## 1. Life and Writings



The philosopher Empedocles was a native of the south-central Sicilian
polis of Acragas (Agrigento). Although the precise dates of his
lifetime are unknown, the sources agree that he was born in the early
fifth century BCE; according to Aristotle, he died at sixty years of
age (DK 31 A 1 = P 5b). Rich detail on the philosopher's life
survives in particular through a late biography written in Diogenes
Laertius' *Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers*,
which dates to the third century CE. Unfortunately, much of this is a
romantic confection, and is often derivative of the verses of
Empedocles himself. It is likely that he was born to an aristocratic
family; his grandfather kept horses and was remembered as a victor at
the Olympic Games. According to the fourth-century BCE sophist
Alcidamas' *Physics* (A 1 = P 15), Empedocles was a
student of Parmenides of Elea, and later became an adherent of
Anaxagoras and Pythagoras. This intellectual apprenticeship, while
hardly possible on chronological grounds, does accurately reflect the
verses' engagement with Parmenides' theories of coming to
be and passing away, and Empedocles' familiarity with the
Pythagoreans and Anaxagoras is not unlikely. The third-century BCE
biographer of eminent philosophers, Hermippus, by contrast, held that
he was an emulator of Xenophanes (A 1 = P 14). In Empedocles'
lifetime, Acragas underwent a series of political transformations from
tyranny to oligarchy to democracy. The biographical tradition
persistently attributes democratic sensibilities to Empedocles: he is
said to have championed the people against those advancing inequality
or aiming at tyranny (A1 = P 18-19). Further, he was associated
with dismantling an oligarchy of the "Thousand" and
rejecting an offer of kingship; similarly, his father apparently
forestalled a rising tyranny (D.L. 8.72). These anecdotes may explain
Empedocles' reputation as a talented orator in the absence of
any prose treatises. In Aristotle's *Sophist*, he is
credited with rhetoric's invention (A 1 = R 5). So too,
Aristotle's *On the Poets* praised his kinship with Homer
in the force of his language and metaphor (A 1 = R 1b). Significantly,
Gorgias was associated with him as a student (A 1 = P 24). Elsewhere,
Empedocles is reported to have been a physician (A 1 = P 24) and a
founder of the Sicilian school of medicine. Evidence for this
reputation is present already in the late fifth century in the
Hippocratic *On Ancient Medicine*, which critiques
Empedocles' alliance of the study of nature and medicine (A 71 =
R 6). Most provocatively, he is said to have brought a dead woman back
to life and been worshipped as a god in his own lifetime (A 1 = P 29),
narratives clearly embellished from his poetry (B 112.4 = D 4.4). Like
his contemporaries, Empedocles supposedly travelled widely, visiting
Thurii after its foundation in 445/4, Olympia, and elsewhere in the
Peloponnese. His enemies may have taken such an absence as an
opportunity to exile the philosopher (A 1 = D.L. 8.67). Reports on his
death are confused. We can be sure that he did not make the fiery leap
into Aetna, as was widely held in antiquity (Chitwood 1986). It is
possible, but that is all, that he died in the Peloponnese (A 1 = P
29.71b-72).



Though his work has not survived intact, Empedocles enjoyed a dynamic
afterlife among philosophers and their commentators, as well as
physicians and natural scientists. According to Diogenes Laertius,
Empedocles composed two poems, *On Nature* and the
*Purifications*. Various other works were attributed to the
philosopher in antiquity, including a hymn to Apollo, a poem on the
invasion of Xerxes, medical texts, tragedies, epigrams, and political
essays, but there is no unambiguous evidence for these. The
interpretation of the extant fragments from *On Nature* and the
*Purifications* is complicated by the modern scholarly debate
on whether they in fact constitute two works, as Diogenes Laertius
alleged, or a single philosophical project, as some recent scholars
have argued (Osborne 1987, Inwood 2001, Trepanier 2004, Janko
2005). The latter, heterodox position has been fueled further by the
recent publication of the Strasbourg papyrus (Martin & Primavesi
1999, Primavesi 2008), which contains a portion of *On Nature*
with lines that had traditionally been assigned to the
*Purifications*. This find unsettles the notion of a physical
doctrine separate from a religious one, showing that if there are two
works, these were much more closely thematically related than was
previously understood. Nevertheless, as the topics of the two parts
(if they did belong to a single poem) are sufficiently distinct, we
treat them separately here. The first primarily concerns the
formation, structure, and history of the physical world as a whole,
and the formation of the animals and plants within it; the second
concerns morality and purification. For convenience, this article uses
the traditional names for the two collections of fragments. 


## 2. On Nature



*On Nature* is a bold and ambitious work. It is addressed
variously to the Muse, Calliope; Empedocles' disciple,
Pausanias; and perhaps also to the wider community of Acragas (Obbink
1993). The poem's authority stems from its appeal to the divine
for inspiration. Empedocles' Muse does not, however, forestall
the labor that the addressee must invest in being cognitively
receptive to the message of the work (B3 = D44; B 4 = D 47). As in
traditional didactic verse, Empedocles cultivates a
"master-pupil" relationship and promises Pausanias a
mortal intelligence to soar beyond all others (B 2 = D 42). *On
Nature* contains an ontology of matter, barring complete
destruction or generation, and a cosmogony, motivated by the
aggregation and separation of Empedocles' four basic elements
through the power of Love and Strife. Following this, the poem passes
to zoogony and biology, as well as reflections on cognition and
perception.


### 2.1 Roots and Forces



*On Nature* is based on the claim that everything is composed
of four roots; these are moved by two opposing forces, Love and
Strife.



> 
> * Hear first of all the four roots of all things:
> * Zeus the gleaming, Hera who gives life, Aidoneus,
> * And Nestis, who moistens with her tears the mortal fountain.
> (B6 = D 57)
> 
> 
> 



Since the roots are identified by the names of deities--and not
by the traditional names for the elements fire, earth, air, and
water--there are rival interpretations of which deity is to be
identified with which root. Nevertheless, there is general agreement
that the passage refers to fire, earth, air (= aither, the upper,
atmospheric air, rather than the air that we breathe here on earth)
and water (cf. B 109 = D 207). Aristotle credits Empedocles with being
the first to distinguish clearly these four elements
(*Metaphysics*. 985a31-3). However, the fact that the
roots have divinities' names indicates that each has an active
nature and is not just inert matter (Rowett 2016). These roots and
forces are eternal and equally balanced, although the influence of
Love and of Strife waxes and wanes (B 6 and B 17.14-20 = D 57
and D 73.245-51).



