Cosmic Cycles #10: Original Sin.

In the passage we call “Strasbourg ensemble d¹”, Empedocles discusses what we today would call “original sin”; i.e. some sinful deed that inaugurates a new eon. The inclusion of this with the content from ensembles a, b and c further weakensthe two-poem and disunity theses.² While ensembles a and c are predominantly physical, d shows a strong overlap with the katharmoi:

…to fall and meet their fate separately from each other,

very willingly, because of baneful necessity,

rotting; and despite now having love and….

The Harpies will be present…with lots [to be cast] for death.

[5] Woe is me! That the pitiless day did not destroy me 

before I devised with my claws terrible deeds for the sake of food.

…in vain in this…I wet my cheeks

….very deep….I thinker

…despite willingness, pains will be present in the heart.

[10]….But we shall set forth again [or: later] upon our accounts

…. an untiring flame happened to meet…

….bringing a mixture of much woe

…. things able to be parents were born…

…. even now dawn gazes on their remains

[15] ….I entered the final place…

………..with a cry and a shout

……..attaining

………around…..earth. 

Ensemble d is highly fragmentary, and thus must be read in the context of the rest of the corpus. In light of this, however, it is perhaps enough to show that physical and katharmic ideas were freely mixed in our best-attested single source.Within ensemble d itself, we have a reference to the separation of components of living creatures: “to fall and meet their fate separately from one another”. In the context of the other Strasbourg ensembles this would seem to be either referring to the separation of the Four Elements during the Cosmic Cycle, or to the devolution of “Men and Women” into “Separate Limbs”. It might also refer to both, since in either case this happens “despite now having love”, i.e., under the influence ofStrife, the contrary Force as found in ensemble c line 4 above. But just after this we find a previously-known katharmic fragment: “Woe is me! That the pitiless day did not destroy me before I devised with my claws terrible deeds for the sake of food.”³ On the two-poem view, these lines would have without a doubt originated in the Katharmoi. There are numerous features that support the two-poem view:

1. “harpies will be present” (line 4) – On a literal reading, this can have one of two meanings, either physical or katharmic. On the latter, the “Harpies” are associated with divine justice the seeks out and punishes the sinner.⁴
2. Lines 5-6 were previously attested in Porphyry’s “De abstentia”, a strongly katharmic text.
3. The mention of the narrator’s “claws” (line 6), which on the literal reading implies that this occurred in a previous incarnation as a clawed animal. Since it is hard to see how reincarnation fits into system of Ionian-style physics, this supports the katharmic reading as well.

All of these considerations have caused two-poem and disunity scholars to place DK B139, the previously-known portion of ensemble d, in the Katharmoi,⁵ but as we have seen such an attribution is questionable.

Conclusion: For reasons given above, we consider the balance of the evidence to lie on the side of unitarian and one-poem readings of Empedocles. However, this cannot yet be taken as a given, and in the following this remaining uncertainty should to be kept in mind. But once we progress from the basic principles of the philosophy to the details of the cosmic cycle, we face a whole new set of problems which have engaged modern interpreters. It is to this that we now turn.

1 DK31 B139+

2Trepanier (2004) 

3Previously known as DK B 139 found in Porphyry’s De abstentia 2.31.5.

4Harpies are associated with divine justice that seeks out and punishes the sinner.

5Kirk and Raven (1957), Burnett (1961), etc.

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Cosmic Cycles #9: “Mid-level” elements

In the last chapter, we dealt with multiple ways that Empedocles teated the substance of living creatures. We are not merely made of the Four Elements, but these elements are combined through a force of nature called “Love”:

This is very clear in the bulk of mortal limbs: At one time we come together into one by love, all the limbs [that is], which have found a body, in the peak of flourishing life; at another time again, being divided by evil quarrels, [5] they [the limbs] wander, all of them separately, about the breakers of life.¹

Now the discourse has much greater depth through the addition of two ideas: 

1. Midlevel elements – The elements of which the organisms are composed are not merely earth and water, but “limbs”. 
2. Phylogeny – The emergence or evolution of our currently dominant forms of life from earlier more primitive forms.²

These two features are clearly relevant to Aristotle’s criticism. Uniquely among his predecessors, Empedocles alone refers to these two important concepts, and each deserves a separate discussion.

Mid-level elements. – It is safe to assume that Empedocles’ “limbs” are composed of the lower-level nonliving³ Four Elements. Mid-level elements are components which are themselves composed of the lower or more fundamental Four Elements. Mid-level elements are then in turn the elements for a potential higher level of organization. On this view, Aristotle and Empedocles both view the distinction of matter and thing-composed-of-matter relative to a nested hierarchy of levels. In the works of Aristotle, organisms are composed not merely of the fundamental material elements (fire, air, water, earth), but also of mid-level elements such as tissues and organs. This vastly increases the explanatory power of his theory, because it allows the same metaphysical principles to function analogically at multiple levels at once. 

Phylogeny – For Aristotle the mid-level elements are merely potential i.e., they do not exist in actuality apart from the entire organism. For Empedocles on the contrary, these elements once formed separate organisms during their own zoogonic era, which Aetius called the “Generation” of “Separate Limbs”. The existence of this era is known from a great many other fragments and testimony. ⁴ There are some unanswered questions concerning it which we shall treat at length below, but what all authorities ancient and modern agree on is that:

1. At some time the “limbs” that make up our body were once separate free-living organisms. (Ensemble c line 5)
2. At some time, these came together through the influence of Love to form beings like us, thus inaugurating the “Generation of Men and Women”. (Ensemble c line 2)
3. At some other time the men and women like us, devolved into separate limbs thus inaugurating the next “Generation of Separate Limbs”. (Ensemble c line 4)

This is of interest for two reasons. First, it is a major point of criticism for Aristotle; though he does carry over the concept of multi-level elements into his hylomorphic theory, he very explicitly and at great length attacks the concept of such lower level elements coming together into a complete organism except through the efficacy of an actualized individual of that same species.⁵ Secondly, in modern science we seem to have a major vindication of Empedocles contraAristotle, for at one time there were separate elements that came together to form more complex systems such as or advanced organisms and biospheres.⁶

To be continued here.

