Reconstructing Empedocles' Thought
Reconstructing Empedocles' Thought
NZD$193.95
inc GSTTo understand Empedocles' thought, one must view his work as a unified whole of religion and physics. Only a few interpreters, however, recognise rebirth as a positive doctrine within Empedocles' physics and attempt to reconcile its details with the cosmological account. This study shows how rebirth underlies Empedocles' cosmic system, being a structuring principle of his physics. It reconstructs the proem to his physical poem and then shows that claims to disembodied existence, individual identity and personal survival of death(s) prove central to his physics; that knowledge of the cosmos is the path to escape rebirth; that purifications are essential to comprehending the world and changing one's being, and that the cosmic cycle, with its ethical import, is the ideal backdrop for Empedocles' doctrine of rebirth. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.
- Provides an effective key to interpreting the relationship between religion and philosophy in Presocratic thought
- Fully situates Empedocles' thought within his poetical, religious, philosophical and historical contexts
- Employs metaphor analysis to reconstruct ancient concepts like rebirth, soul and cosmos
Reviews & endorsements
'[A] rich and rewarding study of some very challenging source material. … prudent scholars will have to pay due attention to Ferella's insightful and thought-provoking work.' Tom Mackenzie, Bryn Mawr Classical Review
Product details
February 2024Hardback
9781009392570
412 pages
235 × 159 × 27 mm
0.74kg
Available
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- 1. Reconstructing empedocles' on nature
- 2. The proem to on nature
- 3. Daimones between plato and pythagoras
- 4. Divine beings
- 5. Changes of form, personal survival and rebirth
- 6. Knowing nature as a God
- 7. Cosmic cycle, Moral agency and rebirth
- 8. Epilogue.