In fragment 17 of Diels-Kranz, apparently speaking of the physical
world as a whole, Empedocles states his fundamental thesis about the
relation of roots and forces:



> 
> * Twofold is what I shall say: for at one time they [i.e., the elements]
> grew to be only one
> * Out of many, at another time again they separate to be many out of
> one.
> * And double is the birth of mortal things, double their death.
> * For the one [i.e., birth] is both born and destroyed by the coming
> together of all things,
> * While the other inversely, when they are separated, is nourished and
> flies apart (?).
> * And these [scil. the elements] incessantly exchange their places
> continually,
> * Sometimes by Love all coming together into one,
> * Sometimes again each one carried off by the hatred of Strife.
> * <Thus insofar as they have learned to grow as one out of many,>
> * And inversely, the one separating again, they end up being many,
> * To that extent they become, and they do not have a steadfast lifetime;
> * But insofar as they incessantly exchange their places continually,
> * To that extent they always are, immobile in a circle. (B 17.1-13
> = D 73)
> 
> 
> 



Immediately one is struck by the comprehensive symmetry of this
scheme. It seems to address coming-to-be and passing-away, birth and
death, and it does so with an elegant balance. The four roots come
together and blend, under the agency of Love, and they are driven
apart by Strife. At the same time, elements have an active drive
toward homogenization on the principal of affinity (Primavesi 2016).
While this passage describes periods when one of the forces is
dominant, it also describes a cycle. One force does not finally
triumph over the other; rather, their periods of dominance succeed one
another in continual alternation.



Empedocles argues that these roots and forces do not pass away nor is
anything added to them. They are the permanent constituents of the
cyclic drama just described:



> 
> * For these are all equal and identical in age,
> * But each one presides over a different honor, each one has its own
> character,
> * And by turns they dominate while the time revolves.
> * And besides these, nothing at all is added nor is lacking;
> * For if they perished entirely, they would no longer be.
> * And this whole here, what could increase it, and coming from where?
> * And how could it be completely destroyed, since nothing is empty of
> these?
> * But these are themselves, but running the ones through the others
> * They become now this, now that, and each time are continually similar.
> (B 17.27-35 = D 73.258-266)
> 
> 
> 



We find similar terminology in Parmenides' poem when he argues
that the All is one and that it does not come to be:



> 
> * And was not, nor will it be at some time, since it is now, together,
> whole
> * One, continuous. For what birth could you seek for it?
> * How, from what could it have grown? (B 8.5-7 = D 8.10-12).
> 
> 
> 



Of course, a notorious consequence of Parmenides' argument is
the impossibility of plurality and of the world of change that we
experience. By contrast, Empedocles argues for a plurality of
permanent entities, i.e., the roots and forces. By incorporating
plurality into his account, he can explain the changing world of our
experience as the combination and disaggregation of the enduring roots
under the influence of the enduring forces. 


### 2.2 Cosmogony



Cosmogony is due to the interplay of the four roots and the two
forces. Each of the roots has its specific nature. Some--like
fire and water--are traditionally seen as antagonistic;
others--like fire and air--are seen as compatible. However,
Empedocles did not think the specific natures of the roots could cause
them to organize themselves into a cosmos. Hence, he introduces Love
and Strife. Love works by bringing together roots of different types
into harmony. It does so by instilling attraction among the different
types of roots for one another; without Love, these roots would not
naturally cohere. While it is true that Love then pulls what is
similar apart from what is similar, it does not do so by causing
repulsion for one another in similar roots. By contrast, Strife
aggregates similar roots together by instilling repulsion among
different types of roots for one another. The work of Strife is to
replace the attraction among different types of roots instilled by
Love with repulsion. During the history of a cosmos, these forces are
in contention, present together in waxing and waning strengths,
throughout the coming to be of the cosmos and its creatures and in
their passing away.



While all commentators take the passage at B17.1-13 (=D
73.233-244) as fundamental, their interpretations vary,
sometimes widely. In the traditional sort of interpretation (see
O'Brien 1969, Wright 1981) this passage speaks about a two-part
symmetrical cosmic cycle, which endlessly repeats itself. We can trace
the history of one cycle, beginning with the point at which all the
roots are united, completely intermingled and motionless under the
total domination of Love, an image reminiscent of Parmenides'
spherical "what-is". Then Strife enters and begins to
separate the roots out, until finally all are completely separated
into distinct, self-contained masses of fire, air, earth and water. At
this point, Love begins to unite the roots until, once again, they are
completely intermingled and another cycle begins. In each half of the
cycle, as the separation or unification proceeds, there is a cosmogony
(generation of a cosmos or ordered world) and a zoogony (generation of
animals). In the first half-cycle, under the increasing influence of
Strife, a cosmos and then animals come to be. In the second half,
under the increasing influence of Love, again a cosmos and animals
come to be. We will start with the traditional interpretations which
hold that there are double cosmogonies and then look at the second
strain of interpretations where there is only one cosmogony.



Empedocles posits a stage in which Love is totally dominant and all
things are unified into a Sphere (B 27 and 29 = D 89 and 92). Since
this spherical unity includes the roots, they are presumably
thoroughly intermingled with one another (for an alternative view,
Sedley 2016). The Sphere is the initial stage in the formation of the
cosmos; it is not itself a cosmos. At this point, Strife begins to
insinuate itself into the Sphere (B 30 and 31 = D 94 and 95). The
outcome is the separation of the roots into a cosmos (A 49 = D
99a-b). The latter requires a separation of roots into
identifiable masses of earth, air, water, and fire (B 38 = D 122),
even though there might still be some (much diminished) presence of
each root within each of the four masses. The roots of earth, water,
air and fire would predominate in the respective masses, making them
identifiable as such. The mass of earth is at the center; water more
or less surrounds the earth. Air forms the next layer. From fire at
the periphery, the sun comes to be as a distinct entity. This
geocentric formation is what the ancients usually recognized to be our
cosmos. Since it is Strife that separates the roots, the cosmogony so
described is presumably dependent on Strife's influence.



