Love, Strife, and the Roots of All Things

Current ecological thinking has made the early fifth-century Greek philosopher Empedocles of Acragas into a household name, thanks to the four-element theory that he bequeathed to posterity.1 A return to the elements and to Empedocles is perhaps unsurprising in a world that is experiencing ever greater climatological distress and a heightened proximity to earth, water, air, and fire, the fourfold constituents of Empedocles’s cosmology, and the very same elements that modern life, habituated to its creature comforts, has sought in vain to tame and control.Empedocles, to be sure, did not have to confront man-made environmental catastrophes of the sort we know today. Instead, like other ancient writers he recognized how nature was itself a catastrophic entity, ungovernable, unforgiving, and deeply ambiguous. The fragility of the human world was a premise of his cosmology, which describes a more-than-human universe that is ceaselessly making and unmaking itself and, in the process, ceaselessly enchanting and disenchanting the human view of reality. His writing does not so much eliminate the anthropocentric perspective as seek to transform it. This is part of what makes Empedocles so shockingly familiar today. The “new materialisms” look strangely “old” when read alongside his fragments. That said, the present essay is written for three audiences: environmental and ecological scholars who want to counter “the anthropocentric arrogance of the very concept of the Anthropocene,” and who have already begun to find conceptual and ethical resources in Empedocles;2 readers who may not yet have encountered this philosopher; and Empedoclean specialists who might want to complicate their own understandings of this figure. The hope is that all three audiences will find reasons to forge alliances around Empedocles as they try to “think with the elements” in a world that increasingly obliges us to live with them.3Arguably the most poetic of the Greek and Roman philosophers (he was rivaled only by Lucretius, who imitated him), Empedocles is the best preserved and most extensively debated of the early Greek philosophers known today as the Presocratics. Aristotle cites him more than he does any other predecessor (not always favorably). Two philosophical titles, both cast in epic hexameters, have come down to us: On Nature in three books, which gives a bracing account of the physical world, and the Purifications in two books, seemingly of a more mystical cast. Whether these represent one poem or two, and which fragments belong to which titles, are heavily disputed questions. But there is enough coherence in Empedocles’s remains to conclude, as scholars increasingly do, that all his writings were underlain by a single physical system.That said, even the most basic outlines of Empedocles’s thought are highly controversial today. My ambition is not to solve these problems—that would be a quixotic task—but I do hope to contribute to a better understanding of them by highlighting two features of Empedocles’s philosophy that have not been sufficiently appreciated: his unbounded aesthetic appreciation of the cosmos, which is mirrored in the very proliferation of poetic images that track the mad courses of Becoming, what we might call his “cosmopoetics”; and his name for the cosmic elements, “roots,” which are the earth-bound materials of life.Empedocles, as I read him, was a philosopher of life who recognized the impermanence of existence: he embraced life as a self-disrupting continuum. In the wake of Parmenides, Empedocles divides the world into One and Many. But unlike Parmenides, he makes each of these polar opposites not only equally real but also equally fragile and susceptible to metabolic change (becoming). The One, in ways resembling Parmenidean Being, must be produced in a process of becoming, and it is only ever approached but never fully realized. Eventually, the Empedoclean One dissolves into a plurality of lesser entities, and then the pluralities are reunited into the One, in an endlessly repeated cycle. The whole of nature is framed by these two competing narratives, which in fact describe competing tendencies toward unification and dispersal. The tendencies are personified by two cosmic agents: Love, the drive or impulse (hormē) to unification (the One), and Strife, the drive to separation, differentiation, and plurality (the Many). The antagonism between these two id-like forces is indefeasible and unhealable, not least because neither one achieves perfect realization. On the contrary, their reality is simply to remain unresolved and, as it were, unfulfilled. Because the cosmos cannot exist without either agency, and because their dual agency is what makes and unmakes the cosmos, we have to conclude that Love and Strife work collaboratively as well as antagonistically. Their tension is what makes the cosmos as variegated and attractive as it is unstable, precarious, and fateful.This is the basic architecture of the Empedoclean system and its principal novelty. Love and Strife loom over the cosmos like everlasting divinities, which they in fact are. They also act like regnant powers, each one staking its claim on the same subjects, which is to say, the material constituents