The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles left a legacy of only 2 poems, and they were preserved only in the form of fragments and quotes, but in them descendants discovered many bold ideas that anticipated the distant future. In the biography of a thinker, it is difficult to separate facts from legends. Contemporaries believed that he had supernatural powers and was even capable of reviving the dead, and the thinker himself willingly supported the idea of ​​his divine origin. in the book "History of Western Philosophy" named Empedocles

"a mixture of philosopher, prophet, man of science and charlatan."

Childhood and youth

Little is known about the philosopher’s early years, and even information about his date of birth is contradictory. Most historians are inclined to believe that it was 490 BC. The main part of the thinker’s life was spent in the city of Acragante (now Agrigento) in Sicily, which is why in surviving written evidence he is often called Empedocles of Acragante. Some sources also contain the clarification “son of Exenet.”

Biographical information about the philosopher is known mainly from the work of Diogenes Laertius, Empedocles’s own writings and the works of other ancient thinkers. He became the founder of the school of oratory, wrote the texts of speeches and was famous for his eloquent speeches. Aristotle considered him the founder of rhetoric.

Empedocles was a staunch supporter of democracy and advocated that young Acragantus follow this path. His position in society was significant, and his position was convincing, but he was unable to maintain the desired way of life in the city. Supporters of tyranny seized power and sentenced the philosopher to exile from the city. After the defeat, Empedocles withdrew from politics, completely immersing himself in philosophy.

Contemporaries believed that Empedocles traveled a lot, and this was the source of his deep knowledge - supposedly only the priests of Egypt could teach him the art of divination, and the secrets of witchcraft and medicine - the eastern sages, but there is no evidence that the ancient thinker actually visited different countries .

In his native lands, the philosopher was considered a miracle worker and magician. Various miracles were attributed to him, including the resurrection of the dead - supposedly he was able to revive a woman who had lain lifeless for 30 days. He was nicknamed the Wind Baner - according to legend, when the wind once became so strong that it damaged the crops, Empedocles ordered to make skins from donkey skins and stretch them over the hills and peaks, after which the weather improved.

The philosopher is also credited with saving Selinunte from a plague epidemic: he ordered a rock to be broken through to let fresh air into the dying city, and soon the northern winds healed the atmosphere and carried away the disease.

Philosophy

Empedocles expressed his ideas in poetic form. Pre-Socratic thinkers preserved, recording in their works, two of his poems: “Purification” and “On Nature”. Presumably, both of them had 5 thousand lines, but only 450 have survived. The verses included in the poems express his thoughts not only accurately, but also elegantly: Empedocles was a master of style and skillfully used metaphors and other techniques of poetic art.

In his youth, Empedocles supported the Pythagorean movement, but then he was expelled from the ranks of his students - either because he made secret knowledge public, or because he appropriated the achievements of others (there is no consensus on this matter). Some ideas, in particular the doctrine of proportion, later formed the basis of the thinker’s natural philosophy.

The teachings of Empedocles are based on the doctrine of arche - the fundamental principle underlying the 4 elements, which correspond to 4 deities - , and Nestis. The elements, being eternal and unchanging, constantly move, fill space and form all things around, including the human body. For example, blood consists of 4 elements in equal proportions, and bones are made up of 4 parts fire, 2 earth and 2 fire. At the same time, the elements themselves are passive and do not create anything, but move due to the collision of 2 opposing forces - Philea (Love) and Neikos (Hate).

Empedocles considered birth and death to be incorrect concepts, behind which there is a simple connection and separation of elements. This dualism underlies all existence, forming a cyclical process in which unity and plurality appear successively.

In his poetic poems, the philosopher expressed dozens of brilliant thoughts that were ahead of his time. Then, of course, such bold ideas could not be confirmed empirically, and Empedocles’ views seemed fantastic to his contemporaries, but with the development of science, scientists were surprised to discover the beginnings of many important ideas in ancient scrolls.

For example, Empedocles supported the law of conservation (first stated by the Eleatics), arguing that nothing arises from the void. In his treatise “On Nature,” he wrote that light travels at a certain speed, which is large but finite. Also in the works of Empedocles, the foundations of the theory of natural selection, developed: the philosopher argued that species are constantly changing, and only the fittest of them survive.

Naturally, his teaching does not have much in common with the ideas of modern biology - for example, the thinker believed that the first animals were mechanical, random connections of individual organs, including human ones, but his hypotheses were reflected and developed in the works of his followers and laid the foundations fundamentals of the study of organic life.

This is not the only contribution to science made by the philosopher. Empedocles was the author of the concept of air as a certain substance, recorded observations of the facts of centrifugal force and pointed out that the Moon shines not with its own, but with reflected light. He was also interested in the topic of childbirth: he considered the birth of opposite-sex twin children especially mysterious and tried to explain this phenomenon through the theory of transmigration of souls.

The ancient philosopher had ideas and conjectures in the field of medicine, especially with regard to physiology and sensory perception. He was one of the first who tried to separate healing from witchcraft and blind beliefs. Empedocles insisted that medicine is a science, not secret magical knowledge, and the doctor is obliged to study the human body, and not just follow ancient legends.

