Empedokles
Empedokles (* between 494 v. Chr. and 482 v. Chr. in distal extremity gas on Sicilies (today: Agrigent), † between 434 v. Chr. and 420 v. Chr. on the Peloponnes) a philosopher , a physician , was politician, Sühnepriesterand poets in the antique Greece.
lives
Empedokles high reputation and highest admiration from an aristocracy sex and enjoyed as physician, politician, Sühnepriester and a poet, which accelerated still its future generations, originated. Thus Friedrich Hölderlin dedicatedit the tragedy “the death of the Empedokles”. After the death of the Tyrannen Theron Empedokles in the breaking out fights of the leaders of the democrats became. It dissolved the probably oligarchische political combination “meeting of the council of the thousands” and gave its birth city (today Agrigent on Sicily) a new condition. The people is to have offered to it the Könisgwürde, it rejected however, “as freer and each rule averse man”, as Aristoteles wrote.
As banishing bewanderte it late Italy and established itself in Thurioi.After one in several variants receive remained legend set it for its life an end, by falling itself in the Ätna. The total extent of its two works written in hexadecimal meters (“over nature” and “Entsühnungen”) amounted to after Diogenes Laertios 6000 lines.From these are delivered to today 450 lines in fragments.
achievements
it was a representative of the four-element teachings, and saw love (Philotes) and hate (Neikos) as Urkräfte, those the four elements bringing together andseparate. Thus organisms would develop again and again again and things in the world (Sphairos).
Its large achievement was it to connect the contradictory theories of becoming Heraklit and the Seiens of Parmenides from Elea to by it itsand Kraft attributed to the material.
Empedokles gave with its evolution theory an impact for development to biology.
philosophy with Empedokles
philosophy with Empedokles designates its nature-philosophical teachings, as far as they receive in fragments and other excessive quantitiesare.
Empedokles closes to milesische nature philosophy at
Empedokles follows with its philosophical teachings to milesische nature philosophy, as she remained in the excessive quantities from Thales and Anaximander. He takes over however from Parmenidesthe view that the being end must be thought as constant and imperishably. In order not to have like those therefore the reality of movement and change denial, it - differently than the Demokrit struggling with the same problem - subordinates, to movementdo not presuppose empty area, but is as local change in the full one to be thought, similar as with the fish in the water.
the problem of the Zugleichheit of its and diversity solving on
by he four qualitatively differentiated components (earth,Water, air and fire) presuppose, solve it in its way the problem of the Zugleichs from its and diversity. While with Heraklit the four elements are into one another ignoring forms of the fire, Empedokles sees them as continuous bases detachable into smallest partson. It brought the thoughts of the structure of the physical world from a limited number of elements thereby as the first into the prehistory of the science. After its cosmological teachings the spherical universe consisting of four elements changes by thosein it affecting both forces love and controversy cyclic kind.
for the conception of the cosmos with Empedokles
Aristoteles attributes to the cosmos of the Empedokles two different each other replacing conditions:
- As Empedokles says, the things become alternating in motionand again in peace shifts; they are moved, if the love makes the unit or the controversy of the Vielheit from the unit the Vielheit; on the other hand they rest in the meantime. (in: Aristoteles, physics VIII 1)
for this reason speakmost modern attempts of the reconstruction of the theory of the Empedokles of four conditions:
to the four conditions of the love and the controversy (hate) as a moment of the development of the universe
- in the time of the rule of the love, ifthe elements mixed completely with one another are
- in the time of the hate (the controversy), if the elements are completely from each other divorced, is the universe in peace
- in the time, if the love arranges the seperate elements to the mixture and/or.
- In thatTime, if the hate dissolves the mixture, comes the cosmos in motion
due to another report of the Aristoteles is however the cosmos with Empedokles in eternal motion (in: Over the sky I 10 279b).
to the construction of theSky, the sun and the moon light
from the homogeneous mixture of the elements first air, then the fire, separated itself which - by manufacturing the two hemispheres of the daily and the night - surround which earth. The sky existsout by fire effect of ice-like confirmed air. The fixed stars and planet determined in the sky are also fiery bodies. The sun is indeed identical to the fiery hemisphere. That sun, which humans in the sky see, is from thatGround back-thrown light of the real sun. The moon receives its light from the sun. The present kinds of the organisms developed in the fourth stage of a phylogenetischen process.
to the phylogenetischen theory of the Empedokles
the phylogenetische theory of the Empedoklesalready in the antiquity as a forerunner of the late medicine justified of Hippokrates one regarded. The body of the organisms is a mixture consisting of the four elements. The difference of the kinds and that of our bodies constituting subjects (meat, bone, blood among other things) explainsEmpedokles by the different proportions of the elementary mixture. Most important moment of the nutrition is digesting, while that divides itself the food into its elements and lets into the body build in such a way.
The respiration illustrates the example of the Wasseruhr. In the way, howin its Röhrensystem the removing water level of air the place freely gives, caused in our body the blood the inhalation and the again forward-pushing bloodstream breathing out withdrawing from the tubes. Those our sensory organs of constituent elements take those to themused elements of the external world truely.
for the conception of the “Entsühnung” with heavy debt of humans
in its “Entsühnungen” Empedokles announces the orphisch pythagoreische theory of the soul migration:
- If one stained own members in debt involving with murder blood its, who furthermore inAttendants of the controversy a perjury swore from the number of the Dämonen, which released a very long life, which must around-curve three times ten thousand hearing faraway from the blessed ones, whereby her in the course of the time as all possible shapes of mortal creaturesdevelop, those of the life toilsome paths change (1, 31 B 115)
the migration are not only the punishment, but at the same time also the purification process of the souls. As ever more perfectly becoming organisms they receive again terrestrial shape, “last however become itSeher and singer and physicians and prince iridischen humans, from which they up-grow as Gods, at honours richest “(ebenda 1, 31 B 146).
The process of the Entsühnung means the adherence to the rules of a certain mystisch asketischen life order, their basic principle thereinexists to slaughter no animals and eat no meat. Empedokles white itself as an involved one of this process:
- To these belong now also I, from God a Gebannter and erring, since I trusted racing controversies (in: ebenda 1, 31B 115).
The authenticity both its cosmologically - as well as its mystischen theory been based however on it that the philosopher finally arrived itself for one at the terminator point of this process, pure soul become it holds kosmogonischen:
- I however wandle you therefore asa unsterblicher God, no more than mortal ones… (in: ebenda 1, 31 B 112)
works
- nature -- Training poems
- cleaning teachings -- mythische revealing
- H. Diels (Hrsg.): The fragments of the Vorsokratiker. Berlin 1956
- W. Capelle: The Vorsokratiker.The fragments and source reports. Berlin 1958
Web on the left of
- {{#if:
| | * Literature of and over Empedokles in the catalog of the DDB
}}
- entry (English) in the Stanford Encyclopedia OF Philosophy (inclusive Literature data)
- fragment: Over thoseNature
- fragment: Sühnelied
- http://www.anderegg-web.ch/phil/empedokles.htm
- God wine, text selection to Vorsokrati philosophy
see also: Philosophy of the antique
| person data | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Empedokles |
| ALTERNATIVE NAME | |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | philosopher, physician and politician in the antique Greece |
| DATE OF BIRTH | around 494 v. Chr. |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | distal extremity gas |
| DYING DATE | 434 v. Chr. |
| DYING PLACE | |
