Life and Works
Empedocles was born sometime at the beginning of the fifth century BCE, though more precise dating is impossible, to a prominent family of the Sicilian city of Acragas, now Agrigento.[1] Many details of his life remain a mystery, due in part to the fanciful nature of the later Greek biographical tradition. He was very likely active in politics and medicine.[2]
His writings, composed in the meter of epic verse, survive in fragments that amount to about 450 lines of poetry. Like other ancient authors, Empedocles understood his works to be divinely inspired and explicitly invoked a Muse in his poetry to help him to speak fittingly. Many of the fragments of Empedocles that remain survive as quotations in the texts of later authors. It seems likely that he composed two poems, and editors have long struggled to determine which fragments belong to which poem, assuming for the most part that one poem contained scientific and philosophical material and the other religious material.
The discovery of new papyrus fragments of Empedocles in the early 1990’s simultaneously complicated and simplified matters—the new fragments showed what had long been suspected: Empedocles mixed religious and scientific material freely in his poetry and any attempt to assign fragments to one poem or the other on the basis of subject matter alone was a doomed endeavor. However, the new fragments also opened the door to an understanding of Empedocles’ poetry as an integrated whole that springs from a worldview in which science and mysticism are not opposed or even distinct.
One suggested solution to the problem of two poems which both contain religious and scientific/philosophical material is to approach the difference between them not in terms of different subject matter but in terms of different audiences or addressees. Discrepancies between the two poems in emphasis, tone, and language can thus be seen as the effect of two poetic voices, one esoteric and one exoteric.[3]
The Philosophy of Empedocles
Basic Preconditions
The best way to approach any author is to take seriously how that author tells us to approach his or her work. Empedocles is no exception, and we are fortunate to have his introductory address to his disciple Pausanius. He writes:
Palms—so narrow and closed in—have been
poured over people’s limbs. But countless
worthless things keep crashing in, blunting their
cares. During their lifetimes they see such a
little part of life and then they are off:
short-lived, flying up and away like smoke,
totally persuaded by whatever each of them
happened to bump into while being driven
one way, another way, all over the place. And they
claim in vain that they have found the whole.
Like this, there is no way that people can see or
hear or consciously grasp the things I have to teach.
But as for you:
because you have come aside here, you will learn.
This is not a flattering picture of humanity, to say the least. The “palms” mentioned in the first lines refer to the senses. The image of “pouring” something over someone’s limbs evokes Homeric scenes in which divine gifts are bestowed on human beings by the gods. The word translated as “narrow and closed in” has a basic connotation of an oppressive and dangerous situation.[6] Empedocles, then, is presenting the senses as divine gifts which are woefully unused—closed off, narrow, they leave us in the situation of utter chaos and futility described in the following lines: we are overwhelmed by the world around us, driven around haphazardly by whatever we come across, we grasp a tiny piece of reality and mistake it for the whole, and then we die. Empedocles warns his reader that like this, he or she will never consciously understand—indeed, will never even catch sight of or hear—his teaching. The best that a mortal’s resourcefulness can manage is to come aside to learn from someone like Empedocles—a teacher who, pointedly, claimed to be “an immortal god, no longer mortal.”[7]
Presented by Empedocles with our hopeless situation and his grim assessment of our ability to understand him or, indeed, even to catch a glimpse of something that needs to be understood, we have every right to ask what we must do. Empedocles’ answer comes in the form of his instructions to his disciple:
Come now: watch with every palm how
each single thing becomes apparent. Don’t hold
anything you see as any more of an assurance
than whatever you hear, or give those loud
sounds you happen to be hearing preference
over the sharp tastes on your tongue. And don’t
reject the assurance provided by any other limb
that offers some passage for perception, but
perceive how each single thing becomes apparent.[8]
If we read these words carefully, we see that Empedocles is instructing his student (and anyone who would understand his words) to use every “palm,” or sense, at once, without preference. We are to see, hear, taste, feel, and smell, and we are to do all of it at once without giving preference to any one of the senses over another. In other words, we are to “open up” the closed palms—the senses—that Empedocles spoke of—and use them.