Empedocles also describes a time when Strife has separated the roots.
This separation is total and is the opposite pole from the Sphere,
which is a total mixture under the influence of Love.



> 
> * When Strife has reached the deepest depth
> * Of the vortex, and Love has come to be in the center of the whirl,
> * Under her dominion all these [i.e., the elements] come together to be
> only one,
> * Each one coming from a different place, not brusquely, but willingly
> (B 35.20-23 = D 75.3-6)
> 
> 
> 



First of all, this somewhat mysterious description suggests that the
means by which Strife separates the roots from the beginning is a
vortex. Heavier elements like earth settle in the middle and lighter
ones like fire are pushed to the periphery. This reference to the
vortex also implies that dominance by Strife is characterized by the
whirling motion of the cosmos as we know it. In addition, this
fragment suggests the end of the rule of Strife and the beginning of
the rule of Love, as this principle begins to insinuate itself into
the elements. The latter part of this passage describes the unifying
effect of Love. 



At this point, we can start to consider the difference between
traditional and non-traditional interpretations of Empedocles'
cycle. While in traditional interpretations the separation by Strife,
as described above in Fr. 30 and 31 (= D 94 and 95), produces at first
a cosmos, the continuing influence of Strife gradually increases the
separation. Eventually, when Strife is totally dominant as described
in B35 (= D75), the roots are so thoroughly separated into their
respective places, each constituting a mass totally on its own, with
no presence in it of any portion of any of the other roots, that the
cosmos and all its movements are destroyed. These interpretations then
hold that there is another cosmogony in the reverse progress from
complete separation to complete unity, under the influence of Love.
Certainly, the symmetry of the fundamental principle might suggest a
second cosmogony. However, we do not find in the remains of
Empedocles' poem a description of another cosmogony, one taking
place under the influence of Love. Of course, that we do not find one
does not mean that it did not exist, given the fragmentary nature of
the text. In fact, Aristotle suggests in a number of places (*De
Caelo* II 13, 295a29; *De Generatione et Corruptione* II 7,
334a5) that Empedocles was committed to such a second cosmogony. But
he says Empedocles shied away from holding to such a cosmogony because
it is not reasonable to posit a cosmos coming to be from elements
already separated--as though cosmogony can only happen through
the separation of elements out of a previously blended condition of
them all (*De Caelo*, III 2, 301a14). 



Such issues lend weight to a second strain of interpretation (see Long
1974, Bollack 1965-1969), which still reads the fundamental
principle of B 17 (= D 73) as referring to alternating periods of
domination by Love and Strife. However, they hold that there is only
one cosmogony and one zoogony. In the vortex, Strife dominates in
order to separate the roots into their respective places, shattering
Love's Sphere. Strife's creation of separate elements
allows for their recombination by Love to form a cosmos. As described
above, this would be a condition in which some portions of each of the
other roots become intermingled. Love asserts her influence, forming
the cosmos (consisting of a world-order with continental land-masses,
oceans, rivers, winds, sun, moon, seasons, planets, stars, etc.). From
the mixture of roots in due proportions, there arise various forms of
animal life. Ultimately, both animals and cosmos perish as Love
totally reunifies the roots. Thus, finally, the Sphere is restored and
the cosmos ends. On this interpretation there is a single cosmogony
generated by the increasing power of Love and a single zoogony under
alternating dominance by Love and Strife. The idea of a single
cosmogony and zoogony is attractive, in part, because it echoes other
Presocratic philosophers.



The discovery and publication of twelfth-century Byzantine scholia on
Aristotle's *Physics* and *On Generation and
Corruption* (Rashed 2001, 2014) that preserve an elaborate cosmic
time line for Love and Strife's rule has further divided
scholarly opinion. The scholia record an increase of Love's
power for sixty units of time; a perfect Sphere for forty units; and a
rule of Strife lasting sixty units. Primavesi (2016) has linked this
ratio to Pythagorean number philosophy through the structure of a
double tetractys. Nonetheless, the authenticity of the scholia's
time line in relation to Empedocles' philosophical system
remains contested (Osborne 2005).


### 2.3 Zoogony



So far we have concentrated primarily on the coming to be of the
cosmos. However, the interplay of forces and roots also explains the
coming to be and destruction of animals:



> 
> * But they, when light mixed with aether in a human (?)...
> * Or in the race of savage beasts or of bushes
> * Or of birds, then ... to be born;
> * But when they are separated apart, this in turn they call
> "unfortunate destiny",
> * As is licit (*themis*), and I myself too apply it [i.e., this
> term] in the same way. (B 9 = D54)
> 
> 
> 



Empedocles uses a striking image to illustrate how roots are mixed to
produce animals:



> 
> * As when painters color many-hued sacrificial offerings,
> * Both men, by reason of their skill, very expert in their art,
> * They grasp many-colored pigments in their hands,
> * Then, having mixed them in harmony, the ones more, the others less,
> * Out of these they compose forms similar to all things,
> * Creating trees, men, and women,
> * Wild beasts and birds, water-nourished fish,
> * And long-lived gods, the greatest in honors:
> * In this way may your mind not succumb to the error that it is from
> elsewhere [scil. than from the four elementary roots]
> * That comes the source of all the innumerable mortal things whose
> existence is evident,
> * But know this exactly, once you have heard the word of a god. (B 23 =
> D 60)
> 
> 
> 



Although this analogy seems to describe the way Love combines
different roots, as we shall see Empedocles associated zoogony with
the influence of both forces. We can distinguish two sets of fragments
that tell of the way that living beings come to be. The first set
tells about fantastic events and creatures; the second about
natural-sounding events and creatures.