1Strasbourg Papyrus ensemble c in Martin and Primavesi (1999).

2“Phylogeny” and its counterpart “”ontogeny” are terms of modern biological theory. The former is what we call the “evolution” of genera and species, while individual organisms undergo “ontogeny”, otherwise called the “development” of mature organisms from eggs. 

3In whatever sense that earth and fire are less “alive” than plants. On the hylozoic or panpsychist view, plausibly attributed to most early Greek thinkers, the living/non-living distinction is less robust than for us. To see this for Empedocles, see DK B102, 103. In Empedocles studies, this view is held by Rowett (2016)

4Minar (1963: pp. 139ff), O’Brian (1969).

5Specifically in Metaphysics IX.8 and XII.3 (1070a4ff)

6Empedocles has forseen the two primary modes of phylogeny: through natural selection (Darwin 1859) and through endosymbiosis (Margulis 1970), of which Aetius’ stages seem to be the latter and the more important.

Cosmic Cycles #8: The “double tale” of the Twin Forces

“Ensemble a” of the Strasbourg Papyrus is the longest continuous Empedoclean fragment that we possess, and it provides an adequate transition from discussion of the “Six Principles” to the Cosmic Cycles.¹ Ensemble a contains DK fragment 17, which the two-poem school formerly assigned to the Physics due to its description of the cosmic cycle of the elements:

I shall tell a double tale. For at one time [they] grew (“euxethe”) apart to be one alone 

from many, and at another, again, [they] grew apart to be many from one. 

And there is a double coming to be of mortals and a double waning; 

[5]while the other, as [they] again grow apart, was nurtured and flew away.

And while these things never cease from constantly alternating,

at one time all coming together by love into one,

and at another time all being borne apart separately by the hostility of strife.

<Thus insofar as they have learned to grow as one from many>

[10] and they finish up many as the one again grows apart,

in this respect they come to be and have no constant life;

but insofar as they never cease from constantly interchanging,

in this respect they are always unchanged in a cycle.²

In this excerpt, we find the next logical step after the introduction of the Four Elements and what we shall call “the TwinForces”³ (of Love and Strife). Even though this excerpt was previously known from the ancient author Simplicius⁴, its mode of expression is rather strange, given the dominant views of the Twin Forces held by him and Aristotle. AgainstAristotle’s view that Love is the cause of coming-to-be and Strife the exclusive cause of corruption⁵, this excerpt seems profoundly ambivalent as to which of the Twin Forces rule which. On the contrary, it seems to emphasize that both forces rule both processes⁶. Lines one and two describe genesis as being twofold, from Love and Strife. Line three says that for mortals both genesis and desctruction (apoleipsis) are “double” (doin). The poetic structure of this passage mirrors the dogmatic content; there is repeated emphasis of the equality of the Twin Forces of Love and Strife. Every mention of the two is paired and uses the same language.

The cosmic dyarchy of the Twin Forces, is the focus of one of Aristotle’s main criticisms. “Dyarchy” is a curious idea where the world is seen as ruled by two separate dieties or principles. Empedocles’ Twin Forces are one of the more prominent examples of this, and it is strongly criticized by Aristotle. He argued that since pairs of contraries must inherein some third underlying reality, no dualism could ever be fundamental. The very next passage of ensemble relates to this point:

But come! Hear my words; for learning will expand your thought organs.

[15] For as I said before, in revealing the limits of my words,

I shall tell a double tale. For at one time [they] grew (“euxethe”) to be one alone 

from many, and at another, again, [they] grew (“euxethe”) apart to be many from one –

fire and water and earth and the boundless height of air;

and destructive strife apart from these, like in every respect, 

[20] and love among them, equal in length and breadth.

Empedocles is still using the same word (“euxethe” in lines 16 and 17) to denote the contrary actions of the Twin Forces. Not only does he use the same word, but each instance of this term refers to both contraries, whereas in the previous except he used contrary terms (“genesis” and “apoleipsis” in line 3) in reference to both Forces. In lines 19 and 20, he says that Love and Strife are “like in every respect” (atalanton hapante) and “equal in length and breadth” (ise mekos te platos te.). So he has really most clearly emphasized a fundamental equality of the otherwise opposed Twin Forces.⁷However, in this excerpt there is one detail in which Love and Strife differ: location. In line 19, Strife is “apart from these” (te holomenon dixa ton), while in line 20, Love is “among them” (en toisin). So something like a primacy of love for the beings so constituted can be seen, perhaps an inspiration of Aristotle’s primacy of love, the Good and “Substance”.⁸

And you, gaze on her [Love] with your understanding and do not sit with stunned eyes.

For she is deemed even by mortals to be inborn in [their] bodies [lit. ‘joints’]

[23] and by her they think loving thoughts and accomplish works of unity 

calling her by the names Joy and Aphrodite.

So here, as if in following up on the claim that Love is “among them”, Empedocles says that love is “inborn” (emphutos) in their bodies or “joints”. This we will return to this verse later on, especially how nature relates to “joints”.⁹ In addition to being composed by the agency (?) of Love, this passage may also claim that we have agency by love as well, since we think and act in virtue of it (line 23). There is thus a greater inherence of love than strife in three ways:

1. Love is among things. (line 20)
2. Love is what makes each thing one. (line 22)
3. Love is what make each thing do what it does. (line 23)

Empedocles’ “Love” is a sort of thing that is in you, makes all your parts to be part of one thing, and to serve some function. All of these give Love the character of being the “what it is” of anything composed of the Four Elements. Now I think that most people who reflect on these three qualities can see why there are all deeply related, and one of the main projects of ancient philosophy is the inquiry into why this is so. Philosophy always has to have some way of articulating that about a thing which makes it what it is, and for speakers of Greek the core reality of a living creature or more specifically a human called our “soul” (in Greek, “psuche”). Most philosophers go further than this to say something more interesting and daring. On my reading of Empedocles, this extra something was that protion of Love which is “in” something, that makes it do whatever that thing does, and which makes it one thing as opposed to another. Thus not only is this sense of “Love” a sort of soul, but it is also what Socrates called “essence” or “character” and Aristotle called the “substance” of the thing. 

