From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordThe phrases refer to generation or a world “under Love.”
- In this workA42 contains the dossier’s sharpest internal tension.
- In this editionThe first Aristotle translation is compressed, but its assertion of omission is clear.
- A place to readStates that Empedocles passes over generation under Love because the proposed construction would not work.
Meaning
The phrases refer to generation or a world “under Love.” They name the phase or governing power under which the account is placed, not a separately quoted title of an Empedoclean episode.
Use in the book
A42 contains the dossier’s sharpest internal tension. In De caelo Aristotle says that Empedocles omits generation under Love, because a heaven could not be constructed through the proposed joining of separated elements. In De generatione et corruptione he says the cosmos now under Strife is in a condition like the one formerly under Love. The first is a criticism of explanatory adequacy; the second is an attributed comparison between phases. Neither should be erased to simplify the reconstruction.
Simplicius at A52 provides recurrent gathering and separation, explicitly naming the cosmos of Strife and the Sphairos produced by Love. The modern note treats this as a symmetrical account naming two cosmoi, but the printed words do not actually name a cosmos of Love. They may support an argument about symmetry when read with other evidence, but the argument remains necessary.
This headword therefore marks a problem rather than a settled additional world. A one-cosmogony reconstruction must explain the former world under Love; a two-cosmogony reconstruction must explain the alleged omission. The volume preserves the competing constraints without furnishing an uncontested solution.
Places to read
- A 42 (polemical)Aristotle, De caelo Γ 2. States that Empedocles passes over generation under Love because the proposed construction would not work.
- A 42 (testimony)Aristotle, De gen. et corr. B 7. Reports a former world under Love resembling the present world under Strife.
- A 52 (testimony)Simplicius, De caelo 293,18. Describes Love making the Sphairos from the cosmos of Strife, without explicitly naming a second cosmos of Love.
Translation in this edition
The first Aristotle translation is compressed, but its assertion of omission is clear. The modern editorial phrase “names two cosmoi” should not be quoted as the content of Simplicius’ printed excerpt.