A fundamental question of Empedoclean exegesis has been how to reconcile what have traditionally been divided into the ‘physical’ and ‘religious’ components of his work: that is, how his physical system, in which all things are formed out of the four elements and governed cyclically by the cosmic forces of Love and Strife, can accommodate his doctrine of rebirth and his first-person narrative of a fallen daimōn, ‘an exile from the gods’ (B115=D10.13) who is condemned to wander the different regions of the earth through various mortal incarnations. The ‘physical’ and ‘religious’ fragments have historically been thought, on the basis of the somewhat ambiguously worded testimony of Diogenes Laertius,[1] to belong to two separate poems: the religious Purifications (Katharmoi) and the cosmological On Nature (referred to in the sources as the Physica or Peri Physeōs). The apparent tension between these two aspects led to Werner Jaeger’s memorable description of Empedocles as a ‘philosophical centaur’.[2] However, since at least the 1960s, the thrust of scholarship has been to emphasize the intended unity of his thought.[3] This tendency was given new momentum, first by Catherine Rowett’s important 1987 article that argued that the surviving fragments in fact come from a single poem,[4] and then in 1999 by the extraordinary publication of the Strasbourg papyrus, which showed beyond any reasonable doubt that one poem both outlined the cosmic, elemental cycle and recounted the first-person experiences of the punished daimōn.[5] The papyrus thus lends support to the single-poem hypothesis without providing a ‘smoking gun’, whilst adherents to the two-poem hypothesis have had to re-draw previous allocations of the fragments.
Chiara Ferella’s substantial new monograph joins the ranks of the unifiers whilst maintaining the two-poem hypothesis. She makes full use of the Strasbourg papyrus to provide both a reconstruction of the opening to On Nature and an integrated interpretation of the story of the fallen daimōn, the theory of metempsychosis and Empedocles’ psychology more generally (including his theories of perception and knowledge-acquisition), and his cosmic cycle (including the creation of gods and humans). She is perhaps unfortunate that, just as her book was coming to publication, news emerged of the discovery of another new Empedocles papyrus by the Belgian papyrologist Nathan Carlig.[6] Remarkable though this discovery is, however, these newest fragments would not have altered her argument, as they are fairly scanty and cover doctrines already known through the testimonia.[7] Since her thesis is a cumulative one that builds on several smaller claims, I will summarize each section of the book in order before offering my assessment.
The Introduction, Chapter 1, and Chapter 2 set out the book’s goals and aim at establishing a new textual basis for the opening of On Nature. Ferella argues that B115 (=D10), in which the narrator describes his exile from the gods, prefaced the poem on the grounds that the Strasbourg papyrus alludes back to it at ens. d-f (=D76). As part of this exile, the narrator undergoes a katabasis, recounted in the proem, with Pythagoras as guiding psychopomp, where, like Plato’s Er, he is introduced to the rebirth of mortals. Empedocles thus legitimates his authority, just like Parmenides before him, through an extraordinary journey in the first-person, and the early occurrence of rebirth within the poem indicates its centrality for Empedocles’ physics.
Chapters 3 and 4 then explore Empedocles’ conception of godhood and its relation to his doctrine of rebirth. Much ink has been spilled over the identity and nature of Empedocles’ daimōn. Ferella argues that he uses the term synonymously with theos for ‘god’. In the tricky B59 (= D149), the two daimones that fall together when single limbs come together to form whole creatures are, in accordance with Simplicius’ testimony, Love and Strife (pp. 173-182). Although the various Empedoclean ‘gods’—Love, Strife, the four elements, the Sphere, the long-lived gods, greatest in honour—differ substantially from one another, they have some common characteristics: they persist longer than mortal beings, and the long-lived gods are modelled on the Sphere as enjoying perfect knowledge under the influence of Love.
