Empedocles’s metaphysics

Abstract

This issue of Rhizomata comprises a collection of essays with special focus on Empedocles’ metaphysics, authored by international leading experts in the field. The topics investigated include Empedocles’s views on composition, structure, causation, creation, change, causal powers, and the nature of divinity and of divine agency. There is no comprehensive study of such topics in the existing literature on Empedocles. The field of Empedoclean scholarship is at present divided, because of disagreements regarding textual issues: the question debated is, in a nutshell, whether the extant fragments belong to one or two poems by Empedocles. These disagreements will not be rehearsed in detail here. Suffice it to briefly summarise the main positions on the map: a traditionally mainstream view has it that Empedocles wrote two unrelated poems (see the work of e.g. D. Sedley, H. Diels, R. Wright); those opposing this view argue that he wrote only one poem to which all the extant fragments belong (see the work of e.g. B. Inwood, R. Janko, O. Primavesi, C. Rowett, S. Trépanier). A third view that has been proposed (e.g. by P. Curd) is that while the new finds cannot tell us whether there was one poem or two, they do show decisively that Empedocles did not keep sharply separated the two types of subject-matter he wrote about, physics and theology. A second often-discussed interpretative issue in Empedocles studies is how many cosmologies and zoologies Empedocles posited within one complete cosmic cycle. Some defend two cosmologies (e.g. S. Trépanier), some just one (e.g. D. O’ Brien). Among those defending two cosmologies, one may further find supporters of either one (e.g. M. Schofield) or of two zoologies (e.g. B. Inwood). This special issue of Rhizomata aims to bring about a shift in the study of Empedocles’s philosophy, by making his metaphysical views the focus of the investigation, and by generating constructive discussion even among scholars who hold different (even opposing) views regarding the textual issues. This is not to say that the essays in this issue pay no attention to the linguistic, historical, and other aspects of Empedocles’s thought. On the contrary, the essays are firmly rooted in scholarship of the highest level. By defining specifically philosophical directions of inquiry into Empedocles’s views, and presenting how five leading