In the process of delving into Empedocles’ belief in rebirth, it was necessary to first consider and clarify the pivotal concepts related to his notions of godhood and their relationship and function within his doctrine of rebirth. While this analysis provided the linguistic and conceptual tools that allowed me to dig deeper into some of the details of this doctrine, in the present chapter I will expand my scope to incorporate the rest of the proemial section, in which, as we saw in Chapter 2, themes and motifs related to the doctrine of rebirth are programmatically intertwined with more strictly physical principles. In this way, I will be able to reconstruct further details of Empedocles’ concept of rebirth, addressing more specifically questions on disembodied existence and personal survival through different forms of life.

In the previous chapters, I could already reconstruct several details concerning Empedocles’ doctrine of rebirth. In Chapter 4, for instance, I have shown that the divine reward obtained by those who escape rebirth involves a divine existence associated with the principle of Love, free from the evil power of Strife. Love’s influence results in a blissful, pure, stable and unfragmented life, further blessed with perfect knowledge in contrast to the general ignorance of ordinary men and women. Moreover, in Chapter 3 I established that Empedocles, by following Pythagoras, postulated a doctrine of ‘general’ rebirth, according to which every mortal being is eo ipso a reincarnated individual who, in this world, works through rebirths as different living forms. Further details concerning this doctrine have also been explored in Chapter 2.2 where, by reconstructing Empedocles’ katabasis within the demonological fragments, we have seen that in his journey through the underworld he learned about the judgement of the dead in the afterlife for things committed during embodied life, their punishment or reward according to that judgement and their final appointment to a new body and life.

In further pursuing the in-depth investigation of the details of Empedocles’ doctrine of rebirth, in this chapter I will slightly change the focus of my analysis and seek to find answers to several questions more closely related to the way in which Empedocles’ religious concerns about rebirth coexist and function within his chiefly materialistic physical system. These include asking: what is behind Empedocles’ rejection of birth and death? What does his doctrine of rebirth entail on the level of his physical tenets in terms of personal survival upon death? Here I shall present a twofold argument. On the one hand, it will be shown that Empedocles’ physical tenet which explains birth and death as mixtures and separations of basic elements, is motivated by his concept of rebirth. On the other hand, it will be argued that key concerns revolving around the belief in rebirth, such as instances of individual identity and personal survivalFootnote ¹ are central elements of Empedocles’ physical system.Footnote ²

The chapter begins with a group of fragments constituting the final part of Empedocles’ proem to On Nature, in which Empedocles calibrates upon the Presocratic axiom nihil ex nihilo fit (literally the principle that nothing is from nothing) his rejection of the ordinary notions of birth and death. According to Empedocles, nothing is born or dies altogether, but everything results from the mixing, exchanging of mixed things and separating of the four basic and pre-existing elements. Section 5.2 will show that Empedocles uses analogous terms to speak of both the mixtures and changes elements undergo when they are compounded in mortal beings and the changes of bodies individuals endure in their cycle of rebirths. Indeed, by drawing on the domain of metamorphosis, Empedocles ends up conceptualizing rebirth as a series of body transformations, in analogy with those transformations the elements go through when mixed in mortal bodies.

In Section 5.4, then, my analysis will concentrate on the central question of whether and in which way personal identity can be carried after death from a body to the next. In this respect, we will first see that Empedocles’ fragments quite clearly establish personal survival upon the death of the body and, indeed, upon several deaths of several bodies. Second, although claims to individual identity and personal survival are usually thought not to fit with Empedocles’ considerations on psychological and mental functions, and for this reason scholars generally refute the idea that rebirth could be a positive doctrine within his physics, here I will suggest a different explanation. My argument is that the particular way in which Empedocles conceived of rebirth, with its focus on body changes, led him to marginalize the soul; that is, to fail a reflection in terms of physical principles on the relationship between personal survival and the self, and the role of the soul in it. However, this does not mean that he had no notion of the soul. As Section 5.3 shows, he speaks of ψυχαί in his verses. My conclusion then is that Empedocles is at ease with a traditional, Homeric concept of ψυχή, which can not only sustain the notion of disembodied existence, as it stands for personal survival upon the death of the body; it can also be adapted to the principles of his physics.

5.1 Birth and Death

To return to the proem to On Nature, in Chapter 2.9 I allocated a group of fragments to its final section, in which Empedocles, by introducing one of the main tenets of his physical system, deals with a revision of the ordinary notions of birth and death. His aim is to challenge the common conception that something can be formed from nothing or end completely in order to offer his own understanding of these phenomena: namely, that birth and death involve basic elements that are mixed and separated into different forms of living beings. In what follows, I will look more closely at these fragments in terms of the argument contained therein, including giving a more comprehensive understanding of his novel concepts of birth and death. Then, by showing that Empedocles’ physical tenet is grounded in his concept of rebirth, I will also show that the changes the elements undergo through mixing and the changes of bodies during a person’s rebirths appear to be, both linguistically and conceptually, deeply interrelated.

In the final group of proemial fragments discussed in Chapter 2.9, Empedocles rejects the standard meaning attributed to the notions of birth and death, as we can read through the lines of B 8 (= EMP D 53 Laks-Most):

The assumption that no mortal thing has neither birth nor death, but that everything that exists is the result of the ‘mixing and exchange of mixed things’ rests on the implicit idea that the ordinary notions of ‘birth’ and ‘death’ are misleading concepts based on a faulty understanding of natural phenomena. As Empedocles explains in the last line, ‘birth’ (but a similar line of reasoning must arguably hold true also for the notion of ‘death’) is a name humans erroneously gave to the natural processes of μίξις (mixis) and διάλλαξις (diallaxis) of things.

While we will return to the notions of μίξις and, above all, διάλλαξις below, the lines of B 9 (= EMP D 54 Laks-Most) help clarify where the error of mortals lies with respect to their understanding of birth and death:

Ordinary people mistakenly conceptualize ‘birth’ as the phenomenon whereby a certain form of a living being comes into being from nothing. Instead, the birth of a living being results from mixtures of pre-existing elements. Similarly, ‘death’ does not coincide with the phenomenon whereby a living being decays into nothingness, but instead refers to the process of separation of its component elements (which presumably continue to exist as such). The broader inference contained in these lines is that the common concepts of birth and death are erroneous because, by grasping the superficial aspect of these phenomena, they lead them back to the notion of ‘nothingness’, which is untenable in light of the invisible natural processes involving pre-existing and perennial matter: the four elements. Thus, in order to correctly illustrate how things in fact come to pass, notions belonging to the domain of mixing and separation – or as stated in B 8 (= EMP D 53 Laks-Most), μίξις and διάλλαξις – are more appropriate than the customary names of birth and death.Footnote ⁴ Nonetheless, as claimed in the last line of B 9 (= EMP D 54 Laks-Most), Empedocles will abide by convention and continue using the ordinary, faulty terms of ‘birth’ and ‘death’. However, Empedocles understands them to be deprived of their conventional meaning and charged instead with a more genuine sense which is more in keeping with the actual process of coming to be and perishing.

