(c.
492—432 B.C.E.)
Empedocles (of
Acagras in Sicily) was a philosopher and poet: one of the most
important of the philosophers working before Socrates (the
Presocratics), and a poet of outstanding ability and of great
influence upon later poets such as Lucretius. His works On Nature and
Purifications (whether they are two poems or only one – see below)
exist in more than 150 fragments. He has been regarded variously as a
materialist physicist, a shamanic magician, a mystical theologian, a
healer, a democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud. To him is
attributed the invention of the four-element theory of matter (earth,
air, fire, and water), one of the earliest theories of particle
physics, put forward seemingly to rescue the phenomenal world from
the static monism of Parmenides. Empedocles’ world-view is of a
cosmic cycle of eternal change, growth and decay, in which two
personified cosmic forces, Love and Strife, engage in an eternal
battle for supremacy. In psychology and ethics Empedocles was a
follower of Pythagoras, hence a believer in the transmigration of
souls, and hence also a vegetarian. He claims to be a daimôn, a
divine or potentially divine being, who, having been banished from
the immortals gods for ‘three times countless years’ for
committing the sin of meat-eating and forced to suffer successive
reincarnations in an purificatory journey through the different
orders of nature and elements of the cosmos, has now achieved the
most perfect of human states and will be reborn as an immortal. He
also claims seemingly magical powers including the ability to revive
the dead and to control the winds and rains.
1. Life
The most detailed
source for Empedocles' life is Diogenes Laertius, Lives of the
Eminent Philosophers 8.51-75. Perhaps because of his claims to divine
status and magical powers a remarkable number of apocryphal stories
gathered around the life of Empedocles in antiquity. His death in
particular attracted attention and is reported to have occurred in
several, clearly bathetic, ways: that he fell overboard from a ship
and drowned; that he fell from his carriage, broke his leg and died;
that he hanged himself; or the most famous account that, when he felt
he was shortly to die and because he wished to appear to have been
apotheosized, he leapt into the crater of Etna. In this story the
ruse was unfortunately discovered when one of his trademark bronze
sandals was thrown up by the volcano.
From more reliable
sources it seems that he was born at Acragas in Sicily around 492
B.C.E. and died at the age of sixty. He was the son of a certain
Meton, and was from an important and wealthy local aristocratic
family: his grandfather, also called Empedocles, is reported to have
been victorious in horse-racing at the Olympic Games in 496 B.C.E. It
is not known where or with whom he studied philosophy, but various
teachers are assigned to him by ancient sources, among them
Parmenides, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Anaxagoras and Anaximander (from
whom he is said to have inherited his extravagant mode of dress).
Whether or not he was his pupil, Empedocles was certainly very
familiar with the work of Parmenides from whom he took the
inspiration to write in hexameter verse, and whose physical system he
adopts in part, and partly seeks to rectify.
He is reported to
have been wealthy and to have kept a train of boy attendants and also
to have provided dowries for many girls of Acragas. In dress he
affected a purple robe with a golden girdle, bronze sandals, and a
Delphic laurel-wreath, and in his manner he was grave and cultivated
a regal public persona. These attributes contrast with his political
outlook which is uniformly reported to have been actively
pro-democratic. He began his political career with the prosecution of
two state officials for their arrogant behaviour towards foreign
guests which was seen as a sign of incipient tyrannical tendencies.
He is also credited with activities against other anti-democratic
citizens, and even with putting down an oligarchy and instituting a
democracy at Acragas by use of his powers of rhetorical persuasion.
Two speeches of his in favour of equality are also mentioned. His
surviving poetry certainly shows considerable rhetorical skills, and
indeed he is credited by Aristotle with the invention of rhetoric
itself. Another report is of his breaking up a shadowy aristocratic
political organisation called the 'Thousand'. As a whole the
tradition presents a picture of Empedocles as a popular politician,
rhetorician, and champion of democracy and equality. This appears to
fit in with the known history of Acragas where after the death of the
popular and enlightened tyrant Theron in 473 B.C.E. his son
Thrasydaeus proved to be a violent despot. After his forcible removal
a democracy was established despite continuing political tensions.
