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Concept
Empedocles
Summary
Empedocles (ɛmˈpɛdəkliːz; Ἐμπεδοκλῆς; 494-434 BC, 444–443 BC) was a Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is best known for originating the cosmogonic theory of the four classical elements. He also proposed forces he called Love and Strife which would mix and separate the elements, respectively.
Empedocles challenged the practice of animal sacrifice and killing animals for food. He developed a distinctive doctrine of reincarnation. He is generally considered the last Greek philosopher to have recorded his ideas in verse. Some of his work survives, more than is the case for any other pre-Socratic philosopher. Empedocles' death was mythologized by ancient writers, and has been the subject of a number of literary treatments.
Although the exact dates of Empedocles' birth and death are unknown and ancient accounts of his life conflict on the exact details, they agree that he was born in the early 5th century BC in the Greek city of Akragas in Magna Graecia, present-day Sicily. Modern scholars believe the accuracy of the accounts that he came from a rich and noble family and that his grandfather, also named Empedocles, had won a victory in the horse race at Olympia in the 71st. Olympiad (496–495 BC), Little else can be determined with accuracy although it is often said that he jumped in a volcano to erase all traces of his body and be remembered as a god.
Primary sources of information on the life of Empedocles come from the Hellenistic period, several centuries after his own death and long after any reliable evidence about his life would have perished. Modern scholarship generally believes that these biographical details, including Aristotle's assertion that he was the "father of rhetoric", his chronologically impossible tutelage under Pythagoras, and his employment as a doctor and miracle worker, were fabricated from interpretations of Empedocles' poetry, as was common practice for the biographies written during this time.
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