The Pre-Platonic Philosophers

Abstract

This chapter examines Empedocles’s idea of monstrosity in the early generation of life, when the earth spontaneously produces all sort of monstrous beings, only some of which will survive and generate viable forms of life. Empedocles intends to establish the norms of life on the process of generation and selection of monstrosities. Nature is not an artist that shapes normal life after many unsuccessful attempts. Empedocles rather sees Nature itself as the successful result of spontaneuous events that create limits and boundaries for viable life. The other major philosopher of the pre-Platonic period is Democritus. I explore his materialism and its relationship with necessity and chance. Atomists have been accused of paradoxically grounding their universe on both necessity and chance. I show that the paradox, however, is only such from the Aristotelian perspective, which aims at establishing teleology as the highest form of causality, in particular in the biological realm. Through the idea of monstrosity, Democritus grounds its atomism on the concept of the spontaneous formation of life. Beyond Empedocles, Democritus flattens even further the material ontology of nature, grounding it on the epigenetical production of normal and mostrous life alike. Through a reading of the agonistic process of life formation, monstrosity becomes the antidote to teleology.