This book traces the intellectual revolution initiated by Thales in the sixth century BC to its culmination in the metaphysics of Parmenides.

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

This article aims at reconstructing the most damaged part of the Strasbourg papyrus of Empedocles (fragment f-d), by taking into account all the parameters at our disposal: palaeography, metre and, of course, content. According to this attempt, Empedocles would be describing the very moment in the phase of increasing Strife when the whole-natured creatures (the ολοφυ) were split into male and female beings. Thus, the first part of the fragment becomes very similar, in its content, to fr. 62 D.-K. and (...) to Plato's parody of Empedocles in Aristophanes' myth in the Symposium , while its second part emerges as containing new details of the process by which double creatures were split into two. If this reconstruction is accepted, its implication will be that Aetius' presentation of Empedocles' cosmic cycle as a fourfold continuous process is deeply inadequate. (shrink)

This article considers how the new finds have affected one's view of Empedocles, and suggests how interpretation of that material might help solve some longstanding problems about the structure and content of Empedocles' writings. A basic account of the teachings of Empedocles would distinguish between two main components. On the one hand, there is a “Presocratic” physics, including a theory of principles, a cosmology, and a biology. On the other hand, there is a mythical law, clearly inspired by Orphic or (...) Pythagorean legends, which imposes on guilty gods a punishment consisting in their transmigration through a series of mortal beings. The purpose of this article is to show that Empedocles has the habit of referring to divine entities of his physical system both in a physical and in a mythological way and that his uses of the word daimon form part of this twofold language. (shrink)

Dans le fr. 128 DK d'Empédocle, Empédocle nomme cinq dieux en opposition à Cypris : Arès, Kudoimos, Zeus, Cronos, Poséidon. Pourquoi ces cinq dieux? Quelle relation peuvent-ils entretenir avec le mythe hésiodique des cinq races, qui semble être en arrière-plan du propos d'Empédocle? Pourquoi Poséidon est-il présent à côté de Zeus et non pas Aïdôneus? L'article tente de répondre à ces questions. Pour finir, il s'interroge sur la relation possible des hommes de l'âge de Cypris et des daimones, et conclut (...) sur la place du fr. 128 dans l'œuvre d'Empédocle. In fr. 128 DK by Empedocles, Empedocles lists five gods in opposition to Cypris: Ares, Kudoimos, Zeus, Cronos, and Poseidon. Why these five gods? What link could they have with the Hesiodic myth of the five races of men, which seems to be in the background of Empedocles' purpose? Why does Poseidon appear near Zeus and not Aïdôneus? The article attempts to answer these questions. Finally, it examines the relationship of the men of the age of Cypris and the daimones, and concludes on the place of fr. 128 in the work of Empedocles. (shrink)

It is no longer generally believed that Empedocles was the divided character portrayed by nineteenth-century scholars, a man whose scientific and religious views were incompatible but untouched by each other. Yet it is still widely held that, however unitary his thought, nevertheless he still wrote more than one poem, and that his poems can be clearly divided between those which do, and those which do not, concern ‘religious matters’.1 Once this assumption can be shown to be shaky or actually false, (...) the grounds for dividing the quotations of Empedocles into two poems by subject matter disappear; and without that division our interpretation of Empedocles stands in need of radical revision. This paper startswith the modest task of showing that Empedocles may have written only one philosophical poem and not two, and goes on to suggest some of the ways in which we have to rethink the whole story if he did. If all our material belongs to one poem we are bound to link the cycle of the daimones with that of the elements, and this has far-reaching consequences for our interpretation. (shrink)

The standard histories give notice of a polemical treatise entitled Letters on Empedocles, 'Eπιστολικ. περ'Eμπεδοκλους in twenty two books by Hermarchus, Epicurus' favourite pupil and successor. The work survives in some twenty fragments of more than probable ascription. The most important of these is an extensive extract preserved by Porphyry at De Abstinentia 1.7–12 on the origin in human history of justice, homicide law, and expiatory purifications, which has been the subject of much discussion. Porphyry himself never names the title (...) of Hermarchus' treatise, though he makes it clear that it was in the form of a polemical attack on the views of Empedocles. A recent papyrus find gives the title not as Letters on Empedocles, but as φρς 'Eμπεδοκλα . In what follows it will be convenient to show that this is no mere variant but in fact the original and correct form of the title, and to determine what can be known with certainty as a result about the make-up of the work. (shrink)

Journal Name: Apeiron Issue: Ahead of print.

