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previous: Chapter 7 This webpage reproduces a chapter of A History of Philosophy by Frederick Copleston, S. J. as reprinted by Image Books — Doubleday New York • London • Toronto • Sydney • Auckland 1993 The text, and illustrations except as noted, are in the public domain. next: Chapter 9

Part I: Pre‑Socratic Philosophy

 p61  Chapter VIII
Empedocles of Akragas

Empedocles was a citizen of Akragas, or Agrigentum, in Sicily. His dates cannot be fixed, but it appears that he visited the city of Thurii shortly after its foundation in 444‑43 B.C. He took part in the politics of his native city, and seems to have been the leader of the democratic party there. Stories were later circulated about Empedocles' activities as magician and wonder-worker, and there is a story that he was expelled from the Pythagorean Order for "stealing discourses."​1 Apart from thaumaturgic activities, Empedocles contributed to the growth of medicine proper. The death of the philosopher has been made the subject of several entertaining fables, the best known being that he jumped into the crater of Etna in order to make people that that he had gone up to heaven and esteem him as a god. Unfortunately, he left one of his slippers on the brink of the volcano, and, as he used to wear slippers with brazen soles, it was easily recognised.​2 Diogenes, however, who recounts this story, also informs us that "Timaeus contradicts all these stories, saying expressly that he departed into Peloponnesus, and never returned at all, on which account the manner of his death is uncertain."​3 Empedocles, like Parmenides and unlike the other Greek philosophers, expressed his philosophical ideas in poetical writings, more or less extensive fragments of which have come down to us.

Empedocles does not so much produce a new philosophy, as endeavour to weld together and reconcile the thought of his predecessors. Parmenides had held that Being is, and that being is material. Empedocles not only adopted this position, but also the fundamental thought of Parmenides, that being cannot arise or pass away, for being cannot arise from not‑being, nor can being pass into not‑being. Matter, then, is without beginning and without end; it is indestructible. "Fools! — for they have no far‑reaching thoughts — who deem that what before was not comes into being, or that aught can perish and be utterly destroyed. For it cannot be that aught can arise from what in no way is, and  p62 it is impossible and unheard of that what is should perish, for it will always be, wherever one may keep putting it."​4 And again: "And in the All there is naught empty and naught too full," and "In the All there is naught empty. Whence, then, could aught come to increase it?"5

So far, then, Empedocles agrees with Parmenides. But on the other hand, change is a fact which cannot be denied, and the dismissal of change as illusory could not long be maintained. It remained, then, to find a way of reconciling the fact of the existence of change and motion with the principle of Parmenides, that Being — which, be it remembered, is material according to Parmenides — neither comes into being nor passes away. This reconciliation Empedocles tried to effect by means of the principle that objects as wholes begin to be and cease to be — as experience shows they do — but that they are composed of material particles which are themselves indestructible. There is "only a mingling and interchange of what has been mingled. Substance (Φύσις) is but a name given to these things by men."6

Now, though Thales had believed all things to be ultimately water and Anaximenes air, they believed that one kind of matter can become another kind of matter, at least in the sense that, e.g., water becomes earth and air becomes fire. Empedocles, however, interpreting Parmenides' principle of the unchangeability of being in his own way, held that one kind of matter cannot become another kind of matter, but that there are fundamental and eternal kinds of matter or elements — earth, air, fire and water. The familiar classification of the four elements was therefore invented by Empedocles, though he speaks of them, not as elements but as "the roots of all."​7 Earth cannot become water, nor water, earth: the four kinds of matter are unchangeable and ultimate particles, which form the concrete objects of the world by their mingling. So objects come into being through the mingling of the elements, and they cease to be through the separation of the elements: but the elements themselves neither come into being nor pass away, but remain ever unchanged. Empedocles, therefore, saw the only possible way of reconciling the materialistic position of Parmenides with the evident fact of change, the way of postulating a multiplicity of ultimate material particles, and may thus be called a mediator between the system of Parmenides and the evidence of the senses.

 p63  Now the Ionian philosophers had failed to explain the process of Nature. If everything is composed of air, as Anaximenes thought, how do the objects of our experience come into being? What force is responsible for the cyclical process of Nature? Anaximenes assumed that air transforms itself into other kinds of matter through its own inherent power; but Empedocles saw that it is necessary to postulate active forces. These forces he found in Love and Hate, or Harmony and Discord. In spite of their names, however, the forces are conceived by Empedocles as physical and material forces, Love or Attraction bringing the particles of the four elements together and building up, Strife or Hate separating the particles and causing the cessation of the being of objects.