Let us start with the fantastic. Empedocles says that there was a time
when separate limbs wandered around on their own:



> 
> * From it [scil. the earth] blossomed many faces without necks,
> * Naked arms wandered about, bereft of shoulders,
> * And eyes roamed about alone, deprived of brows. (B 57 = D 157).
> 
> 
> 



The wandering and straying suggest aimless and disorderly movements
(and so, some influence of Strife). Then, however, these separate
limbs combined in random ways to make fantastic creatures:



> 
> * Many grew double of face and double of chest,
> * Races of man-prowed cattle, while others sprang up inversely,
> * Creatures of cattle-headed men, mixed here from men,
> * There creatures of women fitted with shadowy genitals. (B 61 = D 156)
> 
> 
> 



In these fragments there is a change from separateness to combination
and cooperation (Sedley 2016). Combination and cooperation are, of
course, the work of Love. Whether this phase also produced
non-fantastic creatures, e.g., ox-headed oxen, is not clear. Aristotle
seemed to think it did, because he says some of these combinations
were fitted to survive (*Physics*. II 8, 198b29).



In the second set of fragments we find an explanation of the way that
present day creatures come to be. 



> 
> * Come then: how fire, separating off, drew upward the nocturnal
> saplings
> * Of much-weeping men and women--
> * Hear this. For my tale is not aimless nor ignorant.
> * First, complete [or: rough] outlines sprang up from the earth
> * Possessing a share of both, of water as of heat.
> * These fire sent upward, wishing to reach what was similar to it;
> * As yet they displayed neither the lovely framework of limbs
> * Nor the voice and the organ that is native to men. (B 62 = D 157)
> 
> 
> 



This phase produces the earliest human forms, which are autochthonous,
and they have yet to show entirely human features. Ultimately, from
these there developed men and women as we know them today (B
63-65 = D 164, 162, 171, 172). At this point, sexual
reproduction becomes the focus of Empedocles' account. Still,
this first phase begins with separation of elements, as the first
lines of the fragment show, and so it involves some influence of
Strife.



It has been proposed that the move from discrete necks, arms, and eyes
to the existing, compound bodies of humans and animals is an
anticipation of a kind of evolution through natural selection (Sedley
2016). That is, single-limbed organisms joined together with one
another to produce temporary compounds that survived on the basis of
their success in the environment, and eventually came to reproduce
themselves.



In the traditional interpretations, these fragments describe two
zoogonies, one under the increasingly dominant influence of Love and
the other under the dominant influence of Strife. So, the living
beings produced by the work of Love belong to the era when Love rules
and those brought into existence by Strife belong to the era when
Strife rules. By contrast, in the second strain of interpretation,
there is only one zoogony, which takes place under the increasing
influence of Love, although Strife is still present. Thus, there are
not two zoogonies happening in distinct cosmic cycles; rather there
are fluctuations of Love and Strife within the progress from total
domination by Strife to that by Love. This question has been affected
by a surprising discovery. In 1994, at the Bibliotheque
Nationale et Universitaire of Strasbourg, a papyrus was identified as
containing extensive fragments of Empedocles' poem; some of this
material was hitherto unknown to modern readers. In the wake of this
discovery, some scholars have argued the newly found material added
weight to the traditional reading. For instance, Trepanier
(2003) argues that *ensemble* **d** (see Martin
and Primavesi 1999: 144-149) strengthens previous evidence for a
kind of zoogony taking place under the influence of Strife, which is
fully distinct from the kind of zoogony under the influence of Love.
In turn, distinct zoogonies imply distinct cosmogonies.



However, the double zoogony implies that animals or their parts will
come to be through a process of separation. Since zoogony under
increasing Love is shown to be a kind of assembly of parts that leads
to viable creatures, by parity of reasoning, zoogony under increasing
Strife should be a sundering of wholes that leads to viable creatures
or to the sort of parts that are condemned to further disintegration.
The task, then, for the traditionalists is to find in the manuscript
passages that clearly show a sundering that produces viable creatures
or parts thereof. In turn, the sundering must clearly belong to a
stage in which Strife is not just dominant--after all, their
opponents recognize a fluctuation in the influence of Love and
Strife--but is achieving complete separation. While the
traditionalists have presented passages from the manuscript that they
claim to be such evidence, the claims have not gone unchallenged (see
Balaude 2010 and Laks 2001). At this point in the continuing
scholarly debate perhaps it is not too bold to say that the new
material presents some--not uncontested--evidence for a
double zoogony.



The question of the sequence of these stages is, perhaps, not as
important as the fact that, on any view, Empedocles is proposing a way
of explaining living beings by competing principles of Love and
Strife. While each of the four roots has its particular quality, these
qualities alone are not enough to explain how a cosmos, and its
creatures, come to be. Besides the interaction of fire, air, earth,
and water, there must be other forces at work in order to have the
world we live in. Thus, the four roots, with the particular qualities,
are not so naturally antagonistic as to defy combination but are
capable both of repelling one another and of coming together. On the
one hand, a lot of our world is the effect of disintegration because
the roots prove to be antagonistic due to Strife; on the other, they
also come together by harmonizing their particular qualities due to
Love. When harmony is a creative force, how Love achieves combination
comes to the fore. The explanation of harmonizing what could be
antagonistic achieves an important depth in the idea of a proportional
mixture of roots. Empedocles says that flesh and blood are composed of
approximately equal parts of earth, fire, water, and aither (B 98 = D
190). Another proportion of elements produces bone (B 96 = D 192).
Thus, a proper balance harmonizes the roots and banishes antagonism.
However we read the cycles of Love and Strife, then, this harmony of
potentially opposing roots is only a phase. In the sphere of Love, the
proportion that produces the variety of creatures gives way to a
homogenizing blend of roots.



These fragments seem related to ancient medicine, with its theory of
the proper mixture of hot and cold, dry and wet as constituting the
healthy condition of the body (recall that we are told that Empedocles
was a physician as well as a philosopher and poet). However, the
extant fragments do not show any detailed connection with medical
explanations. The equal proportion in the mixture of blood does seem
related to another kind of explanation. Blood has a central role to
play in Empedocles' account of biological processes, to which we
now turn; among other things, it is that whereby men think (B 105 = D
240). It appears that the equal mixture allows discrimination of all
things (since, of course, all things are made up of the four elements
in differing proportions).