Empedocles tells us of the previously discussed “equality” among the principles:

[25] Her [Love] no mortal man has perceived whirling among them [i.e. the elements]

But you, hear the undeceptive expedition of [my] account.

For these things are all equal and of like age in their birth,

But each rules over a different prerogative and each has its own character 

and they dominate in turn as time circles around. 

[30] And in addition to them nothing comes into being nor ceases [to be];

for if they constantly perished, they would no longer be.

And what could increase this totality, and whence would it come?

And how would it also be destroyed, since nothing is bereft of them?

But these very things are, and running through each other. 

[35] They become different at different times and are always, perpetually alike.

The principles “are all equal and of like age in their birth”. It is ambiguous as to whether “these things” refers to the Four Elements, the Twin Forces or perhaps the Six Principles¹⁰ as equal. In our view, it is likely the Six Principles are all equal in the sense that they are the eternal principles of genesis and decay alike. However, it does seem that the Twin Forces might outrank the Four Elements in at least two senses: They govern the behavior of the Four Elements, while the Four Elements do not govern the behavior of the Twin Forces, and line 28 and 29 there is a reference to “they dominate in turn as time circles around.” It is hard to see how any of the Four Elements can be said to rule “in turn”¹¹, but clearly the Twin Forces do rule ‘in turn’ (Fr. 17.29 above ) one during the Reign of Love, and the other during the Reign of Strife. In spite of Empedocles’ repetition of the “equality” of the Twin Forces, it may be that he favors the rule of Love over Strife in many respects which relate to religion and morality. However from the standpoint of physical theory, he emphasizes their strict equality in terms of 

1. age – “equal and of like age in their birth”(line 27), “perpetually alike” (35)
2. spatial extent – “equal in length and breadth” (line 20)
3. primacy –  “each rules over its own prerogative and has its own character” (line 28) 
4. universality – “nothing is bereft of them” (line 30)

The two poem school has assigned this fragment to the Physics¹², and its apparent Heraclitian tone might lend support to the disunity thesis as well. In such a world of eternal becoming lacking a single guiding Nous, how could the eternal Pythagorean verities hold fast? Such was the view when we only had lines 1-14 as preserved by Simplicius, but lines 15-25 of ensemble a show at least the beginning of Empedocles’ middle path between Ionian “physicalism” and Italian “purificationism”. This will be more clear when we add in a more complete view of how Love works to unify the elements, a major theme of the present work.

Note that in the reconstructions cited earlier, all of this comes near the end of Book I, after the initial outline of the aims of the book (which includes the purificatory, moral and religious fragments such as B112-115).¹³ On this reconstruction,ensemble a prepares the transition to Book II, which elaborates on the physics, giving the details of the cosmic cycles and the zoogonic stages. This later physical portion outlines the famous cosmic cycles, which treats not only of cosmology and astrophysics but also of biological evolution, and the next two Empedoclean fragments found at Panopolis focus on this.

To be continued here.

1 I will cite these fragments not in their raw form, but as reconstructed by Graham, Inwood, and Janko, according to the order in which they appear in Inwood’s reconstruction of the original poem (1992). Each ensemble will receive its own heading, with separate commentary on its relation to the unity of Empedocles’ work and thought.

2DK31 B17, Trans. Graham

3I use the word forces here without wanting to make to much of an analogy with modern “forces” such as gravity. Indeed there is much reason to assume that the Empedoclean forces and elements are somewhat personal or at the very least alive. See Rowett (2016), Coates (2018), among others.

4Physics 158,1. 

5For example in Metaphysics I.4, 985a5, 22. Aristotle here and often in other passages seeks to treat the secondary traits of the Twin Forces as being their essence, and this makes some of his objections to Empedocles to be superficial.

6We shall discuss this issue at length below.

7In this he follows another theorist of duality, physics, cosmology, and Strife: Heraclitus.

8As in Aristotle’s treatment of substance and unity in Metaphysics VII.13 and of love, in XII.7.

9Note that in Empedocles’ evolutionary theory, humans and other creatures are composed of pre-existing elements called “separate limbs”. Since these limbs are connected at joints, then it makes sense that love would be found primarily there if anywhere. 

10These three phrases are all my own coinages, just for the sake of easy clarity: in the present work the Six Principles includes both the Four Elements and the Twin Forces.

11In our discussion of the stages of the cosmic cycle we will return to this, since in some cosmologies, most notably Anaximander and Heraclitus, there is a sense in which World Ages are ruled by a certain element.

12Diels and Kranz were two-poem scholars. In compiling the “DK” fragments ,they listed the alleged Physica first as B1 through B111, and the alleged Katharmoi was B112 and after.

13Inwood (1992), Janko (2004), Graham (2010).

Cosmic Cycles #7 : The unity of Empedocles’ work.