As well as a being a
philosopher, poet and politician, Empedocles was famous for his
medical skills and healing powers. In his works he presents himself
as a wandering healer offering to thousands of eager followers
'prophecies' and ‘words of healing for all kinds of illnesses' (fr.
112 (Fragment numbers are those of Diels-Kranz)). He also promises
his addressee Pausanias 'you will learn remedies (pharmaka) for ills
and help against old age' and even ‘you will lead from Hades the
life-force of a dead man'. To what degree this represents the real
Empedocles is not known, but a tradition grew up of him as both a
renowned physician and a practitioner of more magical cures, or as a
charlatan. These stories however, may well derive from Empedocles'
own words in his poetry. On the other hand his work does show
considerable interest in biology and especially in embryology and he
was eminent enough as a writer on medicine to be attack ed by the
writer of the Hippocratic treatise On Ancient Medicine who attempts
to separate medicine from philosophy and rejects Empedocles' work
along with all philosophical medical works as irrelevant. The stories
of his wonder-working such as curing entire plagues, reviving the
dead and controlling the elements are clearly exaggerated at least,
but it is becoming clearer, especially since the discovery of the
Strasbourg fragments (see below), that, contrary to many former
interpretations, Empedocles did not make a clear separation between
his philosophy of nature and the more mystical, theological aspects
of his philosophy, and so may well have seen no great difference in
kind between healing ills through empirical understanding of human
physiognomy and healing by means of sacred incantations and ritual
purifications. His public as well may have made no great distinction
between 'scientific' and sacred medicine as is suggested by the
account of Empedocles curing a plague by restoring a fresh
water-supply, after which he was venerated as a god.
2. Physics and
Cosmology
a. Physics
The foundations of
Empedocles' physics lie in the assumption that there are four
'elements’ of matter, or ‘roots’ as he calls them, using a
botanical metaphor that stresses their creative potential: earth,
air, fire and water. These are able to create all things, including
all living creatures, by being 'mixed' in different combinations and
proportions. Each of the elements however, retains its own
characteristics in the mixture, and each is eternal and unchanging.
The positing of these four roots of matter forms part of a tradition
of opposite material creative principles in Presocratic philosophy,
but it also has its origins in an attempt to counter the theories of
Parmenides who had argued that the world is single and unchanging
since nothing can come from nothing and nothing can be destroyed into
nothing: the theory known as Eleatic monism. Empedocles' response was
to appropriate Parmenides’ ideas and to use them against
themselves. Nothing can come from nothing nor be destroyed into
nothing (fr. 12), and therefore, in order to rescue the reality of
the phenomenal world, there must be assumed to exist something
eternal and unchanging beneath the constant change, growth and decay
of the visible world. Empedocles then, transfers the changelessness
that Parmenides attributes to the entire world to his four elements,
and replaces the static singularity Parmenides' world with a dynamic
plurality. The four elements correspond closely to their expression
at the macroscopic level of nature, with the traditional
quadripartite division of the cosmos into earth, sea, air, and the
fiery aether of the heavenly bodies: these four naturally occurring
'elements' of the cosmos clearly represent a fundamental natural
division of matter at the largest scale. This division at the
macroscopic level of reality is applied reductively at the
microscopic level to produce a parallelism between the constituents
of matter and the fundamental constituents of the cosmos, but the
reduction of the world into four types of material particles does not
deny the reality of the world we see, but instead validates it.
Empedocles stresses this parallel between the elements at the
different levels of reality by using the terms 'sun' ‘sea’ and
‘Earth’ interchangeably with ‘fire’, ‘water’ and ‘earth’.
