Empedocles (c.495–c.435 BC)

3. The cycle of change

The cycle of change is announced in fragment 17.1–2: ’A twofold tale I shall tell: at one time they grew to be one alone out of many, at another again they grew apart to be many out of one’. These lines deliberately echo and defiantly contradict the assertion of Parmenides (§3) that there is only one tale to tell, that of changeless and timeless being and unity (fr. 8.1–6). The language of growth is not accidental. Empedocles has already indicated that the subjects of the dual process are what he calls the ‘roots’: earth, air, fire and water. Subsequent philosophy would speak of these as ‘elements’, but Empedocles chooses a designation which captures the idea that they are not merely the basis of everything else, but themselves have a potentiality for development. He is emphatic in his agreement with the Parmenidean thesis that nothing comes into being from non-existence or perishes into it: mixture and separation of roots are what humans mistakenly call birth and death (frs 8–12).

After amplification of the twofold tale Empedocles continues: ‘And these things never cease their continual interchange, now through love all coming together into one, now again each carried apart by strife’s hatred’ (fr. 17.6–8). Mixture and separation would not occur without the agency of forces bringing them about. Are Love and Strife physical or psychological forces? For us it is counterintuitive to envisage earth or fire as capable of psychological responses. But On Nature is permeated with expressions of the hatred the roots have for each other, of their desire for one another. Empedocles does not write as though he wants the reader to construe them metaphorically. On the other hand, the operation of Love in creating mixtures of the roots is often also described in the language of craftsmanship: she welds (frs 34, 96) and rivets (fr. 87) and fires like a potter (fr. 73). Here Love seems to represent whatever physical force makes for the assimilation of things. However we are to conceive of Love and Strife, they are certainly treated as existing independently of the roots. But there is a difference between them: Love is ‘among’ the roots, Strife ‘apart from’ them (fr. 17.19–20). The implication is presumably that Love works with the grain, Strife against it: roots have a natural tendency to join together, whether earth with earth or in mixture with air, fire and water, whereas their separation is unnatural (fr. 22). Aristotle, however, found Empedocles thoroughly confusing on this issue (Generation and Corruption II 6).

Fragment 17.9–13 sums up the two key features of change – its oscillating duality and its ceaseless repetition – in a surprisingly Heraclitean conclusion (compare Heraclitus §3):

The implication is that Parmenides looked for changeless existence in the wrong place: it is not to be found in being (not even the being of the roots), but in the regularity of the cycle of unending flux.