From the point of view of epistemology, Empedocles was a supporter of sensory knowledge and was an optimist regarding its boundaries, arguing that truth exists and there are no fundamental obstacles to its comprehension. At the same time, a person experiences the world through sensations: his organs adapt to the object being studied and perceive information through special pores. The wider the pores, the more multifaceted and complex information can be perceived and learned through them.

Together with Anaxagoras, Empedocles laid the foundations for the development of Greek philosophy, from which the teachings of atomists, works, etc. later grew.

Personal life

Nothing is known about the wife of the great philosopher. However, he had descendants: Satyr in his “Biographies” mentions that Empedocles had a son, whom the thinker named Exenetus in honor of his father. Also in some sources there is a mention of a daughter who, either intentionally or accidentally, burned part of the philosopher’s remaining unfinished manuscripts.

Empedocles had an extravagant demeanor and liked to emphasize his superiority over others. He wore the clothes of a priest - a purple robe, a golden belt and a Delphic crown, appeared everywhere surrounded by a retinue and enthusiastic students, and his majestic arrogance inspired awe among his fellow citizens. From his parents he inherited a decent fortune, which he preferred to spend in an original way, giving dowries to poor girls he half knew and organizing successful marriages for them.

Death

There are many versions about how Empedocles died - from everyday to fantastic. Diogenes Laertius cites 2 of them. According to the first, the famous philosopher was taken to heaven alive, and “sacrifices must be made to him as if he had become a god.” According to the second, Empedocles chose suicide: sensing the approach of death, he threw himself into the mouth of the Etna volcano. Fellow citizens learned of his death when they discovered his bronze sandals in the ashes near the mountain.

However, in some written evidence of that time, simpler versions are found: perhaps Empedocles fell from a cart going to a holiday in Messene, broke his hip and, falling ill after that, died. It is also mentioned that he actually slipped and fell into the sea. Being a weak old man, the philosopher could not cope with the oncoming wave and drowned.

Which interpretation is correct and what exactly caused the death is not known for certain. Historians even disagree on how old the thinker was at the time of his death: 60, 77 or 109.

Descendants erected a statue of Empedocles in his hometown. Later, the Romans moved it to the capital and placed it in the square in front of the Senate building. Sculptural portraits of the philosopher have also been preserved, from which one can get a rough idea of ​​his appearance.

Quotes

Many striking misfortunes dull inquisitive thoughts.

It is a pity who has a vague opinion in his soul about immortals.

There is one cosmos, but the cosmos does not constitute the Universe, but forms only a certain, small part of the Universe, the rest of it is raw matter.

Nothing can come from nothing, and there is no way that what exists can be destroyed.

ê Empedocles (c. 490 - c. 430 BC) originally from Agrigente, poet, philosopher, democrat.

He influenced the entire direction of scientific and philosophical thinking. He made a great contribution to the development of natural sciences. He treated air as a special substance. He observed the fact of centrifugal force: if you rotate a bowl of water tied at the end of a rope, the water will not spill out. He knew that plants have sex. Empedocles put forward the hypothesis of the evolution of plants and animals, and the principle of survival of the fittest said that the Moon shines with reflected light, that it takes a certain time for the light to spread, but it is so short that we do not notice it. His achievements in medicine are significant. In his interpretation of being, Empedocles takes as his starting point the thesis of Parmenides, which consists in the fact that in the proper sense there can be neither origin nor death. Empedocles explains the apparent appearance and disappearance by the mixing of the original elements - the “roots” of all things - and the disintegration of this mixture. The original elements are characterized by the predicates of non-emergent, imperishable and unchangeable: they are eternal being, and from the spatial movement, as a result of which they are mixed in various relations, both the diversity and the change of individual objects must be explained.

Thus, Empedocles came to the understanding that everything that exists somehow, from something and into something, was organized, came into being, and did not remain in a once and forever given state from time to time.

In his views on knowledge, Empedocles largely aligns himself with the Eleatics: he speaks of the imperfection of feelings and in matters of truth he trusts only reason, partly human, and partly divine. According to Empedocles, the mind grows in people in accordance with the knowledge of the world, and a person can contemplate God only by the power of reason. Empedocles put forward the famous principle of true knowledge: “Like is known by like.” In his religious quests and interpretation of the soul, Empedocles relied on Pythagoras’ idea of ​​immortality and transmigration of souls.

ê Anaxagoras (c. 500-428 BC)

Historians of science consider Anaxagoras the first professional scientist who devoted himself entirely to science.

In Greece in the mid-5th century BC. e. This was a new, hitherto unprecedented type of creative personality. Anaxagoras expressed his views this way: the Greeks are mistaken in thinking that anything has a beginning or an end; nothing is generated or destroyed, for everything is an accumulation and separation of previously existing things. Therefore, everything that is formed can be called mixing - separation. This means that there was no act of creation, but there was and is only dispensation.