### 2.4 Perception/Cognition



It is not clear that Empedocles makes a distinction between perception
and cognition. Certainly the tradition in antiquity, exemplified by
Aristotle, attributes to him only an account of perception, which is
based on the following:



> 
> * For it is by earth that we see earth, by water water,
> * By aether divine aether, and by fire destructive fire,
> * And fondness by fondness, and strife by baleful strife. (B 109 = D
> 207)
> 
> 
> 



If we take "see" (*opopamen*) to mean sense
perception, then this characterization suggests that such perception
is by the likeness of external elements to internal elements. Then,
since roots and principles in the perceiver are related to the roots
and principles in the perceived object, the passage suggests that
elements in one correspond to elements in the other. This passage, of
course, does not make clear how this correspondence results in the
perception of color and shape. Still, Empedocles is able to explain,
by way of "effluences" how the elements in the perceived
object affect the elements in the perceiver. Everything gives off
effluences (B 89 = D 208). These are tiny particles that flow out from
objects continually. One can then grasp one half of the
correspondence; effluences from the perceived object flow to the
perceiver, in particular to the perceptual organ. Then, effluences of
fire would make contact with the fire in the eye. On this basis, since
fire, e.g., is white, one can construct an account of the way that
fire, and the other roots, are responsible for color perception.
However, these sorts of explanation do not encompass the perception of
Love and Strife, which seems to depend on deduction (B 17.21 = D
73.252). 



In view of such difficulties, some have argued that B 109 (= D 207)
implies a more general notion than sense perception. If
*opopamen* includes understanding and knowledge (as it
seems to in the case of Love and Strife), then Empedocles is not
talking about the meeting of external and internal elements. Rather,
he implies a more abstract operation in which we acquire an
intellectual grasp of the roots and the forces and do not just
perceive them (see Kamtekar 2009). However, two recent studies that
focus on the perception of color imply that B 109 (= D207) describes
sense perception (Ierodiakonou 2005 and Kalderon 2015:
1-16).



Whether B 109 is about sense perception or not, in another passage (B
84 = D 215) Empedocles focuses on the senses when he talks about the
way the eye functions (trans. Rashed 2007):



> 
> * Just as when someone, before taking to the road, constructs a lamp for
> himself,
> * A flame of gleaming fire in a stormy night,
> * Fitting, as protection against all winds, lantern casings
> * That scatter the breath of the buffeting winds,
> * While the light, finer as it is, leaping through to the
> outside,
> * Shines on the threshold with its unimpaired beams,
> * Thus, after Aphrodite had fitted the ogygian fire enclosed in
> membranes with pegs of love,
> * She poured round-eyed Kore in filmy veils
> * These kept off the depth of water flowing round about them,
> * But allowed the fire to pass through to the outside, in that it is
> finer, where they had been bored through with marvellous funnels.
> 
> 
> 



In the lantern, the flame is shielded by a linen screen, but the light
still goes through the linen. So the eye has a membrane through which
the flame within the eye goes out. This account of the eye refers to
another important Empedoclean idea: the surface of the eye has
passages through which the effluent fire goes out. Still, effluences
go in the other direction, as well, from the objects. This possibility
suggests another important Empedoclean idea. In a well-known passage
of Plato's *Meno* where Socrates is supposed to be giving
Empedocles' theory of perception, effluences come from the
object of perception to the organ of perception. In this account there
is also a way to distinguish the different kinds of perception.
Different sized effluences from the object fit similarly shaped
openings or pores in the different organs. Then colors are effluences
from objects fitted to the pores of the eye (A 92 = D 209). So,
perception of color is based on a correspondence between the shape of
the pores in the eye and the shape of the particles that flow from the
perceived object.



Empedocles' portrayal of the functions of the mind also seems
based on the philosophy of affinity. Its materialist basis is clear
from Empedocles' contention that the blood around the heart is
uniquely suited to cognition:



> 
> * Nourished in the seas of back-springing blood,
> * Where above all is located what humans call thought:
> * For the blood around the heart is for humans their thought. (B 105 = D
> 240).
> 
> 
> 



As in Parmenides' account of thought as a "mixture of
much-wandering limbs" (B 16 = D 51), so too in Empedocles
thinking appears to result from the blended ratio (Palmer
2019)--in this case, of the mixture of earth, water, air, and
fire (A 86 = D 237). It has been suggested that the roughly even
distribution of the four elements in blood is what makes it so suited
to cognition (Long 1966). Though both cognition and sense perception
operate on the basis of affinity, their relationship to one another is
less clear. According to the traditional interpretation, cognition
does not seem to rely upon the senses. Nor is there a single
"command center" in the blood around the heart, where
effluences from the sensory organs are relayed to. Instead, cognition
operates as a sense in its own right. This materialist account of
cognition has lately been called into question (Curd 2016). As
Empedocles is committed to the idea that all things have a share of
thought (B 110 = D 257), then this must include things that have no
blood. For humans, pericardial blood might then serve as a command
center for sensory data, for evaluation and judgment.



However we interpret the process of cognition, it is clear that
thought has the potential to dramatically alter an individual's
constitution:



> 
> * For if, leaning upon your firm organs of thought (*prapides*),
> * With pure efforts you gaze upon them benevolently,
> * They [i.e., the elements] will all be present to you throughout your
> lifetime
> * And many other good things will come to you from them. For these
> things themselves
> * Are what makes each thing grow in one's character, according to
> each person's nature.
> * But if you covet different things, such as those that among men are
> * Countless miseries that blunt their thoughts,
> * Certainly they will abandon you quickly, as the time revolves,
> * In their desire to rejoin the race that is theirs.
> * For know that all things feel (*phronesis*) and have their
> share of thought (*noema*). (B 110 = D 257)
> 
> 
> 



Acceptance of Empedocles' philosophical program is envisioned as
being dependent upon his physicalist doctrine of the mixture of
elements. Its adoption by the addressee relies on a constitution that
is receptive to truth. Still, one remains capable of growing in wisdom
(Sassi 2016). Alternatively, the disciple will increasingly become
cognitively corrupted, "blunted". The philosopher
Theophrastus reports that Empedocles attributed individual
temperaments to the more or less favorable mixture of the elements
within blood, which was responsible for intelligent, slothful, and
impetuous individuals (B 86 = D 237).



It is likely not coincidental that the balance of elements in blood
that is productive of thought approximates the elemental balance also
found within the Sphere under the influence of Love. This would
suggest that cognition is to be associated with Love. But the failure
of perfect cognition should be linked to the imperfections of the
mixture of the elements in blood, and this must be due to the
co-presence of Strife (Long 1966).