In another fragment belonging to the same context (also discussed in Chapter 2.9), Empedocles calls ‘fools’ those who take the concepts of birth and death in the traditional sense:

The expression δολιχόφρονες μέριμναι at line 1 is reminiscent of Empedocles’ criticism, expressed in B 2 (= EMP D 42 Laks-Most), against ordinary people who, with their narrow cognitive tools, their thoughts dulled by worthless solicitudes and their small portion of life, have just a superficial understanding of things, knowing only what they happen to experience. Indeed, being driven by their perceptions, they are unable to achieve an in-depth comprehension of ‘the whole’.Footnote ⁵ In B 11 (= EMP D 51 Laks-Most), people are similarly called fools because they lack far-reaching thoughts and this prevents them from understanding (and consequently caring about) the real nature of processes of birth and death. So they end up expecting that something could come from what formerly was not and that it could also utterly dissolve.

Wrapping up, the problem with the standard notions of birth and death ultimately rests on an incorrect, indeed superficial, way of looking at phenomena and understanding the way things come to pass. Human superficial understanding results in concepts and names that crystallize superficial perceptions and give rise to erroneous but standardized meanings. Thus, ‘birth’ and ‘death’ turn out to crystallize the notion of ‘non-being’ or ‘nothingness’, from or into which a given being emerges or disappears. Yet their standardized meanings betray a superficial perception, instead of illustrating (or evoking) the underlying natural process, and for this reason they are flawed.

As we have seen above, in B 8 (= EMP D 53 Laks-Most) Empedocles defines the process underlying the birth (φύσις) of a living being by the expression μίξις τε διάλλαξίς τε μιγέντων. When commenting on these lines, Plutarch clarifies that Empedocles does not negate the concept of life or the notion of existence, rather he redefines it in terms of combinations and separations of pre-existing things, such that ‘“coming-to-be” is just a name applied to the combination with one another of some pre-existing things, whereas “death” is analogously a name applied to their separation from one another (διαλύσει δ’ ἀπ’ ἀλλήλων τὸν θάνατον ἐπονομάζεσθαι)’. While Empedocles speaks of the process underlying the generation of a living being as μίξις and διάλλαξις, Plutarch explains the Empedoclean notion of φύσις and θάνατος in terms of mixture and separation, that is, διάλυσις. The idea that birth is a form of mixing while death coincides with separation has a parallel in B 9 (= EMP D 54 Laks-Most), where Empedocles straightforwardly connects birth with mixture (μιγέντα at l. 1) and death with separation (ἀποκρινθῶσι at l. 4). Yet Plutarch is here commenting on B 8 (= EMP D 53 Laks-Most) and this invites the reading that he understands Empedocles’ word διάλλαξις as more or less equivalent to διάλυσις.

We find the same equivalence in Aristotle’s reading of Empedocles in On Generation and Corruption.Footnote ⁶

Aristotle’s partial quotation of B 8 (= EMP D 53 Laks-Most) is made in order to corroborate his assumption that those earlier thinkers who, like Empedocles, postulated more than one basic element also maintained that coming-to-be coincides with a σύνεσις of these elements, whereas passing-away is their διάλυσις. In other words, Aristotle bends Empedocles’ interpretation to his own explanation of the nature of natural processes and, in doing so, equates διάλλαξις with διάλυσις.

However, as Palmer has correctly observed,Footnote ⁷ Aristotle’s understanding of διάλλαξις in terms of separation is problematic, as it stems from his assumption, stated just before the Empedoclean quotation, that those who have posited a plurality of material principles must argue for generation and destruction in terms of their combination and separation. The term διάλλαξις, however, does not seem to mean anything like separation. By discussing the sense of this unusual word,Footnote ⁸ along with other terms related to its root, such as the more common διαλλαγή (diallage), Palmer emphasizes that they express the notion of ‘interchange’ and ‘change’, as well as ‘change from enmity to friendship’ and, hence, ‘reconciliation’. They never mean ‘separation’. Indeed, the verb διαλλάσσω (diallasso), from which διάλλαξις and διαλλαγή are derived, is attested with the sense of ‘give and take in exchange’ or simply ‘exchange’, ‘interchange’ or, in some contexts, with the sense of ‘reconcile with one another’. It is never attested with the meaning of ‘separate’. Even more relevantly, when διαλλάσσω recurs in Empedocles’ fragments, it depicts the elements interchanging with one another or exchanging their paths when forming compounds.Footnote ⁹ With all this given, a cognate term such as διάλλαξις, just like διαλλαγή, would be expected to have, analogously, the sense of ‘exchange’ or ‘interchange’, rather than that of ‘separation’. Thus, Palmer concludes that

Palmer dismisses the idea that ‘exchange’ or ‘interchange’ in this context may indicate the ‘remixing’ of elements to form other products, which occurs when a living compound dies.Footnote ¹¹ Rather, the term διάλλαξις specifies a process of transformation: as they mix, the elements give to and take in exchange from one another their own specific properties and, in doing so, are qualitatively affected by one another. The result is a new compound with its own new qualities.

Wrapping up, according to B 8 (= EMP D 53 Laks-Most) the origin of living beings is governed by the interaction of pre-existing materials – the four elements – that continuously mix and reciprocally interchange, transforming themselves into the multitude of living beings we can now see. Following B 9 (= EMP D 54 Laks-Most), moreover, death implies a separation of elements. Indeed, death can intuitively be taken as involving the final departure of breath or utter dispersion of heat from the living body; that is, in Empedoclean terms, the separation of air and fire from the other compounded elements.

It is worth considering that Empedocles’ way of arguing for birth and death is a result of his tacit assumption of the physical principle nihil ex nihilo fit, which Aristotle identifies as a common axiom of Presocratic cosmology.Footnote ¹² Indeed, Empedocles’ physical theory establishes that every visible and invisible thing in the universe, thus including both organic and inorganic matter, is brought about by the interchange of pre-existing elements mixing with, and separating from, each other. In this respect, nothing in the universe ever comes to be out of nothing or is utterly ended. However, the focus on θνητά in B 8.2 (= EMP D 53.2 Laks-Most), with its specification in B 9 (= EMP D 54 Laks-Most) as human beings, wild animals, plants and birds, betrays the impression that the Presocratic axiom governing all areas and things of the universe is enunciated by Empedocles specifically to explain that living beings do not ever come to be and perish altogether. Empedocles’ unconditional refutation of birth and death, in other words, seems to be tailored to his more religious belief that there is something of the individual that pre-exists the birth and outlasts the death of their present mortal form. Indeed, Empedocles seems to be articulating his central physical theory with his doctrine of rebirth in mind.Footnote ¹³

This impression gains force when we consider further lines belonging to the same proemial section of the fragments quoted above, namely B 15 (= EMP D 52 Laks-Most):

Here Empedocles tells us that whereas those who believe that what formerly is not could come into being or that something could utterly end are ‘fools’ and ‘not-far-reaching’ thinkers (B 11.1 [= EMP D 51.1 Laks-Most]), a wise person knows that there is individual existence, as well as evil and good things that come with it, beyond embodied life. As we have seen in Chapter 2.9, the reference in B 15 (= EMP D 52 Laks-Most) to good and evil things that men and women experience before their birth and after their death as mortals strongly indicates that Empedocles hints here at his doctrine of rebirth.

