Empedocles of Agrigento

EMPEDOCLES OF AGRIGENTO. - A complex figure of physician, naturalist, philosopher and politician, about whom legend and history are not easily separable, he lived between c. 490-430 B.C. He made the democratic party prevail in his homeland, but he seems to have died in exile, in the Peloponnese. The tradition accepted by Horace is certainly legendary: « deus immortalis haberi dum cupit Empedocles, ardentem frigidus Actnam insiliuit » (Ep., II, 3, 464), although in a well-known fragment he says he wanders like a God among mortals, honored by all.

He wrote two works: Περὶ φύσεως and Καθαρισμοί (a few others are attributed to him with little foundation by Diogenes Laertius). In the first it may be said, schematically, that he occupies, like Anaxagoras and Democritus, a mediating position between the Eleatic doctrine of being, which excludes becoming, and the Heraclitean doctrine of becoming, which excludes being: according to E. there are being and becoming, the one represented by the four elements: fire, air, water, earth, the other by the union (μεῖξις) and separation (διέλ-λαξις) operated respectively by love (Φιλία, Ἀρμενία, Ἀρροδίνη, Σταργή, Γηθοσύνη, Κύκας) and by hate (Νεῖκας, Κόπας, Δήρις, Ἄρης). The nature of these causes, which alternate in the dominion of reality, is uncertain

Ibn Alborz