Empedocles and Parmenides: how does the doctrine of the roots and the cycle stand to the Eleatic axioms on being?

Empedocles, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

I accept the Eleatic axioms on being. Nothing comes to be from what is not; nothing perishes into what is not. What is, is and cannot become not-being; what is not, is not and cannot become being. I say this in B 11 and B 12 in Parmenidean cadence — the language is taken up from Parmenides directly and the doctrine is preserved. But I do not follow Parmenides into the denial of plurality and motion.

The six everlasting principles — four roots and two motive forces — are each what they are, unchanging in themselves, equal in age, none coming to be and none perishing; in this much they are Parmenidean.¹ What mortals call generation and destruction is the mixing (mixis) and separation (diallaxis) of the eternal principles, not the coming-to-be of new being or the perishing of being into not-being.

Plurality and change are saved on the surface of the world precisely because they are not real generation and destruction underneath. My relation to Parmenides is productive tension, not simple inheritance and not simple rejection. I accept his rigor on being while transforming it in ways that may strain his own commitments; the doctrine of the roots and the cycle is the philosophical move that makes plurality and change intelligible without coming-to-be from nothing.²³⁴⁵

Sources

1. But that easy answer is discouraged by the seriousness with which Empedocles accepted the ban on coming-into-being and passing-away. In 18/12 he accepts Parmenides' denial of genesis and perishing, and supports it with further considerations which are appropriate to his own position.

   The Poem of Empedocles, pp. 26–27

2. It would be a mark of foolish ontological puritanism to ignore such a widespread and internally consistent unreality; a poet like Parmenides would do so, I suggest, only if he explicitly held that only what was proven to be real should be the subject of philosophical verse. Why should a philosophical poet so restrict himself?

   The Poem of Empedocles, p. 26

3. It is important to see what Empedocles objects to in ordinary discourse. 23/11 gives an important clue: people are fools for expecting 'that what previously was not comes to be / or that anything dies and is utterly destroyed.' In other words, Empedocles objects to the implication of ordinary terms like 'birth' or 'coming into being' that something has come-to-bej from not-being or that it might perish into…

   The Poem of Empedocles, p. 35

4. For Parmenides does argue for, or at least assert, the invariance of what is (B8.22-25, 44-49). But because of his undefended monism, these claims of invariance are not claims about the impossibility of qualitative difference among different entities; they deal instead with the internal homogeneity of a single entity.

   The Poem of Empedocles, pp. 28–29

5. He has not been able to distinguish the two levels of existence by any easily formulable criterion (any more than he can distinguish senses of becoming, as we have done) which would provide a clear alternative to the ordinary way of speaking about the world; Plato eventually solved this problem to some extent, but only by adopting an incorporeal realm which the world of experience mirrors.

   The Poem of Empedocles, p. 42

Where the argument is made

• B 8 (no birth of any of all mortal things, no end in baneful death
• only mixing and separation of what was mixed)
• B 9 (the same point on mortal nomenclature)
• B 11 (against thinking what is not can come to be or what is can wholly perish)
• B 12 (nothing comes to be from what is not
• impossible for what is to perish away)
• B 13-14 (against the void)
• B 17 lines 30-35 (the principles are equal, all of the same age in birth, all everlasting)
• the dependence on Parmenidean axioms (DK 28 B 8) for the unchangeability of being
• the divergence from Parmenides in admitting plurality and motion

How the argument was received

Empedocles' relation to Parmenides is a major theme in modern Empedoclean and Eleatic scholarship. The pluralist-response reading (Curd, Graham, Long) treats Empedocles, Anaxagoras, and the Atomists as the three Presocratic responses to Parmenidean monism that preserve plurality and change while accepting the Eleatic axioms on being. Trépanier's Empedocles: An Interpretation (2004) Ch. IV — 'Empedocles' Response to Parmenides: The Continuity of Thought' — is the most sustained modern treatment of the relation. The continuity-of-thought reading (Trépanier) emphasizes the inheritance and the acceptance of the axioms. A more dialectical reading (Osborne in some passages, the older Cornford) emphasizes the transformation as itself a strain on the Parmenidean framework. Aristotle's reading at Metaphysics A 4 places Empedocles in the pluralist-response position. The cleaner reading (continuity, inheritance, transformation without rupture) is mainstream; the dialectical reading (productive tension that may strain Parmenidean commitments) has currency among readers who emphasize Empedocles' own systematic claims as not reducible to Eleatic inheritance.