of the cosmos. These are the four elements (Empedocles uniquely calls them rhizai or rhizōmata, “roots”)—earth, water, air (or aether), and fire—which are themselves divine, immortal, and immutable. Love mixes and combines, seducing the heterogeneous elements to congregate with one another. Strife separates, by encouraging the elements to congregate with their like. Together, Love and Strife are demiurgic powers, the artists of cosmic becoming. Indeed, Empedocles likens them to painters whose canvas is the cosmos itself.To complete this picture, we must imagine intersecting cyclical patterns that operate in the world simultaneously but at different velocities. On the slower cosmic level, Love and Strife take turns in achieving near-total dominance, be it in the formation of an immobile Sphere (the One) or in its dissolution into the single elements (the Many) after being shattered by Strife. On the quicker zoogonic level, the immortal roots are joined into mortal compounds, at first forming the manifold physical structure of earth, waters, airs, and aethereal fire. Next, a cascade of life forms populates the universe, starting with basic compounds (blood, seed, flesh, bark, bone, stone) that combine, in turn, into larger living unities that continuously flourish and die, only to be recycled or reincarnated in new forms. Within these individual life cycles, life forms undergo further complications (divisions), unifications, and fallings off (for instance, in the formation of embryos, where a kind of cell birth and death or division occurs, or in the wear and tear of limbs). After a time, created life vanishes and the Sphere is born, only to be shattered again eons later. Such are the Empedoclean cycles in their most basic and least controversial form.That said, every aspect of Empedocles’s cosmology is the subject of fierce debate, from the nature, number, and frequency of the cycles to the number of worlds that each cycle generates. In nesting an unknown number of zoogonic stages within each larger cosmic rotation (from Sphere to Sphere), I have already aligned myself with one strand of the scholarship within this vast and frankly chaotic field. In doing so, I am highlighting the ceaseless cyclical activity that takes place at every level of reality in the living world, its unending vitality, before which Empedocles, and we, stands in complete awe—at least some of the time. But to say this is to bring to the surface an inconsistency in Empedocles’s writings that slips by almost unnoticed in the ancient and modern literature on him and that can result in a skewed reading of his thought. Let me explain.Much of the time, Empedocles seems to be truly inspired by the processes that make up the cosmos as a changing thing. But in his darker moments, he appears to detest the world in which he finds himself. Most scholars accept this pessimism as Empedocles’s settled opinion about earthly reality, which they attribute to an eschatological orientation on his part. Love is good, Strife is evil, the world has fallen from its perfected condition of the Sphere into an increasingly divided and “despicable” state, and we are morally obligated to yearn for a return to or the this is to imagine that human are of reality and that they seek by to the of life, with a that is after the The of must be by of life from and from this reading is not without some in Empedocles’s I find it for a of not least because it on a highly of fragile this reading is by the of Empedocles’s which does not the One over the or Love over Strife but their tension better their which is itself a of Strife. in a is in a world that is being and is of to which one can look and and more perfect to which one can look In to the Sphere to a is to make a the processes of the that is a one can only ever scholarship and the of Love and its the over the tendencies of Strife. does not yearn for On the other the birth of the Sphere at the of all earthly which it calls the Sphere “the most and and even of the But the are not is and a and I find it that the Sphere can the of the cosmos and the of the the of The Sphere Being, and yet it a Empedocles the is not Parmenidean is it is In place of by a in and and best Empedocles’s toward the The very fragility of the and us all that we to for Empedocles is first and of But it is also a condition that a in that is the of becoming. is that the poetic of Empedocles’s takes on the of his The of are not for the of the They are the of the only are all the in the life of the cosmos with and without it. are also the of an and that the cosmos all the each of Empedocles’s of Love and Strife is itself divided in its to and I would is the of and in as to the of birth by both are for is what I for at one the roots to be only one of at again they to be of is the birth of mortal their the of all and the the when is and the say is that birth and death are themselves and in birth is a kind of death and death is a kind of so, even as the of the life processes is to what these processes is not but a mortal we into the inconsistency that I at the of this Empedocles an unbounded appreciation for the world we and its which he describes as and even can this of the world be with which is to say, his to from the world that he so scholars