Apart from the alleged doctrinal conflicts discussed earlier, there is other evidence that seems to imply that Empedocles wrote two poems, and that these poems might disagree with each other. First, many of our most important testimonies from the ancient world imply that Empedocles wrote at least two major philosophical works. In Diogenes’ Lives of the Philosophers, for example, he is said in one paragraph to have written a work called On Nature, and in the next he is also said to have written one called Purifications.¹ Elsewhere Diogenes claims “His verses On Nature and Purifications extend to five thousand lines…”² Secondly, there are multiple modes of address in the poetic fragments. Diogenes cites that  On Nature was said to have been addressed to Empedocles’ disciple Pausanias, from whicha fragment has been preserved: “Pausanias, son of Anchites, hearken.”³ In other sources, we have preserved other passages addressed in the plural, for example to “Friends, who inhabit the great city of Acragas…”⁴

These two factors of title and addressees are chief among those which motivate the two-poem view, and until recently it was dominant in our field, but now this has begun to change.⁵ Upon further reflection, neither of these arguments are considered very compelling, given the fact that the titles assigned to this work or works were stock titles by which people described many works and were not likely to be assigned by the author. Most nonfiction works of this era are titled by their audiences in this way. Thus, when Diogenes refers to two titles written by Empedocles, he may be citing from sources that have given different title based on whether they were more interested in the study of nature or in caring for the soul. Empedocles clearly pursued both concerns, and so if he did write one poem, it could easily have been given either title. 

Likewise, many classic poems have changes in addressee. If Diogenes’ testimony about titles is suspect, then when he claims that “the physics” is addressed to Pausanias, it should not carry enough weight to tell us much about whether every single verse of this work was addressed to Pausanias, or whether there were changes of addressee in this same work. 

In addition to these counter-arguments there are some more detailed considerations arising from the analysis of the Empedoclean corpus that argue in favor of a single poem. These include the overlap in topics among the testimonies of the two titles; for example: Fragment B153a claims that the Katharmoi speaks concerning embryology, and another from this same work is claimed to say something on the growth and structure of trees.⁶ While it is possible to have allusions to physical doctrines in a katharmic poem, most of our testimony of the content of this alleged work seems to lend credence to the likelihood that such a work could just as easily be called “physics” as otherwise.
There is also not a single case of any ancient testimony explicitly distinguishing between two separate works by Empedocles, even when these authors quote from both the so-called physical and what I will call the “katharmic” fragments. In addition, no ancient author has ever mentioned a major doctrinal division or tension between the physical and katharmic within the philosophy. 

Furthermore, there is considerable overlap of physical and katharmic in the recently-discovered “Strasbourg Papyrus”.⁷Since this is our best-attested source of Empedoclean material, we shall review this entire corpus before moving on to other fragments. 

To be continued here.

1DL .60, 63. (DK31 A1)

2DL 8.77 (DK31 A1)

3DL 60 (DK31 B1)

4DL 61 (DK31 B12)

5See Osbourne (1987) pp.25ff and Trepanier (2004) pp. 6-14.

6Trepanier (2004) 9-10, Inwood(2001), fragment Inwood 35.

7Martin and Primavesi (1999)

Cosmic Cycles #6

7. Did Empedocles write one poem or more?

Apart from the alleged doctrinal conflicts, there is other evidence that supports two poems: 1) Testimony of two titles. – In great many of our most important testimonies from the ancient world, Empedocles seems to have written two major philosophical works. In Diogenes’ Lives of the Philosophers, for example, he is said in one paragraph to have written a work called On Nature, and in the next he is also said to have written one called Purifications.¹ In another place Diogenes claims “His verses On Nature and Purifications extend to five thousand lines…”² 2) Single vs. Plural addressees in the fragments. – In addition to this, there are multiple modes of address in the poetic fragments. Diogenes cites that  On Nature was said to have been addressed to Empedocles’ disciple Pausanias, from which a fragment has been preserved: “Pausanias, son of Anchites, hearken.”³ In other sources, we have preserved other passages addressed in the plural, for example to “Friends, who inhabit the great city of Acragas…”⁴

These two factors of title and addressees are chief among those which motivate the two-poem view, and until recently it was dominant in our field, but now this has begun to change.⁵ Upon further reflection, neither of these arguments are considered very compelling, given the fact that the titles assigned to this work or works were stock titles by which people described a work and were not likely to be assigned by the author. Most nonfiction works of this era are of this sort. Tragedies, on the contrary, were given specific titles by their authors by which they are known to contemporary audiences. Thus, when Diogenes refers to two titles written by Empedocles, he may be citing from sources that have given different title based on whether they were more interested in the study of nature or in caring for the soul. On most views, Pythagoras and Empedocles clearly pursued both concerns, and so if Empedocles did write one poem, it could easily have been given either title. Likewise, many classic poems have changes in addressee. If Diogenes’ testimony about titles is suspect, then when he claims that “the physics” is addressed to Pausanias, it should not carry enough weight to tell us much about whether every single verse of this work was addressed to Pausanias, or whether there were changes of addressee in this same work. 

In addition to these counter-arguments there are some more detailed considerations arising from the analysis of the Empedoclean corpus that argue in favor of a single poem. These include the overlap in topics among the testimonies of the two titles; for example: Fragment B153a claims that the Katharmoi speaks concerning embryology, and another from this same work is claimed to say something on the growth and structure of trees.⁶ While it is possible to have allusions to physical doctrines in a katharmic poem, most of our testimony of the content of this alleged work seems to lend credence to the likelihood that such a work could just as easily be called “physics” as otherwise.
There is also not a single case of any ancient testimony explicitly distinguishing between two separate works by Empedocles, even when these authors quote from both the so-called “physical” and katharmic fragments. In addition, no ancient author has ever mentioned a major doctrinal division or tension between the physical and katharmic within the philosophy. 

Furthermore, there is considerable overlap of physical and katharmic in the recently-discovered “Strasbourg Papyrus”.⁷Since this is our best-attested source of Empedoclean material, we shall review this entire corpus before moving on to other fragments. I will cite these fragments not in their raw form, but as reconstructed by Graham, Inwood, and Janko⁸, according to the order in which they appear in Inwood’s reconstruction of the original poem (1992). Each ensemble will receive its own heading, with separate commentary on its relation to the unity of Empedocles’ work and thought.

