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 verb evokes stammering or inarticulate utterance.
- In this workA39 asks the reader to follow the sense of Empedocles’ account rather than what he “stammers” in speaking.
- In this edition“Stammering” translates a polemical figure.
- A place to readUses the stammering metaphor to separate an alleged underlying intention from Empedocles’ expressed words.
Meaning
The verb evokes stammering or inarticulate utterance. Aristotle applies the figure to Empedocles’ manner of saying what the critic takes to be his underlying thought. It is an evaluative metaphor about philosophical articulation, not a report of a physical speech impairment.
Use in the book
A39 asks the reader to follow the sense of Empedocles’ account rather than what he “stammers” in speaking. This creates room for Aristotle to supply a more explicit analysis: Love causes good, Strife causes evil, and perhaps good and evil are therefore principles. The metaphor is not incidental decoration; it authorizes a reconstruction in which the later philosopher understands the predecessor’s theory better than its own expression appears to do.
The reader should consequently distinguish reported names and functions from the critic’s completion of their meaning. To reproduce the moral analysis as a simple Empedoclean quotation would repeat the very act of appropriation that the metaphor announces. The edition compares Aristotle’s treatment of other early thinkers, but no such parallel passage is printed here, so that comparison should remain contextual rather than an additional textual witness.
Places to read
- A 39 (polemical)Aristotle, Metaphysics A 4, 984b32. Uses the stammering metaphor to separate an alleged underlying intention from Empedocles’ expressed words.
Translation in this edition
“Stammering” translates a polemical figure. It must not become biographical evidence about Empedocles’ health, ability to speak, or performance of his verse.