To sum up, in the fragments I have considered up to this point – B 8 (= EMP D 53 Laks-Most), B 9 (= EMP D 54 Laks-Most), B 11 (= EMP D 51 Laks-Most) and B 15 (= EMP D 52 Laks-Most) which all belong to the same context of the proemial section – Empedocles formulates the idea of pre-existing elements forming, through their continuous combinations and interchanges, all kinds of living beings, bearing in mind his belief in disembodied existence and rebirth. This reading shows that the concept of mixing and exchange of elements, so central to Empedocles’ physics, is not only in line with more religious concerns, but seems to be prompted by them and premised upon them. Indeed, Empedocles’ refutation of the usual concepts of ‘coming to be’ and ‘perishing’ goes hand in hand with a rethinking of the notion of individual existence, now disentangled from birth and death.

5.2 Rebirth as Transformation

Having now established that one of Empedocles’ main physical tenets – his unconditional refutation of the ordinary concepts of birth and death – is in fact formulated with his doctrine of rebirth in mind, I can begin to investigate the relationship between the two in more detail, especially by looking at his word choice in terms of metaphor domains. In what follows, I will first outline the way that the concept of rebirth draws on the metaphor domain of journey before I clarify its use in B 115 (= EMP D 51 Laks-Most) in relation to the gods’ exile. By looking at Empedocles’ metaphor use in a number of fragments related to the theme of rebirth, it will be argued that his conception of the bodily transformations individuals undergo during their reincarnations is analogous to the changes of the elements into mortal bodies. Thus, despite the modern conception of metempsychosis, Empedocles’ concept of rebirth is illustrated through notions that are closer to the domain of metamorphosis.

To begin, let us consider what a basic doctrine of rebirth entails. From a modern point of view, doctrines of rebirth are commonly taken to convey the idea that the personal soul of the individual transmigrates from one body to another. They are therefore usually indifferently referred to as doctrines of transmigration or metempsychosis. In his comprehensive study on metempsychosis in archaic and classical Greece, H. S. Long defined it as ‘the belief that at the death the soul passes into another body’.Footnote ¹⁴ The concept of ‘transmigration’ similarly entails the notion that there is something, usually the soul, that migrates from one body to another. The term metempsychosis, formed from the verb ἐμψυχόω (empsychoô), ‘to animate’, and the prefix μετά (meta, lat. trans), signifies the re-insufflation of a soul in a new body and draws attention to the movement of the eternal or at least long-lasting soul which, like a breath (πνεῦμα, in Greek), enters the body.

As we can see from even this short explanation, this concept is constructed around metaphors belonging to the domain of journey. The focus on the movement or journey of the soul in and out of the body and from one body to another displays Plato’s influential legacy (in its Christian adaptation, which has spread and made Plato’s thought familiar to us) to our understanding of ancient (and modern) doctrines of rebirth.Footnote ¹⁵ As we have seen in Chapter 3.3, in Plato’s writings we find the assumption that the soul is the eternal and semi-divine personal element in human beings, which will outlive the death of the body; indeed it will persist through many deaths and journey through many bodies. From a perspective that analyzes metaphor concepts, the metaphor domain of the wandering or journeying of the soul draws attention to the notion of an eternal or at least persisting entity in us that migrates intact through diverse places – these being either places in the cosmos (such as the underworld, heaven, the moon, our earth, etc.) or the same as mortal bodies.

Nevertheless, it should be asked to what extent this Platonizing way of speaking about the soul and its transmigrations fairly renders Empedocles’ doctrine of rebirth. By focusing on the lines of B 115 (= EMP D 10 Laks-Most), which, as we saw in Chapters 1.2 and 3.2, scholars have taken as the standard fragment on rebirth, Empedocles appears to use the conceptual domain of a journeying entity as the main agent of rebirths. Although in Chapter 3 I put forward more than one reason to reject the standard reading of B 115 (= EMP D 10 Laks-Most) representing the aetiological myth for the soul’s rebirths, it is nevertheless true that the guilty δαίμων, who is going to be born as diverse forms of mortals, is said to ‘wander (ἀλάλησθαι) away from the blessed gods’ and to ‘exchange the hard paths of life’ (βιότοιο μεταλλάσσοντα κελεύθους).

However, the notion of the wanderings of the δαίμων in the context of B 115 (= EMP D 10 Laks-Most) might not be used as a metaphor to talk about rebirths but might instead convey, in allegorical terms,Footnote ¹⁶ the state of exile into which the guilty gods are sent after they are banished from the divine abode. On the other hand, the expression βιότοιο μεταλλάσσοντα κελεύθους in B 115.7 (= EMP D 10.7 Laks-Most) illustrates the punishment inflicted on guilty gods once they are compelled to leave their original abode. They must be born over time as diverse forms of mortals (φυόμενον παντοῖα διὰ χρόνου εἴδεα θνητῶν). The wording βιότοιο … κελεύθους exploits the metaphor of the paths of life, conceptually related to the domain of journey, to talk about the drastic changes (μεταλλάσσοντα) in existential conditions the guilty gods will undergo. These changes certainly refer to the gods’ rebirths as all forms of mortals. However, the metaphor of the paths of life, which belongs to the conceptual domain of life as a journey, is pervasive in Greek language,Footnote ¹⁷ as it is in everyday English too.Footnote ¹⁸ In other words, the domain of journey may not be meant specifically to illustrate the notion of rebirth, but may rather be exploited to conceptualize and talk about life. Moreover, the context of B 115 (= EMP D 10 Laks-Most) suggests that the many paths of life guilty gods must exchange are conceptually related to their new condition as exiles and wanderers. This is an indication, in conclusion, that the notion of the paths of life is idiosyncratic to the depiction of the gods’ journey of exile.

