles’ poem. On the other hand, wishing to implement his program, Simplicius chose those fragments of the poem that fit well into it. Therefore, the question arises whether we should take into account the context in which the fragments are quoted, or simply extract from the general body of the commentary those fragments of Empedocles’ poem that we need and consider them independently?
Mythical structures in Empedocles
academia.edu, 2013
With Empedocles, the qualities of a creative religious, mytho-poetic imagination fluent in Homer, Hesiod, Pindar, and Parmenides allies itself with a rational mind keenly interested in understanding the natural world.: The first condition for an understanding of Empedocles is to banish the notion of a gulf between religious beliefs and scientific views. His work is a whole, in which religion, poetry, and philosophy are indissolubly united. His imagination is constructive, gathering elements from every available quarter-Hesiodic and Ionian cosmogony, Parmenidean rationalism, Orphic mysticism, poetic legend, the experience of a physician, a poet’s sensuous response to the sights and sounds of mature, and the fears and hopes of a spirit exiled from heaven for ‘a brief span of life that is not life’- but building all these elements together into a unitary vision of the life of the world and the destiny of the human soul, bound, like the macrocosm, upon the wheel of birth and death (Cornford 122). To give an idea of how Empedocles articulates the elements of muthos and logos in his system, eleven fragments have been chosen in an attempt to illustrate the basic aspects of his system with an attention to mythical aspects:
The Zoogonies of Empedocles Reconsidered
Rhizomata, 2021
The studies of Empedocles have made headway in showing that Empedocles postulated a double zoogony. Whereas this has been traditionally related to the hypothesis of two worlds per cycle, some Empedoclean fragments provide evidence for a double zoogony in a cosmic cycle with one world. How can we reconcile the hypothesis of two zoogonies with the assumption of a unique world? Whereas there have been attempts to address this question by retaining the traditional idea of two opposite zoogonic periods or phases, I contend that Empedocles' fragments invite us to a reconsideration of his notion of a double birth and death of mortal beings.
review of Primavesi on Empedocles.pdf
Oliver Primavesi has made an enormous contribution to the study of Empedo-cles, since he co-edited the editio princeps of the Strasbourg papyrus that contains substantial fragments of the Physica (Martin and Primavesi 1999). In the present slim volume he courageously revisits some of his central ideas about it in the light of subsequent research, including the discovery of new information on the duration of Empedocles' cycles (Rashed 2001). He includes new details about the history of the papyrus, which came from a funerary pectoral attached to its mummy by a collar rather than from a crown (5-9), an analysis of the philoso-pher's overall argument in book 1, a discussion of central problems, notably his use of first persons plural (47-57), and a revised text and translation with many new supplements and changes (64-79). To understand the significance of this book, the philosophical reader will need to grasp some no doubt tedious details of papyrological reconstruction. These are, however, vital to assessing the reliability of any particular theory about this text. The papyrus consisted of 52 fragments, which its editors skilfully assembled into six larger pieces or 'ensembles' (denoted by letters in bold face), leaving only five small scraps. However, they did not succeed in linking these separate ensembles. The beginning of the first and largest, a, corresponds to DK B17 as quoted by Simplicius, and contains the sign Γ marking line 300. This part of the text contains a general description of Empedocles' four elements, two forces (Love and Strife), and cosmic cycle. Another ensemble, d, appeared to describe the terrible fate of the soul of a person who eats meat. The editors assigned it to a later book of the Physica, even though its script and format are identical to those of the other pieces. They did so for two reasons: first, because its content seemed so disparate, and second because they believed that a series of fragments that Simplicius quotes in sequence (DK B17, 21, 23, 26), the first of which corresponds to ensemble a, must have come in between the two. To this reader of the editio princeps it seemed an uneconomical and therefore an unlikely hypothesis that fragments of two different rolls in the same hand and format were incorporated into the pectoral from which all the pieces derive; nor did it appear a necessary assumption that they were widely separated within the same roll. Hence I tested the reverse hypothesis, i.e., that all the pieces derive from the same portion of a single roll, by positing that they all came from the smallest possible length within it. The paper model that I made, combined with observations of the papyrus' physical state when I examined it in Strasbourg together with its editors, enabled me to show that (i) ensemble c (= B20, which
The paper examines all the entities that are said to be divine in Empedocles’ philosophical poetry (i.e. roots, forces, long-lived gods, daemons, the Sphere and the holy mind), and raises the question of whether or not they form a rather consistent view of what it is for something to be a god. The paper also examines the dialectics of mortality and immortality in Empedocles’ thought. Since everything whatso- ever, including the most unstable living beings, stemmed from divine principles there is a sense in which all composite things were regarded as divine in Empedocles’ cosmos. But there is another sense in which only highly integrated structures were considered to be gods. To suffer as a mortal, it is argued, was to live a fragmented life continuously threatened by the prospect of death. Contrariwise, to lead a divine life was to live in wholeness, not at all worried by the eventual termination of such a blessed existence. In conclusion it is argued that two distinct trends of early Greek poetry and philosophy seem to have vied for supremacy in Empedocles’ understanding of godhead.
Table of Contents Anna Marmodoro: Empedocles’s metaphysics 1 Oliver Primavesi: Empedocles’ Cosmic Cycle and the Pythagorean Tetractys 5 John Palmer: Elemental Change in Empedocles 30 Patricia Curd: Powers, Structure, and Thought in Empedocles 55 Catherine Rowett: Love, Sex and the Gods: Why things have divine names in Empedocles’ poem, and why they come in pairs 80 David Sedley: Empedoclean Superorganisms 111