Empedocles
Everything is made of four elements – earth, water, air and fire – which two forces, Love and Strife, keep mixing and separating.
Placement
Four elements, moved by Love and Strife, explain coming-to-be and passing away.
Key ideas
- Theory of the four elements
- Love and Strife
Influence
Influenced by 2
Pythagoras
influenced by ✓
Empedocles took up Pythagorean transmigration and the ban on killing animals (DK 31 B117, B137); the sage praised in B129 is often taken to be Pythagoras. Empedocles, DK 31 B117, B129, B137; Porphyry, Life of Pythagoras (quoting B129); SEP “Empedocles”
Pythagoras › traditionally c. 570–495 BCE
Parmenides
influenced by ✓
Empedocles accepted Parmenides’ claim that nothing comes from nothing or perishes and explained change as the mixing and separating of four eternal roots (DK 31 B8, B11–12). Empedocles, DK 31 B8, B11–12, B17; SEP “Empedocles”
Parmenides › c. 515–450 BCE
Influenced 3
Gorgias
influenced ✓
In Plato’s Meno Socrates defines colour ‘in the manner of Gorgias’ with Empedocles’ effluences and pores; ancient tradition makes Gorgias Empedocles’ pupil (Meno 76c–e; Diogenes Laertius VIII.58). Plato, Meno 76c–e; Diogenes Laertius VIII.58 (Satyrus); IEP “Gorgias”
Gorgias › c. 483–376 BCE
Aristotle
influenced ✓
Aristotle took over Empedocles’ four elements as the simple bodies of the sublunary world, crediting him as the first to posit four (Metaphysics I.4). Aristotle, Metaphysics I.4, 985a31–33; On Generation and Corruption II.1–6; SEP “Empedocles”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Aristotle › 384–322 BCE
Lucretius
influenced
Lucretius praised Empedocles’ philosophical poem as the model for his own, while rejecting his four elements as first beginnings (De rerum natura I.705–829). Lucretius, De rerum natura I.705–829 (praise at 716–733); SEP “Lucretius”
Evidence: AI draft
Lucretius › c. 99–55 BCE
Position
Empedocles sought to reconcile Parmenides’ claim that nothing comes from nothing with the evident change in the world. His solution: there are four eternal “roots” – earth, water, air and fire – which never perish but mix and separate. Two cosmic forces move them: Love, which unites, and Strife, which divides, prevailing in turn in an endless cycle. What we call birth and death is merely mixture and separation. His doctrine of the four elements dominated Western natural philosophy and medicine until the early modern period, while his poem on purification joined it to a teaching of the soul’s transmigration.
Life & context
Empedocles came from Akragas (Agrigento) in Sicily and was active in the fifth century BCE as a statesman, physician, poet and self-styled miracle worker. Legend has it that he died by leaping into the crater of Etna. He wrote in hexameter verse; considerable fragments of his poems survive, some recovered only in the late 1990s from a papyrus.
Main works
- On Nature (c. 450 BCE)
- Purifications (c. 450 BCE)
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