Considered theoretically, the above passage gives rise to interesting speculations about the importance of incorporating sense data into our model of reality, or about the psychological issue of what faculty of consciousness coordinates the five senses into a single, unified experience of the world. Aristotle followed this line of thinking, and many modern scholars have followed Aristotle. But this is more than an exhortation to empiricism, especially in light of the context of a preliminary instruction in a transmission to a single disciple and Empedocles’ total lack of concern for such issues elsewhere. Empedocles means for his reader to carry out the practice in awareness that he gives.[9]
Approached phenomenologically, instead of abstractly, this text takes on a greater depth of meaning. That is, when we actually try to do what Empedocles says, our experience immediately tells us several things. First, what he says must be done is tremendously difficult to do for any length of time. Second, it is the sort of exercise that one could only master after long and arduous practice. Finally, it reveals to us the narrowness of our normal sense experience—it turns out that, just as Empedocles said, our senses are closed off and essentially unused. In short, Empedocles is presenting a meditative discipline—a practice of awareness through the senses designed to cultivate the necessary level of awareness if a reader is to “see or hear or consciously grasp” the main teaching. In some respects this practice can be compared to meditative techniques from other traditions that call for an all-embracing awareness of our experience, like Zazen or Vipassana, but such comparisons are of limited use at best, as the practice laid out by Empedocles is unique.
Cosmology and Soteriology
The two most fundamental concerns in Empedocles’ philosophy are his account of the cosmos, or his cosmology, and his account of the destiny of the human soul, or his soteriology. So basic are these two concerns that the tendency has been to split his work, as mentioned above, into two poems, one cosmological, scientific, and philosophical, and the other soteriological, religious, and mystical. Again, attempts to bifurcate Empedocles are unfounded, as argued by many scholars and confirmed by the mixed material in the newer papyrus fragments: there is no “religious Empedocles” as opposed to a “scientific Empedocles”: there is just one Empedocles, who blended philosophy and science, religion and mysticism, into one seamless whole. But this raises a basic question: What, if any, was the relationship between Empedocles’ cosmology and his soteriology? The answer will involve exploring both separately, and will also shed light on Empedocles’ dire characterization of humanity in the preliminary material quoted above—as well as on his prescribed remedy of the practice in awareness given there.
Empedocles’ cosmos is composed of six entities. There are the familiar four “elements,” which were actually termed “roots” by Empedocles: water, fire, earth, and air (aithêr). These basic root entities were equated with four divinities of Greek religion, and were described by Empedocles as immortal and conscious. The elements, or roots, are combined and separated by the forces of Love and Strife—also described as conscious and divine. When the elements are combined, this is the work of Love, (philotês), often simply identified with the goddess Aphrodite. When they are separated from one another, this is the doing of Strife (neikos). Everything, absolutely everything in the universe, including human beings, is a combination of several or all of the four elements. The differences between the varied compound beings we experience can be attributed to the fact that the elements have been combined in them in varying proportions.[10]
Importantly, while the elements themselves are divine and immortal, not subject to birth or death, the combinations that they form are by their nature temporary. But Empedocles warns us not to approach appearances too naively. When something seems to come into existence from nothingness, this is an illusion: it is simply the mixing of the preexisting divine and immortal elements in a new combination that will have no lasting existence. Similarly, when something seems to pass out of existence, be destroyed or die, nothing of the sort is really taking place: the divine and immortal elements that made up a temporary compound being are just going their separate ways again. Birth and death, in other words, have no reality:
For all mortal beings, there is no such thing as
birth. Neither is there any end for them in hateful,
destructive death. There is nothing at all but
mixture, followed by rearrangement of the things
that have been mixed: “birth” is just the name
The other implication of Empedocles’ cosmology is that the universe and everything in it is divine and conscious—human beliefs to the contrary, again, being delusion.