Of the four elements, although Empedocles stresses their equality of
powers, fire is also granted a special role both in its hardening
effect on mixtures of the other elements and also as the fundamental
principle of living things.
b. Cosmology
Empedocles also
posits two cosmic forces which work upon the elements in both
creative and destructive ways. These he personifies as Love (Philia)
- a force of attraction and combination – and Strife (Neikos) – a
force of repulsion and separation. Whether these cosmic forces are to
be envisaged in simply mechanistic terms as descriptions of the way
things happen, or as expressions of internal properties of the
elements, or as external forces that act upon the elements, is not
clear. It is also unclear whether the two forces are to be seen as
impersonal mechanistic physical forces or as intelligent divinities
that act in purposive ways in creation and destruction. Evidence can
be found for all these interpretations. What is clear is that these
two forces are engaged in an eternal battle for domination of the
cosmos and that they each prevail in turn in an endless cosmic cycle.
Beginning from the
top of the diagram and proceeding clockwise, when Love is completely
dominant she draws all the elements fully together into a Sphere in
which, although the elements are not fused together into a single
mass, each is indistinguishable from the others. The Sphere then, is
an a-cosmic state during which no matter can exist, and no life is
possible. Then as Love's power gradually weakens and Strife begins to
grow in power, he gradually separates out the elements from the
Sphere until there is enough separation for matter to come into
existence, for the world to be created and for all life to be born.
When Strife has achieved total domination we again get an a-cosmic
state in which the elements are separated completely and the world
and all life is destroyed in a Whirl. Then Love begins to increase in
power and to draw the elements together again, and as she does so the
world is again created and life is again born. When Love has achieved
full dominan ce we return once more to the sphere. As Empedocles puts
it in fr. 17.1-8:
A twofold tale I
shall tell: at one time it grew to be one only from many, and at
another again it divided to be many from one. There is a double birth
of what is mortal, and a double passing away; for the uniting of all
things brings one generation into being and destroys it, and the
other is reared and scattered as they are again being divided. And
these things never cease their continuous exchange of position, at
one time all coming together into one through Love, at another again
being borne away from each other by Strife's repulsion.
The cosmos exists in
a state of constant flux then, beneath which there is a certain sort
of stability in the eternity of the elements. The world is in a
constant state of organic evolution, and there appear to be two
different creations and two different worlds which have no direct
link between them. According the most widely accepted interpretation
Empedocles considered that we ourselves inhabit the world under the
increasing power of Strife.
2. Biology
Empedocles' physics
have a particularly biological focus as is indicated by his choice of
the botanical metaphor of 'roots’ for what were later called
'elements'. The term ‘roots’ stresses the creative potential of
the roots rather than illustrating the way they create things by
being mixed in different combinations: 'elements' (stoicheia in
Greek, elementa in Latin) is the word for the letters of the
alphabet, and is a metaphor that stresses the ability of the elements
of matter to form different types of matter by interchange of
position just as a limited number of letters are able to form all
sorts of different words on the page. To illustrate this aspect of
the creative abilities of his roots Empedocles uses an analogy with
the way painters can use a limited number of colours to create all
sorts of different colours and represent all the different
productions of nature.
Fr. 23:
“As painters, men
well taught by wisdom in the practice of their art, decorate temple
offerings when they take in their hands pigments of various colours,
and after fitting them in close combination - more of some and less
of others – they produce from them shapes resembling all things,
creating trees and men and women, animals and birds and
water-nourished fish, and long-lived gods too, highest in honor; so
let not error convince you in your mind that there is any other
source for the countless perishables that are seen, but know this
clearly, since the account you have heard is divinely revealed.”
Among other aspects,
this analogy exhibits Empedocles' tendency to think about the
creative abilities of the elements in terms of their biological
products, here a characteristically Empedoclean list of creatures
representing the different orders of nature: plants, humans, land
animals, birds, and fish, as well as gods. If painters use a mixture
of a small number of pigments to produce copies of the works of
nature, then the same process is productive of those works of nature.
In other ways as well in his presentation of the cosmic cycle and the
endless combination and separation of the elements he tends to elide
the distinction between the elements and the life-forms they produce.
