Empedocles of Agrigento: biography of this Greek philosopher

The figure of Empedocles of Agrigento is wrapped in legend because, in addition to being a philosopher, he was widely known in his time as a skilled doctor.

These doctor's skills were not in tune with the knowledge of Classical Greece about diseases and ailments of the body, since his medical technique was intermingled with the art of magic and shamanism and, of course, with his his philosophy.

Although not much is known about his life, his philosophy is known in depth, which has had an impact to this day with respect to what elements or "roots" make up matter. Let's see here how his life and work was through a biography of Empedocles.

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Summary biography of Empedocles of Agrigento

Empedocles of Agrigento born in Akragas (also called Agrigento), Sicily, probably between 483 and 495. As is frequent among the pre-Socratic philosophers, it is not possible to accurately fix the date of his birth, although it is true that by indirect testimonies 495 BC is accepted as the year of birth. c.

Virtually nothing is known of his childhood, although it is known that in his childhood his native Agrigento enjoyed great power and fame thanks to the tyrant Theron (488-472). He was born into an illustrious family, received a careful education and, thanks to it, became head of the democratic faction of his native Agrigento. Thanks to having a good social position and gaining popularity as a doctor-thaumaturge 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 Theron and the rise to power of his son Thrasideus, the tyranny ended with the latter losing power. It was then that Empedocles, defender of democracy, encouraged the parties that were 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 made many enemies, which is why he would end up going into 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 himself threw himself into the bowels of the Etna volcano in 423 BC. c. It is said that he immolated himself like this so that he could gain fame among the living and 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 The guests, including his disciple Pausanias, left the place, except Empedocles, who stayed behind. there. The next day the philosopher was no longer anywhere and a servant said he heard a voice calling him, and then saw 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 data on how Empedocles of Agrigento died is held by the Greek historian Timaeus of Taormina. This one maintains that Empedocles of Agrigento died in the Peloponnese, surely in the year 423 a. c. exiled and living far from his native Sicily at the age of 60.

Thought and career as a philosopher

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

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

As these ideas developed they came closer to the antithetical conceptions of reality of Parmenides and Heraclitus. For Parmenides, the real is one and immutable, its transformation being a mere appearance. On the other hand, for Heraclitus it was the incessant becoming, the constant change, 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 atomists such as Leucippus and Democritus would also try to combine. They all aspired to an eclectic synthesis, proposing the arché not as a single element or type of energy, but rather a plurality of them or a set of particles. These elements had the ability to remain unchanged.

In his works Empedocles establishes the necessity and permanence of being. For this he established four "roots" or "rhicómata" as constitutive principles of all things: water, air, earth and fire. It is these four roots that correspond to the principles or arjé proposed by various philosophers prior to Empedocles. Thales saw how I threw away 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 exist and to exist, but that it is the combination in different proportions of these four roots which results in the different materials and living beings of reality. He also highlights the idea that these four roots remain what they are, regardless of how they are combined. The elements that constitute matter remain unchanged, no matter how much the being or object they constitute changes.

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 what is different can stay together. On the other hand, Hate acts as a force of separation from what it resembles.

When Love totally predominates, a perfect sphere is generated, all of it equal and infinite. Upon reaching this perfection, Hate begins to act, undoing all this harmony until achieving the most absolute separation, which would come to be represented in the form of the most erratic chaos. Faced with this chaos, Love intervenes again, uniting everything again. In this way, these two forces work in a cyclical way, 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 his time's knowledge of botany, zoology, and physiology. In addition, he exposed very new ideas about the evolution of living organisms and the circulation of blood. Curiously, this philosopher believed that thought was in the heart, an idea that was long accepted by medicine.

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

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Plays

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

The way in which 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 his hometown of Elea.

Influences on other thinkers

The name of Empedocles, although famous, is not that of one of the great figures of Greek philosophy, but his theory of the four roots would end up being very important to western thought for more than twenty centuries after his existence. Aristotle he would adopt his theory, changing the name of "roots" to "elements", and this theory would be the most accepted to explain what matter was like until well into the 18th century.

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

Among the thinkers closest to his time we have Plato, who helped him to formulate a theory about vision. In agreement with the idea of ​​Empedocles that the similar is known by the similar, both postulate that in our interior there is fire and it resembles the external fire. This fire flows, in a subtle and continuous way, 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.

Reaching more modern times and arriving in 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 appreciate the figure of Empedocles, taking his theory on Love and Hate and the way in which you are two forces structure reality, relating it to his idea of ​​blind Will as the principle of all reality and destination.

Friedrich Nietzsche also feels 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 oriented towards the achievement of unity, through the forces of Love in various areas of life, especially in the political and moral.

Sigmund Freud, in the same vein as Schopenhauer, would consider Empedocles a very classical ancestor of his modern theory on Eros (love) and Thanatos (death) in his work "Análisis terminable e endless". Although Freud himself points out that, although the Hellenic philosopher was based on a "cosmic fantasy", Freud's theory claims a certain biological validity.

Bibliographic references:

• Ruiza, M., Fernandez, T. and Tamaro, E. (2004). Biography of Empedocles of Agrigento. In Biographies and Lives. The online biographical encyclopedia. Barcelona, ​​Spain). Recovered from https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/e/empedocles.htm on June 29, 2020.
• Laercio, d. (1947). Life and doctrine of the great philosophers of antiquity. Buenos Aires: Clarity.
• Chambers-Guthrie, W. K. (1998). History of greek philosophy. Volume II: The presocratic tradition from Parmenides to Democritus. Spain: Gredos.
• Eggers-Lan, C. Eggers; Lamb, n. L. (1985). The presocratic philosophers 2. Spain: Gredos. p. 426. ISBN 9788424935320.
• Barrio-Gutierrez, J. (1964). Empedocles. On the nature of beings: Purifications. Buenos Aires: Aguilar. p. 106.
• Nietzsche, F. W. (1873). The preplatonic philosophers. Madrid: Celesa. p. 182. ISBN 9788481645910.