The cosmos works in cycles. As Empedocles describes events, at the beginning of each cycle, all the elements are separate from one another—distinct and pure, completely under the influence of Strife, with earth at the center, surrounded by water, then fire, and finally pure air on the outside. Then Love begins to exert her influence on the elements, drawing together what is essentially different, mixing and blending what was once separate and distinct, until the result is a perfectly homogeneous sphere of combined elements, with all that exists totally under her power. But then Strife begins to exert its power again, separating out the elements one from the other, undoing Love’s work of blending and mixing, until finally everything is back the way it was at the beginning.[12]
It should be noted that the two movements of the cosmic cycle—a drawing together and unifying under Love and a moving apart and separation under Strife—are not identical. In a universe in which everything is a divine immortal with consciousness and desire, the elements are not, as it were, indifferent to what is happening to them. The basic, ancient principle of “like to like” is at work in Empedocles just as much as in other ancient authors. The elements begin in a state of separation because this is what is most natural for them: they are drawn to one another by a basic affinity. When they are brought together by Love, they are moving against their own natural inclination—only the seductive power of a being like Aphrodite can overcome the elements normal resistance to mixture. When they begin to separate again under Strife, they are moving once more according to their own natural tendencies.[13]
The story of the soul, like the story of the cosmos, also works in cycles. The word used by Empedocles to refer to the soul is daimôn. It has the basic meaning of divine being. And the daimônes, like the elements, take part in a great drama of wandering away from their true home, of mixing and blending, and of a final return to the way things were. The daimôn is described as being
made to wander away from the blessed ones
and take on all sorts of shapes and forms of
mortal existence through the course of time,
exchanging one hard path of life for another.[14]
The daimôn is “made to wander,” as Empedocles says, because it has “stained its dear limbs with blood.”[15] This exile, and wandering, and series of incarnations in which it takes on “all sorts of shapes and forms of mortal existence,” is the result of the impurity of blood pollution—in effect, a punishment. To offer some sort of context for Empedocles’ poetry, we should remember that the theme of divine souls forced to take part in mortal existence as a sort of punishment, the acceptance of reincarnation as a basic tenet, as well as practical moral precepts advocating vegetarianism were all mainstays of Orphic and Pythagorean tradition.[16][17] The deep sympathy of ideas between Empedocles’ poetry and Orphic and Pythagorean thought has long been noted—it should be mentioned that certain ancient authors simply claimed Empedocles as a Pythagorean.[18]
Empedocles indicates in the clearest of terms that the daimôn, during its exile and its long series of incarnations, takes on human form as well—using himself as an example:
The might of aithêr chases it into the sea,
sea spits it out onto solid ground, earth spits it
up into the rays of the radiant sun and sun hurls it
into the whirlpools of aithêr. One receives it from another, and they all
hate it. This is the way that I too am now going,
an exile from the gods and a wanderer, placing my
trust in mad Strife.[19]
Exile and wandering as a result of impurity is not the end of the soul’s story, however, any more than mixture and homogeneity is the end of the story for the elements when Love blends them all together. As Empedocles says:
And finally they become prophets and singers and doctors
and leaders among men who dwell on earth;
thence they sprout up as gods, first in their prerogatives.[20]
In other words, the daimônes, forced to wander away from their own kind for so long, forced to live out mortal existence after mortal existence, finally return to their rightful place of honor as gods, just as the elements, forced into mixture by Aphrodite, finally return to their places of origin with one another under the influence of Strife.
