From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordElleipsis is lack or deficiency; the participle means what is lacking or deficient.
- In this workThe two doxographic notices describe appetite through what a body needs restored.
- In this editionThe headword is qualified as appetitive to distinguish this particular use from deficiencies elsewhere in the physiology.
- A place to readMakes shortage of nourishment or constituent elements the condition of appetite.
Meaning
Elleipsis is lack or deficiency; the participle means what is lacking or deficient. In A95 the relevant shortage concerns nourishment and the elemental constituents making up an animal.
Use in the book
The two doxographic notices describe appetite through what a body needs restored. The first speaks of lack of food or nourishment, then says that desire for the like belongs to the deficient thing. The second describes a plurality of appetites corresponding to deficiencies in an animal's composing elements. The reported mechanism thereby makes differences of constitution relevant to differences of desire.
Deficiency is paired with replenishment, and pleasure is explained in relation to that restoration. It should not be flattened into the general concept of privation used in other ancient systems or treated as a measured biochemical deficit. Similar language of what an eye lacks appears in the visual account, but the appetitive passage concerns motivation and pleasure rather than visual acuity. The comparison reveals a recurrent explanatory pattern without proving that all its applications have identical details.
Places to read
- A 95 (testimony)Aëtius, first and second notices. Makes shortage of nourishment or constituent elements the condition of appetite.
- A 86 §§ 7–8 (testimony)2Theophrastus, On the Senses 8. Provides a comparison in which external conditions fill an eye’s deficiency.
Translation in this edition
The headword is qualified as appetitive to distinguish this particular use from deficiencies elsewhere in the physiology. The notices establish causal association, not the strict identity of lack and desire asserted by the modern commentary.