Thus, if nothing can come from nothing, then all objects can only be combinations of already existing principles. That which enters into union or undergoes separation is called seeds, or homoeomers. (This is something similar to the modern understanding of chemical elements.) In contrast to Parmenides and Thales, who taught that “All is one,” Anaxagoras argued: “Everything is many”; but the mass of elements is itself chaotic. What combines the elements? Which force from the innumerable multitude of embryonic elements arranges a comprehensive harmonic system? This force, said Anaxagoras, is Reason ( Nus) is the force that moves the Universe. He was a follower of Anaximenes and for the first time added reason to matter, beginning his work like this: “All things were mixed up, then Reason came and ordered them.” Therefore, Anaxagoras was nicknamed Reason. He rejected fate as something dark, as well as chance, considering it a cause unknown to the human mind.

Anaxagoras was the first to separate the immaterial principle of thought, or Mind, from matter. He realized that matter as such does not explain the phenomena of movement, thinking and expediency in the universal world order. Anaxagoras defined the immaterial principle of existence by analogy with the rational spirit of man. Thus, for the first time, the concept of a universal principle was introduced, which plays the role of a world engine.

Reason, as Anaxagoras understood it, is an omniscient and driving force that leads the elements into a certain structure.

Ministry of Science and Education of the Russian Federation

Yaroslavl State University named after. Demidova.

according to the Concept of Modern Natural Science-biology

Topic: Empedocles.

The students completed:

Checked:

Yaroslavl, 2004

1. Introduction……………………………………………………...........3

2. Empedocles of Acraganthus…………………………………………………….…......4

3. Philosophy of Empedocles……………………………………………………………......9

4. Conclusion…………………………………………………………….14

5. References……………………………………………………15

Introduction.

“ Love and enmity!

Both of them are immortal...”

Empedocles

The ancient Greek philosopher Empedocles has no similarities among his contemporaries - he is so unique and individual. He lived in the classical times of Greece, but his image is so unclassical that analogies can only be found in late, dying antiquity. Sometimes they see in him features that are not characteristic of a Hellenic at all.

Empedocles, like the first philosophers, is characterized by a combination of depth of speculation, broad and accurate observation with practical tendencies - with the desire to make knowledge serve life. Philosophy was not yet separated from science by Empedocles, and in science itself the theoretical view is not separated from the formulation of various practical problems. Thus, Empedocles studied biological and physiological phenomena and developed a number of hypotheses related to these phenomena. But at the same time he became famous as the founder of a medical school famous in antiquity. A number, undoubtedly, in a well-known part of fantastic reports, have been preserved of the remarkable exploits of Empedocles in the conquest of nature by man. For all the obvious exaggerations they contain, these reports show that Empedocles amazed his contemporaries with his scope and ingenuity in solving large practical problems.

Empedocles of Acraganthus.

Empedocles of Acragantum - Sicilian philosopher and poet, politician and religious reformer, doctor and miracle worker, encyclopedist and rhetorician, senior contemporary of Socrates - is essentially unknown to few people.

The exact date of birth and death of Empedocles is not known. Some ancient authors report that he lived 60 years, others over 100 years. Approximate date of life: 484-424. BC. Some sources refer the conditional date of the philosopher’s “prosperity” to the 84th Olympiad (about 444 BC). It is believed that Empedocles was of noble family; in the political war that was raging in Akragant during his time, he supported the side of democracy, achieved a high position in it and with a firm hand sought to protect young Akragant from attempts to restore aristocratic power. In the legends about the life and work of Empedocles, there are many clearly fantastic and fictitious features.

The image of the Akragant philosopher is highly inharmonious and dual. Empedocles is striking in his ostentatious openness to the public, and at the same time he is a mysterious, least understood personality of classical Greece. In the minds of his contemporaries, he remained an inexplicable figure, combining a brilliant thinker and an ambitious sophist. In Akragant, like all the outstanding men of the city, a statue was erected to him, but it differed from the others in one rather unexpected feature: the statue presented the audience with a philosopher with a covered face - a sign of hopeless, invulnerable secrecy.

Empedocles is attracted by the public, national political platform; the closed society of philosophizing intellectuals does not suit him. He certainly wants to be a national idol during his lifetime, an idol of the crowd, and in this he succeeded. The fame of Empedocles exceeded all plausibility. Not only his fellow citizens, but also residents of other city-states of Hellas had heard about his miracles; his original appearance, his personality, steeped in fantastic inventions, always evoked silent prayerful worship. They didn't want to see him as a mortal. All of Hellas idolized him.

But he rushes between publicity and loneliness and finds peace nowhere. On the one hand, the ideal of a solitary, gloomy, unsociable sage is unbearable to him; on the other hand, he is cold towards the crowd and inaccessible to them, he is careful not to come within a handshake distance of them.

The philosophy of Empedocles matches his personality: everything in it is also contradictory, intricate and dual.

