Poet, Theologian, Scientist, And Philosopher: Empedocles Of Agrigentum

Empedocles of Agrigentum was a Greek philosopher who lived from approximately 490 to 430 B.C.E. As with many of the pre-socratic thinkers, his work only survives in fragments, the bulk of which derive from Aristotle and Plutarch. The three texts we know Empedocles wrote are entitled On Nature and Purifications. As for interpretive issues, some scholars maintain that Empedocles studied under the famous Parmenides. However, some debate exist as to the validity of this claim, but he was certainly familiar with Parmenides' work and attempted to correct and build on his "teacher's" work. Empedocles disagreed with Parmenides on the nature of change, as Parmenides saw change as a mere illusion, and nature as a unified unchanging substance. To support his argument, Parmenides' thought rests very heavily on a simple premise: something cannot come from nothing. He develops this premise to later conclude that the world was one single, unified substance. Empedocles did not wholly disagree with this, but he suggested that conversely, we must also accept with this premise that something cannot turn into nothing either. If we buy into this as well, then we deny the possibility of seemingly true concepts such as change, demise, decay, destruction, and absence. Empedocles stated that we should rather say that the ever-changing phenomenal world must be supported by a unified, monistic metaphysics. He elaborated on this by positing that the world was made up of four elements, or "roots," which are earth, air, fire, and water. These four basic elements undergo a cosmic tension between two forces: Love and Strife. When Love completely dominates the world, the elements are fused into indistinguishable forms without being reduced to a single element. Without any difference or distinguishable forms, then life and matter cannot exist in the world. As Strife begins to act on this world, the elements are separated but can be so manipulated by Strife as to create a whirlwind of change that cannot support any stability or unified being. When this happens, love returns to rebalance the Cosmos, life and the phenomenal world are again brought back to life, and then Love seeks to dominate the cosmos again. Once it has, the process starts all over at the beginning. We do not know whether Empedocles saw these forces as merely mechanical or if they were acts of the gods, because Empedocles was a theologian and very ethical man as well. Despite this fact, many scholars contend that Empedocles was positing the existences of two separate worlds, or Spheres, one wrought with Strife and the other with Love. Empedocles suggested that the human race lives in the world increasingly dominated by Strife. In the Strife-ridden world, the violent force acts against Love, and constantly differentiates all things, and the elements exist in differing proportions in our world to give rise to ever-increasing difference and creativity. In fact, he described botany in terms of a painter, who starts with a set of a few colors and mixes them to create an infinite number of colors for his art. Our world, like botany and the painter's art, acts similarly as the four elements combine and separate to provide an existence of change and difference. Empedocles believed, for example, that fire was a dominant element in the nature of human beings. He applied this entire Cosmology to the rest of his thought as well, including biology and ethics. The journey of the soul is modeled, in fact, on the movement of the Cosmos. The soul undergoes these same changes and tensions between Love and Strife, and we can likely assume that he applied his Cosmology to physics and theology as well. As a poet, scientist, theologian, ethicist, prophet, and metaphysician, Empedocles is certainly an important thinker in the history of Western thought. At the very least, he played an important role in the heated debate that followed Parmenides. All the Philosophy Books you could want! If you get a chance, visit the Best Philosophy Books site.