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Thinkers

Empedocles

Ancient Greek · Europe · 494 to 434 BCE

Greek thinker from Sicily who said all things mix four roots, earth, air, fire and water, moved by love and strife.

What it is

Empedocles was a Greek thinker from Acragas, a city in Sicily, who lived in the fifth century BCE. He wrote in verse, and he is remembered for the idea that all things are made of four roots, earth, air, fire and water, which two forces, Love and Strife, join together and pull apart.

He came from a wealthy aristocratic family, and his grandfather won a horse race at the Olympic Games. Later writers made him many things at once, a scientist, a healer, a speaker for the people and a man who claimed to be divine. Only fragments of his poems survive, so much of what is said about him comes from others.

The main ideas

  • Four roots. Everything that exists is a mixture of earth, air, fire and water. The roots themselves do not come into being or pass away; only their mixtures do.
  • Love and Strife. Love draws different roots together into harmony, and Strife drives them apart. Neither force wins for good. Their turns of power follow one another in a continuing cycle.
  • An answer to Parmenides. Parmenides had argued that nothing can come from nothing and that change is therefore an illusion. Empedocles kept the first claim but allowed many lasting roots, so that what looks like birth and death is only mixing and separating.
  • Souls that wander. In his other main poem he describes spirits cast out from the divine, who must live through a long series of lives until they are cleansed. He counts himself as one of them. A person on that path has to give up eating meat.

What it looks like in practice

Picture someone stirring paint. Two colours blend into a third, and nothing has been created or destroyed; the same stuff has been rearranged. Empedocles would say that this is the whole story of the world on a small scale, with Love as the stirring that joins and Strife as the force that later pulls the colours apart again. This is an illustration of his picture, not a passage from his writing.

Books and moments

  • On Nature is a poem on the roots, the two forces, how the world formed, and how living things and perception work.
  • Purifications is the poem about the fate of the soul, wrongdoing and cleansing.
  • Ancient writers speak of these as two poems. Modern scholars argue about whether they were one work with two themes.
  • His death is told in several ways. The best known story, that he threw himself into the volcano Etna, is not thought to be true.

Questions and criticism

  • One system or two? If the poem on nature and the poem on the soul belong together, then his physics and his religion were one outlook. If they are separate, he may have held two quite different views. Scholars disagree.
  • A democrat? Stories say he took the side of the people against tyranny. The evidence is thin, and it is fair to ask how much of this is legend.
  • Healer or showman? He presented himself as a healer who could do wonders. Tales of raising the dead are plainly exaggerated, and writers have called him a scientist, a magician and a fraud.

Close neighbours

His account of change was written against Parmenides. Gorgias is reported to have studied with him. Anaxagoras, a contemporary, gave a different answer to the same problem of change.

Written by epchē in our own words, and checked against independent sources on 29 October 2026. The sources are listed below.

Who they connect to

Influenced by

  • Parmenides · He kept the view that nothing truly comes from nothing, but explained change as mixing of roots.

Other Ancient Greek thinkers

Sources we used

  • Empedocles · Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 29 October 2026
  • Empedocles · Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, read on 29 October 2026
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