Empedocles of Agrigento: biography of this Greek philosopher.

A summary of the life and work of Empedocles, pre-Socratic Greek philosopher.

The figure of Empedocles of Agrigentum is shrouded in legend because, in addition to being a philosopher, he was widely known in his time as a skilled physician.

These skills as a physician were not out of tune with the knowledge of Classical Greece about diseases and illnesses of the body, since his medical techniques were intermingled with the art of magic and shamanism and, of course, with his philosophy.

Although not much is known about his life, his philosophy is known in depth, which has had repercussions up to the present day regarding the elements or "roots" that make up matter. Let's see here what his life and work were like through a biography of Empedocles..

Summary Biography of Empedocles of Agrigentum

Empedocles of Agrigento was born in Akragas (also called Agrigento), Sicily, probably between the years 483 and 495.. As it is frequent among the pre-Socratic philosophers, it is not possible to fix with exactitude the date of his birth, although by indirect testimonies it is accepted as year of birth the 495 B.C..

Of his childhood practically nothing is known, although it is known that in his childhood his native Agrigento enjoyed great power and fame thanks to the tyrant Terón (488-472). He was born into an illustrious family, received a careful education and, thanks to this, became head of the democratic faction of his native Agrigento. Thanks to his good social position and his popularity as a physician-taumaturge and scientist, he was able to occupy important positions in public life.

It is known that during his lifetime Empedocles motivated political changes.. After the death of Therion and the rise to power of his son Thrasydeus, the tyranny ended with the latter losing power. It was then that Empedocles, defender of democracy, encouraged the parties fighting for power to stop the conflict and cultivate political equality. It is perhaps for this reason that, despite achieving great fame among his fellow citizens, he also earned many enemies, which is why he ended up in exile in the Peloponnese.

The death of Empedocles, as with his own birth and figure, is shrouded in mystery. Several anecdotes are told about his death, the best known being that he threw himself into the bowels of the volcano Etna in 423 B.C. It is said that he immolated himself in this way in order to acquire fame among the living and to be recognized as a god by dying in such an epic way. However, this story was discarded by the historian Hippobotus.

Another legend tells that, after celebrating a sacrifice in a field of Pisianacte, all his guests, including his disciple Pausanias, left the place, except Empedocles, who stayed there. The next day the philosopher was nowhere to be found and some servant claimed to have heard a voice calling him, and then to have seen a heavenly light. After this, Pausanias determined that the time had come to praise him as if he were a god.

As impressive as these two stories are, the truth is that the most reliable information about how the most reliable information on how Empedocles of Agrigentum died comes from the Greek historian Timaeus of Taormina. He maintains that Empedocles of Agrigento died in the Peloponnese, probably in the year 423 B.C. exiled and living far from his native Sicily at the age of 60 years.

Thought and trajectory as a philosopher

This Greek philosopher and poet was the first of the thinkers of pluralistic eclecticism, who tried to reconcile opposing visions of reality that Parmenides and Heraclitus had reached.

The four roots of matter

Before the arrival of the great Socrates on the Hellenic philosophical scene, Greek philosophy had assumed the existence of a common constitutive principle in nature, called the arche.

Philosophers such as Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, all three from Miletus, together with the school of Pythagoras, wanted to find this principle in different phenomena and phenomena of nature. to find this principle in different natural phenomena and aspects of nature.. Some saw it in concrete substances, such as air, water, while others saw it in abstract or formal nature, such as the indeterminate, proposed by Anaximander, or number, proposed by the Pythagorean sect.

As these ideas developed, they approached the antithetical conceptions of reality of Parmenides and Heraclitus. For Parmenides, the real is one and immutable, its transformation being a mere appearance. For Heraclitus, on the other hand, incessant becoming, constant change, was the true nature of the real. Empedocles saw in these two positions two ideas perfectly in tune and that explained the behavior of the natural world.

Thus, the figure of this philosopher represents the first attempt to harmonize these two positions, something that Anaxagoras and the atomists such as Leucippus and Democritus would also try to combine. All of them aspired to an eclectic synthesis, proposing the arche not as a single element or type of energy, but as a plurality of them or a set of particles.. These elements had the capacity to remain immutable.

In his works Empedocles establishes the necessity and perenniality of being. For this he established as constitutive principles of all things four "roots" or "rhichomata": water, air, earth and fire. It is these four roots that correspond to the principles or arche proposed by various philosophers prior to Empedocles. Thales saw as arche the water, Anaximenes the air, Xenophanes the earth and Heraclitus the fire.

Empedocles differs from these philosophers in that it is not that the substance or arche becomes all things that have been and will be, but rather that it is the combination in different proportions of these four roots which results in the different materials and living beings of reality..... It also highlights the idea that those four roots remain what they are, regardless of how they are combined. The elements that constitute matter remain immutable, however much the being or object they constitute may change.

