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Offers the first complete reinterpretation of Empedocles – one of the founding figures of Western philosophy – since the publication of the Strasbourg papyrus in 1999 brought new fragments of his lost work to light.
Cover
EMPEDOCLES
Series Editors’ Foreword
Contents
Preface and Acknowledgments
Abbreviations
CHAPTER I The Single-Work Hypothesis
1. THE UNITY OF EMPEDOCLES’ THOUGHT
The Unity of Empedocles’ Thought and Ensemble d of the StrasbourgPapyrus9
2. THE CASE FOR THE SINGLE-WORK HYPOTHESIS
Thematic Overlap
The Evidence for Book I and Its Proem: The Argument fromComplementarity
Books II and III: Biology and Kulturgeschichte?
3. THE TWO TITLES
Thematic Content: Titles or the “Diadoche” Tradition?
The Earliest Evidence for Each Title, 1: Ancient Medicine and Plato’s Phaedo
The Earliest Evidence for the Titles, 2: Aristotle
The Dialogue “On Poets” and Empedocles’ “Persika”
Dicaearchus, Theophrastus, and Timaeus of Tauromenion
The Testimony of Diogenes Laertius
The Two Titles: Conclusion
The Single-Work Hypothesis and Empedocles’ Addressees
CHAPTER II The Framework
1. A SINGLE THEORY OF EVERYTHING
Empedoclean Panpsychism
The Scope of Fragment B 17 versus B 115
2. THE DIRECT EVIDENCE FOR EMPEDOCLES’ PROEM
The Single-Work Hypothesis and the Relative Positions of B 17, B 115, andB 112
3. INDIRECT EVIDENCE FOR EMPEDOCLES’ PROEM: SEDLEY’S THESIS
a. The Hymn to Venus
b. The Address to Memmius and the Semina Rerum (50–61)
c. The Sacrifice of Iphigenia
d. General Precepts
4. Proposed Reconstruction
The Extant Fragments and the Number of Lines
a. The Division by Addressees: Plural and Singular
b. The Fragments Addressed to Plural Addressees
i. The Address to the “Friends from Acragas”
DK B 112 and the Subject of the Work
The Fictional Setting
Empedocles’ Authority Matches that of Parmenides’ Goddess
ii. The Exile of the Daimon and Related Fragments
iii. Invective with Plural Addressees
iv. Two Parallels from Lucretius: B 137 and 129
c. Fragments with a Single Addressee
i. B 1: The Address to Pausanias
ii. DK B 2 and 3: The Critique of Mortal Knowledge and the Address to theMuse
The Context in Sextus Empiricus
B 2: The Critique of Mortal Thought
Further Problems with Sextus’ Testimony
DK B 3.1–5 and B 131: The Address to the Muse
B 3.6–8: Pausanias or the Muse?
iii. B 110 and B 111: Things to Come
iv. B 8 to B 15: Eleatic Laws and the Critique of Mortal Thought
The Context of B 8,9,11, and 15: Plutarch’s “Against Colotes”
B 12, 13, 14
Internal Unity, Order, and Position of B 8–15
v. Conclusion: Proposed Reconstruction of the Second Half of the Proem
The Change of Addressees from the “Friends of Acragas” to Pausanias
The Critique of Mortal Thought, Things to Come, Eleatic Laws
B 3.9–13
CHAPTER III Interpreting the Framework
1. THE PROEM AND THE DOCTRINE: DIFFICULTIES OF INTERPRETATION
a. Gods and Men
b. The Aim of the Present Section
c. A Preliminary Objection: Aristotle on the Presocratics
d. The Proems of Parmenides and Lucretius
e. The Function of a Proem
The Indirect Opening: Problems of Continuity
Attention and Suspense
f. Empedocles’ Divinity according to B 112, B 115, and B 17/ensemble a
DK B 112
DK B 115
B 17/Ensemble a
Clarification and Elaboration: Long-lived, Not Immortal
Unity and the Proleptic Style
2. PEDAGOGICAL STRATEGIES AND PROTREPTIC PHILOSOPHICAL WORKS