Already the ancients found it difficult to answer who he was: a poet, a prophet, a philosopher, a scientist or a doctor? Empedocles' range of intellectual inquiries is truly unlimited, and he can perhaps be called one of the first ancient Greek encyclopedists. In any case, in terms of the breadth of his mind, he is compared to Democritus. He was interested in everything in which human genius could manifest itself, and everywhere he left his mark, the stamp of his inexhaustible individuality. And yet, his versatility did not benefit him, but harmed him; it was she who reproached him. He exchanged his natural creative gift for all kinds of knowledge and, naturally, shredded it, did not succeed as a philosopher, degenerated into a superficial universality without depth and understanding. Subsequent philosophical criticism never forgot about this and has long cemented his reputation as philosophical mediocrity.

According to the testimony of the ancients. Empedocles was a prolific author: he wrote tragedies, political and medical treatises, hymns to the gods; but not even fragments have survived from them. Fragments of two of his works have reached us: the natural-philosophical poem “On Nature” and the religious-eschatological (in the Orphic spirit) poem “Purification”.

Empedocles belonged to a wealthy and politically powerful aristocratic house. This is evident from the fact that his grandfather (also named Empedocles) kept racing horses for Olympic competitions, which was an honorable, but extremely expensive pleasure. Empedocles the grandfather also influenced state affairs; he had the powers and privileges of ambassadors, i.e. acted as a government official. My grandfather also became famous as an Olympic champion - in 496 BC. he won the chariot race. This is an indisputable guarantee of tribal and personal authority. The philosopher's father, Meton, was also fond of sports and was also an Olympic winner.

We can say with almost certainty who his first mentors were. The Pythagoreans, in all likelihood, were the first educators of Empedocles. His connection cannot be doubted - ancient authors directly call him a Pythagorean. But he was a special Pythagorean. The probable position of Empedocles: external detachment from the union while being faithful to its teachings. Contrary to the Pythagorean circle ethics, his lips are not closed, but speak incessantly. He was expelled after he violated the order's rule obliging initiates not to disclose religious and scientific knowledge.

Empedocles' political sympathies cannot be reduced to any doctrine typical of antiquity. It seems that he was not at all concerned about the form of government. The only regime with which he is unconditionally irreconcilable is tyranny. The Empedocles family probably took part in the overthrow of the Acragantian tyranny and may even have led the coup. From Timaeus a story has come down to us depicting the political debut of the philosopher. A certain state military leader invited him to a feast. The guests had already been assembled for a long time, but they hesitated with the wine and did not serve it. Empedocles was indignant and demanded an explanation, and it turned out that the owner of the house was waiting for some important person from the city council. As soon as he appeared, the owner ordered wine to be served. The philosopher saw in this tactlessness an attempt at autocracy; he summoned the host and his guest to trial and obtained a death sentence for them.

Since then, the political influence of the philosopher has increased; his instructions and decisions had the force of state regulations and decrees. But he reveals indifference to power, even when the citizens of the city invited him to become their king. He refused, preferring to remain a private citizen.

Empedocles is famous as a sorcerer. Already the ancients put him on a par with the legendary pagan wizards: Pythagoras, who understood the language of nature; Epimenides of Crete, personal interlocutor of Zeus; Abaris of Hyperborean, who knows how to make himself weightless. Empedocles, as Heraclides says, revived the deceased woman Panthea of ​​Acragantia, who had lain without breathing or pulse for a whole month.

But the most mysterious thing is his death. There are several versions of his death. But they are all overshadowed by one thing - the solemn self-immolation in the red-hot Etna. Heraclides tells the following about the fate of the philosopher. One night, Empedocles was feasting with friends on the occasion of the resurrection of an Acragantian woman. After the feast, Empedocles disappeared. Suddenly they remembered that at midnight he heard a loud voice calling Empedocles. They did not believe this, but when they combed the surrounding area and did not find the philosopher, they believed in a supernatural disappearance and declared that he had become a god.

Hypobotus gives a different version of the death of Empedocles. After a dream descended on the feasting philosopher, he went to Etna and threw himself into the fiery mouth of the volcano. And material evidence of this is a copper shoe thrown out by a volcanic mass.

Many did not believe this beautiful death and gave arguments against it. The main argument is that the volcano is inaccessible due to the unbearable heat.

The death of the philosopher is also told that he lived to an old age and, due to senile weakness, fell into the sea and choked. It is also said that he hanged himself.

But the legend of self-immolation, for all its fantastic nature, was more to the taste of descendants; in a certain sense, she glorified Empedocles.

The death of Empedocles is not a punishment for the egoism of a genius, not the revenge of Gods or people, but also not a blind, inevitable disaster. In it, the philosopher finds the answer to his own mystery and his purpose in the world. Death for him is the same creation as any of his works, i.e. a natural continuation of his poetry. By killing himself, he creates his own destiny, performs a ritual-poetic sacrifice, where the priest and the victim, the poet and the poetic work are himself.

Philosophy of Empedocles.

Empedocles outlined his physical doctrine of the world in the poem “On Nature.” The same circumstance that his natural philosophical work was executed in the form of a work of art speaks about the nature and boundaries of his natural science. Empedocles is not a natural scientist, not an analytical scientist in the usual sense of the word.