To return, then, to the original question: What is the relationship between the cosmology and soteriology of Empedocles? The answer comes from the fact that the substance of the soul, for Empedocles, was aithêr.[21] The aithêr of the soul and the aithêr of Empedocles’ cosmic cycles one and the same, and are part of one and the same story: the story of the cosmos is the story of the soul, and vice versa. When Aphrodite draws the elements away from their realms of purity, in which they are distinct from one another, and mixes them into the myriad combinations of mortal beings and ultimately into a giant, uniform sphere, the aithêrial souls are included in this process. When Strife begins to undo her blending, returning the elements to their original state of purity and separation, the aithêr, the substance of the soul at the heart of human existence, is included in the process. In cosmological terms, the aithêr is headed back to its original state of separation and purity. But put in soteriological terms, the same process can be described as the exiled soul finally headed for its true home, for its original divinity, and for this reason Empedocles places his “trust in mad Strife.”
Magic and Esotericism
As noted above, when Love—Aphrodite—joins the elements together into mortal compounds, she is causing them to move against their own natural inclinations. To understand how she accomplishes this, it is only necessary to look to the totally standard view of Aphrodite in Greek literature: she is the goddess of sex and love, and above all she is a divine seducer who accomplishes all her aims through the delicate but unstoppable force of love magic.[22] Mortal existence, then, insofar as it is under the sway of Love’s influence, may be viewed as under a magic spell—the spell of Aphrodite.
It should be noted here that the two main principles that drive Empedocles cosmic cycles, Love and Strife, the powers of binding and releasing, correspond perfectly to the two most basic principles of Greek magic, affection and enmity, the powers behind binding and releasing spells.[23] This is clearly no accident. In one significant passage of his poetry, Empedocles tells his disciple just how to approach Aphrodite:
Watch her with your consciousness! Don’t just
sit there in a daze staring blankly with your eyes![24]
Here we have a glimpse of the teacher calling his disciple to attention in the face of a magical power who was renowned for her ability to leave people in a blank stupor. Empedocles demonstrates an acute awareness of the dangers of love magic, and of the importance of staying alert when confronted with it.
If this aspect of Empedocles’ poetry has been underappreciated for some time, it is likely due to the inability of readers outside of Empedocles’ milieu to appreciate the nature of esoteric expression. Specifically, while Empedocles warns his disciple not to be taken in by Aphrodite and her illusory creations, he does so while referring to her in conventional human terms, talking about her in all the terms human beings are accustomed to use, and even referring to the fact that he is doing this: “faultless Love,” “They call her Delight and Aphrodite.” He does exactly the same thing for Strife and its work, saying things like “mad Strife” and “hateful, destructive death.”[25]
Now Empedocles is very clear to distinguish between his own knowledge and awareness and that of ordinary human beings—the whole point of his teaching is that he has access to a wisdom that most human beings do not, though they are in desperate need of it. But he also acknowledges the need to accommodate human delusion, saying:
When light has been mixed into the form of a
human, or any kind of wild beast or shrub or
bird, and then comes into contact with aithêr,
this is what they call “coming into existence.”
But when those elements are separated again,
They call that “ill-fated destiny.” What they say is,
for them, quite right; and I myself conform to
their convention.[26]
As Empedocles says elsewhere, there is no such thing as “coming into existence” or “birth,” and no such thing as “ill-fated destiny” or “death.” But from the limited perspective of mortals, it seems this way, so Empedocles will talk about appearances in terms that mortals will understand, which is the only appropriate way to talk to someone you are trying to teach.
Interestingly, the idea of adapting the delivery of one’s teaching to the level or perspective of one’s audience was a fundamental aspect of Pythagorean pedagogy, the rhetorical tradition which was reportedly founded by Empedocles, and the later Hermetic tradition which shared so much in common with him in terms of subject matter and basic philosophical approach.[27] Interpreters of Empedocles run into trouble when they take his statements, made in accommodation of human convention, at face value, without taking seriously other statements to the contrary made from his own (divine) perspective, his open explanation of what he is doing, or his clear, repeated distinction between his knowledge and mortal knowledge.