Chapters 5, 6, and 7 then form the longest and most significant section, investigating the nature of rebirth, knowledge acquisition, and the status of humans within the cycle. Chapter 5 draws on well known parallels between the language Empedocles uses for the persistence of elements across different compounds and for the persistence of the soul across different incarnations to argue that his elemental physics ‘is motivated by his concept of rebirth’ (p. 218). Empedocles, for Ferella, does not present rebirth as a ‘journey’ of the Soul from one incarnation to the next such as we find in Plato, but rather a ‘metamorphosis’, analogous to when gods take on different guises or when Proteus changes his shapes. Yet Empedocles still uses psychē in the traditional Homeric sense for the life force that departs the body on death and may enter Hades.
Chapter 6 then gives an overview of the connection between divinity and knowledge in Homer, Xenophanes, and Parmenides to provide a background for Empedocles’ epistemology. Empedocles, Ferella argues, presents knowledge acquisition as both dependent on, and affecting, one’s elemental constitution: perceptions and verbal teachings have a physical basis in elemental effluences; these effluences enter the body via pores in our sensory organs and are then ‘processed’—as she puts it, ‘stored, pressed hard, thrust, cut up and gazed upon in order to produce thinking and understanding’ (p. 294)—by the blood. ‘Thus, the balanced krasis of elements in our bodily organs, and especially in blood, is essential to the quality of our perceptions and thinking’ (p.294). Yet the effluences themselves, she argues, contribute to the ratio of elements in our sensory and cognitive organs; the effectiveness of those organs can therefore be improved by the right inputs to the extent that, with appropriate training, someone born as a mortal can perceive, think, and know like a divine mind (pp.294-300). The acquisition of knowledge is thus a physically transformative process that is simultaneously conceived as purification and apotheosis. Hence Empedoclean purification and physics are interconnected.
Finally, Chapter 7 expounds the cosmic cycle. Ferella follows Sedley in disputing the widely endorsed view that the cosmos is generated symmetrically in two separate phases: increasing Love and increasing Strife. Rather, according to Ferella, the two phases of the cycle consist of the Sphere under Love’s supremacy and of a more chaotic period of plurality in which Love and Strife vie for power, alternately oscillating in their level of authority. The ‘twofold creation of mortals’ (B17.3=D73.235) refers not to their creation at different, symmetrical points in the cycle, but rather to the fact that they are creations of both Love and Strife: Love designs the limbs and causes them to come together into living beings, although Strife’s opposition causes some of those beings to be monstrous and also gives rise to two distinct sexes. Moreover, the people born in the golden age under the predominating influence of Love were able to become gods (just like Hesiod’s golden race). This, for Ferella, explains the ethical significance of the cycle: Love and Strife are presented as being in conflict; humans have a moral responsibility to perform acts of Love, which may influence the world on a microcosmic level even if the macrocosmic development is fixed by necessity (pp. 348-360).
Although, as is almost inevitable with such a fragmentary and ambiguous corpus, scholars will disagree with Ferella on several points, it is valuable to have a fresh, up-to-date and carefully argued reassessment of the material. Especially impressive is the manner in which she presents with admirable clarity complex arguments that untangle the challenging and variegated evidence. Particular strengths are her critical handling of the testimonia—a body of evidence, ranging from Plato to Simplicius, that is too often neglected in favour of a decontextualised focus on the ipsissima verba—and her sensible exploration of the epic and Pythagorean background to Empedocles’ work. Some of her central claims, such as that Empedoclean rebirth is conceived as metamorphosis rather than metempsychosis and that humans are a combined product of Love and Strife, hence their ‘twofold’ birth, seem to me to be original and insightful.
Significant as these virtues are, here are two overarching criticisms as well as some more specific objections. First, there is a tendency to exaggerate the novelty of the conclusions, especially in the Epilogue. B115 (=D10) has long been placed prior to the stretch covered by the Strasbourg papyrus by single-poem advocates.[8] The notion that Empedoclean daimones are theoi is fairly well-represented in the scholarship;[9] her understanding of Empedoclean cognition is heavily indebted to A. A. Long,[10] and her reconstruction of the cosmic cycle follows fairly closely that proposed by David Sedley.[11] Of course, it is still worthwhile to have new considerations in favour of these views, but her claim to have produced a ‘“new” Empedocles’ (p. 365) feels like a bit of an oversell.