Just as in the parallel he draws between the elements of the cosmos
on both microscopic and macroscopic levels, so a close parallel is
drawn between living creatures and their constituent elements.
a. Origin of
Species
Empedocles presents
us with the earliest extant attempt at producing a detailed rational
mechanism for the origin of species. Greek traditions include the
aetiological myths of the origin of a particular species of animal by
transformation from a human being (many of these ancient mythological
aetiologies are collected by Ovid in the Metamorphoses). The origins
of humans, or of particular heroes, founders of cities or of races is
frequently explained by what I term a botanical analogy: they
originally emerged autochthonously from the ground just as plants do
today, and this is also standard in ancient scientific theories as
well: the original spontaneous generation of life from the earth,
with all creatures emerging in their present species. Empedocles
attempts to provide a comprehensive mechanism for the origins not
simply of humans or of a particular animal but of all animal life,
including humans, and a rational mechanism that would seem to do away
with the need for any design in creatures or any external agency to
order them and separate them into their individual species.
In Strasbourg fr.
a(ii) 23-30 we now find the following lines in which Empedocles
seemingly introduces his account of zoogony:
I will show you to
your eyes too, where they find a larger body: first the coming
together and the unfolding of birth, and as many as are now remaining
of this generation. This [is to be seen] among the wilder species of
mountain-roaming beasts; this [is to be seen] in the twofold
offspring of men, this [is to be seen] in the produce of the
root-bearing fields and of the cluster of grapes mounting on the
vine. From these convey to your mind unerring proofs of my account:
for you will see the coming together and unfolding of birth.
Empedocles promises
an exposition of zoogony and the origin of species which, from the
examples he gives - wild animals, humans and plants - is clearly
intended to encompass all animal and plant life, including humans. He
appeals to present day species as proofs of his theories: we can see
both the products of this process of zoogony around us in nature
today and also, it seems, we can see the same processes still going
on today. That the theory refers to present day species rather than
creatures in some counter world is underlined by the stress
Empedocles puts on 'as many as are now remaining of this generation'.
So the theory is intended to explain the origin and development of
all life and refers specifically to the animals and plants around us
today, both as examples of and as proofs of the theory he will
propose. This process of generation he describes by the repeated 'the
coming together and the unfolding of birth'. This seems to posit two
processes which work, either together or separately, to produce the
life we see around us today: a process of coming together and also a
process of unfolding or perhaps more strictly 'unleafing' since the
metaphor originates from the leaves of plants. So the second part of
this process of zoogony involves a botanical metaphor: just as in the
traditional botanical analogy of the myths of autochthony, an appeal
to the development and growth of plants is used to describe the
process of the development of all life.
According to
fragments B57, B59, B60, and B61, first of all individual limbs and
organs were produced from the earth. These wandered separately at
first and then under the combining power of Love they came together
in all sorts of wild and seemingly random hybrid combinations,
producing double fronted creatures, hermaphrodites, ox-faced man
creatures and man-faced ox-creatures. This weird picture is explained
by Aristotle in the Physics and later in more detail by Simplicius in
his commentary on the Physics as a theory of the origin of species in
which, as we would put it, a certain form of natural selection is
operative. The creatures assembled wrongly from parts of disparate
animals will die out, either immediately, or by being unable to
breed, and only the creatures by chance put together from homogeneous
limbs will survive and so go on to found the species that we see
today. The production of species and their ordering then is explained
by a mechanistic process long recognised as a forerunner of Darwin's
theory of natural selection. Unlike in Darwin's theory however, there
would seem to be no gradual evolution of one species into another,
and all of the variety of nature is produced in a great burst of
birth in the beginning and is then whittled down by extinctions into
the creatures we see today. That this theory intends to account for
the origins of both humans and animals is ensured by the component
parts of the ox-headed man-creatures and man-headed ox-creatures.
There will clearly also be created by this system man-headed
man-creatures and ox-headed ox-creatures, that is to say normal oxen
and normal humans, although they are not mentioned. Further evidence
that this zoogony relates to present day creatures is given by
Aristotle and Simplicius who tell us that this process is still going
on today.
However, Empedocles
also adds to this theory another explanation of the origins of humans
very much along the lines of traditional myths of autochthony. In fr.