Furthermore, when we look at other Empedoclean verses that hint at rebirth but do not refer to the exile of the guilty gods, we notice a use of different conceptual metaphors than those related to the domain of paths and journeys. Let us closely consider B 137 (= EMP D 29 Laks-Most):

As we saw in Chapter 2.6, this fragment represents Empedocles’ condemnation of the impious practice of ritual sacrifice, which, against the backdrop of the doctrine of rebirth, can be seen as the killing of a human being, temporarily reborn with the body of the sacrificial animal on the altar. From the lines quoted above it plainly emerges that rebirth is conceptualized as a change of form. Indeed, the phrase μορφὴν δ᾽ ἀλλάξαντα emphasizes the body and its transformations.

Furthermore, this expression closely resembles a passage of Euripides’ Bacchae, in which Dionysus explains that he has come to Thebes to demonstrate to King Pentheus that he is a god and, as such, deserves proper honours. However, if Pentheus continues obstructing him, Dionysus will meet him in battle at the head of an army of maenads. Then the god concludes, ‘that is why, having taken in exchange a mortal appearance I changed my form to that of a man (ὧν οὕνεκ’ εἶδος θνητὸν ἀλλάξας ἔχω / μορφήν τ’ ἐμὴν μετέβαλον εἰς ἀνδρὸς φύσιν)’.Footnote ¹⁹ In Euripides’ passage, the Empedoclean reminiscence of ἀλλάξας … μορφήν highlights the temporary metamorphosis of the god into a human being. Analogously, in Empedocles, the focus is on the bodily transformation the new birth brings about. In other words, the metaphor used in these verses with reference to Empedocles’ doctrine of rebirth highlights the notion of the body and its transformations, while being silent about the soul and its wanderings.

In B 137 (= EMP D 29 Laks-Most) the verb ἀλλάσσοντα, in conjunction with the object μορφήν, indirectly recalls the concept of elements interchanging with one another to shape the new mortal body. As we have seen above, in B 8 (= EMP D 53 Laks-Most), by refuting the common notion of birth and death as coming to be from, and dissolving into, nothingness, Empedocles claims that φύσις entails an underlying process of mixture and interchange of mixed things, a διάλλαξις. As has been argued in Section 5.1, the word δι-άλλαξις and its cognate terms such as ἀλλάσσω and διαλλάσσω occur in Empedocles to depict the elements interchanging with one another and producing a reciprocal interaction, in which the elements as they mix are qualitatively affected by one another. This process produces transformations of the mixed elements into new compounds with new qualities of their own. Analogously, in B 17.6 (= EMP D 73.238 Laks-Most) the elements are said constantly to change, ἀλλάσσοντα, when they come together into one thing due to Love or are borne apart separately by Strife. At B 17.12 (= EMP D 73.243 Laks-Most) Empedocles rephrases the same idea by saying that the elements, having learned to grow as one out of many and many out of one, have no steadfast life, but constantly change (διαλλάσσοντα).Footnote ²⁰ Thus, within six lines, Empedocles uses the verb ἀλλάσσω and its cognate διαλλάσσω to express the notion of continuous elemental transformations – in other words, the elements, by interchanging with one another, transform themselves into diverse and multifarious compounds of living beings.

While the verb ἀλλάσσω and its cognates διαλλάσσω and διάλλαξις represent the concepts that illustrate the cycles of the elements and their transformations into living beings, the same notions are also employed to convey the cycle of rebirth of the individual persons. Above we have seen that rebirth is illustrated through the phrase μορφὴν δ᾽ ἀλλάξαντα in B 137.1 (= EMP D 29.1 Laks-Most); yet the importance of the use of ἀλλάσσω and its cognates to convey the concept of rebirth extends beyond B 137 (= EMP D 29 Laks-Most). A further example is represented by the expression μεταλλάσσοντα κελεύθους in B 115.7 (= EMP D 10.7 Laks-Most), which, as we have seen above, illustrates the gods’ rebirths. A parallel with Isocrates in which Heracles is said to μετήλλαξε τὸν βίον, to have changed his life, becoming a god from a mortal, θεὸς ἐκ θνητοῦ γενόμενος,Footnote ²¹ shows that the Empedoclean expression analogously conveys the meaning of a radical change of life, indeed a transformation into a new kind of living being each time a guilty god is reborn. To sum up, we can say that Empedocles depicts the cycle of rebirths of the individual persons in analogy with the cycles of the elements and their transformations into living beings, employing the verb ἀλλάσσω (with its cognates) as the key concept to convey both cycles.

In this respect, it is worth noting that the above-quoted expression μεταλλάσσοντα κελεύθους which, as we have just seen, refers to the gods’ multiple rebirths into mortal beings, closely resembles the phrase διαλλάξαντα κελεύθους employed in B 35.14–15 (= EMP D 75.14–15 Laks-Most). There, it illustrates the interchange of paths among the four elements that, having hitherto been immortal and unmixed, now mingle and through this interchange give rise to mortal and integrated beings. As has been argued in the previous chapter, these two lines are part of a passage explaining the mixing of the elements due to Love’s increasing influence, which brings about a multitude of living beings. Thus, the wording ‘interchange of paths’ precisely refers to the elements’ transformations into living beings and, consequently, to their birth. In this respect it is worth noting that the line depicting the coming into being of living beings due to elemental mixtures in B 35.16 (= EMP D 75.16 Laks-Most) – τῶν δέ τε μισγομένων χεῖτ’ ἔθνεα μυρία θνητῶν – closely recalls the continuous changes of life a guilty god undergoes by ‘being born throughout time as all kinds of mortal forms’ – B 115.6 (= EMP D 10.6 Laks-Most): φυομένους παντοῖα διὰ χρόνου εἴδεα θνητῶν. This is further evidence that the cycle of rebirths of the guilty gods is conceptualized in analogy with the elements’ transformations into mortal compounds.

Returning to the analysis of the metaphors illustrating the process of rebirth, in B 126 (= EMP D 19 Laks-Most) the focus is still on the notion of bodies that change during rebirths, although here Empedocles uses a different image. The body is described as a ‘tunic of flesh’, σαρκῶν … χιτῶνι, that is ἀλλογνώς. The word ἀλλογνώς is unique. Guthrie put forward a parallel with a Herodotean passageFootnote ²² where a form of the cognate verb ἀλλογνοέω means ‘failing to recognize’.Footnote ²³ In the Empedoclean context, therefore, the word ἀλλογνώς could illustrate the new body received at birth as ‘alien’ or ‘unknown’ (to the person who is going to be reborn), but it could also suggest the idea that the new body makes the person unrecognizable. Either way, the fragment conveys the image of the body as a brand-new dress the person is about to wear and clearly draws attention to the novel form of body obtained at birth.