the in fact they it at because they attribute the aesthetic of Empedocles’s world to Love Their view is on the that Strife is and of in the The The world, and all the one we is the of Love and Strife. a Empedocles’s of is Indeed, it is as as his appreciation of the of the world, whose die, and are and and come as a they make Empedocles’s philosophy into an for one that the is it to find in the of the do like us into this and cosmic is to be in the of what in was known as a process that be and at one and the same time. In what I that it is only by the of Empedocles’s poetic that we can find a of coherence in his philosophy of the world and of human But to do so will an of a different kind and in a different from its and for instance, the of as a of first look at the Empedocles’s cosmos is and then to its for his and for cosmos is the result of a process, that of the repeated unmaking and of the Aristotle in the this process a he has in the work not of Love but of Strife. the when he of the poetic and demiurgic that Strife with Most Empedoclean scholars have with this they are by the that Love is and Strife is only I am not in the On the contrary, I want to that the between and us with a can be act of in nature that is not at the same a and the is as this is then Empedocles’s of Love and Strife will be to what appears to be can be as and The was again by that Strife a of than one of for it the that the Sphere Aristotle Love is not the of for in into the One it all other is After act is to the world of life when it the Sphere of the Sphere the of life in all its of the sort that appears in by Aristotle at as of his which the of and and and and is Empedocles’s repeated for all life on are and is his that Strife were not present in all would have been which is to say, at and immobile A would have the universe, as it does when the Sphere is at one of the cosmic cycle. But of the sort in the world that we the zoogonic world, which is a place of and manifold and the and in mortal are to with each and are that is what we find Empedocles’s the of look the to this of have been in it the to and all all the that are in and in all and and from the and In all are of different forms and but in Love they come and are by each the by that the take on different and to The is the of Strife this is to new and as new come into is one The I am making the understanding is that work is not say that Love Strife But even this is a of their division of forces and and each the other every of the The result of this and is the we call and Strife are equally in the they are the artists of cosmic becoming. Empedocles likens them to two painters whose canvas is the cosmos. the a of the different come from the same when painters are well in their when they of in their in an more of some and of they from them forms resembling all the mortal that are to how both Love and Strife are to and a This is their Their dual agency is at and and the same is of their The world is as a is and manifold the that it are is in world only at the of as Empedocles is writing in the of the of the But he is also writing as the of his philosophical poem who has an to as we in to the of to in an account of how to the to the of reality as Empedocles The is not the four roots are not They have their own physical and they are the four roots of all or and who with mortal the features are it is that and in it is air that is of these the reality we know a in the like this do they the of what is to be we not be all its the world remains a place of and it is of this fact about can we the fact that the of are and the of we have further that the nature of life in Empedocles, both cosmic and to be to the cannot be in and are at a further the of processes is by Empedocles as a toward life into a new world mortal as a by Empedocles’s and by on one the place of his new appears to be not with but with with and and and and and and and the world is a of seemingly this of life in the world into which is born, world, is not all of one But life is only a of the life of the cosmos, from which there is not even and in both and it does so at both the zoogonic and the cosmic take a look at the of this In the Love and Strife are the that down the the four elements, by in Empedocles is being to the of early Greek four in number, were not so much as they were by in what was a or a in this is to the (the and to them from into one is to them and them in a a as in this The may is not a complete of the work of either Love or Strife. A perfect of the roots is not at any in the cosmic not even in the Instead, compounds of roots are they but do not as the painters the elements, “the the The is about not also the of between the two as artists of the is the of in the as well as a of their In to the of the world on The world is always a between more and even is The most perfect of with is the most but also the most in Empedocles’s gives its in thought and so, is not a perfect is the result of being the of the four elements, with as their This is like in Empedocles’s universe, is and of or like the stands in and in the is the on which us of the between Love and Strife, with each agency the each to more and to The process the of the world as Empedocles the world is on a The more that Love the more Strife