{"_index":"sire","_id":"1358","_score":null,"_source":{"id":1358,"authors_free":[{"id":2034,"entry_id":1358,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":203,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"},"free_name":"Janko, Richard","free_first_name":"Richard","free_last_name":"Janko","norm_person":{"id":203,"first_name":"Richard","last_name":"Janko","full_name":"Janko, Richard","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1013357299","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}},{"id":2391,"entry_id":1358,"agent_type":"person","is_normalised":1,"person_id":204,"institution_id":null,"role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"},"free_name":"Pierr\u0113s, Apostolos L.","free_first_name":"Apostolos L.","free_last_name":"Pierr\u0113s","norm_person":{"id":204,"first_name":"Apostolos L.","last_name":"Pierr\u0113s","full_name":"Pierr\u0113s, Apostolos L.","short_ident":"","is_classical_name":null,"dnb_url":"http:\/\/d-nb.info\/gnd\/1034968068","viaf_url":"","db_url":"","from_claudius":null}}],"entry_title":"Empedocles' Physica Book I: A New Reconstruction","main_title":{"title":"Empedocles' Physica Book I: A New Reconstruction"},"abstract":"In 1992 Alain Martin recognized that papyrus fragments from Panopolis in Upper Egypt, and now in Strasbourg, derive from Empedocles\u2019 Physics. This was a discovery of extraordinary significance. It is universally regarded as the first time that a text of a known Presocratic philosopher has been found in a papyrus, with the exception of parts of the On Truth of Antiphon the sophist. The proof that complete texts of a Presocratic thinker were still in circulation late in the first century C.E. came as a surprise to many, although not to me. In fact, Antiphon and Empedocles are not the only cases in which the text of a fifth-century philosopher survives on a papyrus. I have argued elsewhere that the Derveni Papyrus is also the work of a Presocratic, the physikos Diagoras of Melos, and in my view, that papyrus is even more important than this one. But the identification of the Strasbourg fragments of Empedocles might have been expected to be profoundly important for early Greek philosophy.\r\n\r\nThe first editors of the fragments, Alain Martin and Oliver Primavesi, have presented us with an edition of extraordinarily high quality. However, the papyrus has raised more puzzles than it has solved and thus far has been considered something of a disappointment, because much of it overlaps with the longest extant fragment of Physics Book I, while the rest has seemed very peculiar indeed.\r\n\r\nIn the last part of this paper, I shall offer a new solution to these problems, one which reveals the full significance of the papyrus, renders the philosophical system of Empedocles slightly (but only slightly) less bizarre than it has seemed, and makes the argument of his poetry much more coherent than the papyrus made it appear. In the process, we shall, I believe, be able to reconstruct a passage from his Physics 131 verses long and form a clear impression of how his great philosophical poetry would have sounded. But before I do so, I must remind you of the situation before the discovery of the papyrus and explore the question of whether Empedocles composed one poem or two, and on what topics. [introduction p. 93-94]","btype":2,"date":"2005","language":"English","online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/mT5sBgIVt1JZCw2","doi_url":null,"categories":[],"authors":[{"id":203,"full_name":"Janko, Richard","role":{"id":1,"role_name":"author"}},{"id":204,"full_name":"Pierr\u0113s, Apostolos L.","role":{"id":2,"role_name":"editor"}}],"book":null,"booksection":{"id":1358,"section_of":317,"pages":"93-137","is_catalog":null,"book":{"id":317,"bilderberg_idno":null,"dare_idno":null,"catalog_idno":null,"entry_type":null,"type":4,"language":"en","title":"The Empedoclean Kosmos. Structure, Process and the Question of Cyclicity. structure, process and the question of cyclicity ; proceedings of the Symposium Philosophiae Antiquae Tertium Myconense, July 6th - July 13th, 2003. Papers","title_transcript":"","title_translation":"","short_title":"Pierres2005","has_no_author":null,"volume":null,"date":"2005","edition_no":null,"free_date":"2005","abstract":"Review