Empedocles' physics, or the doctrine of the physical principles of the world, at first glance is very simple and unoriginal. It strongly resembles Ionian natural philosophy. The universe, according to Empedocles, is based on four elements: fire, air, water and earth. All these elements were put forward before him, and he added nothing to them. He just combined them.

The four elements he accepts are not equal, side-by-side quantities from the combination of which the world is formed. The universe resembles an arena of struggle between opposite principles: the “upper” - life-giving and good fire and the “lower” - the inert evil earth with the space adjacent to it. Life is a competition, a struggle of opposites striving for mutual abolition. Therefore, the initial, cosmic-determining principles are not four, but two. According to Aristotle, Empedocles interprets his elements “not as four, but as if there were only two of them: on the one hand, fire separately, and on the other, the opposite earth, air and water...”. So the basis of world life is not four elements, but only two; all the rest are just transitional stages from one pole to another and are products of their interaction.

But the question arises: if the elements were not the origins of things, then what were they? Empedocles' direct statements have not survived. But on this issue we find an important message from Aetius. He claims that, according to the teachings of Empedocles, even before the formation of the four elements, there were very small particles, elements of different sizes, preceding the “four roots.” Aetius calls these equal-sized particles “elements of elements.”

The foundation of being, according to Empedocles, lies the substantial-non-quality nature of pre-elemental elements. It forms a neutral field where the drama plays out. The main participants are: the top, which plays a vitally positive role and its physical equivalent is heat (fire) and the bottom, which plays a low-negative role, and its equivalent is cold (earth and its neighboring elements). The world process is an alternating expansion: sometimes the upward with its sign of life and goodness wins, and then the direction of the cosmic process is realized as ascent, growth, or “the path upward”; then the bottom overcomes, with its sign of evil and death, and then the direction is like a decrease, or “the way down.” On the “way up” there is a point at which worries and passions subside and “peace reigns.” Empedocles calls this state of the world "venerable Harmony" or even god. Empedocles called God - Sphairos - a comprehensive sphere, self-identical and equal in size at all points.

Empedocles calls the elements “long-lived, highly revered gods.” His elements not only exist, but “each of them performs actions consistent with its nature.” Empedocles personifies material elements in the images of traditional mythology: fire is Zeus, air is Hera, water is Nestis, earth is Hades. But they are not mythological heroes, but they are simply indefinite vital forces, demon gods, elemental spirits, living in the bosom of a solid “organic-life continuum.”

The universe is gradually fragmented and crushed. The limit of the disintegration of Sfairos is the sensual elements - fire, air, earth, but in their mutual isolation. Existence is differentiated into four opposing, hostile elements. All elements are closed in on themselves and infected with the thirst for mutual destruction. But this lasts one moment and again returns to the original primal unity of Sfairos. A new world cycle begins.

According to Empedocles, the universe is limited by two limits, which alternately replace each other: the “upper” is the harmony of the One, the “lower” is the hostility of the Many.

There must be two mutually exclusive causes within the cosmos. And Empedocles has such powers. The first of them overcomes hostility and discord with harmonizing agreement and unity. This power is personified in the images of Aphrodite, Eros, and Friendship. The other, on the contrary, divides the universe and plunges harmony into chaos. Empedocles calls this force Ares, Enmity, Hatred. Aphrodite and Ares in Empedocles are elemental spirits without a face, image or gender, symbolizing opposing cosmic tendencies towards the disintegration and reunification of existence. Therefore, Love and Hate in Empedocles’ description are either likened to the elements, or they themselves are the elements. They look like two additional elements that act as a kind of enzyme, or “dynamic fluid”: one associates a substance, the other dissociates. As Aristotle notes, Love and Hate are part of the world whole and therefore, along with other elements, “participate in the general mixture of elements.” Cosmic life, according to Empedocles’ picture of cosmogenesis at the elemental level, is the formation of matter, carried out through the struggle of Aphrodite and Ares.

The world, as Empedocles perceived it, is essentially cyclical: absolute unity and absolute plurality periodically replace each other. The philosopher identifies three positive authorities in the formation of the world: God (Sfairos), natural things (space) and man. Accordingly, world development falls into three genetic stages: theogenesis, cosmogenesis, and anthropogenesis.

The primal deity or divine Sphairos in Empedocles is devoid of any theistic meaning. The God of Empedocles is a developing substance that gradually passes into the world. The mathematical symbol of Sfairos is a ball. The ball was taken because in it the edges, differences and disproportions inherent in the world of material formation are smoothed out as much as possible. The fact that Empedocles' god is something more than a huge physical object is evidenced by Sphairos' ability to experience.

Empedoclean cosmology distinguishes four phases of the world cycle. Of these, two are limiting, i.e. a state of complete dominance of Love and complete dominance of Enmity, and two intermediate ones, i.e. transition from Love to Enmity (descending) and from Enmity to Love (ascending). The cosmos and man are born in transitional, intermediate phases of the world cycle. The existence of Empedocles is initially and axially bifurcated: unity and plurality, forming opposite poles of the world cycle.