on an and in In their with they never the Love and Strife are painters of the thanks to this life the and in the and the the in both with a kind of mad Love and Strife are not simply They are and life this at every is this than in the of which both and all know the is to in each off But in its and is itself a of Empedocles the of to the of and that and we the must make for the in “the air, the after in a but when the the air is in the same The of these us of the of life and of its The is more like a than a it is perhaps to say that are catastrophic for Empedocles, so is the between life and death and so are their After life is a fragile in being and by the of Love and Strife that life its and the world at first and then with an into a the mortal that before were to be immortal, and that were before as they their as they of mortal with forms of all a to the immortal roots a drive to life or a drive to The is they both their the of nature, of this we look in Empedocles’s an of to in the of the airs, and living are and and The universe is not it is is to an both and in the plurality of and living that are then and then in an cycle of and life is one of with a a then a we at and then at a of that on The four elements one and they every in the world, from the of to the of the cosmic and in between that the of the of the “the of the and the of and not they are and are for Empedocles the of and in that that than simply to the world is But with is of the more of in the world is the to that is by proliferation we to the painters we can that it is as an account of the from all their mortal are with This gives them a But the coherence at the of a only do all created from the of a four but the more one the more it that is like from the immortal four roots and the two cosmic Love and Strife. Such is the of in Empedocles, which from the fact that in the created world in a real in this condition of Empedocles’s His to take the of and as to the of nature and the of all and are only the most the of are all the as are on The is as that of is is the of the are their are “the the of the the and Empedocles of a of a that is and which in he to also of that as and we about of The to embryos, and is a in even the cosmos is of a and an in their own of a the is the of are are an with are not and all in the cosmos, which to different more or like and to one another. Empedocles makes the in by on the of in his own and forms of and and from the they and like are are The first and are But and in appears to be that are and for They are the first to be born, and they are of the that is made in his for what would be elements, But roots are not simply and they and they represent the of nature but also the of as we are to the an of and every of the Empedocles is to the of all and their to the earth, to and to the of earthly life in the and and not in some Such is the of the the thinking of Empedocles was thinking of of which were the The first of all life, are truly to their into the and into the their roots are and their are on they in are which to in the These and compounds are not They and Empedocles’s earthly On we that “the down the by even as was The must be to in which are being as They with the very and of the cosmos. the is with earthly reality as so well is the the of own we are in with the first life forms on are to the for but also to its present (for the of and more as living forms and to its when the world will be of the roots the cosmic rotation takes are in and and their in Empedocles’s In these Empedocles is not his most basic philosophical of all is also the with his and his the same what he about the roots is of the they in his for all their they never to This is how the cosmos is as a of of into different the roots elements of themselves at every This a of in nature, in the of (from and to and and one or or with or the roots cycle the zoogonic over of cycles, are and into what was a will at take on the of a human an or a all are This is how Empedocles describes his own was and a a and a and a this is that we look at a we are other of that have been as we are in more ways than same was by in an essay from In he which and the human and for to the world, a that of all human and cosmic Such than he all that and will be in a in which has a to In this of we are with the world not from without but from all the of Within all Within is not only is The between is a to the whose and have always and whose “the of the the of the even more than the because the is and in the because the is it is also and to The is and the can from its to the but he does so by what is most in the human the like the he has life that has in the earth, he has his which has with the he has he has he has Empedocles is us to in nature that we might never His are an of than a poetic with at least three ecological and ethical we is in some then in nature is equally but also equally and to change and is on this view of the mortal entities, being are only individual (for as as they But they are also never fully individual as they within which they always in the world has agency, that is by Love and Strife (for they act on each The Empedoclean world is a may not be so very different from own world in the

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