by\r\nJenny Bryan, Homerton College, Cambridge: This is a collection of fifteen papers presented at the Symposium Philosophiae Antiquae Tertium Myconense held on Mykonos in July 2003. If this volume is any indication, the meeting must have been a lively affair. It includes work by many of the most influential modern scholars of Empedocles and covers a wide range of topics from the reception of Empedocles to his methodology of argumentation to the details of his cosmology. In addition, Apostolos Pierris provides, in an appendix, a reconstruction of Empedocles\u2019 poem. Several themes emerge from the various papers, most notably the notion of scientific versus religious thinking, the unity of his poem(s?), the importance of the Strasbourg Papyrus, and Aristotle\u2019s role in shaping our understanding of Empedocles\u2019 cycle. As a whole, the book\u2019s most obvious and perhaps most exciting theme is that of \u2018Strife\u2019. This \u2018Strife\u2019 is not, however, Empedocles\u2019 cosmic force (although he does, of course, loom large). Rather it is the kind of discord that seems to arise whenever there is more than one (or maybe even just one) interpreter of Empedocles in the room. This, of course, is no bad thing. This volume represents Pre-Socratic scholarship at its most dynamic.\r\n\r\nIn general, editing seems to have been rather \u2018hands off\u2019. Some papers offer primary texts only in Greek, others include translations. One piece in particular is sprinkled with typos and misspellings that do a disservice to its argumentative force.1 That being said, thought has clearly been given to the grouping of the papers. I particularly benefited from the juxtaposition of those papers explicitly about Empedocles\u2019 cosmic cycles, if only because it illustrates the strength of disagreement which this topic continues to inspire. Thus, for example, whilst Primavesi employs the Byzantine scholia as the linchpin of his reconstruction of the cycle, Osborne dismisses the same as \u2018probably worthless as evidence for how Empedocles himself intended his system to work\u2019 (299). Whatever position you hold, or indeed if you hold no position at all, this collection will present you with something to get your teeth into.\r\n\r\nAnthony Kenny\u2019s \u2018Life after Etna: the legend of Empedocles in literary tradition\u2019 offers a whistle-stop tour through accounts of Empedocles\u2019 reputed death on Etna, and then arrives at a more extensive discussion of Matthew Arnold\u2019s \u2018Empedocles on Etna\u2019. Kenny points out that, at times, Arnold\u2019s Empedocles resembles Lucretius, of whom Arnold was an admirer from childhood. Kenny concludes with the suggestion that, although \u2018Empedocles on Etna\u2019 may be more about Arnold than Empedocles, there is an affinity between the two men: \u2018Empedocles, part magus and part scientist, was, like Arnold, poised between two worlds, one dead, one struggling to be born\u2019 (30).\r\n\r\nGlenn Most offers a rather fascinating discussion of Nietzsche\u2019s Empedocles in his \u2018The stillbirth of tragedy: Nietzsche and Empedocles\u2019. Most reveals the extent to which Empedocles \u2018played quite a significant role in Nietzsche\u2019s intellectual world\u2019 (33). Although Nietzsche made some abortive attempts at a philosophical discussion of Empedocles, he was \u2018far less interested in Empedocles as a thinker than as a human being\u2019 (35). Such was his admiration for Empedocles, whom he viewed as \u2018der reine tragische Mensch\u2019, that, perhaps under the influence of H\u00f6lderlin, Nietzsche formed the (unfulfilled) intention of writing an opera or tragedy about him. Most suggests, in passing, that the tendency for reception of Empedocles to take dramatic form could be due to the influence of Heraclides Pontus (whose dialogue about Empedocles may have formed a source of Diogenes Laertius\u2019 account).