Second, and relatedly, there are occasions where quite speculative hypotheses are presented as established incontrovertibly. This is especially the case with the reconstruction of the proem. Although her notion of an Empedoclean katabasis with Pythagoras as psychopomp is plausible and quite attractive, it rests on rather flimsy evidence in the form of a questionable Homeric echo and the late and vague testimony of Porphyry. Ferella acknowledges the speculative nature of this reconstruction early on (p. 67); but by the Epilogue, she has begun to present it, rather incautiously, as unqualifiedly what Empedocles wrote (p. 364).
There are as well objections concerning the substance of some of her central claims. Ferella is at pains to distinguish herself from ‘traditional readings’ (p. 366) by regarding Empedocles’ physics as accommodating his concept of rebirth. Yet she accepts that ‘Empedocles failed to develop a coherent view of the soul that could address the problems’ (p. 243) of explaining how a ‘self’ whose mental processes depend upon the ratio of the elements it comprises could survive death when death is defined as a dissolution of those elements. It seems to me that this objection is precisely what those ‘traditional readings’ may have in mind when averring that Empedocles’ physics cannot accommodate his doctrine of rebirth. To this extent, Ferella appears, in spite of herself, in sympathy with the centaur-view of Empedocles. Furthermore, she stresses repeatedly that Empedocles ‘articulated his central physical theory [viz. the persistence of the elements] with the doctrine of rebirth in mind’ (p. 307, cf. pp. 20, 218, 366). It is not clear why she privileges rebirth over physics here, since the evidence of the linguistic parallels could just as easily indicate that he articulated his doctrine of rebirth with his central physical theory in mind. Further, there are two instances where the translation does not correspond exactly to the quoted Greek (p.174, with Simplicius’ context for B59 [=D149] and, more seriously, at p. 336 where the Greek text quotes Diels’ emendation at B35.10 [=D75.10] but the translation and argument depend upon the transmitted text).
These criticisms should be taken as part of a productive engagement with what is a rich and rewarding study of some very challenging source material. In the absence of further substantial textual discoveries, no commentator of Empedocles can hope to have said the last word on any aspect of his cycle. Nevertheless, prudent scholars will have to pay due attention to Ferella’s insightful and thought-provoking work.
Notes
[1] Diog. Laert. 8.77: τὰ μὲν οὖν Περὶ φύσεως αὐτῷ καὶ οἱ Καθαρμοὶ εἰς ἔπη τείνουσι πεντακισχίλια, ‘his work on nature and his purifications stretch to five thousand verses’.
[2] Paideia Engl. Tr. (2nd ed. New York, 1945) I, 295.
[3] Starting with Charles Kahn (1960) ‘Religion and Natural Philosophy in Empedocles’ Doctrine of the Soul’. Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 42: 3–35
[4] Published as C. Osborne (1987) ‘Empedocles Recycled’. Classical Quarterly 37.1: 24–50.
[5] A. Martin and O. Primavesi, L’Empédocle de Strasbourg (P. Strasb. Gr. Inv. 1665–1666). Introduction, Édition et Commentaire. With an English Summary. (Strasbourg, Berlin and New York, NY, 1999)
[6] Ferella was able only briefly to make note of this discovery at p. 4 n.15.
[7] I was lucky enough to see Dr Carlig present his findings in London on 26th May 2023.
[8] E.g. S. Trépanier Empedocles: An Interpretation (London, 2004), 31-37.
[9] By J. Barnes The Presocratic Philosophers (rev. ed. London, 1982), 495-501 and D. Sedley, Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley-Los Angeles, CA, 2007) 51 n.62.
[10] A. Long (1966) ‘Thinking and Sense-Perception in Empedocles: Mysticism or Materialism?’ CQ 16.2 256-276.
[11] D. Sedley, Creationism and its Critics in Antiquity (Berkeley-Los Angeles, CA, 2007) 31-74.