## 3. Purifications



The title of Empedocles' hexameter poem, *Purifications*,
is not likely to be original; still, the title provides a valuable
guide to its contents. Purification or cleansing
(katharmos) could be
performed both prior to pollution (to ward it off) and after it was
incurred (to dissolve its power). Ritual and symbolic washing with
water or blood were lustral, as was abstinence from select harmful
practices. Seers held that the purification of the body could remove
disease; at the same time, Pythagoreans and Orphic mystics apparently
understood purification as the emancipation of the soul from the body.
Musaeus and Epimenides also had *Purifications* attached to
their names. Any one or indeed all of these associations may have
attracted the title to Empedocles' work.



Apart from the relatively rare explicit citations from the
*Purifications*, scholars have been hard pressed to identify
what fragments come from this work as opposed to *On Nature*,
and in general adhere to "ritual" themes as the deciding
factor. Additionally, the internal audience appears to be not a single
individual as Pausanias, but the people of Acragas in general, and so
second-person plural addresses are often taken as evidence for the
*Purifications*. At the start, Empedocles declares his divinity
and his powers of prophecy and healing to his fellow citizens. In what
follows the fragments of the *Purifications* disclose an
ancient decree and an "oracle of Necessity" of
transmigration for fallen daemons, "spirits", as
punishment for their alliance with Strife through bloodshed and
perjury (B 115 = D 10 and 11). After becoming polluted, the daemon is
successively rejected by the elements and banished from the divine for
30,000 seasons. Empedocles reveals that he too is a participant in
this cosmic peripatetic. Incarnation has the potential to expiate the
crime of the daemon, and by moving through a series of lives as
plants, animals, and finally, humans, he returns to the banquets of
the gods. But in order to achieve this enlightened state, the daemon
must adhere to a rigid ethical program, refusing meat, beans, and the
bay leaf, and heterosexual sex as well. These injunctions constitute a
radical indictment of traditional Greek religion.



Transmigration is governed by the four roots under the influence of
Love and Strife, aligning the *Purifications* with the physical
doctrine of *On Nature*. Here, however, the ramifications of
matter, attraction, and repulsion are paramount for humans. Strife
sets off the initial collapse of divine unity, creating the daemons
who descend into the cycle of incarnations. Their return to the
worship of Love permits an eventual restoration to the divine.
Empedocles gives a vivid portrayal of her peaceful worship by early
humans; this near Golden Age is in stark contrast to those fragments
that inveigh against traditional sacrifices and the eating of meat in
language evocative of Agamemnon's sacrifice of Iphigenia and
Thyestes' cannibal feast of his children. Worship of Love allows
for a return to the divine. At last the daemons arise as gods;
released from exile, they enjoy a blessed life (B 146 and 147 = D 39
and 40). 


### 3.1 Transmigration



Transmigration is central to the philosophical program of the
*Purifications*. The doctrine already had adherents in the
followers of Orphism and among the Pythagoreans, and Empedocles no
doubt drew upon this prominent south Italian and Sicilian tradition in
advocating for his own cycle of incarnations (Kingsley 1995, Palmer
2019). One part of the cycle begins under the total domination of Love
through the Sphere, with Strife exiled from the four roots. After
these have become blended, Strife "leaps" into action,
becoming the motivator of the pollution by those gods who perjure a
sacred decree governed by Necessity. This triggers a chain reaction of
banishment and wandering for the newly fallen daemons in a fragment
traditionally taken as part of the *Purifications*
(O'Brien 2001):



> 
> * There is an oracle of Necessity, an ancient decree of the gods,
> * Eternal, sealed by broad oaths:
> * Whenever by crimes some one [scil. of them] pollutes his limbs, by
> murder
> * <...> whoever commits a fault by perjuring himself on oath,
> * The divinities (*daimones*) who have received as lot a long
> life,
> * Must wander thrice ten thousand seasons far from the blessed ones,
> * Growing during this time in the different forms of mortal beings,
> * Exchanging the painful paths of life.
> * For the force of the aether chases them toward the sea,
> * The sea spits them out toward earth's surface, the earth toward
> the rays
> * Of the bright sun, and he [i.e., the sun] hurls them into the eddies
> of the aether.
> * Each one receives them from another, but all hate them.
> * Of them, I too am now one, an exile from the divine and a wanderer,
> * I who relied on insane Strife. (B 115 = D 10)
> 
> 
> 



The daemon's fate reworks a passage from Hesiod's
*Theogony* (775-806) that recounts the prerogatives of
the goddess Styx, who, after strife and quarrels have emerged,
punishes the gods' perjury with an exile of nine years. Yet, as
in *On Nature*, the four roots are crucial--air, water,
earth, and fire play a key role in the cycle of incarnation,
successively expelling the daemon from their spheres of influence.
Details on the beginning of the cycle remain frustratingly unclear. At
what stage in the rising influence of Strife the gods pollute
themselves is ambiguous, as are the precise conditions under which the
gods become daemons. As in epic and tragedy, there may be "dual
motivation": Strife provokes transmigration, but the daemon
remains accountable for its crimes.



Punishment arises through exile from the gods and a long wandering;
the daemon is hated by all and reliant on Strife. Neither Zeus nor
Hades will receive it (B 142 = D 12). The fate of mortals in general
is grim:



> 
> * Alas! Wretched race of mortals, miserable race!
> * From such kinds of strife and from such groans you are born! (B 124 =
> D 17)
> 
> 
> 



The *persona loquens* laments, "I wept and wailed when I
saw an unaccustomed place" (B118 = D 14), and finds himself,
"Far from what honor and from what abundance of
bliss"... (B 119 = D 15). Transmigration as part of the
ritual of purification mandates partaking in a world of suffering in
which all life is fated to be born, become corrupt, and die. This
reasserts the doctrine in *On Nature* that all things are
mortal except for the four roots and Love and Strife, which combine
and break down matter. Empedocles narrates his own dissolutions and
recombination, 



> 
> * For as for me, once I was already both a youth and a girl
> * a bush and a bird, and a sea-leaping, voyaging fish. (B 117 = D 13)
> 
> 
> 