To be continued here.

1DL .60, 63. (DK31 A1)

2DL 8.77 (DK31 A1)

3DL 60 (DK31 B1)

4DL 61 (DK31 B12)

5See Osbourne (1987) pp.25ff and Trepanier (2004) pp. 6-14.

6Trepanier (2004) 9-10, Inwood(2001), fragment Inwood 35.

7Martin and Primavesi (1999)

8Graham(2010), Inwood(1992), and Janko(2004).

Cosmic Cycles #5

Love, Strife and the Four Elements. 

There is also a set of physical doctrines such as the theory of the Four Elements and the Twin Forces as the exhaustive causes of genesis and decay.

Empedocles’ most influential doctrine is probably the “Four Elements“ of which natural beings are composed. Eusebius says: “Empedocles of Acragas [says that] there are four elements, fire, water, aether…”.¹ Aristotle’s first mention of Empedocles in the Metaphysics concerns the topic of “material causes:  “Empedocles [posits] four [principles] adding earth to the three already mentioned [water, air, and fire]. For these always remain and do not come to be except by becoming more or less as they congregate or segregate to form or dissolve a unity.”² Empedocles’ main contributions to the study of matter is “material pluralism”, of which our modern “Periodic Table of Elements” is a variation. Previous Ionian thinkers were material monists; i.e., they claimed that there was only one sort of matter by which material beings are composed. As the single ultimate material principle Thales put forth water, Anaximenes air, and Heraclitus claimed fire.³

After material causes, Aristotle (and in Simplicius’ commentary on these same passages) discuss so-called “efficient causes”; for Empedocles these are Love (“Philotes”) and Strife (“Neikos”). In the present work I shall call these the “Twin Forces”.

He [Empedocles] makes the corporeal bodies four in number: fire, air, water, and earth, everlasting but changing in their multitude and fewness by congregation or segregation, while he makes the real principles, those by which these are moved, to be Love and Strife. For the elements must continually move back and forth, at one time being congregated by Love, at another time segregated by Strife, so that there are in fact six principles according to him. Indeed, in one place he grants active power to Love and Strife when he says 

“At one time coming together into one by Love, 

at another time each being borne apart by the enmity of strife”

but sometimes he uses these powers with the four as equals when he says 

“At another time it grew apart to be many from one:

fire, water, earth, and the lofty expanse of air,

destructive Strife apart from them, balanced in every direction

and Love among them, equal in height and width.”⁴

Furthermore, many other fragments show that these elements and their interactions exhaustively explain everything:

“But come, let us gaze on this witness of previous words, 

If anything in the previous one was lacking in form;

sun, shining to sight and everywhere hot,

and immortal things which are soaked in heat and blazing beam,

and rain, dark and chilling in everything,

and from earth flow out intertwined and solid things.

When they are in strife all these are different in form and separated; 

but they come together in love, and are desired by one another. 

For out of these have sprung all things that were and are and shall be—

trees and men and women, beasts and birds and the fishes that dwell in the waters, 

yea, and the gods that live long lives and are exalted in honor. 

For there are these alone; but, running through one another, 

they take different shapes—so much does mixture change them.  (DK31 B21)

Here we find that “all things” are composed of the four elements which “come together in Love” and “in Strife they are all divided and separate”. Even the gods are subject to becoming and corruption; note that they are called “long-lived” (“dolikaiones”) rather than “immortal“. As with Aristotle, anything which is generated must perforce be contingent and corruptible.⁵

If coming-to-be is nothing besides the composition of material elements, then death must be nothing but the decomposition of those same material elements: “He does not make some things perishable, some not, but he makes all things imperishable except the elements.”⁶

“Empedocles [says] the kinds of flesh were generated from a blend of the four elements in equal measure; the sinews from fire and earth mixed with a double portion of water; the claws of animals from sinews which were cooled as they encountered air; and bones from two parts of water and an equal number of earth, as well as four parts of fire, which were combined <within> the earth. Sweat and tears come to be when blood is melted and dissolved to become thin.” (DK31 A78, Trans. Graham) 

And if living creatures are so composed in genesis, they are so decomposed in death:

“…at another time each being borne apart by the enmity of Strife. 

<Thus inasmuch as they are wont to grow into one from many,> 

and in turn with the one growing apart they produce many, 

they are born and they do not enjoy steadfast life; 

but inasmuch as they never cease continually alternating, 

they are ever immobile in the cycle.”⁷

Such are the rudiments of Empedocles’ physics. In addition to this, there is a very strong streak of Empedoclean supernaturalism in the katharmic fragments and testimony. Many doubt whether these are coherent, either as a single philosophy or a single poem.

To be continued here.

1A30

2Metaphysics I.3 984a8-11. Trans. Graham (2010).

3Aristotle followed this line of thought in the fashion of Heraclitus, whose various elements were continuous and transmutable. HoweverEmpedocles, seems to claim that the multiple fundamental elements are each on the contrary irreducible and eternal.

4 DK A28; Simplicius, Physics 25.21-31. Trans. Graham (2010).

5 Note that in line 10-12 we have an instance of the elemental catalogue motif; in this case the elements are represented by those organisms whose predominant element they are fowls for air, fish for water, beasts for earth, humans for fire(?), and gods for Love, since they are long-lived, and it is love that makes things live. 

6 DK 31 A52 from Aristotle Metaphysics Book III.4 (1000b18-20)

7Simplicius On the Heavens 293.18-2, Trans. Graham

Creation, Cosmic Cycles and History #4

From Diogenes Laertius’ life of Empedocles:

“That he was a citizen of Acragas in Sicily he himself says at the beginning of the purifications: ‘O friends, who dwell in the great city of yellow Acragas, up in the high parts of the city…’.”¹ …”Heracleides says that the case of the woman who stopped breathing was like this: for thirty days her body was preserved intact, although she neither breathed nor had a pulse, Hence he called him both a doctor and a prophet, deriving this also from these lines:

O friends, who dwell in the great city of yellow Acragas, 

up in the high parts of the city, concerned with good deeds,

Hail! I, in your eyes a deathless god, no longer mortal,

go among all, honored, just as I seem:

[5] Wreathed with ribbons and festive garlands.