Sfairos is the initial value-generating point of the world process. Sphairos disintegrates, differentiates and transforms into less perfect formations. Cosmos is the increasing deterioration of the world deity, its gradual fall to Chaos.

Anthropogenesis, according to Empedocles, also has a two-pronged genetic structure, i.e. in each world cycle, humanity is born twice: once on the path from the spherical deity to the elements, another time on the path from the elements to the deity. In the first case, a person is not born, but incarnated: people are fallen gods, demons, spirits. In the second case, human development continues, people are unfinished, becoming gods.

The question remains, in what world does a person live? It is not known what the philosopher himself thought about this. Some researchers believe that according to Empedocles' theory, we belong to the evolving phase. However, according to Empedocles, we live in a world of decline, destruction and degeneration. Empedocles believes that the second is possible for mortals. He writes a poem-sermon “Purification” - a kind of guide to the salvation of a lost and mired in vices pagan.

In this world, according to Empedocles, people are temporary residents, like strangers, guests or exiles. Having lost their original homeland, the land of Love and Truth, they are forced to wander along the roads of earthly existence, called by Empedocles “the vale of sorrows.”

Actually, to be saved according to Empedocles means nothing more than to overcome the need to fall out of the cause-and-effect relationship of events, from becoming and time. The man did not appreciate the freedom given to him. The body is not to blame for the fact that we are in it, but the soul is to blame for committing the sin. To free yourself from the body, you should shift your attention to the soul; do not throw away the flesh, but overcome it within yourself, i.e. one must spiritually cleanse oneself from sin that led to evil.

This is how Empedocles appears before us: a belated Orphic, a religious-philosophical romantic, a moral idealist and an artist, who squandered his soul-saving illusions in the fight against the social world of Enmity and found peace, as legend claims, in a solemn suicide on Sicilian Etna.

Conclusion.

So, Empedocles is an ancient Greek philosopher. He believed that there is no emergence and disappearance in the proper sense, but there is only confusion and separation, connection and separation of unchanging elements that do not arise and do not disappear. He counted four of these elements: fire, air, water, earth. From the initial state of absolute mixture, in which there are no separate things, the state of absolute separation of elements gradually develops, from the latter again the state of mixture, and so on ad infinitum. The driving forces of this development, he believed, were love and enmity.

Empedocles belongs to those colorful personalities of antiquity about whom it is impossible to remain silent when speaking about their ideas. Empedocles is not just a thinker, not a philosopher of thought, but a philosopher of life, a religious and moral life teacher and preacher. The main object of his philosophy is not the cosmos itself, but human rootedness in it, the fate of the soul in the world process.

Bibliography.

1. Asmus V.F. “Ancient Philosophy”; M., 1998.

2. History of philosophy. Volume I. - M., 1940.

3. Semushkin A.V. Empedocles. M., “Thought”, 1985

“Love and enmity!

Both of them are immortal...”

Empedocles

I Introduction.

One of the most important consequences of the Greco-Persian wars was the movement of the center of economic and cultural life in Greece from East to West. Ruined and deprived of eastern markets, the Ionian cities lost their former importance. Athens, Sparta and Sicily come to the fore.

Empedocles' activities took place in Agrigentum on the coast of Sicily. Agrigent was in the 5th century. BC. one of the most significant commercial Greek cities on the Sicilian coast. The exact date of birth and death of Empedocles is not known. Some ancient authors report that he lived 60 years, others over 100 years. Some sources refer the conditional date of the philosopher’s “prosperity” to the 84th Olympiad (about 444 BC). It is believed that Empedocles was of noble family; in the political war that was raging in Agrigentum during his time, he supported the side of democracy, achieved a high position in it and with a firm hand sought to protect the young democratic structure in Agrigentum from attempts to restore aristocratic power. In the legends about the life and work of Empedocles, there are many clearly fantastic and fictitious features. It is not easy to separate the grain in the reports of ancient writers from later unreliable reports. Empedocles appears as a sage, as a doctor and a miracle worker of superhuman power. His activity was as multifaceted as the activity of the first Milesian philosophers: Empedocles entered the history of Greek culture as an outstanding philosopher, poet, master of oratory, and founder of the school of eloquence in Sicily. Aristotle said that Empedocles was the first to invent rhetoric and that he knew how to express himself skillfully, using metaphors and other means of poetic language. He outlined his philosophical views not in a prose treatise, but in the poem “On Nature.” Empedocles is perhaps the first, after Pythagoras, ancient philosopher about whom a large literature, partly polemical, arose in ancient times. Zeno of Elea and Melis wrote against the philosopher. A monograph on Empedocles was written by Aristotle's greatest student, Theophrastus. Plutarch and Epicurian Hermachus dedicated special works to Empedocles. We find numerous judgments about Empedocles and polemics with him on various issues in Aristotle.