According to Empedocles the world-process is circular, in the sense that there are periodic world-cycles. At the commencement of a cycle the elements are all mixed up together — not separated out to form concrete objects as we know them — a general mixture of particles of earth, air, fire and water. In this primary stage of the process Love is the governing principle, and the whole is called a "blessed god." Hate, however, is round about the sphere, and when Hate penetrates within the sphere the process of separation, the disuniting of the particles, is begun. Ultimately the separation becomes complete: all the water particles are gathered together, all the fire particles, and so on. Hate reigns supreme, Love having been driven out. Yet Love in turn begins its work, and so causes gradual mingling and uniting of the various elements, this process going on until the element-particles are mixed up together as they were in the beginning. It is then the turn of Hate to start its operations anew. And so the process continues, without first beginning and without last end.8

As to the world as we know it, this stands at a stage half‑way between the primary sphere and the stage of total separation of the elements: Hate is gradually penetrating the sphere and driving out Love as it does so. As our earth began to be formed out of the sphere, air was the first element to be separated off; this was followed by fire, and then came earth. Water is squeezed out by the rapidity with which the world rotates. The primary sphere, i.e. primary in the cyclical process, not primary in an absolute sense, is described in what appear to us somewhat  p64 amusing terms. "There" (i.e. in the sphere) "are distinguished neither the swift limbs of the sun; no, nor the shaggy earth in its might, nor the sea — so fast was the god bound in the close discovering of Harmony, spherical and round, rejoicing in his circular solitude."​9 The activity of Love and Strife is illustrated in various ways. "This" (i.e. the contest between them) "is manifest in the mass of mortal limbs. At one time all the limbs that are the body's portion are brought together by Love in blooming life's high season; at another, severed by cruel Strife, they wander each alone by the breakers of life's sea. It is the same with plants and the fish that make their homes in the waters, with the beasts that have their lairs on the hills and the seabirds that sail on wings."10

The doctrine of transmigration of souls is taught by Empedocles in the book of the Purifications. He even declares: "For I have already been in the past a boy and a girl, a shrub and a bird and a fish which lives in the sea."​11 It can scarcely be said, however, that this doctrine fits in well with the cosmological system of Empedocles, since, if all things are composed of material particles which separate at death, and if "the blood round the heart is the thought of men,"​12 there is little room left for immortality. But Empedocles may not have realised the discrepancy between his philosophical and religious theories. (Among the latter are certainly some very Pythagorean-sounding prescriptions, such as "Wretches, utter wretches, keep your hands from beans!")13

Aristotle remarks that Empedocles made no distinction between thought and perception. His actual theory of vision is given by Theophrastus, a theory used by Plato in the Timaeus.​14 In sense-perception there is a meeting between an element in us and a similar element outside us. All things are constantly giving off effluences, and when the pores of the sense-organs are the right size, then these effluences enter in and perception takes place. In the case of vision, for example, effluences come to the eyes from things; while, on the other hand, the fire from inside the eye (the eye is composed of fire and water, the fire being sheltered from the water by membranes provided with very small pores, which prevent water getting through, but allow fire to get out) goes out to meet the object, the two factors together producing sight.

 p65  In conclusion, we may remind ourselves that Empedocles tried to reconcile the thesis of Parmenides, that being can neither come to be nor pass away, with the evident fact of change by postulating ultimate particles of the four elements, the mingling of which forms the concrete objects of this world and the separation of which constitutes the passing-away of such objects. He failed, however, to explain how the material cyclic process of Nature takes place, but had recourse to mythological forces, Love and Hate. It was left to Anaxagoras to introduce the concept of Mind as the original cause of the world-process.

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The Author's Notes:

1 Diog. Laërt., 8.54.

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2 Diog. Laërt., 8.69.

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3 Diog. Laërt., 8.71. (The great Germanic classical poet Hölderlin wrote a poem on the legendary death of Empedocles, also an unfinished poetic play.)

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4 Frag. 11.

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5 Frag. 14.

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6 Frag. 8.

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7 Frag. 7 (ἀγένητα i.e. στοιχεῖα).

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8 This theme of an unending cyclic process reappears in the philosophy of Nietzsche under the name of the Eternal Recurrence.

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9 Frag. 27.

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10 Frag. 20.

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11 Frag. 117.

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12 Frag. 105.

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13 Frag. 141.

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14 Arist., De An., 427a21. Theophr., de sensu, 1 ff. Plat., Tim., cf. 67C ff. (D. 31 A 86).

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