a. Plato and Empedocles as Representatives of the Hierarchical Tradition of Thought
The Hierarchy of Knowledge
The Fourth Century Debate
Plato and Empedocles
i) Empedocles on Mental Growth and the Goal of Wisdom
Empedocles and the Scale of Nature
Empedocles on Learning
The Practice
ii) The Link to Plato: Dialectic and the Ascent Passage from the Symposium
The Ascent Passage
Plato as a Practitioner of the Proleptic Style: The Example of the Republic
Some General Points of Comparison
b. Protreptic Philosophical Works: Rhetorical Features in Empedocles’ Proem
Protreptic Philosophical Works
i) Reply to the Preliminary Objection
ii) The Rhetorical Structure and Function of Empedocles’ Proem
The Public Address to the Acragantines
Continuity and the Hearer’s Expectations
CHAPTER IV The Persuasion of Empedocles
1. GENERAL REMARKS: EMPEDOCLES’ HEROIC SYNTHESIS
B 17/ensemble a: A Difficult Passage from a Difficult Work
The Aim of the Present Section
Methodological Excursus
The Supracelestial Approach
The Historical Approach
Empedocles’ Heroic Synthesis
2. BACCHICS, ORPHICS, AND PYTHAGOREANS
a. Three Related Movements
The Common Element
Pindar and the Gold Lamellae
b) The Afterlife: A Basic Typology
c. Orphic or Pythagorean?
Empedocles’ Avowed Allegiances
Orphics and Pythagoreans
d. Empedocles’ Rational Theology and Eschatology
Esoteric and Exoteric Strands in Empedocles?
3. PARMENIDES’ POEM: UNITY BY EXCLUSION
Summary of the Poem and Some Main Lines of Interpretation
a) A Defense of the Current Consensus
The Goddess’s Instructions
Appearances before the “Heart of Truth”: Poetic Form
b. A First Contrast: βίος
c. First and Second Order
Long’s Critique: The Mind/Being Identity
First and Second Order Thought
Intelligibility and Continuity in the World and in Thought
4. HISTORICAL INTERLUDE: DlVIVE AND MORTAL KNOWLEDGE 115
Empedocles as Traditional Poet and Poetic Innovator
a. Poetic Pessimism and Causal “Overdetermination”: Pindar
b. The Homeric Gods before the Unity of All Things: Two Types of Response
c. Xenophanes on Knowledge
d. Heraclitus: The God’s-Eye View and the Geometrical Mean
5. EMPEDOCLES” RESPONSE TO PARMENIDES: THE CONTINUITY OF THOUGHT
a. Divine and Mortal Thought in Parmenides
b) Ancient and Modern Critiques of Parmenides’ Argument
Parmenides on Thinking in Pictures: The Route and the Sphere
Critical Thought and Abstraction
Theory and Practice of Thinking
c. Empedocles’ First Principles as Thinking Beings
The Parody of a Parody: Empedocles on the Elenchus
d. Empedocles on Mortal and Divine Thought
Styles of Transcendence: Rival Interpretations of Nous
Mortal Thought
Mortals’ Grasp of Partial Truth
Complex Truth
Common Sense and the Fantastical
6. INTELLIGIBLE ORDER: B17/ ENSEMBLE A
Empedocles’ Counter-claim: Intelligible Order
Graham’s Motif
The Structure of the Passage
Proleptic Composition
Learning as a Form of Natural Change: Aristotle
Continuity: Heraclitus and the Perils of Metaphor
Conclusion
1. WIDENING GAPS
Intelligibility and Clarification
The Reconstruction of Book I
2. CLARIFICATION AND ELABORATION IN B 21, 23, 26, AND 35
B 17/Ensemble a and the Cosmic Cycle
Fragment 21
B 23
B 2613
B 35
Notes
Appendix
Appendix
DK B 17/ensemble a
Bibliography
Bibliographical Surveys
History of the Text: Principal Modern Editions in Chronological Order
Modern Studies
Index Locorum
Selective General Index
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