The change in the proportion and quantity of these substances is the implication of two cosmic forces, which this philosopher called Love and Hate. Love is the force of attraction, which tends to unite the four elements, making that which is different can be held together. Hate, on the other hand, acts as the force of separation of what is similar.

When Love predominates totally, a perfect sphere is generated, all equal and infinite.. Once this perfection is reached, Hate begins to act, undoing all this harmony until the most absolute separation is achieved, which would come to be represented in the form of the most erratic chaos. In the face of this chaos, Love intervenes again, bringing everything back together. In this way, these two forces work cyclically, giving life to the various forms of matter in the cosmos, generating order and disorder.

On nature and reincarnation

Empedocles devoted great interest to the observation of natural phenomena, contributing to the knowledge of his time on botany, zoology and physiology. In addition, he expounded very novel conceptions on the evolution of living organisms and the circulation of the blood. Curiously, this philosopher was of the opinion that thought was to be found in the heartan idea that was accepted for a long time by medicine.

His ideas about the evolution and transformation of all living beings gave rise to the theory of metempsychosis. According to this view, living beings atone for their crimes through a series of reincarnations. According to Empedocles, people have been various things before dwelling in our bodies, and we could even have been other men and women. According to his vision, only men who manage to purify themselves will be able to escape the cycle of reincarnations, and return to live in the world of the gods.

Works

To this day only a few writings of Empedocles of Agrigento are known. Among the most notable we have the political writings, the treatise On Medicinethe Proem to Apollo, Purifications and the poem On Nature. The latter is incomplete, since of the 5,000 verses that the work consisted of, only about 450 have been recovered. All these works were written in the form of poems..

The way Empedocles describes the world and how he sees it seems to have a very strong influence from Parmenides, a Greek philosopher whom he met in the latter's hometown of Elea.

Influences on other thinkers

Empedocles' name, although famous, is not that of one of the great figures of Greek philosophy, but his theory on the four roots would eventually his theory of the four roots would end up being very important for Western thought for more than twenty centuries after his existence.. Aristotle would adopt his theory, changing the name of "roots" for "elements", and this theory would be the most accepted to explain how matter was until the eighteenth century.

It was during this century that, thanks to the foundation of chemistry as a modern science by the French chemist, biologist and economist Antoine Lavoisier, it was discovered that matter was indeed made up of elements. However, it was not four, but hundreds of them that made up matter. In fact, the four original elements were not pure, for water was made of hydrogen and oxygen, air was a very disparate mixture of gases, earth had an infinity of elements and fire was energy in the form of plasma.

Among the thinkers closest to his time we have Plato, who helped him to formulate an idea of the universe.who helped him to formulate a theory of vision. In agreement with Empedocles' idea that like is known by like, both postulate that within us there is fire and it resembles the external fire. This fire flows, subtly and continuously through the eye, allowing vision. Aristotle pointed out that Plato's theory of the soul coincides with that of Empedocles, where the soul is composed of the four roots that make up matter.

Coming to more modern times and coming to Germany we have the lyric poet Friedrich Hölderlin and the philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer.. Hölderlin dedicates a work to the Greek philosopher, with his "The Death of Empedocles", published between 1797 and 1800. Schopenhauer would have appreciated the figure of Empedocles, taking his theory on Love and Hate and the way in which these two forces structure reality, relating it to his idea of blind Will as the principle of all reality and destiny.

Friedrich Nietzsche also has a special interest in the figure of Empedocles. He regards the Greek as a pessimistic thinker, but one who makes active and productive use of pessimism. His efforts are directed towards the achievement of unity through the forces of Love in various spheres of life, especially in the political and moral spheres.

Sigmund Freud, in the same vein as Schopenhauer, would consider Empedocles a very classical predecessor of his modern theory of Eros (love) and Thanatos (death) in his work "Terminable and Interminable Analysis". Although Freud himself emphasizes that while the Hellenic philosopher was based on a "cosmic fantasy," the Freudian theory claims some Biological validity.

Bibliographical references:

• Ruiza, M., Fernández, T. and Tamaro, E. (2004). Biography of Empedocles of Agrigento. In Biographies and Lives. The online biographical encyclopedia. Barcelona (Spain). Retrieved from https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/e/empedocles.htm on June 29, 2020.
• Laertius, D. (1947). Life and doctrine of the great philosophers of antiquity. Buenos Aires: Claridad.
• Chambers-Guthrie, W. K. (1998). History of Greek Philosophy. Volume II: The pre-Socratic tradition from Parmenides to Democritus. Spain: Gredos.
• Eggers-Lan, C. Eggers; Cordero, N. L. (1985). The pre-Socratic philosophers 2. Spain: Gredos. p. 426. ISBN 9788424935320.
• Barrio-Gutiérrez, J. (1964). Empedocles. Sobre la naturaleza de los seres: Las purificaciones. Buenos Aires: Aguilar. p. 106.
• Nietzsche, F. W. (1873). The pre-Platonic philosophers. Madrid: Celesa. p. 182. ISBN 9788481645910.