Empedocles of Acragas (Ἐμπεδοκλῆς ὁ Ἀκραγαντῖνος)
c. 494-434 BCE · Early Greek Thought · Prominent
Empedocles wrote his philosophy in verse, and it survives in quotation by other authors plus one papyrus at Strasbourg. Everything is four things stirred together: earth, air, fire and water, named as gods, pushed into mixtures by Love and pulled apart by Strife in a cycle without end, so nothing is ever born or destroyed. He called himself an exiled spirit who had been a boy, a girl, a bush and a fish, and banned animal sacrifice because the victim might be your own son.
Signature
The position Empedocles is most identified with in the Profiler:
- Opposition
- leans Sublation
- Primary Bond
- All Beings
Positions on the 8 axes the sources answer
- The Divine
- leans Indescribable (75 on a 0–100 scale from Describable to Indescribable)
- Identity
- strongly leans Unchanging (0 on a 0–100 scale from Unchanging to Changing)
- Meaning
- strongly leans Inherent (94 on a 0–100 scale from Constructed to Inherent)
- Nature of Reality
- leans Unity (25 on a 0–100 scale from Unity to Multiplicity)
- Opposition
- leans Sublation (25 on a 0–100 scale from Sublation to Concurrence)
- Ethics
- leans Means (85 on a 0–100 scale from Ends to Means)
- War
- strongly leans Pacifism (6 on a 0–100 scale from Pacifism to Militarism)
- Allegiance
- leans Global (81 on a 0–100 scale from Local to Global)
12 of 20 axes are left blank: the sources do not answer them, or Empedocles refused the framing. Nothing is imputed; a blank is not a middling score.
Foundational questions
- Theology
- Polytheism
What is your position on the existence and nature of God or gods? - Highest Good
- Wisdom
What is the highest good? - Good and Evil
- Cosmic Dualism
What is the fundamental nature of good and evil? - End of Things
- Eternal Return
What is the ultimate end of all things? - Knowledge
- Sense Experience
What is the ultimate foundation of knowledge? - Ethics Basis
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate basis of ethics? - Agency
- Karmic Causation
What is the nature of human agency and freedom? - Beginning of Things
- Eternal Cosmos
What is the origin of reality? - Time
- Cyclical Return
What is the fundamental shape of time? - Language
- Conventional
What is the fundamental nature of language? - Law
- Natural Law
What is the ultimate source of legitimate law? - Death
- Reincarnation
What happens at death? - Human Nature
- Redeemably Corrupted
What is human nature? - Primary Bond
- All Beings
What is your primary bond and loyalty?