Furthermore, in other fragments belonging to the context of rebirth, Empedocles employs a terminology that could also be related to the conceptual domain of body change or transformation I have reconstructed thus far. In B 127 (= EMP D 36 Laks-Most), to say that the same individual can be reborn as a lion among animals and as a laurel among plants – the best lives in both cases – Empedocles says that individuals γίγνονται, ‘become’ or ‘are born’ as lions and laurels. Analogously, in the fragment depicting the final leg of the cycle of rebirths (B 146–47 [= EMP D 39 and D 40 Laks-Most]), individuals πέλονται, ‘become’ or ‘are born’, as seers, poets, doctors and political leaders before they ‘blossom’ (ἀναβλαστοῦσι) as gods of greatest honours.Footnote ²⁴

What is more significant about this terminological use, however, is that while being opaque about body transformations, it conceals the role of the soul in rebirths. In fact, rather than talking about the wanderings of the soul into the bodies of a laurel, lion, doctor, leader, poet, etc., Empedocles describes these rebirths in a way that is reminiscent of Proteus’ transformations in the Odyssey. As the Homeric poet tells us, ‘Proteus of Egypt, the immortal old man of the sea who never lies, who plays the deep in all its depths and is servant of Poseidon’ used to come out of the sea at noon to lie down and doze in the shade of the rocks. Thus, whoever wished to know their fate, had to approach him at that time to catch him in his sleep. However, strength was needed to hold him back, because Proteus was a shape-shifter and therefore able to ‘assume (γινόμενος) all manner of shapes of all things that move upon the earth, and of water, and of wondrous blazing fire’.Footnote ²⁵ After returning from the Trojan War and having captured him, Menelaus saw him turn himself (γένετο/γίνετο) into a lion, a snake, a leopard, a pig, even into simple water, and again into a tree, before resuming his human form and telling him his future.Footnote ²⁶ Thus, while Proteus became (γένετο/γίνετο) all these forms, so too do the individual persons who do not pass through different mortal bodies, but rather turn into or become (γίγνονται/πέλονται) a lion, laurel, political leader, poet, physician and seer upon death.

In conclusion, both Empedocles’ metaphor of bodily change employed to depict rebirth and the reminiscences of Proteus’ transformations in some verses referring to rebirth suggest that, rather than the most common Platonic metaphor of a journeying or wandering soul, Empedocles exploits the image of the body transformations individuals undergo through rebirths. To put it another way, if we consider that two poles are involved in rebirths – continuity (of soul or self) and changes (of bodies) – Plato pushes towards continuity whereas Empedocles stresses change. Empedocles’ idea of rebirth, in other words, is illustrated through concepts that are closer to the domain of metamorphosis than to that of metempsychosis.Footnote ²⁷

5.3 De Anima

Having established that Empedocles’ concept of rebirth is linked with the domain of metamorphosis, I would now like to combine this with my analysis in Chapter 3 to consider the implications that this conception has on the soul in Empedocles’ verses. Specifically, in what follows, I will argue that the conceptualization of rebirth as a chain of metamorphoses led to the marginalization of the soul. However, moving beyond the extant fragments considered above, including returning to B 126 (= EMP D 19 Laks-Most) in light of Porphyry and Plato, I will also challenge scholars’ common opinion and argue that Empedocles has a notion of soul and in fact spoke of ψυχή (psyche) in his physical poem.

As I have just shown, Empedocles draws on a metaphor domain that highlights the bodies and their transformations in rebirths, while concealing the role of a continuing entity such as the soul. Moreover, judging from the extant fragments, Empedocles does not seem to have a special attachment to the word ψυχή when dealing with rebirth. Indeed, it is absent from verses where we would expect it most, for instance in B 111.9 (= EMP D 43.9 Laks-Most). To express the promise that Pausanias will raise the dead to life, Empedocles says that he will be able to bring out of Hades the μένος (menos) – not the ψυχή – of a dead person. Similarly, in other contexts that are chiefly religious, Empedocles is silent about the ψυχή, while putting emphasis on the θυμός (thymos) that can never rest from dreadful sufferings (B 145.2 [= EMP D 30.2 Laks-Most]) or, even more remarkably, on the θυμός that priests unwittingly ‘rip out’ from their relatives when officiating a ritual sacrifice (B 137.6 [= EMP D 29.6 Laks-Most]).Footnote ²⁸

In light of this, scholars have advocated the view that Empedocles has no notion of soul as ψυχή. In fact, the term occurs in just one fragment, B 138 (not in Laks-Most), whose attribution to Empedocles has been questioned.Footnote ²⁹ In this context, additionally, ψυχή is not explicitly associated with the doctrine of rebirth and is usually interpreted as meaning ‘life’, rather than ‘soul’.Footnote ³⁰ Furthermore, it is general opinion that the Empedoclean term translating the notion of (transmigrating) soul is δαίμων rather than ψυχή. However, in Chapter 3, beside showing that the term δαίμων in B 115 (= EMP D 10 Laks-Most), in line with its occurrences in epic poetry, in Pythagoras and Plato is a synonymous term for ‘god’, I argued that the story of Empedocles as a wandering δαίμων, which emphasizes his extraordinary nature and special wisdom, challenges the view that the souls of all human beings are called δαίμονες. Since Empedocles’ claim places him in a unique position in contrast to ordinary people, δαίμων can hardly be taken as a term for soul or as the subject of a general doctrine presenting rebirth as the destiny of each living being. Rather, as I argued in Chapter 3.5, this concept emphasizes the role of δαίμων φύλαξ that Empedocles chooses to impersonate: through his philosophy, he teaches people their place in this world and beyond, while guiding his disciple along the way to godhood.

On the other hand, the term ψυχή in Empedocles cannot be dismissed so easily. In fact, although, as we have just seen, Empedocles shows no particular attachment to this word, J. Barnes correctly points out that ‘the view that Empedocles had no soul … was not held in antiquity: the doxographers are ready enough to use psyche in Empedoclean contexts, and their sunny acceptance of Empedoclean souls suggests that the absence of the term psyche from the fragments should be ascribed to chance’.Footnote ³¹ An easy objection to Barnes may run as follows: since the majority of ancient doxographers are not exempt from the Platonizing interpretation that, as we saw in Chapter 3.2, assimilates the Empedoclean concept of δαίμων to the notion of ψυχή, it is possible that they read the word δαίμων in the Empedoclean text and rephrased it in their commentaries as ψυχή.Footnote ³² However, Empedocles’ story of his katabasis to the realm of the dead strengthens Barnes’ hypothesis that the absence of ψυχή in the Empedoclean fragments is to be ascribed to chance. Indeed, it seems reasonable to assume that, just like Odysseus before and Er and Aeneas after him, Empedocles encountered many ψυχαί populating Hades.

