LOVE AND Strife Empedocles PDF

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LOVE AND Strife Empedocles...

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LOVE AND STRIFE: EMPEDOCLES

Who hasn't gazed up at a sky full of stars and pondered where we fit into the grand scheme of things in the universe? What exactly is the nature of the environment in which we find ourselves today? Is it possible that the "material" that makes up our world has some underlying substances? It is all too often the case that the contemplative among us receives few acceptable answers, but instead receives an infinite list of questions. We who have been cruising around our sun on planet Earth for many years, especially those of us who were younger and seemed to "know everything," have a unique perspective on the world now. A famous professor of mine recently stated that as we grow older, it is precisely the trajectory we should follow: as time passes, the "answers" become less and the questions become more numerous, until we are left with nothing but questions and no answers! Perhaps that is a little cynical, but it isn't too far off the mark in my estimation.

Empedocles, an ancient Greek philosopher, was one of those individuals who pondered these

fundamental problems in his life. He was born in Acragas (now Agrigento), Sicily, somewhere during the early 5th century B.C. and died in 444 B.C. He is a member of a unique group of philosophers known as the pre-Socratics, who lived in the 5th century B.C. and died in 444 B.C. There are many outstanding philosophers among this group, including Thales of Miletus (with whom it is generally agreed that the beginning of this age began; he was born in 624 B.C. ), Anaximander, Anaxagoras, Protagoras, Heraclitus, and the list goes on until Socrates himself (born 470 B.C.). I like to think of this period as the "Big Bang" of Western philosophy because so many of the questions that have occupied the philosophic enterprise from that day until now were articulated, pondered, debated, and written about during those nearly two remarkable centuries before Socrates, which I consider to be the "Big Bang" of philosophy. To name a few topics, the nature of reason, the nature of morality, religion, the gods, the soul, and what kind of stuff the cosmos was created out of are all topics that have been discussed in depth. To this day, the questions that were raised then, as well as the approaches and schools of thought that arose in try to provide answers to them,

continue to be relevant (with variations of course).

What we now refer to as "Greece" was originally a collection of city-states and islands scattered around the Mediterranean, modern (western) Turkey, the Aegean Sea, and other parts of the world. These diverse geographical sites served as trade route hubs, facilitating the flow of not just goods but also a plethora of cultural, religious, political, and philosophical ideas from one place to another.

What Is This Thing Called Nature?

It is believed that Empedocles was a poet, and the two major works of his that have survived (in fragments and written in hexameter) are On Nature (Peri Phuseos) and Purifications (his later religious-themed work). Due to the fact that I could spend all day writing on Empedocles and the implications of his philosophy (and you, dear reader, probably have other Classical Wisdom Weekly pieces to attend to), I will instead attempt to provide a brief review of On Nature.

To a considerable extent, pre-Socratic philosophers took the approach of seeking to arrive at the heart of things, starting with the cosmos as a whole and working inwards from there, as their starting point for philosophical inquiry. Empedocles proposed four fundamental things, or "elements," that comprised nature (phusis): earth, air, fire, and water, which he called the "elements of nature." His theory was that these were the "roots" of the "stuff" that we experience and interact with on a daily basis. He was right. This perspective on nature persisted in western philosophy all the way up to the Renaissance. ) (It is still alive and well in some circles today, particularly in neo-Pagan philosophy.)

To be sure, today's common interpretation of the word "elements," or the fundamental "material" of the natural cosmos, is vastly different from that of the ancients. Our current notion of "everything that is" (at least for Materialists) boils down to the 118 elements (as of 2017) that are organised on the periodic table of elements. Starting with Mendeleev in 1869, all of the scientists were catalogued in this manner. For example, the air we breathe is made up of many gases, the majority of which are nitrogen (78

percent), oxygen (almost 21 percent), and argon (nearly 1 percent), as well as other trace components.

The entire philosophical effort is frequently referred to as a millennium-long "conversation," and particular philosophers like as Empedocles are frequently shown as being in conversation with, or reacting to, other thinkers of their respective periods (or immediately preceding). Empedocles learned the essential notion "that nothing can come out of nothing" and that nothing can die into nonentity from Parmenides, and he embraced it as his own. Does this sound familiar? ("Matter cannot be generated or destroyed," said Antoine Lavoisier, a French chemist who lived in the 18th century.) Although Empedocles believes that all motion and change in nature is illusionary, Parmenides believes that there is a true process in nature: "the mixing and separating of things mixed."

Empedocles is able to explain natural change as the outcome of the combining, separation, and regrouping of these indestructible beings since the elements are four (rather than a monistic "One"). Furthermore, in Empedocles' thinking,

these four are constantly in interaction with one another, each under the influence of two cosmic powers: Love and Strife. These two serve as forces of attraction and repulsion, respectively. As an example, the force of Love not only works by bringing together "like" with "like" (earth with earth, fire with fire, and so forth), but it also assimilates the four elements one to another, resulting in a homogenous composite of biological unity.

Strife, on the other hand, is viewed as a force of differentiation and repulsion for the elements, and as such, it is thought to be responsible for the creation of significant diversity in nature. This is exactly what we mean when we say that the Universe (and, by extension, humans) is a "dynamic" system (think plate tectonics, volcanism, impact events, etc.) In the sense that matter does not appear to be generated or destroyed, nature appears to be both "fixed" and "fluid," with forces moulding and modifying the world we perceive at any given moment. However, what we see as "change" over time is not caused by fundamental changes in the cosmos, but rather by the forces of Love and Strife, which are constantly joining together and tearing apart, and thus creating what we

perceive as "change." Here is a diagram that basically depicts Empedocles' point of view:

What Is This Thing Called Love?

Charts aren't always sufficient in their own right. As a reader, if you requested me to demonstrate what love is, you would most likely be disappointed if I returned with a diagram similar to the one shown above. As a result, in addition to the chart, I have decided to make use of this wonderful song by the famed American music composer Cole Porter, because I believe it will further aid us in visualising exactly how Empedocles envisaged of the universe.

In his nearly one-hundred-year career, Cole Porter wrote a slew of songs that have been adapted by jazz musicians, with "What is this Thing Called Love" being one of the most popular (it now belongs to the pantheon of classic tunes from the "Great American Songbook" that jazz musicians enjoy playing and improvising over). In jazz, players are fond of rearranging the chord structures of popular songs (known as "substitutions" - which are frequently considered

"hipper" and more accommodating to improvisation on instruments such as the saxophone and trumpet as well as the piano and bass, among others). They also enjoy altering the underlying beat (resetting it to Latin rhythms, swing feel, ballads, and so on) and speed (changing it to quicker or slower) (faster or slower). It takes true artistry to accomplish this in a way that is pleasing to both the players and the audience, as well as to come up with something "fresh" and pertinent to the situation at hand.

In the course of my extended reflections on Empedocles' philosophy, it occurred to me that the art of jazz players could be viewed as a parallel to Empedocles' concept of Love and Strife. Despite the fact that western music employs 12 different tones (in a chromatic scale), it is the manner in which they are juxtaposed that results in something "new" being created out of the underlying, unchanging elements or notes (a new melody, a new set of chord changes, rhythms, and so on). Similar to how Love and Strife act on the four primal Elements in various ways, the twelve different tones are constantly being brought together and forced apart in various ways by musicians, while remaining dependent on the forces that underlie them, just

as they are dependent on the forces that underlie Love and Strife. As the Greek philosopher Empedocles phrased it, Now there grows to be one thing alone out of many; now again many things separate out of one....