\r\n\r\nIn \u2018Empedocles: two theologies, two projects\u2019, Jean Bollack rails against attempts made, on the basis of the Strasbourg Papyrus, to narrow the gap between Empedocles\u2019 physical and ethical theories. He interprets \u2018The Origins\u2019 and \u2018The Purifications\u2019 as offering two distinct theologies, tailored to suit the purpose, strategy, and audience of each poem. His view is that \u2018[t]he two poems were very probably intended to shed light on one another precisely in their difference\u2019 (47). Bollack also offers, in an appendix, a rereading of fragment B31 \u2018extended by the Strasbourg Papyrus\u2019 (62).\r\n\r\nRene N\u00fcnlist\u2019s \u2018Poetological imagery in Empedocles\u2019 considers the apparent echo of Parmenides B8\u2019s \u03ba\u1f79\u03bc\u03bf\u03c2 \u1f10\u03c0\u1f73\u03c9\u03bd in Empedocles B17\u2019s \u03bb\u1f79\u03b3\u03bf\u03c5 \u03c3\u03c4\u1f79\u03bb\u03bf\u03c2. N\u00fcnlist argues that Empedocles\u2019 \u2018poetological imagery\u2019 is more dynamic and potentially more aggressive than that of his predecessor. Empedocles uses path metaphors to \u2018convey the idea of philosophical poetry being a process or a method\u2019 (79). N\u00fcnlist also provides a brief appendix on line 10 of ensemble d of the Strasbourg Papyrus.\r\n\r\nRichard Janko returns to the vexed question of whether Empedocles wrote one poem or two in his \u2018Empedocles\u2019 Physica Book 1: a new reconstruction\u2019. Janko presents a masterful summary of the evidence for and against trying to unite Empedocles\u2019 physical and religious verses, admitting his preference for accepting Katharmoi and Physika as two titles for the same work (which discussed both physical theory and ritual purification). On this topic, I benefitted particularly from his discussion of the fragments of Lobon of Argos (another possible source for Diogenes Laertius). This discussion serves as the introduction to Janko\u2019s reconstruction and translation of 131 lines of Book 1 of Empedocles\u2019 Physics, in which he attempts to incorporate some of the ensembles of the Strasbourg Papyrus, which he suggests \u2018at last gives us a clear impression of Empedocles as a poet\u2019 (113).\r\n\r\nIn \u2018On the question of religion and natural philosophy in Empedocles\u2019, Patricia Curd neatly sidesteps the \u2018one poem or two?\u2019 question, formulating instead a distinction between Empedocles\u2019 \u2018esoteric\u2019 and \u2018exoteric\u2019 teachings. She then attempts to establish an essential relation between the two. Curd argues that the exoteric verses, addressed to a plural \u2018you\u2019, offer exhortation and instruction as to how to live a certain kind of life without any \u2018serious teaching\u2019 (145). On the other hand, the esoteric verses addressed to Pausanias offer explanation but lack any direct instruction. Curd\u2019s suggestion is that Empedocles holds that \u2018one must be in the proper state of soul in order to learn and so acquire and hold the most important knowledge\u2019 (153). Further, she argues for reading Empedocles as holding the possession of such natural knowledge as the source of super-natural powers. Curd\u2019s Baconian Empedocles \u2018sees knowledge of the world as bestowing power to control the world\u2019 (153).\r\n\r\nRichard McKirahan\u2019s \u2018Assertion and argument in Empedocles\u2019 cosmology or what did Empedocles learn from Parmenides?\u2019 offers a subtle and stimulating survey of \u2018the devices [Empedocles] uses to gain belief\u2019 (165). McKirahan attempts a rehabilitation of Empedocles against Barnes\u2019s assertion that those reading his cosmology \u2018look in vain for argument, either inductive or deductive.\u20192 Offering persuasive evidence from the fragments, he argues that Empedocles employs both assertion and justification (via both argument and analogy) in his cosmology and that the choice between the two is fairly systematic. McKirahan frames his suggestions within a reconsideration of Empedocles\u2019 debt to Parmenides, arguing that, in places, \u2018Empedocles seems to be adding new Eleatic-style arguments for Eleatic-style theses\u2019 (183).\r\n\r\nApostolos Pierris argues for a \u2018tripartite correspondence\u2019 (189) between Empedoclean religion, philosophy and physics in his \u2018 \u1f4d\u03bc\u03bf\u03b9\u03bf\u03bd \u1f41\u03bc\u03bf\u1f77\u1ff3 and \u0394\u1f77\u03bd\u03b7 : Nature and Function of Love and Strife in the Empedoclean system.