Second, a fragment belonging to the narration of Empedocles’ katabasis might represent an occurrence of the term ψυχή in Empedocles’ poem. The above-analyzed B 126 (= EMP D 19 Laks-Most) is quoted by Porphyry and PlutarchFootnote ³³ in connection with Empedocles’ doctrine of rebirth.Footnote ³⁴ In particular, the passage in Porphyry runs as follows:

Editors of Empedocles rightly take the phrase σαρκῶν ἀλλογνῶτι περιστέλλουσα χιτῶνι as Empedocles’ own words. The standard interpretation maintains that Porphyry’s use of the term ψυχάς (psychas) is a usual way to rephrase the Empedoclean concept of δαίμων.Footnote ³⁶ However, it is worth noting that, if this were the case, we would need to assume that in Empedocles’ text either δαίμων is both the subject and the object of dressing, or it is the object of dressing but Porphyry misunderstood it for the subject. Whereas both alternatives are unattractive, an object like ψυχάς is exactly what we expect in the context of Empedocles’ katabasis into a traditional underworld, traditionally populated by ψυχαί.

Moreover, Mansfeld and Primavesi in their 2011 edition of Presocratic fragments (and now in their 2021 reprint) considered, correctly in my view, that the word δαίμων is also part of the Empedoclean quotation.Footnote ³⁷ In his commentary on the line, Porphyry makes it clear that a female δαίμων called εἱμαρμένη καὶ φύσις, is the subject of the feminine participle περιστέλλουσα. According to Porphyry’s report, in other words, Empedocles speaks here of a goddess who is responsible for the souls’ new bodies.Footnote ³⁸ Thus, besides accepting Mansfeld and Primavesi’s interpretation of this fragment, I would also argue that not only the subject (δαίμων) but also the object of περιστέλλουσα, namely ψυχάς in Porphyry’s text, is to be considered Empedocles’ own word. My conclusion, therefore, is that Empedocles wrote of a female δαίμων in Hades who dresses with a new body ψυχαί that are about to be reborn.

Furthermore, as Inwood has pointed out, in a passage of Plato’s Phaedo (86e–88b), the Pythagorean Cebes refers to the ψυχή by using a metaphor that is reminiscent of Empedocles’ B 126 (= EMP D 19 Laks-Most).Footnote ³⁹ In order to object not only to Plato’s notion of the immortality of the soul, but also to Simmias’ hypothesis that the soul is weaker and more short-lived than the body, Cebes compares the soul to a weaver who, during his life, can wear diverse cloaks. Thus, as the weaver lives longer than a cloak, but not eternally, the soul, analogously, lives longer than the body even though it is going to perish at some point. Given the parallel with Empedocles’ metaphor of the body as clothing, it is not unlikely that the metaphor and, presumably, also the whole theory explained by Cebes was inspired by Empedocles.Footnote ⁴⁰ In fact, Cebes uses the image of the body as a cloak in order to make a point – rebirth does not require an immortal soul – which Empedocles would have advocated.Footnote ⁴¹ It is possible, in conclusion, that Plato’s passage constitutes external evidence for a reading of B 126 (= EMP D 19 Laks-Most) in the sense I am suggesting – with ψυχαί being reborn as new forms of mortal beings. Furthermore, the Phaedo’s passage invites the reading that Empedocles talked about ψυχαί in his verses and even in reference to his doctrine of rebirth.

In summary, despite scholars’ standard view, we have seen that Empedocles most likely spoke of ψυχαί inhabiting Hades that he met in his journey to the underworld, where he learned by first-hand experience about the individual’s cycle of rebirths. In what follows we will see that Empedocles’ conceptualization of rebirth entails a traditional notion of ψυχή that he could already find in two of his models, Homer and Pythagoras. This notion implies that ψυχή is not conceptualized as the centre of the person, yet, just like in epic poetry, it stands for personal survival upon the death of the body.

5.4 Personal Survival

Having shown that Empedocles has a notion of soul, indeed that he talks of ψυχαί which, in line with epic tradition, populate Hades, I must now note that the hypothesis of Empedocles’ use of ψυχή in contexts of rebirth raises more questions than it answers. First of all, what is the nature of ψυχή and what sort of entity is it? Empedocles’ fragments do not offer much to help us to define ψυχή more clearly. On the one hand, given Empedocles’ ontology, it seems necessary to assume that ψυχή consists of one or more of the four elements.Footnote ⁴² On the other hand, it is not at all clear that Empedocles ever explicated it in this way. In any case, since ψυχαί survive death, it must be conceded that, whichever type of entity the soul is, as a minimum requirement it must live longer than the body. Therefore, if we assume it to be a compound of elements like anything else existing in Empedocles’ cosmos, we must concede that it is a longer-lived compound than other elemental compounds making up our bodies. In this way, ψυχή can separate from the body at the moment of death and ‘fly away’ into the underworld, just as souls do in the Homeric epics.

However, the central issue at stake here does not so much concern the nature of ψυχή, as the question whether it is the seat of the person, and/or such that it ensures personal survival at the death of the body. Put differently, at a more general level, the issue concerns whether and in which way individual identity can be carried both within the body and after the death of the body, indeed, upon many deaths and through different bodies. To answer this, in what follows, I will first place Empedocles’ philosophical thought in context, as this allows us to appreciate that issues of disembodied existence and, to a certain extent, also personal survival were familiar to him through Homer and Pythagoras. I will then consider the scholarly interpretations regarding the coherence of Empedocles’ view of the soul, arguing that the acknowledged fact that Empedocles does not have a concept of soul as the seat of the person is no reason to reject the possibility that his physical system accommodates his doctrine of rebirth. This inference will finally lead us to conclude that doctrines of rebirth do not require that the soul is the true seat of the person, but more simply that it stands as the bearer of disembodied individual existence – a conception that Empedocles took up from the epic tradition.

Returning to the suggestion made by Inwood, referred to at the chapter’s outset,Footnote ⁴³ we can then appreciate that Empedocles’ doctrine of rebirth entails personal survival upon several deaths of several bodies. This essentially means that the same individual could, in principle, be recognized and identified despite their changed bodies. This claim can be made on the basis of B 115 (= EMP D 10 Laks-Most), which contains Empedocles’ declaration to be an exiled god, undergoing several changes of mortal bodies. Beyond Inwood’s suggestion, G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M. Schofield also agree that in regard to B 115 (= EMP D 10 Laks-Most), ‘what is clear is the force of Empedocles’ conviction that there is an “I” which survives such changes … “I” is ineliminable’.Footnote ⁴⁴ However, given that my interpretation of B 115 (= EMP D 10 Laks-Most) excludes that it deals with the fate of rebirth of all people, it can be objected that the emphasis on the ‘I’ in B 115 (= EMP D 10 Laks-Most) is idiosyncratic to Empedocles’ self-presentation as an exceptional being with a special authority.