Mortal and Divine Consciousness
If there is any theme most consistently asserted in Empedocles’ philosophy, it is the utter futility of human knowledge and perception on its own, without a divine teaching. Similarly, Empedocles consistently points toward, and speaks from, just such a divine consciousness—which is his prerogative as a divinized teacher. But none of this is simple arrogance or pessimism on Empedocles' part: such consciousness is the birthright of all human beings, and to awaken it in his reader is the very point of his poetry. His writings would make little sense and have no purpose beyond rubbing salt in the wound if Empedocles did not believe that human beings could transcend their limitations and discover their divine potential. A few words, though, are in order about the distinction between mortal and divine consciousness.
To begin with, it is important to note that Empedocles distinguishes clearly between mortal and divine consciousness. It is also important to note the logical, biological, and religious consistency with which he does this. In ancient thought, what we now tend to think of, somewhat abstractly, as mental, emotional, and spiritual life was strongly associated with and localized in different parts of the human body. For Empedocles, mortal consciousness is located in the blood around the heart, as he says:
in the oceans of throbbing blood, this is where
you will find what usually is called awareness by
humans. For consciousness, the consciousness
of humans, is the blood around the heart.[28]
Note that Empedocles is careful to qualify his words, saying that he is talking about human consciousness. This is significant, especially given his evaluation of human consciousness in an above quoted passage: human beings are overwhelmed by “worthless things” that “keep crashing in, blunting their cares,” they “see such a little part of life” and are “totally persuaded by whatever each of them” happens to “bump into while being driven one way, another way, all over the place.” Despite the sad reality of their predicament, people are actually convinced that they have accomplished something in their confusion: “they claim in vain that they have found the whole.”
Note also the perfect logic of locating such a helpless, delusional, and archetypically mortal consciousness in the blood: blood is the combination of the four elements in near perfect harmony—artifact par excellence of the divine enchantress who seduces the elements into mixture and mortality: Aphrodite.[29]
Taking into account Empedocles’ claims to divinity, and to a wisdom beyond the confusion of mortals, it is impossible that he (or any wise person) knows what he knows by the same faculty that leaves most people in such utter chaos. In other words, wherever divine consciousness is, it cannot be in the blood around the heart. Instead, Empedocles’ points to the breathing apparatus: to the diaphragm, the lungs, the midriff.
For instance, he instructs his disciple to care for his teacher’s words by pressing them “underneath your dense-packed diaphragm (prapides).”[30] Thus the proper reception of a divine teaching is accomplished through the breathing. Similarly, when Empedocles describes the extraordinary knowledge and mystical abilities of a particular wise person, he calls him a “man of exceptional knowledge” who possessed “the greatest wealth in his prapides,” someone who “whenever he stretched his prapides to the full was easily able to see each single detail of everything that happened during ten human lifetimes, even twenty.” The locus of divine knowledge is, again, the diaphragm, the midriff. The reference to mystic insight being the result of stretching the prapides to the full underscores the specific importance of the breathing in accessing divine consciousness.[31] Associating divine consciousness with breathing is quite consistent: as we saw, aithêr, pure air, is the divine, conscious element of soul for Empedocles. And anatomically, it makes perfect sense to associate such consciousness with the organs and loci of breathing in the human body.
In another passage, Empedocles locates the prophetic power of wise people who have insight into the illusory nature of birth and death:
No one
who was wise about such matters would
prophesy in his chest (phresi) that for as long as people
live what they call life they are, and experience
bad things and good, but that before being
fastened together as mortals and after being
released they are nothing.[32]
The seat of prophetic insight here is the phrên, the midriff. Divine knowledge and consciousness, again, is found in this part of the body. Even the god Apollo, the quintessential god of prophecy whose divine awareness transcends time and space, is characterized by Empedocles as a “sacred and ineffable phrên.”[33]
In summation, then, we may say that the mortal consciousness characterized by delusion and helplessness is Aphrodite’s creation, localized in the blood around the heart, the best example of her work of mixing and blending, and a crucial part of her illusion. The divine consciousness that leads to real knowledge—prophetic knowledge possessed by people like Empedocles—is located in the midriff, the diaphragm, the breathing apparatus. These two kinds of consciousness, deceptively close to one another in the human body, could not be more different. The work of Empedocles’ poetry was to elicit from his readers a divine consciousness different from Aphrodite’s deceptive, blood-bound consciousness.