\u2019 Pierris traces the connection between these three aspects of Empedocles\u2019 thinking via an investigation of the relation between the activity of Love and Strife and the role of the cosmic vortex, reconsidering Aristotle\u2019s critique along the way. He concludes that \u2018in understanding Empedocles\u2019 system of Cosmos both [i.e., metaphysical and physical levels of discourse] are equally needed, for one sheds light on the other\u2019 (213). Further, the physical and metaphysical accounts of the Sphairos and the effects of Love and Strife aid our awareness of our ethical status.\r\n\r\nIn \u2018The topology and dynamics of Empedocles\u2019 cycle\u2019, Daniel Graham attempts a sidelong offensive on the puzzles of Empedocles\u2019 cosmic cycle, armed with a plausible belief that a treatment of the cosmic forces of Love and Strife will shed light on the cycle that they dominate. He offers a neat summary of traditional readings of the location and direction of the action of Love and Strife before presenting a defence of the position developed by O\u2019Brien.3 Graham argues that this so-called \u2018Oscillation Theory\u2019 makes the most sense of Empedocles\u2019 use of military imagery in B35. He also presents a rather illuminating political analogy whereby Empedocles\u2019 Love serves to avoid a kind of cosmic stasis.\r\n\r\nOliver Primavesi\u2019s \u2018The structure of Empedocles\u2019 cosmic cycle: Aristotle and the Byzantine Anonymous\u2019 also has in its sights O\u2019Brien\u2019s reconstruction of the Empedoclean cycle. Primavesi argues against this reconstruction on the grounds that \u2018O\u2019Brien\u2019s hypothesis of symmetrical major alternation of rest and movement is [\u2026] exclusively based on a controversial interpretation of Aristotle, Physics 8, 1\u2032 (257). As an alternative, Primavesi adduces a set of Byzantine scholia which seem to conflict with O\u2019Brien\u2019s alternations and which were \u2018composed in a time when access to a complete work of Empedocles was still open\u2019 (257).4 Primavesi concludes by hypothesising a timetable for the cycle compatible with the scholia.\r\n\r\nAndr\u00e9 Laks considers the relationship between Empedocles\u2019 cosmology and demonology in his \u2018Some thoughts about Empedoclean cosmic and demonic cycles\u2019. He champions a \u2018correspondence model\u2019 of interpretation, arguing that, although the two accounts are distinct, they are also clearly related. Laks suggests that one clear point of relation is the shared cyclicity of the cosmic and demonic stories. Laks focuses his discussion on how each of the cycles starts and argues that \u2018we are entitled to speak of necessity in the case of the cosmic cycle (as Aristotle does) as well as in that of the demonic circle\u2019 and, further, that \u2018although we are entitled to speak of necessity in both cases, we should carefully distinguish between the two cases, and indeed between two kinds of necessity\u2019 (267). Cosmic \u2018necessity\u2019 is absolute, whilst demonic \u2018Necessity\u2019 is hypothetical.\r\n\r\nIn \u2018Sin and moral responsibility in Empedocles\u2019 cosmic cycle\u2019, Catherine Osborne also gets stuck into the thorny issue of Empedoclean necessity. She rejects the kind of \u2018mechanical and deterministic\u2019 reading of Empedocles\u2019 cycle which, by imposing \u2018fixed periods between regular recurring events [\u2026] leave[s] little room for moral agency to have any significance\u2019 (283). Osborne worries that notions of sin and responsibility will be meaningless in a cosmos where acts of pollution and periods of punishment are predetermined. Using the illuminating parallel of Sophocles\u2019 Oedipus, Osborne argues that a distinction between necessity and prediction should be applied to Empedocles. Empedocles\u2019 daimones are moral agents who act voluntarily in a manner that has been predicted (but which they have promised to avoid) and thus, being responsible for their own predicament, they are punished according to the moral code upon which they have previously agreed. She canvasses a variety of possible readings for B115\u2019s \u2018oracle of necessity\u2019 and concludes that none of them diminishes the responsibility of the daimones or interferes with their free will. Her ultimate conclusion is that Empedocles intended to \u2018set the cosmic events within a moral structure, one in which the fall from unity was the effect of violence in heaven\u2019 (297). Osborne also offers an appendix on the Byzantine sScholia.