Nevertheless, an analogous emphasis on the survival of the same individual despite their changed form is put forward in B 137 (= EMP D 29 Laks-Most). As we have seen above, here Empedocles claims that, because sacrificial animals are truly human beings reborn in a different mortal form, ritual sacrifice turns out to be the same as murder and cannibalism. Clearly, the dramatic power of the message of B 137 (= EMP D 29 Laks-Most) is entirely conveyed only if the self is preserved despite the changed body. In other words, the impious nature of ritual sacrifice is fully communicated by assuming that the priest’s son can still be identified as the priest’s son even though he now looks like the sacrificial victim. The same holds true for the father seized by his son and the mother killed by her children in the last two lines of the same fragment. Thus, we can conclude that, the person – that is, someone in particular, someone who has already lived a particular embodied life – survives death and a new rebirth and maintains their identity despite their new mortal form.

Where did Empedocles draw his belief in personal survival through diverse bodies and forms of life from? In search of an answer, I will first consider Pythagoras and then look at Homer. As we have seen in Chapter 2.2.2, Heraclides of Pontus reported that Pythagoras could recollect his previous lives, and precisely his lives as Aethalides, son of Hermes, Euphorbus, Hermotimus and Pyrrhus, a fisherman of Delos.Footnote ⁴⁵ In Pythagoras’ own cycle of rebirths, the personal identity continuing from one life to another – indeed, from a specific embodied person to another – goes hand in hand with memory of previous lives, thereby suggesting that the continuing individual possesses some kind of consciousness of previous rebirths. However, despite the significance of recollection in Pythagoras’ doctrine, continuity of consciousness seems to be no necessary criterion to establish personal survival from a body to another in his doctrine of rebirth. When, according to Xenophanes, Pythagoras claims to recognize the soul of his dear friend in a puppy,Footnote ⁴⁶ he is basically asserting the belief in the survival of a specific individual – his friend – even in a different animal species. Moreover, it seems that the personal identity of Pythagoras’ friend persists in the mortal body of a dog without consciousness: the puppy is not said to be aware either that it had been Pythagoras’ friend in a previous life or that it possesses the same soul as Pythagoras’ friend. Admittedly, this is not negated, but it seems difficult to imagine that the mental faculties of a dog could enable it to have such a high degree of consciousness as to know that it was a human being in a previous life. Be that as it may, what is clear is that the dog’s consciousness of its rebirths is not needed as a criterion to postulate its individual identity among different bodies, if a third someone, in this case Pythagoras, could declare that the puppy and his friend are clearly the same. As Inwood emphasizes, ‘Pythagoras was able to detect the sameness of the recycled soul, so there seems to be a considerable degree of continuity.’Footnote ⁴⁷ Accordingly, it is safe to assume that Empedocles too, like Pythagoras, maintained that personal identity is disentangled from consciousness, awareness or reminiscence of previous lives. In fact, in light of Empedocles’ theories of sensation and knowledge acquisition, according to which, as we will see in the next chapter, the ability to perceive and know is proportionate to the structure of one’s own body organs, it is difficult to imagine how the sacrificial victim, reduced to the limited mental faculties of an animal, could have such a high degree of consciousness as to be aware of their previous life as a human.

Beyond the example set by Pythagoras, some degree of continuity upon death and the notion of a person’s disembodied existence are also already found in epic poetry. In Homer, living human beings are essentially embodied. Their ψυχή is that which we may call life-breath or life-force, which leaves a living being permanently at death to continue existence as nothing more than a ghost or a shade in Hades. Or as A. A. Long puts it, ‘all that remains of persons once they have breathed their last is a ghostly replica of the previously embodied person, a mere phantom or lifeless shade’.Footnote ⁴⁸ Consequently, the ψυχαί in Hades are mindless. When Circe describes the ψυχή of Tiresias as exceptionally holding φρένες (phrenes) and νόος (noos), she indirectly indicates two things that all other souls are no longer supposed to possess.Footnote ⁴⁹ Similarly, the souls of the dead in Homer cannot speak in a normal manner, but shrill like terrified birds flying around (as the multitude of souls do when accompanying the eidolon of HeraclesFootnote ⁵⁰) or squeak like bats (as the souls of the suitors do when Hermes guided them to the UnderworldFootnote ⁵¹). This has been taken as a sign that the ψυχαί in Hades are mere departed spirits that do not have an existence of their own. Yet we will see that several other elements in the Homeric depiction of departed ψυχαί do not agree with this picture.

In Odysseus’ Nekyia in the eleventh book of the Odyssey (ll. 36ff.), the ψυχή is depicted as a bodiless ghost (εἴδωλον) and is compared to a dream (ὄνειρος) and a shadow (σκιή). For instance, when Odysseus unsuccessfully tries three times to embrace his mother Anticlea, she clarifies that this is how life is after the death of the body: while the sinews no longer bind flesh and bones, consumed by fire on the pyre, and the θυμός flees from the body, the ψυχή flutters and flies away like a dream. Then, Anticlea explains why she is in Hades rather than Ithaca, where the absence of her beloved son and the dreadful political situation became unbearable for her. Thus, we can infer Anticlea lacks bodily consistency but appears to retain her distinctive shape – she must look like the embodied, living Anticlea if Odysseus can recognize her among many other souls – as well as her distinctive character and mental faculties – indeed, she is perfectly able to explain to her son how things were in Ithaca for Penelope and Telemachus, and to recount the way she is now experiencing things in Hades.

Analogously, Agamemnon’s ψυχή is said to lack both strength, κῖκυς (kikys), and vigour, ἴς (is), and, for this reason, he cannot embrace Odysseus.Footnote ⁵² Yet, except for the lack of bodily consistency, Agamemnon’s ψυχή speaks, remembers and looks exactly like embodied Agamemnon. Indeed, he can recount what happens to him and his companions once he came back to his country and wife. Finally, in yet another example, the ψυχή of Achilles, the ruler of the dead, points out the horrifying nature of his actual condition. He wishes he could be alive on earth and serve as a poor peasant without land, rather than live eternally as the lord of the lifeless dead. Moreover, the ψυχαί of Agamemnon and Achilles are still able to care about their own beloveds and feel sad for or proud of them.

All this shows that the ψυχαί of Anticlea, Agamemnon and Achilles in Hades are a perfect replica of the embodied individuals who have already lived a particular embodied life. Memories, interests, concerns and emotions expressed by disembodied Anticlea, Agamemnon and Achilles come from the fact that they are still the same person they were in their embodied lives.Footnote ⁵³ Rather than merely being lifeless phantoms, therefore, their ψυχαί are the bearers of Anticlea’s, Agamemnon’s and Achilles’ post-mortem existence.

