Reconstructing Empedocles' Thought

To 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 ...