As soon as I arrive in flourishing cities I am revered

by all, men and women. And they follow at once,

in their ten thousands, asking where is the path to gain,

some in need of divinations, others in all sort of diseases

[10] sought to hear a healing oracle.”²

Diogenes has told us this concerning the unity Empedocles’ work:

• There was a work which was called by some of its readers ‘the purifications’.
• The quote was the opening lines.³
• This work has a plural addressee, as opposed to the singular which the two-poem view claims for “the physics”. (For which see below.)
• This incipit claims for the poet the following: Divinity of some sort, miraculous powers of healing, prophecy, practical wisdom, and a public reputation for the above.

This testimony is the most explicit we have for the existence and content of Empedocles’ “katharmoi”.

Empedocles taught both the immortality of the soul and reincarnation:

“Most of all he [Empedocles] agrees with the doctrine of reincarnation, saying:

For ere now I have been a boy, a girl,

a bush, a fowl, and a fish traveling in the sea.

He said all souls transmigrate into every kind of living thing.”⁴

In addition, there is ample testimony to some doctrine of what we today call “karma”, i.e. change in the fate of the reincarnated soul connected with the observance or violation of certain moral laws.⁵ For example, another katharmic⁶fragment that Plutarch cites (as he says) from “a prelude at the beginning of his [Empedocles’] philosophy”:

There is an oracle of necessity, an ancient decree of the gods,

eternal, sealed with broad oaths:

whenever one, in his sins, stains his dear limbs with blood

….[corrupt text here] by misdeed swears falsely,

[5] [of] the daimons [that is] who have won long-lasting life,

he wanders for thrice ten thousand seasons away from the blessed ones,

growing to be all sorts of forms of mortal things through time,

interchanging the hard paths of life.

For the strength of aither pursues him to the sea,

[10] and the sea spits [him] onto the surface of the earth and earth into the beams

of the blazing sun, and it throws him into the eddies of the air;

and one after the other receives [him], but all hate [him].

I too am now one of these, an exile from the gods and a wanderer,

trusting in mad strife. (B116)

According to this, the bad karma for murderers or liars is to suffer “exile” described as follows:

1. Lasting “thrice ten thousand seasons”. (line 6)
2. “Away from the blessed ones” or gods (line 6, 13)
3. A long series of incarnations in various kinds of living beings. (line 7)⁷
4. With much difficulty. (line 8)
5. …which difficulty is caused by Strife (line 14) and the Four Elements (“aither”, “sea”, “earth”, “sun”)line 9-12)

Of these, only the second and third are distinctly katharmic, the first applies also to the (physical) Cosmic Cycles, and the fourth applies to Strife in both its moral and physical aspects. 

In contrast to these doctrines, there are others which are more clearly “physical” in that they belong more properly to the study of nature rather than to the care of the soul. The most important of these physical doctrines are: that nature is nothing but contraries of the material elements and that death is nothing but the dissolution of these elements.

To be continued here.

1DL 8.54 (DK A1)

2DL 8.61-61 (DK A1) Trans. Graham (2010).

3Following Trepanier (2004), we shall assume this means the incipit or “very first lines” of the work.

4DK B119. Trans. Graham (2010) Attested in Hippolytus, Plutarch, Diogenes Laertius, and Athenaeus – Ibid. p. 406.

5It is not my intent to make any claims relating to the concept of work “karma” and its history in authentic Indian discourse. Instead I use this term as it is used in modern English.

6I will use the term “katharmic” to refer to the domain proper to works bearing the title “Katharmoi”; i.e. concerning healing, prophecy

7The fifth point above should be given particular notice. We shall call it the “elemental catalogue motif” in B115 lines 9-12 first explicitly described by Daniel Graham. This motif consists of the description of the Four Elements and often one or both of the Twin Forces. Lines 9-12 above are a good example. It is very often used in the more obviously “physical” works of Empedocles; seven to nine times in the 69 lines of B115/Strasbourg ensemble d (see below Ch, 2.B.5). Compare this to the three katharmic fragments cited thus far (B112, B115, B117) which total 29 lines and have an abbreviated elemental motif occurrence (B117 line 2 “a bush [earth], a fowl [air], and a fish [water]”).Thus, it shows that even in the most katharmic of the fragments, we have clear presence of physical themes: the Cosmic Cycles and the Six Principles. 

Creation, Cosmic Cycles, and History #3

On Empedocles and early Greek philosophy. –

Before we dive in, we should describe some assumptions we have about the coherence is Empedocles’ work. They come down to us as a set of fragments, and we are not really sure what order they came in, whether they form an entire work, or whether they come from various stages in the development of one career, so this complicates our project. Now I can assume that many of my readers are not ones to pore over fragments of scrolls for mere antiquarian purposes. Are there not enough books to read without trying to piece together another one from quotes in other authors? I am sympathetic to this concern, but there is a special charm to poring over the fragments of the early greeks, and this has been a major source of inspiration for philosophy and science in recent times.¹ The view that our current collection of Empedoclean fragments are all in fundamental agreement we call the “unitary view”.² The opposing disunity view which sees the extant fragments as fundamentally in disagreement with each other over the primacy of faith and reason, or myth and science. Those who hold the “Disunity View” are further divided as to whether this disunity was because Empedocles changed his views³ or whether perhaps was a charlatan or just divided his views into separate realms of faith and reason⁴. Each of these views has major implications for our work and they need to be addressed at the outset. In addition to the unity of thought, there is also the issue of the unity of work, whether the extant fragments all stem from one poem or two poems.⁵ In recent years, the one poem thesis may have been supported by the discovery of the Strasbourg Papyrus⁶, and we shall take this into account in our argument.