To return to where we started, Empedocles pointed out that most people have no concept of how to approach his teaching. Now we can see why in terms of the difference between mortal and divine consciousness. Our usual thinking is not an appropriate or productive apporach to a divine teaching, since any resulting interpretation will invariably be delusion, the product of Aphrodite’s mortal consciousness, part of the seducer's greatest deception. As for the right way to approach Empedocles’ teachings, the poet could not have been more clear: “Oversee them with good will and pure attention to the work,” “Watch with every palm how each single thing becomes apparent,” “Cover over these teachings in your silent breast (phrenos).”[34]
References
- For dating of Empedocles see Brad Inwood, The Poem of Empedocles (revised edition), 6. Toronto: The University of Toronto Press, 2001. See also John Burnet, Early Greek Philosophy, 138. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1945.
- Politics: See Inwood, 7. Medicine, See Peter Kingsley, Ancient Philosophy, Mystery, and Magic: Empedocles and Pythagorean Tradition, 217-232. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995. Hereafter APMM.
- For a discussion of Empedocles' poetry in the context of the Strasbourg papyrus finds, see Peter Kingsley, "Empedocles for the New Millennium,” in Ancient Philosophy 22 (2002): 333-413. Hereafter "NM."
- Empedocles Fragment B2. The standard Diels and Kranz system of enumeration is used throughout this article: Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz, eds., Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. Berlin: 1951.
- Unless otherwise noted, translations are from Peter Kingsley, Reality, Inverness, CA: Golden Sufi Press, 2003; also from Kingsley, "NM."
- "NM," 360-363.
- Empedocles B112. My translation.
- Empedocles B3.
- For comments see Kingsley, Reality, 507-517 and notes on 590.
- See Empedocles B16, B17, B21, B23, B26, B35, and B71.
- Empedocles B8.
- See Empedocles B17, B20, B21, B22, B23 (by analogy), B26, and B35.
- Inwood, 50.
- Empedocles B115.
- Ibid.
- For Orphic soteriology, see M.L. West, The Orphic Poems, 21-23. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983.
- For Pythagorean vegetarianism and Empedocles, see Charles Kahn, Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans, 9,17, 146-153. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2001.
- Empedocles A7, A11, A19 (Diels and Kranz "A" material signifies testimonia).
- Empedocles B115.
- Empedocles B146. Translation Brad Inwood's.
- For the soul as aithêr in Empedocles and in Greek thought generally see Kingsley, Reality, 400-402 and "NM," 381-382 with note 116.
- See Kingsley, Reality, 375-383 and notes on 587-588 for references to Aphrodite in Greek literature.
- APMM, 298-300 with notes on same pages.
- Empedocles B17.
- For "faultless Love" and "They call her..." see Empedocles B35 and B17. For "mad Strife" and "hateful, destructive death" see Empedocles B8 and B115.
- Empedocles B9.
- "NM," 346-350 with notes on those pages; see also Kingsley, "Knowing Beyond Knowing: The Heart of Hermetic Tradition," in Parabola, vol. 22/1.
- Empedocles B105.
- See Empedocles B98.
- Empedocles B110 with comments in "NM," 399-402.
- Empedocles B129. For comments, see ibid with special reference to note 166 regarding the insights of Louis Gernet.
- Empedocles B15.
- Empedocles B134. Translation Inwood's.
- Empedocles B110, B3, and B5, respectively.
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