There is more evidence for Empedocles than for any early Greek philosopher before Democritus, yet the details of his philosophy remain controversial and often hopelessly obscure. Jaeger called Empedocles a ‘philosophical centaur’, which aptly sums up the seeming disparity between the and the There is no agreement about the famous simile to illustrate respiration, generally known as the Clepsydra, and the stages and nature of the cosmic cycle continue to be disputed. Perhaps we can never be certain about these aspects (...) of Empedocles' thought, for the evidence fails at every crucial point and the imaginative reconstructions which have to serve are unlikely to win universal acceptance. It may then appear hazardous to discuss the fragments concerned with thinking and sense-perception, for these too are riddled with problems. I do so prompted partly by the timely reprint of J. I. Beare's book, Greek Theories of Elementary Cognition, and also because this feature of Empedocles has been touched on by modern scholars but not studied in any detail. At the same time the significance of the is greatly affected by how we interpret the theory of sense-perception and thinking. (shrink)

Contrary to the Aristotelian interpretation of Empedocles' views about cognition, according to which all cognition, like perception, is due to the compositional likeness between subject and object of cognition, this paper argues that when Empedocles says that we know one thing 'by' another (e.g. earth by earth or love by love), he is characterizing analogical reasoning, an intellectual activity quite different from perception (which is explained by the fit between effluences and pores). The paper also explores the idea that strife (...) and love describe, in addition to physical separation and composition, the mental activities of analyzing and composing. (shrink)

Aristotle claims that Empedocles took perception and knowledge to be the same; Theophrastus follows Aristotle. The paper begins by examining why Aristotle and Theophrastus identify thought/knowing with perception in Empedocles. I maintain that the extant fragments do not support the assertion that Empedocles identifies or conflates sensation with thought or cognition. Indeed, the evidence of the texts shows that Empedocles is careful to distinguish them, and argues that to have genuine understanding one must not be misled into supposing that sense (...) perception is sufficient for knowledge. Nevertheless, sense perception is necessary for human knowing. (shrink)

Greek text, english translation and commentary on the surviving fragments of Empedocles (fragments as known in 1981, does not include more recent finds).

The Presocratics were the founding fathers of the Western philosophical tradition, and the first masters of rational thought. This volume provides a comprehensive and precise exposition of their arguments, and offers a rigorous assessment of their contribution to philosophical thought.

This is the only known work by the Roman poet and philosopher Titus Lucretius Carus. It expounds the tenets of Epicureanism, a philosophy which believe "pleasure" was best obtained by living modestly, seeking and gaining knowledge about the world, and limiting one's desires.

This book offers the first complete reinterpretation of Empedocles-one of the founding figures of Western philosophy-since the publication of the Strasbourg ...

This is the first book to analyze systematically crucial aspects of ancient Greek philosophy in their original context of mystery, religion, and magic. The author brings to light recently uncovered evidence about ancient Pythagoreanism and its influence on Plato, and reconstructs the fascinating esoteric transmission of Pythagorean ideas from the Greek West down to the alchemists and magicians of Egypt, and from there into the world of Islam.

Mark Eli Kalderon presents an original study of perception, taking as its starting point a puzzle in Empedocles' theory of vision: if perception is a mode of material assimilation, how can we perceive colors at a distance? Kalderon argues that the theory of perception offered by Aristotle in answer to the puzzle is both attractive and defensible.

De la connaissance à la vie, et de la vie à la connaissance: en s'installant dans cette circularité radicale, les initiateurs grecs de la philosophie ont tâché de répondre à la difficulté que résume la question lancée par Socrate à ses contemporains: Comment doit-on vivre?. Pour ceux-là, connaître est tout sauf une activité désincarnée, et la vie humaine ne peut atteindre sa perfection propre qu'en se forgeant dans la quète d'un savoir sur soi, sur les autres et sur le monde. (...) En ce sens, c'est un savoir-vivre fondamental qui s'élabore dans les démarches contrastées, mais à bien des égards convergentes, des trois penseurs liminaires de la réflexion éthique que sont Empédocle, Socrate et Platon. Dans cette perspective, le présent essai se donne pour objet d'explorer de multiples facettes du projet philosophique, tel qu'il s'est affirmé entre le Vème et IVème siècles, interrogeant la visée de perfection individuelle et collective, la dimension réflexive et l'exigence pratique constitutives du mode de vie poursuivi. (shrink)