B62 and Strasbourg fr. d he describes the 'shoots' of men and women
arising from the earth, drawn up by fire as it separates out from the
other elements during the creation under the power of increasing
Strife. As his choice of the word 'shoots' indicates these are not
yet fully articulated people with distinct limbs but ‘whole-nature
forms’ that ‘did not as yet show the lovely shape of limbs, or
voice or language native to man'. We may assume that as Strife
increases in power these 'shoots’ will, just as plant buds do,
gradually become fully articulated with distinct limbs and features.
So human origins are accounted for by a botanical analogy, with
humans as biological productions of the earth itself. This theory is
also intended to account for modern-day as humans, as Strasbourg fr.
d tells us 'even now daylight beholds their remains'. So both the
creation under Love and the creation under Strife refer to the
origins of modern plants, animals, and humans. This is problematic
since according to the picture of the cosmic cycle given above the
world created by Strife is quite separate from that created by Love,
and two quite different explanations are given by Empedocles for each
creation of life. Various attempts have been made to account for
this, including a radical revision of the cosmic cycle in order to
allow both creations of life to take place within the same world, and
also seeing the two different worlds of the cosmic cycle as more
useful devices for examining different aspects of creation separately
than absolutely chronologically separate phases of a cycle: the work
of Love in combining creatures and the work of Strife in articulating
them would then actually take place at the same time, but are simply
described as operative in chronologically separate phases.
b. Embryology
Empedocles is an
exponent of the pangenetic theory of embryology. In this theory
inheritance of characteristics from both mother and father is
explained by each of the two parents' limbs and organs creating tiny
copies of themselves. These miniature limbs and organs then flow
together in the generative seed and when the two seeds combine in the
womb the father's seed may provide the model for the nose, while the
mother's seed the model for the eyes and so on. This is an elegant
way of accounting for inheritance of characteristics, but this is
unlikely to be the whole story. As Aristotle points out there are
strong conceptual similarities between Empedocles' embryology and the
creation under Love in which we see the coming together of pre-formed
limbs creating life. So Empedocles thinks of the original formation
of animals as a process analogous to the present day formation of the
embryo in the womb. From his description in Strasbourg fr. a (ii)
23-30 'the coming together and unfolding of birth' we seem to have
two processes that are at work in the formation of both present day
creatures and the original creation of life. The 'coming together'
describes both the original coming together of the limbs of the first
creatures and also the coming together of the tiny limbs in
conception. The other side of the creative process, the 'unfolding'
is illustrated by the creation under Strife of the ‘shoots of men
and pitiable women’ whose limbs are at first not fully articulated
or defined: they will undergo a process of 'unfolding' just like
plant buds and become fully developed humans. This 'unfolding' is
clearly paralleled in embryology by the gradual development and
growth of the embryo in the womb. Therefore it may be best to think
of the tiny limbs and organs contained in the generative seed not as
fully developed limbs and organs, but as the genetic material that
contains the potential for the development of limbs and organs. This
is so mewhat speculative, but would provide Empedocles with a much
more nearly truly evolutionary theory of the origin of species than
had previously been ascribed to him. Certainly the differentiation
into the two sexes is described in terms of potential: the warmth of
the womb determines whether the embryo will be male or female, cf. fr
B 65: 'They were poured in pure places; some met with cold and became
women', fr. B 67: 'For the male was warmer . . . this is the reason
why men are dark, more powerfully built, and hairier’. It may be
that other characteristics are also determined or informed by
environmental factors as well.
c. Perception and
Thought
Empedocles seems to
have been the first philosopher to give a detailed explanation of the
mechanism by which we perceive things. His theory, criticised by
Aristotle and Theophrastus, is that all things give off effluences
and that these enter pores in the sense organs. The pores and the
effluences will be of varying shapes and sizes and so only certain
effluences enter certain sense-organs if they meet pores of the
correct size and shape to admit them. Further, perception is achieved
by the attraction of similars: we perceive light colours with fire in
the eye, dark colours with water, smell is achieved by the presence
of breath in the nostrils etc.
As Theophrastus
complains, perception is closely linked to thought by Empedocles, cf.
fr. B109:
“With earth, we
perceive earth, with water water, with air divine fire, with fire
destructive fire, with love love, and strife with baneful strife.”
fr. B 107:
“All things are
fitted together and constructed out of these, and by means of them
they think and feel pleasure and pain.”
