From the book
Empedocles’ The Testimonia, Volume II
Empedocles of Acragas · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordEmpsychos means ensouled or animate, apsychos without soul or lifeless.
- In this workAt §12 the critic notes that fitting passages exist in lifeless bodies too.
- In this editionThe conditional ἐὰν μὴ προσθῆι τινα διαφοράν, “unless he adds some difference,” limits the critic's conclusion.
- A place to readFrames the animate/inanimate difference and infers universal perception absent an added distinction.
Meaning
Empsychos means ensouled or animate, apsychos without soul or lifeless. Theophrastus uses the contrast to ask what distinguishes perceivers from bodies that merely mix or grow. “Panperception” is a modern index label for the consequence he draws, not a source term.
Use in the book
At §12 the critic notes that fitting passages exist in lifeless bodies too. The same commensurability explains the mixing of liquids and, he says, growth. Unless an additional difference is supplied, everything would perceive and mixture, perception, and growth would become the same.
This is a conditional challenge. It does not directly report that Empedocles asserted every stone feels, nor does it prove that no further qualification could have been supplied. The next paragraph deepens the problem within living animals: why does inner fire perceive rather than outer fire, if both likeness and fit are reciprocal? At §23 a parallel argument extends the alleged consequence to thinking. These distinctions make the question more precise than a modern label such as materialism or panpsychism: the witness asks what physically marks an event as perception and what fixes the direction from object to subject.
Places to read
- A 86 §§ 12–13 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 12. Frames the animate/inanimate difference and infers universal perception absent an added distinction.
- A 86 §§ 12–13 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 13. Asks why inner fire is the perceiver rather than matching outer fire.
- A 86 §§ 22–23 (polemical)Theophrastus, On the Senses 23. Extends the issue to universal participation in thinking.
Translation in this edition
The conditional ἐὰν μὴ προσθῆι τινα διαφοράν, “unless he adds some difference,” limits the critic's conclusion. Omitting it turns an objection into a stronger doctrinal attribution than the text warrants.