ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 5: EMPEDOCLES
EMPEDOCLES:
- pluralist (more than one fundamental principle)
- naturalist, but also religious figure (Orhpism-Pythagoreanism mix)
- Sicily, noble family, sided with the democratics
- many recently discovered fragments
- similar to Heraclitus and Parmenides
- denies generation and corruption
Fragment 3:
- we must look for clarity in our examinations, sense perception does not provide this
- rejection of perception, but no positivising account
Perception:
- first proper theory of perception
- things are drawn to similar things; we are similar to everything via the elements, so our perception is merely an expression of our being drawn to them
System:
- FOUR ROOTS (elements): earth, water, air, fire
- everything is mixes of these (what appears to be generation and corruption)
- unlike Parmenides he can explain change, doesn’t affirm the one
- reality is complex and requires differentiation to be explained
- everything can be produced with only 4 elements, mixed differently
- TWO PRINCIPLES: Love and Hate/Strife (destruction of the perishable, destruction of the stable)
- Love aggregates, births, unifies; Hate segregates, brings about death
- only love leads to stillness, lifelessness, no differentiation; only Hate is nothing/chaos, pure difference
- reality is a cyclical rotation between Love, Hate and their equilibrium
- only in intermediate periods is life possible
- this is an eschatological/ethics perspective
- soul, daimon, which transmigrates to new bodies in new cycles [Pythagorean]
- some idea of sinning by following Hate, paid for by reincarnation