Empedocles, as well as the first Milesian philosophers, is characterized by a combination of depth of speculation, broad and accurate observation with practical tendencies - with the desire to make knowledge serve life. Philosophy was not yet separated from science by Empedocles, and in science itself the theoretical view is not separated from the formulation of various practical problems. Thus, Empedocles studied biological and physiological phenomena and developed a number of hypotheses related to these phenomena. But at the same time he became famous as the founder of a medical school famous in antiquity. A number, undoubtedly, in a well-known part of fantastic reports, have been preserved of the remarkable exploits of Empedocles in the conquest of nature by man. For all the obvious exaggerations they contain, these reports show that Empedocles amazed his contemporaries with his scope and ingenuity in solving large practical problems.

A story has been preserved about how Empedocles changed the climate of Agrigentum: he allegedly made a passage in the rocks that surrounded the city with a wall, and thereby opened the way into it through the resulting gap for beneficial warm winds. From the point of view of the technical capabilities of that time, this message is so incredible that, of course, it is not necessary to take it seriously. However, this naive and fantastic story reflected a real feature of Empedocles’ activity - the desire to connect speculation, theory with practical activity.

II Basic ideas of the philosophy of Empedocles.

Empedocles received his philosophical training at the Elean school. One of the results of Eleatic philosophy had a great influence on the subsequent development of Greek philosophical thinking in the 5th century. BC e. This result is the thought of the Eleans, according to which a truly existing being cannot but perish and not arise. They developed this position with great force, but connected it with their conviction in the immutability of the truth of the existing elements of being. This idea, after the Eleans, became the prerequisite for the largest materialistic teachings of the 5th and first half of the 4th century. BC e. Such are the teachings of Empedocles in Sicily, Anaxagoras in Athens, and Democratus in Abdera. Even if we observe in the world what is called genesis, birth, change or death, destruction, destruction, then this is only a deceptive appearance. All these phenomena must be explained in such a way that any explanation does not undermine the basic and original thesis about eternity and immutability, about the non-emerging and non-perishing nature of truly existing being. Among the Eleans, true existence is one; in it there cannot only be origin, change, and death, but there cannot be any plurality. Empedocles rejects the strict Leonism of the Eleans. He does not try to explain all the variety of forms and phenomena from one - a single material principle. He recognizes four such principles - basic and irreducible material elements. These are fire, air, water, earth. Empedocles calls these material principles “the roots of all things.” However, it is impossible to explain the visible phenomena of nature by assuming only the existence of these four “roots”. In order to explain what appears to people as the emergence or genesis of all things in the natural world, it is necessary, according to Empedocles, in addition to the existence of four “roots” (material elements, principles), to also admit the existence of two opposing driving forces. The elements, or “roots,” are set in motion by these forces: they either connect, come together, combine, or, on the contrary, they separate, move away from each other, or diverge. According to Empedocles, the life of nature consists in combination and separation, in qualitative and quantitative mixing and, accordingly, in the qualitative and quantitative separation of material elements, which in themselves, as elements, remain unchanged.

There is still a lot of ancient mythology here. Material principles, or elements, are characterized by Empedocles not as bone, inanimate and dead matter, but as divine beings - alive and capable of feeling. Material elements are not divorced from driving forces. All elements have a driving force. From this driving force of all elements, Empedocles distinguishes two specific driving forces. The active driving force appears in the form of two opposing forces. He calls the force that produces the connection, the force that produces the connection, love (or friendship, affection, harmony, even Aphrodite, after the name of the goddess of love that connects a man and a woman). He calls the force that produces division hatred (enmity, Ares). Empedocles' view of motive force has its roots in the very ancient ideas of the Greeks.

The originality of Empedocles, unlike his predecessors, was that, having borrowed his theory of the 4 primary substances from the very ancient Greek tradition, Empedocles connected it with the concept of the element, which he found in the second part of the poem of Parmenides, where the author set out his physical hypotheses and where a clearer physical concept of the element has already emerged. Having thus separated the moving or active cause from the material elements of nature, Empedocles then introduces an element of bifurcation into each of these two foundations - both the active driving force and the material “roots of all things”. He divides material elements into two classes. In addition to the driving forces of love and enmity, which, strictly speaking, are not elements of things, the driving principle for Empedocles is also the material element of fire. In this sense, Empedocles contrasts fire and air as male deities with earth and water as female deities. Sometimes he considers all four elements as living substances.