The wandering of the daemon forms a "ladder" of
transmigration, in a cycle ascending from animal to plant to human.
This hierarchy of incarnation is further subdivided, with laurel at
the highest plant rung; lions at the highest animal one; and seers,
poets, doctors, and leaders of men for humans (B 127, 146 = D 36, 39).
Theoretically, the cycle applies to all living creatures. This
consideration necessitates the injunction against bloodshed and
meat-eating:



> 
> * Will you not desist from evil-sounding murder? Do you not see
> * That you are devouring each other in the carelessness of your mind? (B
> 136 = D 28)
> 
> 
> 



Humans unaware of the cycle of transmigration commit murder by eating
flesh. The verb in Greek for "devouring"
(daptontes) is used of
wild animals, highlighting the dehumanizing effect of being
carnivorous. The legal language of the gods' oath returns in the
human sphere, where all humans are bound by the injunction against
killing (B 135 = D 27a). The hexameter verse form is used to
spectacular effect in Empedocles' equation of ritual animal
sacrifice to human sacrifice familiar from Agamemnon's slaughter
of Iphigenia:



> 
> * The father, lifting up his own son who has changed shape,
> * Cuts his throat, with a prayer--fool that he is! The others are
> at a loss
> * While they sacrifice the suppliant; but he [scil. the father], deaf to
> the shouts,
> * Has cut the throat and prepared an evil meal in his house.
> * In the same way, a son seizes his father and children their mother,
> * And ripping out their life they devour the flesh of their dear ones.
> (B 137 = D 29)
> 
> 
> 



The gnomic wisdom that "not to be born is best" is
modified by Empedocles in light of his prior transgressions: 



> 
> * Alas, that the pitiless day did not destroy me earlier,
> * Before I contrived terrible deeds of feeding around my lips. (B 139 =
> D 34)
> 
> 
> 



This fragment finds an almost exact parallel in *On Nature*,
again pointing to the fundamental unity of what have been perceived as
physical and ritual doctrines. Vegetarianism becomes an antidote to
the cannibalism inherent in meat-eating, and the extant fragments show
similar injunctions against bay leaves (B 140 = D 32) and beans (B 141
= D 31).



At an earlier stage in the cycle with Love more powerful, humans
enjoyed a kind of Golden Age of prosperity and peace. Under her
influence, humans and animals are harmonious: beasts and birds become
tame and gentle (B 130 = D 26). For these humans, the worship of Love
rejects blood sacrifice for honey, myrrh, perfume, and votives (B 128
= D 25). Early human history thus models the ethical norms that must
be recovered in Empedocles' modernity in order to become pure
and advance in the cycle of incarnations. The focus upon ethics in the
*Purifications* is a radical shift from prior Presocratic
discourse (Barnes 1979). Abstaining from meat, bay, beans, and
heterosexual congress may place the cycle in the realm of human
manipulation, and the *Purifications* thus has a didactic
message with the potential to accelerate the daemon's path from
human to divine being. More speculatively, it has been suggested that
the motion of the cycle itself can be changed on the basis of human
action (Osborne 2005), though this has not gone unchallenged (Picot
& Berg 2015). 


### 3.2 Gods and daemons



The prominence of the divine is made clear in the fragments of the
*Purifications*. In an introduction or an introductory section,
Empedocles asks the Muse, Calliope, to aid his inspired discourse
about the "blessed gods" (B 131 = D 7). Who are these
figures? According to Hippolytus, Empedocles' gods include the
four elements--Zeus, Hera, Aidoneus, and Nestis--and the two
powers, Love and Strife (*Refutation of All Heresies* 7.29).
Each plays a crucial role in the cycle of transmigration outlined in
the poem: Strife governs the exile of the daemon; the elements hate
and successively reject it; and the worship of Love creates the
conditions for the daemon's restoration. This restoration to
godhood further expands the pantheon to include gods who enjoy a
shared hearth and banqueting, the absence of human misery, and freedom
from destruction (B 147 = D 40). They are subject to the divine
"oracle of Necessity" mandating against bloodshed and they
fall into the cycle of transmigration after foreswearing it, becoming
daemons like Empedocles.



Daemons constitute a sub-category of gods "who have received as
lot a long life" (B 115 = D 10), and by qualifying their
immortality Empedocles adapts their traditional association with fate
and a protecting spirit for humans as is evident in, for example,
Hesiod (*Erg.* 122, 314). The cycle constantly renews the body
of the daemon; in one fragment, a female subject is described as
"enveloping in an unfamiliar cloak of flesh" (B 126 = D
19) a figure regularly interpreted as the daemon. At the same time,
the fragments take for granted some set of stable qualities that are
incrementally purified. In the absence of any Empedoclean discussion
of the soul or an incorporeal carrier, scholars continue to debate the
material makeup of the daemon, with arguments for it as embodied Love
(Kahn 1960); incorporeal imprints of the Sphere (Therme 2010); or
compounds of the roots (Trepanier 2014). Presumably, unlike the
roots and Love and Strife, these "long-lived" gods will be
subject to dissolution under the total reigns of Love or Strife (B 21
= D 77a). 



Daemons occupy transient forms, incarnating into plant life, animals,
and humans. Empedocles relates that they wander in these for thirty
thousand seasons. Their exile on earth is well-expressed by Empedocles
in his affirmation that while the daemon transmigrates, it neither
reaches the abode of Zeus nor the palace of Hades (B 142 = D 12). It
is a period of suffering and loss, underscoring the importance of the
escape that is the daemon's return to godhood. Incarnation
appears to form a "ladder". The highest order of plants is
the laurel, and of animals, the lion. Empedocles states of humans:



> 
> * At the end they become seers, hymn singers, doctors,
> * And leaders for humans on the earth,
> * And then they blossom up as gods, the greatest in honors. (B 146 = D
> 39)
> 
> 
> 



Since antiquity, these figures have been interpreted as ethically
ideal types, as closely allied with Love. If this is correct, then the
daemons have become purified of Strife at this end point in the cycle.
An alternative suggestion is that an alliance with Love and
purification is unnecessary and that "time served" is
sufficient to graduate a daemon to godhood (Picot-Berg 2015). 