\r\n\r\nAngelo Tonelli\u2019s \u2018Cosmogony is psychogony is ethics: some thoughts about Empedocles\u2019 fragments 17; 110; 115; 134 DK, and P. Strasb. Gr. Inv. 1665-1666D, VV. 1-9\u2032 is an intriguing attempt to draw parallels between Empedocles\u2019 \u2018initiation poems\u2019 and the \u2018oriental spiritual tradition\u2019. As the title suggests, Tonelli argues for the unity of physics and ethics in what he identifies as Empedocles\u2019 mysticism. He reaches the provocative conclusion that Empedocles\u2019 wise man longs for the triumph of Love even at the expense of his own dissolution qua individual into total unity. \u2018But this\u2019, Tonelli asserts, \u2018is not nihilism: this is psychocosmic mysticism\u2019 (330).\r\n\r\nDavid Sedley urges a radical rethinking of Empedocles\u2019 double zoogony in his \u2018Empedocles\u2019 life cycles\u2019. He argues against the reading that places Love\u2019s zoogony in a phase of increasing Love leading up to the Sphairos. Sedley points out that it would be odd for Empedocles to expend more energy \u2018accounting for the origin of life forms which he could do no more than conjecture to have existed in a remote part of cosmic history [\u2026] (since the sphairos has intervened to render them extinct), than he did on accounting for life as we know it\u2019 (332). He proposes an alternative reading whereby both parts of the double zoogony are offered as an explanation of life as we know it, i.e. \u2018Love\u2019s zoogony was itself located in our world\u2019 (341) and is not separated from us by the Sphairos. Sedley also makes a seductive suggestion regarding the double anthropogony: Love\u2019s anthropogony produces daimones (whom Sedley understands to be creatures of flesh and blood), whilst Strife\u2019s \u2018discordant anthropogony\u2019 (355) results in \u2018wretched race of men and women [\u2026] committed to the divisive sexual politics that Strife imposes upon them\u2019 (347).\r\n\r\nIn \u2018Empedocles\u2019 zoogony and embryology\u2019, Laura Gemelli Marciano too turns her thoughts to the double zoogony, reinstating the Sphairos between the twin acts of creation. She argues that Strife\u2019s zoogony is, in a sense, a continuation of the creative act of Love. For the creatures who owe their origin to Love are, in time, \u2018suffocated\u2019 by the total unity of the Sphairos (but still present within it) but are then, in a sense, reborn via the divisive power of Strife. Strife\u2019s zoogony is dependant on that of Love for \u2018he only frees little by little those beings that Aphrodite had first created and then suffocated\u2019 (381). Gemelli Marciano presents a particularly appealing case for reading Empedocles\u2019 double zoogony as \u2018repeated at a microcosmic level in the mechanism of the conception and development of the embryo\u2019 (383). Both zoogony and embryology describe conception followed by articulation. She closes with some thoughts of how this connection should inform our understanding of Empedocles\u2019 theory of the transmigration of souls.\r\n\r\nI can\u2019t help but feel well-disposed towards a book that includes the declaration \u2018The colour of the cover in this volume corresponds to that of blood, Empedoclean substance of thought\u2019 (407). Had the book\u2019s design been influenced by more prosaic concerns, its sheer wealth of stimulation, provocation and authority ensures that I would nevertheless recommend it to anyone who feels the slightest curiosity about Empedocles, perhaps the most curious of all the Pre-Socratics. ","republication_of":null,"online_url":"","online_resources":"https:\/\/uni-koeln.sciebo.de\/s\/TxAm4obxbTupTry","translation_of":null,"new_edition_of":null,"is_catalog":0,"in_bibliography":0,"is_inactive":0,"notes":null,"doi_url":null,"book":{"id":317,"pubplace":"Patras","publisher":"Institut for Philosophical Research","series":"","volume":"","edition_no":"","valid_from":null,"valid_until":null}}},"article":null},"sort":["Empedocles' Physica Book I: A New Reconstruction"]}