Yet, we may still wonder what the Homeric ψυχή does for the persons when they are alive. However, as A. A. Long observed, this question is probably ill framed, as it projects later thinkers’ ideas on the soul as the vital centre of the entire person and as incorporating all of the individual’s mental and emotional life. In the Homeric poems there is no notion of soul as a mental or emotional seat of the living person similar to that which Plato theorized several centuries later. Nonetheless, the ψυχή in Homer

Thus, the corpse a ψυχή leaves behind shows that the embodied life a particular individual has lived is finished. Yet disembodied life and personal identity persist in the soul’s post-mortem existence in Hades.

Returning to Empedocles, having placed his philosophical interests in context, we can now appreciate that issues of personal survival upon death and therefore of disembodied existence in Hades were almost certainly familiar to him from two of his models: Pythagoras and Homer.Footnote ⁵⁵ Nevertheless, it is generally maintained that in doctrines of rebirth, to satisfy the idea of a continuing personal identity, the soul (or whatever entity we may assume as the subject of rebirths) must represent the personal element in every living being.Footnote ⁵⁶ That is, it must play a role in the person’s mental and emotional functioning and then preserve their mental and emotional life through various deaths and bodies.Footnote ⁵⁷ In the next chapter we will see that Empedocles argues for psychological and mental functions in terms of bodily processes that rest upon the elemental composition of body organs and tissues, which dissolve upon death. But if the body’s organs die, how can those psychic and mental functions that characterize the individual person and make up one’s own self be preserved during diverse rebirths? Additionally, how does the soul that outlives the mortal body have a share of the personality of the living embodied individual?

If we look first to the scholarly reception, we can see that various modern interpreters recognize that, in the physical poem, Empedocles does not have a theory of soul as the seat of the person and this is considered a reason to reject the possibility that his physical system accommodates his doctrine of rebirth. For instance, E. Zeller concluded that the idea of a reincarnated soul, and more generally any doctrine of rebirth, ultimately collides with Empedocles’ physical system. If mental life in all its aspects, including sensations, emotions, thoughts and knowledge acquisition is explained in terms of mixtures of the four elements, the existence of a soul carrying distinctive aspects of the human individual beyond the life of the body is simply impossible.Footnote ⁵⁸

Analogously, G. Vlastos has highlighted that since mental processes in Empedocles are always a function of the ratio of fire, air, water and earth, these seem to be irreconcilable with the doctrine of the transmigration of the soul.Footnote ⁵⁹ Siding with Vlastos, A. A. Long concluded that ‘between these two conceptions of consciousness on the one hand and a spiritual existence on the other’, he could find ‘no clear connection’.Footnote ⁶⁰ More recently, Primavesi affirms that ‘within the attested fragments of Empedoclean poetry … the notion of individual transmigratory “soul” is entirely absent’.Footnote ⁶¹ Admittedly, however, some scholars have tried to smooth the issue of the relationship between Empedocles’ doctrine of rebirth and his physics by emphasizing that, in order to satisfy the idea of transmigration of the individual soul through different bodies, not every aspect of human psychological and mental functioning must be preserved in each incarnation.Footnote ⁶² Yet it remains unclear in which way the preserved aspects defining personal identity could be preserved at all.

Siding with the majority of scholars, I recognize that Empedocles failed to develop a coherent view of the soul that could address the problems raised above. Indeed, he seems to have never felt the need to clarify the relationship between personal survival and the mortal bodies a given person is from time to time. In other words, despite attempts of scholars who have tried to ascribe to Empedocles a more complex theory of the soul that could be integrated in his physics, in all fairness there is nothing in his fragments that could explain personal survival on the elemental level. On the contrary, it is possible that because of his particular conceptualization of rebirth, issues such as those just mentioned may simply not have occurred to him.

As we have seen above in Section 5.2, Empedocles’ fragments dealing with rebirth exploit a metaphoric scenario that draws particular attention to the corporeal changes and transformations individuals undergo during their cycles of rebirths. For these corporeal changes Empedocles did develop a complex physical theory, which explains the origin of the myriad living beings we can now see in the world as interactions of the four elements. That is, as we have seen above, Empedocles takes care to use the same language related to the conceptual domain of transformation both when he has to explain the phenomenon of birth at the level of the physical processes involving the elements and when he talks about rebirth, thus suggesting that he sees the two processes as deeply interrelated.

However, while emphasizing changes of bodies, Empedocles’ metaphor for rebirth conceals the notion of the persisting entity or soul working through many bodies and lives. Therefore, his accent on the transformation of the same individual into diverse forms of mortal bodies – a notion that relates to the great mythological tradition of metamorphosis tales – could indirectly have led to a marginalization in his physical system of the role of the soul in the notion of personal identity (both embodied and disembodied). Yet the fact that Empedocles does not seem to have felt the need to develop a complex theory of the soul as the seat of the person does not mean that in his physics there is no room for a positive theory of rebirth.

More specifically, I challenge the standard view that doctrines of rebirth require a complex notion of the soul as the true seat of the person similar to what we find later in Plato. In contrast, for a doctrine of rebirth to be sound, what is needed is the conception that the individual could survive and preserve their identity after death – a conception that developed from the epic tradition where, as we have seen, we can already find traces of the notion of personal disembodied existence in Hades. In other words, doctrines of rebirth could work with the Homeric traditional notion of post-mortem individual existence, by exploiting it in terms of the personal survival through many deaths of many bodies. In this respect, Empedocles seems to be at ease with a notion of ψυχή that is essentially traditional: a departed spirit that signifies the person beyond the body (and in this sense it could be said to stand for the person’s disembodied survival). Then, in line with Pythagoras’ doctrine, Empedocles’ contribution to tradition is the idea that (embodied and disembodied) existence and personal identity are not confined to one single death and body. Indeed, they straddle numerous lifetimes and numerous life forms.

5.5 Conclusions

The focus of this chapter has been on the concept of rebirth and the argument that, despite its allegedly religious aspect, it can be reconciled with Empedocles’ physical system. Indeed, not only does it function within this system, but Empedocles conceived one of the main tenets of his physics, namely the rejection of the ordinary concepts of birth and death, with the notion of rebirth in mind. Moreover, his key physical theory of the four elements mixing and transforming into living beings is argued in analogy to the changes a person undergoes through rebirths. Indeed, both processes are represented as changes of form, with rebirth conceptualized as a metamorphosis rather than a metempsychosis.

More importantly, traditional readings that assert that Empedocles, in his physics, had no notion of the soul, are inherently wrong. Instead, this chapter has shown that Empedocles, while speaking of ψυχαί inhabiting Hades, have a (traditional) notion of the soul which accords with his natural philosophy. Above all, it has been demonstrated that concerns on personal identity and survival upon death are central to his physical system.Footnote ⁶³ This is a strong indication that, despite the general view, rebirth is a positive, indeed a pivotal, doctrine within his physical system.