These two unities of work and thought are related like this: if we know that we have one single work from which our fragments and testimonies stem, then this greatly supports the unitarian view concerning thought. On the other hand, if we find that our extant material might come from two or more separate works written at different times for different audiences or different purposes, then this greatly complicates our interpretation and supports the dualist. It is not our goal to take a strong stand on either issue, but knowing something about it is important in understanding Empedocles. We shall attempt to elucidate both issues (unity of work and unity of thought) concurrently in our exposition.

It is clear from many sources that Empedocles wrote many works: various poems as well as prose works on rhetoric, medicine, and politics.⁷ Most relevant to the present work is the question of how many philosophical works there were. Here we shall briefly review the basis for the unity of thought, and then that for unity of work. For our exposition, we shall focus on those aspects which have been thought by modern interpreters to be most in conflict with each other. They are best summed up⁸ at the following:

1. The So-called Katharmic doctrines:
   1. There is reincarnation of some portion of one’s personality between one life and the next.
   2. There are idealistic moral laws and taboos that affect one’s happiness and one’s reincarnation.
2. The Physical Doctrines:
   1. Nature is nothing but contraries of the material elements.
   2. Death is just the dissolution of these elements.

The Katharmic doctrines are said to be the content of the alleged work “Katharmoi”⁹, while the latter two are said to come from the work “Ta Phusika”.

To be continued.

1Over many centuries, Plato and Aristotle dominated the field, but in modern times Democritus and other atomists made a major comeback. More recently, Nietzsche’s study of philosophy is perhaps the first to center the early Greeks so as to gain a better perspective on Plato and Aristotle, who have between them formed the horizon for so much later thinking, and in my next work I hope to explore his use of them. 

2The dualists include: Rohde (1925), Diels and Kranz (1960), Sedley (1989), Kingsley (1996, 2002) Laks (2002), and Graham (2010).The unitarians include Kirk and Raven (1960), Barnes, H. E. (1967), Long (1949), and Trépanier, Simon (2004).

3Kranz, W. (1935), Bidez (1894), Wilamowitz (1929).

4Rohde (1925)

5Two poem-ists: Diels and Kranz (1960), Kingsley (1996, 2002) Laks (2002). One poem-its: Barnes, H. E. (1967), Long (1949), Inwood(2001), andTrépanier, Simon (2004). Sedley (1989) believes that there was a separate work called the “Katharmoi”, but that this work was not a poem or philsophical work but merely a list of magical or ritual formulae and thus was unlikely to be the source of any of our fragments.

6Martin, A. and O. Primavesi, 1999

7DK A1, A2, A26.

8Following Long (1949) p. 142ff

9This Greek word means “purifications”, which has a wide variety of related meanings, from purely medical (as in using a “purgative” to purifiy the body from toxins) or in the sense of Purgatory, where one’s sins are purged away. Plato calls the practice of philosophy a “purging” of ignorance, and Aristotle claims that tragic drama “purges’ pity and fear. Given the broad and fragementary nature of Empedocles’ work, it is hard to tell where the emphasis lies in his purifications.

Creation, Cosmic Cycles, and History. #2

This is a continuation of a series that began here.

2. The Cosmos and “substance” – Aristotle’s primary objection against Empedocles is that that any natural organism¹ can only be generated from the agency of another of the same species.² This means that you cannot get a horse from anything but a horse; which most early thinkers thought ruled out evolution. Plato, Anaxagoras, and most theologians claim that new substances may come to be only by God’s action, which is conceived by analogy with artificial craft-production.³ Against this consensus, Empedocles makes the radical claim that natural organisms can come to be from mere potentiality.  Both Platonic creationism and Aristotelean eternalism, for all their differences, share a source of pre-existing forms from which substances may generate: either Plato’s world of separate forms or the Aristotle’s world of formed matter. Empedocles has renounced any such pre-existing forms from which to derive generation of newly formed matter. It is this that we refer to when we say that our sense of “emergentism” implies that potentiality precedes actuality.

Questioning the primacy of the actual will inevitably force us to examine our account of purpose, whose study is called “teleology”. Coexisting within Empedoclean cosmology are two themes that stand in some tension: 1) where chance is allowed to govern or initiate the emergence of order, and 2) another that recognizes the importance of cosmic purpose or teleology with respect to the emergence of life.⁴ One form of genesis which we consider to have occurred is that of “strong emergence”, where organisms come to be from mere potentiality without any preceding actuality other than the matter and the forces of nature. We hope to retain as much of the doctrine Metaphysics as possible, and where this is not possible, suggest the alternative solution to the origin of form from potentiality, one that we hope serves as the best answer Empedocles might give to Aristotle. If Empedocles is to have generable biological forms from mere potentiality, then something like an “Empedoclean form” must exist potentially. How this could be is something that we will discuss in due course. But first, let us discuss the difficulties specific to reading early Greek philosophy in our next chapter.

1 He called them “generable substances”; for reasons which we will discuss below.

2 This is a broad simplification of his complete view, but if we limit our view to generable natural substance, then this holds. Aristotle’s eternalism avoids the need for an account of cosmic origins.

3 But which I mean that the Forms pre-exist in the mind of the Creator, as in Plato, Anaxagoras, and many theologoi. This world of the Forms functions in much the same way as the box full of light that Raven stole from the Old Man.

4“…Empedocles in a sense both mentions, and is the first to mention, the bad and the good as principles…”. Metaphysics I.4 (985a6).

Creation, Cosmic Cycles and History #1.

From the Holy Bible to Nietzsche and Back Again.

Part One: Empedocles and Aristotle.

The following is #1 of a series of numbered sections of a series on the Big Questions. At present my plan is to do this by a study of a few selected authors in the following order: Empedocles, Aristotle, Plato, Nietzsche, and the Holy Bible. I hope that these are enough for our purpose.