In B 109 Empedocles
moves from perception of physical elements to ethical perceptions
using the same theory of perception by similars, while in B 107 we
can see the theory used to account more directly for thought itself.
Hence for Empedocles there is a close link between what we perceive
and what we think. Further our thoughts will also be affected by our
own physical constitutions (B 108). This process of the attraction of
like to like is operative from the most fundamental level with the
parts of the roots of matter being attracted to their like, right up
to the highest level of the purest mixture which is the highest form
of thought. Hence it seems that everything in nature has a share in
perception and intelligence, cf. fr. 110.10: 'know that all things
have intelligence and a share of thought'.
3. Ethics and the
Journey of the Soul
a. The Daimôns and
Transmigration of Souls
Plutarch cites the
following fragment as coming from 'the beginning of Empedocles'
philosophy’, fr. B 115:
There is a decree of
necessity, ratified long ago by gods, eternal and sealed by broad
oaths, that whenever one in error, from fear, defiles his own limbs,
having by his error made false the oath he swore - daimôns to whom
life long-lasting is apportioned – he wanders from the blessed ones
for three-times countless years, being born throughout the time as
all kinds of mortal forms, exchanging one hard way of life for
another. For the force of air pursues him into the sea, and sea spits
him out onto earth's surface, earth casts him in the rays of blazing
sun, and sun into the eddies of air; one takes him from another, and
all abhor him. I too am now one of these, an exile from the gods and
a wanderer, having put my trust in raving Strife.
Traditionally
Plutarch's seeming attribution of this fragment to On Naturewas
assumed to be incorrect and it was placed in the Purifications
instead. However from the evidence of the Strasbourg fragments it
seems that it may well be that Plutarch was correct, since they
contain a description of the details of the sin Empedocles accuses
himself of in fr. 115, cf. Strasbourg fr. d lines 5-6:
'Alas that merciless
day did not destroy me sooner, before I devised with my claws
terrible deeds for the sake of food'
In fr. 115
Empedocles describes himself as a 'daimôn', a being to whom long
life has been granted, but who has committed the sin of meat-eating
and bloodshed and consequently is punished by banishment from the
company of the immortal gods. The banishment lasts three myriads of
years, either 'three-times countless years' or thirty thousand years.
In either case he must atone for his sin by being repeatedly
reincarnated into all the different living forms of the different
orders of nature. Elsewhere he says: 'For before now I have been at
some time boy and girl, bush, bird, and a mute fish in the sea' (fr.
B 117). Empedocles then, has already suffered this nearly endless
cycle of reincarnations having been seemingly hurled down to the
lowest rung of the scale of nature but has worked his way up, has
been purified at last and, as he tells us in fr. B. 112, is himself
now an immortal god. There are others too numbered among the daimôns,
those who 'at the end ... come among men on earth as prophets,
minstrels, physicians and leaders, and from these they arise as gods,
highest in honour.' (fr. 146). It is not entirely clear whether we
are meant to imagine the daimôns as an entirely separate class of
blessed being with a different creation and a different fate from
ourselves, the ordinary mortals, or as people who began as ordinary
mortals but who, having purified themselves and having achieved
perfection, are now approaching divine status. The latter reading
would perhaps make more sense in terms of Empedocles' didactic
ethical mission: if we are all potentially perfectable, then his
purificatory teaching becomes much more crucial. Empedocles himself,
as his life shows, has achieved all four of the states that qualify
the daimôns for immortality, he is a prophet, a minstrel, a
physician and a leader, and can now pass on his wisdom to those on
earth whom he is about to leave behind when he rejoins the company of
the immortals. As can be seen from the description above, there are
strong similarities between Empedocles and the teachings of
Pythagoras on the transmigration of souls. Empedocles is clearly a
follower of Pythagoras, in his ethics and psychology at least, and
shares his vegetarianism and pacifism.
b. Meat-eating and
Sin
Slaughter and
meat-eating are the most terrible of sins, indeed for him animal
slaughter is murder and meat-eating is cannibalism, as shown by fr.
