The Origin of the Empedocles Philosophy

Empedocles, who is accepted to have lived in the 5th century B.C. (495-435 B.C.), established a new mindset by bringing a spiritual interpretation to the views of natural scientists who came before him with the identity of bard, statesman, orator, religious leader and philosopher. He put forward a strong claim to the questioning of the first matter that constitutes the essence of the universe, claiming that no single substance constitutes the basis of the existence of the universe and put forward the four-element theory. He used religious facts to defend this idea and gave a religious approach to scientific inferences by stating that each of the qualities possessed by divine beings symbolizes an element. Empedocles has managed to bring a mystical understanding to the society of the period he lived by adding a legendary identity to his intellectual life. Thus, he transformed the purely methodical mindset of natural philosophers into an extraordinary religious pattern and supported a doctrine that puts science into the background with a mythological narrative. For this reason, his life and thoughts have been the subject of discussion for centuries, arousing serious curiosity even in the periods after him. In this study, it is emphasized that the philosophy of Empedocles can be related to other cultures other than the Hellenic elements and the misperceptions caused by periodic interpretations by bringing a new perspective on this centuries-long dilemma. Especially, the main point of this study is the religious interaction caused by the Orphism movement and the effect of Egyptian philosophy on the Greek mindset and how the philosophers, who grew up in this culture, proceeded in the mixed structure of the two cultures.

Keywords

Philosophy, Archaeology, Empedocles, Antiquity, Four Elements, Egypt, Sicily.