Perhaps the most important question mark surrounds the issue of the
position of the daemon in the wider cosmic alternation of Love and
Strife. The fragments give no unequivocal direction on integrating
transmigration into the ultimate dissolution of the elements under
Strife or their complete mixture under Love. Nor do scholars yet agree
on a methodology for approaching this issue (Marciano 2001). Much
earlier scholarship rejected the compatibility of the cosmic and
daemonic cycles (Diels 1898). A related solution has been to suggest
that the cycle of the daemon is a mythological mirror of the physical
cycles of Love and Strife (Primavesi 2008). More often, interpreters
attempted to unite the cycles of transmigration within the broader
movements toward the one and the many. This suggests that there is no
eternal paradise for the daemon after attaining godhood again. 


## 4. Relation of *On Nature* to *Purifications*



The relation between *On Nature* and *Purifications* is
the subject of varied speculations. Once it was thought that the first
was a scientific work and the latter a religious one. Since these
categories were understood to be antithetical, there could be no
relation at all between them; Empedocles had just written two
incompatible poems. More recently, as the usefulness of such a rigid
dichotomy seemed less plausible, commentators have seen the teaching
about nature as continuous with *Purifications*. Both, after
all, give a prominent place to Love and Strife. Nature, then, is ruled
by the very same principles that are the key to understanding the
drama of the ethical life, as Empedocles represents that.
Understanding how nature works, one will want to side with Love and
not Strife--especially, one will want to avoid the shedding of
blood, that whereby we think and perceive, the very principle of
conscious life. This sort of approach sees a complementarity between
the natural philosophy and the religious narrative. However, in light
of the Strasbourg manuscript, some have argued for a tighter unity.
Martin and Primavesi, for instance, focus on a part of
*ensemble* **a** which describes the moment when
Strife dominates in the vortex and Love comes to be in its center.
This description mirrors the same event described in B 35 (= D 75),
except that, besides roots being united by Love, there are also
persons of some sort being united in Love. According to the authors,
these persons are the incarnated *daimones* of
*Purifications*; in turn, these *daimones*, whose
punishment through incarnation is coming to an end, are also particles
of Love. The dissolution of composite beings under Strife, then,
liberates these particles of Love from their cycle of incarnation and
they unite in Love at its advent in the center of the whirl (Martin
& Primavesi 1999: 83-86, 90-95). Such interpretations
might imply that there are not two poems but one. Nevertheless, the
way textual support has been marshaled for these sorts of readings has
not gone uncriticized (see Laks 2002, Bollack 2005). A third
interpretation has recently been proposed, which views the differences
in emphasis between the works as not necessarily establishing two
separate texts, but two 'levels' of teaching: esoteric and
exoteric (Curd 2005). On this reading, Empedocles is in fact
addressing two audiences, one general, represented by the people of
Acragas and the second-person plural, and one specialized group of
intimates, represented by the appeals to Pausanias and the use of the
second-person singular. The general audience is instructed in public
lectures on the necessity of purifying themselves and the means to do
so. By contrast, the inner circle receives a detailed explanation of
the cosmos' inner workings, a more rigorous account of
Empedocles' daemonology, and unique powers.


## 5. Influence



As a testament to the success of Empedocles' philosophy in its
afterlife, the philosopher boasts the largest number of preserved
Presocratic fragments. His popularity soon after his death is assured
by a reference to him in the Hippocratic *Ancient Medicine*, in
which the author protests that:



> 
> 
> Some doctors and experts (*sophistae*) say that it is
> impossible for anyone to know medicine who does not know what a human
> being is [...]. But what they are talking about belongs to
> philosophy (*philosophie*), like Empedocles and other
> people who have written about nature--what a human being is from
> the beginning, how he came about at first and what things he is
> constituted of. (A 71 = R 6)
> 
> 
> 



Part of this success must be attributed to Empedocles'
reputation as a poet rivaling Homer for his inspired use of expression
and metaphor (A 1 = R 1b).



Yet Empedocles' philosophical theories too excited great
interest in his successors. Plato regularly refers to him by name, and
in the *Symposium* he puts in the mouth of the comic poet
Aristophanes a re-worked version of the origin of the human that
lampoons Empedoclean Love and Strife and Empedocles'
interpretation of the evolutionary development of the human species: a
former spherical unity is split into two and then only comes together
through the influence of erotic Love (O'Brien 2002). Aristotle
was similarly influenced by him; he mentions no philosopher with
greater frequency except Plato. His critiques range from
Empedocles' treatment of the generation of elements (R 8a), to
the problems of Love and Strife as motive principles (A 42 = R 12 and
13), to the motionlessness of the earth (R 14), to the growth of
plants and animals (A 70 = R 17), to the generation of animal
organisms (R 19). His successor, Theophrastus, devotes a long,
agonistic section of his *On Sensations* to attacking
Empedocles' interpretations of sight, sound, smell, and thought
(A 86 = R 25). Timon of Phlius' *Silloi* ridiculed his
use of elements (A 1 = R 37). Empedocles remained a touchstone among
the Stoics and Epicureans as well: a pupil of Epicurus',
Hermarchus, wrote an *Against Empedocles* in twenty-two books
(Obbink 1988), while in his *De Rerum Natura*, Lucretius offers
fulsome--though not unqualified--praise of the Agrigentine,
who "scarcely seems to have been born of human stock" (A
21.21 = R 31.733; complete translation of the entire work is in Rouse
1924). Chrysippus is said to have interpreted passages of his poetry
(R 40a-b) and the Stoics were associated with the element of
fire that Empedocles may have given some prominence to (A 31 = R
41). Sallust composed an entire *Empedoclea*, which Cicero
commended to his brother (A 27 = R 36). Thanks to this robust early
tradition, rich exegesis on Empedocles continued in commentaries
written on these authors and by the early Christians until well into
late antiquity. Empedocles' immortal hold on his readers
continues. Friedrich Holderlin's unfinished drafts of
*Der Tod des Empedokles* continue to inspire modern analysis
(Foti 2006), and Nietzsche's "stillbirth" tragedy on
Empedocles has been well-treated recently (Most 2005), as has Matthew
Arnold's "Empedocles on Etna" (Kenny 2005).