137:
The father will lift
up his dear son in changed form, and blind fool, as he prays he will
slay him, and those who take part in the sacrifice bring the victim
as he pleads. But the father, deaf to his cries, slays him in his
house and prepares an evil feast. In the same way son seizes father,
and children their mother, and having bereaved them of life devour
the flesh of those they love.
Here, in terms
reminiscent of Hesiod's description of the coming horrors of the Iron
Age in Works and Days, we see the appalling consequences of
meat-eating: murder, cannibalism, the destruction of whole families
and, by extrapolation, of entire societies. This is a radical
position in both political and religious terms. Plato's Protagoras in
the eponymous dialogue can simply assume that all men agree that
warfare is 'a fine and noble thing'. For Empedocles warfare, one
fundamental plank of the Greek city state, is the most appalling of
all evils and is punished by the immortals by hurling the
perpetrators not only out of their society, but out of human society
and even down to the level of the lowest forms of nature.
c. Theology
In religious terms
as well traditional animal sacrifice, another fundamental basis of
Greek society, becomes the grossest impiety of all. A probably
apocryphal tale reports that Empedocles sacrificed an ox made of
honey and meal at Olympia, the religious heart of Greece: a pointed
act of criticism of traditional religion. Further evidence for his
radical theology lies in his appropriation of the names of the
Olympian gods for his roots of matter and his cosmic forces.
Implicitly he argues that the Olympian gods came into being as
misinterpretations of the natural world: the real 'gods' are the
elements of nature and the cosmic forces that direct their endless
evolutionary cycle. His religious and ethical teachings then are of
purification of the soul in an attempt to achieve perfection and
unity with perfect Love. He pictures a time in the past, a sort of
golden age, when this universal harmony existed, fr. B 128:
They did not have
Ares as god or Kydoimos, nor king Zeus, nor Kronos, nor Poseidon but
queen Kypris [Love]. Her they propitiated with holy images and
painted animal figures, with perfumes of subtle fragrance and
offerings of distilled myrrh and sweet-smelling frankincense, and
pouring on the earth libations of golden honey. Their altar was not
drenched by the unspeakable slaughter of bulls, but this was the
greatest defilement among men - to bereave of life and eat noble
limbs.
fr. B 130:
“All creatures,
both animals and birds, were tame and gentle to men, and bright was
the flame of their friendship.”
Originally people
worshipped only one god, Love, and this resulted in universal
harmony, even between humans and animals. Implicitly the argument
runs that the worship of the Olympian gods he mentions, Ares, Zeus
and Poseidon, and the sacrifices they demand have destroyed this
harmony, resulting in worship also of Kydoimos, the personification
of the noise of battle. Traditional religion with their sacrificial
slaughter and meat-eating have had a degrading effect on society.
d. Physics and Theology
As I say above it
now seems very likely that Empedocles discussed purificatory topics
early on in his poem On Nature. Unlike for modern rationalists then,
it seems that for Empedocles there was no fundamental divide between
physics and religion. Indeed as can be seen from fr. B 115 above the
sin of the daimôn results in an expiatory journey of the soul not
only through the different orders of living creatures but through the
physical elements of the cosmos. Empedocles draws a close analogy
between the cycle of the soul and the cycle of the cosmos itself.
This is a hallmark of his work: frequently he uses the same language
whether describing the journey of the soul or the cycle of the
elements. Sometimes in the Strasbourg fragments the description of
the elements coming together under the power of Love is rendered as
'we are coming together'. His sin, in fr. 115, he describes as
resulting from having put his trust in raving Strife, one of his
cosmic forces, and conversely in fr. 130 we see the people of the
golden age worshipping the other cosmic force, Love. Clearly there is
more than a little cross-over between physics and ethics for
Empedocles. How this works in detail is hard to pin down but perhaps
the best reading we can give of On Natureis that it represents the
detailed expression of the cycle of the soul at the level of the
entire cosmos. The endless evolutionary cycling of the elements is in
fact part of the cycle of the soul.