We begin our journey with a study of two radically differing views of the cosmos form the ancient world, one that is strikingly modern and another quite pre-modern, yet bother a quite alien to us in many ways. I hope that this will cast our current discourse in a different light that will be useful to our current difficulties.

1. “Why Start with Empedocles?” Good Question. – 

Of the questions that people ask, the two must fundamental and puzzling are “What is there?” and “What is the purpose of life?”. In both philosophy and religion, answers to these two questions have been given as cosmology, which means “an account of the origin of all natural things taken together as a whole”. Every new stage in the historical development of mankind correlates with a new development in the field of cosmology. First, some preliterate peoples tell how a Trickster god revealed a preexisting world by the light a stolen Sun which banished the primal darkness. Then others spoke of how land, sea, sky and sun came to be from a primal chaos. In either case the substance of things made was taken from a state of potentiality to one of actuality. In the Bible, the primal waters were “formless and void”¹ and by the agency of God this primal mass was divided into separate masses such as the Earth or Sun, while in the story of Raven, the Old Man had a box with the Sun hidden from sight and Raven merely stole it from him.²

When we look at these two differing accounts, we see that they both deal with a fundamental issue of whether and how radically new things can come to be. The creator-god Raven merely took something out of the Old Man’s box, and the Lord God separated the waters from each each other, thus opening up a space where there is air. In addition, He seems to have conjured light out of nothing and simply ordered the earth to produce life. He did not find things in a stolen box, but rather made something radically new. How did this happen? People have not stopped asking this question even today, but their answers have only a few possible forms, all of which were conceived in antiquity. They are enshrined in myth, philosophy, and science. 

Combined with this inquiry of beginnings of merely physical things has always been the subject of how good things came to be. Did things start out all bad, all good, or neutral? If things started out good, how did there come to be bad? The Biblical account begins with something inferior (although not yet strictly “evil”) which is given order and thus goodness by a something good named “God”. Then something happened in the good world that made some things evil. It seems that this pattern of chaos → order→ evil is replicated in many other cosmologies but other cosmologies differ, including those of Aristotle and Empedocles. The narrative of how goodness and evil come to be are an important part of any fundamental theory of reality, and in the following we shall focus at length on how goodness relates to cosmology.

Modern science seems to support the thesis that radically new beings can emerge from simpler beings over the course of gradual evolutionary processes. In Western philosophy, one of the earliest proponents of this view is Empedocles, whose work is among the first to promote proto-evolutionary views of the origin of the cosmos and of life. Empedocles was thus a pioneer in the inquiry that led to the theories of the Big Bang and Darwinian evolution. The dominant views among the Greeks, on the other hand, were opposed to this and included Plato’s creationism and Aristotle’s “eternalism³. In the present work, “eternalism” means the view that “there is nothing new under the Sun.” This means that things have always been pretty much as they are for eternity with no radical changes. However cosmic eternalism is more thoroughgoing than for the Greeks than for the author of Ecclesiastes. For Aristotle there was no original beginning, no “formless and void”, no moment where “the Spirit of God hovered over the waters”, just the alternation of summer and winter, birth and death, war and peace, slleping and waking on into the eternal past as it will be into the eternal future. Such a view is worthy of contemplation, not merely as a scientific “theory of everything”, but also as an expression of a type of person. However very few people, both then and now, find this a satisfying view.

The alternatives to this eternalism include the ‘creationism’ found in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. These are far more popular among humans of all types, whether from the earliest stages of barbarism to the most refined thinkers of our own day. But the Creationists must defend contend with views found in Empedocles, Epicureanism, Buddhism and modern materialism. I think that these other views can be categorized as “emergentism”. This latter term means that view that radically new things can emerge from previously existing matter without the external agency of a theistic God. The present work will try prepare the way for a possible relation of theism and emergentism. 

In addition to these views, there came about an elaboration of cosmogonies’ narrative structure. Previous people had reasoned that there was a divine mind that gave form to the primal chaos. Assuming this divine mind was good, the world must have been good as well. To explain evil, a separate evil event or influence was posited, such as the rebellion of Satan or the sin of Adam and Eve. Once this evil came into the world, things would start to get worse, and it seemed to some that it was still getting worse today, and would perhaps get still worse in the future, until things just could not get any more worse. But of course, there was still a good creator, and such a creator would not completely abandon us, so it has been thought that at some point He would return and set things aright, either by creating a new world or by remaking this one. Such was the state of discourse when our story begins in one tiny corner of the world where people spoke Greek. In this place, there was a common inheritance of mythology similar to what we have alluded to above. But there was also a desire to submit theories about the cosmos to criticism such that a more scientific theory of everything would result. In the time and place where we begin, cosmology had divided into two broad schools of thought: 1) the “Ionian” schools in Asia Minor who spoke in terms of the fundamental material of the universe and 2) the “Italian” schools who spoke in terms of mathematics and geometry. Both used the term “arkhe”, which is difficult to translate but which refers to that which is permanent and unified and which underlies the changing and the many. It is not hard to see that modern science combines both of these in equal measure, and many people at the time desired to find a common truth underlying these two schools such that the advantages of both were retained while the disadvantages were left behind. This still-ongoing project was begun by Empedocles’ generation, who studied the thought of Pythagoras and Parmenides as well as early materialism. He and other “Early Greek Philosophers” created the first detailed rational cosmologies in the West, and of these Empedocles’ is by far the most complete and one of the most similar to that of modern science. It unified questions of ontology and morality and was similar to our own Big Bang cosmology and evolutionary biology. It has many advantages, but in later times it faced strong criticism from others, chief of which was Aristotle.

Our discussion is continued in our next chapter.

1Genesis 1:2ff

2Reid and Bringhurst (1984) pp. 19-24