On the question of the relationship of unity to plurality, the philosophy preceding Empedocles put forward deeply opposing points of view of the Eleans and Heraclitus. For the Eleans, only unity is conceivable, there is no plurality, it is only an illusion of the senses. For Heraclitus, the one and the many exist simultaneously: all from one and from all one. Empedocles outlines a compromise, more “gentle” point of view. According to his view, the opposites of unity and plurality, love and enmity exist not simultaneously, but sequentially. Empedocles represents the life of nature as a cyclical or rhythmic process in which love, which unites physical elements, and enmity, which separates them, alternately prevail. The world is ruled alternately by love and enmity. During the reign of love, everything becomes unified, nature is an endless “ball”, and the originality of individual material elements is no longer preserved in it. At this time we will not find in it either the peculiar properties of fire, or the peculiar properties of any other of the elements - each loses its own appearance here. On the contrary, during the reign of hostility, everything becomes many, the uniqueness of the elements appears, they stand out and become isolated. Between periods of complete dominance of love and the same dominance of enmity there are transitional periods. Having retreated to the periphery of the world during the reign of enmity, which had established itself in the center of the world, Love begins to victoriously advance towards this center and partially dominate until it achieves complete triumph. At this time, hostility is removed from the center to the periphery. But as soon as love achieves victory, enmity will again begin to move towards the center, and love towards the periphery. The world process is the rhythmic repetition and return of these phases. With all the changes that occur during this process, the material elements themselves neither arise nor perish.

III Metaphysics of Empedocles.

Of Empedocles' four physical elements, fire plays a particularly important role. The philosopher, recognizing the beginning of everything as enmity and love, said that everything arose from fire and will be resolved into fire. This is one of the proofs of the strong influence that, apparently, the teachings of Heraclitus had on Empedocles. In view of the special significance that fire has in the physics of Empedocles, we can say about Empedocles that, strictly speaking, he operates with two physical elements: fire, which he considers in itself, and the elements opposite to fire, which for him are earth, air and water. But were, according to Empedocles, the four “roots of all things” eternal elements of nature, or did he think that they were formed from even more primordial principles? On this issue we find an important message from Aetius. He claims that, according to the teachings of Empedocles, even before the formation of the “four elements” there existed very small material particles - equally partial elements that preceded the “four roots”. If this is so, then the philosophy of Empedocles plays a certain role in the preparation of the future theory of atomism. On the basis of all these concepts and teachings, Empedocles developed his explanation of “genesis,” that is, the origin of all natural things. By genesis he understood only the connection or composition of eternal, non-emerging elements. According to Aristotle: “The connections (they) should be like a wall (built) of bricks and stones.

Note 1

Empedocles ($490 - $430 BC) ancient Greek philosopher, doctor, politician, priest. Founder of the rhetoric school. He paid attention to a beautiful, correct way of speaking. Empedocles' philosophy was greatly influenced by the Pythagorean school.

Empedocles wrote in the form of poems, in the style of the Pythagoreans - in hexameter, emphasizing the fact that he was not just expressing his thoughts, but expressing god-like knowledge.

Main works: “On Nature”, “Purification by Katarma” - the influence of the Pythagorean tradition, about the need to maintain oneself in the right state.

Some fragments of his writings are close to Parmenides.

Original "be" for Empedocles it also acts as a basis. Parmenides has it all. Empedocles tries to explain plurality. His point of view is based on pluralism, the plurality of arche (beginnings).

His teaching includes the theory of the four elements, roots and two forces of Philea (love) and Neikos (enmity), which explain the unity and plurality of things in the world. Through this concept he denies the idea of ​​the birth and death of things.

Empedocles said that there were initially four roots or, as he called them, elements in the world:

• Fire
• Earth
• Air

The root is a synonym for the beginning. Nature combines the beginning and the goal, for the sake of what. There is no nature in one goal, there is no nature in one beginning. Speaking about roots, Empedocles spoke about the beginning, which are necessary for something to exist.

The interaction of these principles is possible due to the presence of two forces:

• Love
• Hatred

Empedocles explains everything in terms of love and hate. The first connects, the second separates.

Love strives to unite everything, birth occurs under the influence of its power. Death occurs due to the influence of the forces of hostility. When love connects one thing, then by connecting it, something else is separated. If love acts at the same time, then enmity also acts at the same time. And vice versa, enmity acts with love, which unites what is divided. Thus, love and enmity are not different stages of the existence of the world, they exist simultaneously.

Note 2

There is no emptiness in nature, and everything that exists is driven by these forces. Thanks to their connection and separation, simultaneously occurring in the world, many different things appear. Existence is united together by the power of love. Dying, it disintegrates, but disintegrates as one single entity, into some parts, and each element of these parts, roots (earth, water, air, fire) are again united by love as these elements. They become one thing or another, while remaining identical to themselves at the same time. No part of the whole is empty

Where could anything come from? There is no super-existence, everything simply is. The world itself does not perish; if there were only enmity, the world would be exhausted. The world always remains the world, it is always one. If we see what seems to us to be death, then in fact it is decomposition, which will again appear as a union, a return of the elements to themselves.

Aristotle would later cite Empedocles as the philosopher who introduced this the stated reason for the start of the movement. The movement occurs due to the influence of two forces. Under the influence of enmity there are multitudes. Under the influence of love, each thing is itself, and there is as much being in it as in any other existing thing. The alternation of enmity and love is never stopped, since they are always there, motionless in the circle. Here Empedocles assimilates the teaching of Parmenides, who posited with the mind the sphere of positing a single being, which establishes the plurality of the world.

Note 3

That is, the world is a sphere, a ball. The ball is a figure expressing perfection. The world as a sphere can only be seen by the mind