Empedocles quotes. The Love and Strife Philosophy of Empedocles. Empedocles. 1. Introduction 2. Biographical Information 3. Philosophical Views 3.1. Empedocles as an Eleatic Philosopher 3.2. Empedocles and the Possibility of Becoming 3.3. 1. Parmenides and his philosophical school assert that Being is one (monism) and changeless, a position that contradicts the world of common sense. 2.
Empedocles was born in Akgragas, a Greek city in Sicily, sometime in the early fifth century BCE. 3. 3.1. Empedocles accepts Parmenides' view that ultimately there is no generation or destruction; what is, is and cannot come into being or perish. Fools! Similarly, in Fr. 8, he says, "There is no substance (phusis) of any of all the things that perish, nor any cessation for them of baneful death.
" And in the All there is nothing empty and nothing too full. (13) In the All there is nothing empty. There is no emptiness in the All or Being, from which it follows that there could be no increase in the All, for increase presupposes emptiness. 3.2. 3.3. 3.4. 3.5. 3.6. Empedocles. Empedocles (/ɛmˈpɛdəkliːz/; Ancient Greek: Ἐμπεδοκλῆς; Empedoklēs; Ancient Greek: [empedoklɛ̂ːs]; c. 490 – 430 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a citizen of Agrigentum, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for being the originator of the cosmogenic theory of the four Classical elements.
He also proposed powers called Love and Strife which would act as forces to bring about the mixture and separation of the elements. These physical speculations were part of a history of the universe which also dealt with the origin and development of life. Influenced by the Pythagoreans, he supported the doctrine of reincarnation. Empedocles is generally considered the last Greek philosopher to record his ideas in verse. Some of his work survives, more than in the case of any other Presocratic philosopher. Empedocles' death was mythologized by ancient writers, and has been the subject of a number of literary treatments. Life[edit] Works[edit] Purifications[edit] Empedocles Empedocles (of Acagras in Sicily) was a philosopher and poet: one of the most important of the philosophers working before Socrates (the Presocratics), and a poet of outstanding ability and of great influence upon later poets such as Lucretius.
His works On Nature and Purifications (whether they are two poems or only one – see below) exist in more than 150 fragments. He has been regarded variously as a materialist physicist, a shamanic magician, a mystical theologian, a healer, a democratic politician, a living god, and a fraud. To him is attributed the invention of the four-element theory of matter (earth, air, fire, and water), one of the earliest theories of particle physics, put forward seemingly to rescue the phenomenal world from the static monism of Parmenides.
Empedocles’ world-view is of a cosmic cycle of eternal change, growth and decay, in which two personified cosmic forces, Love and Strife, engage in an eternal battle for supremacy. Table of Contents 1. 2. 3. A. B. 4. A.