Overview

The discovery of the Strasbourg Empedocles Papyrus and its publication in 1999 was a unique stroke of luck for the study of ancient philosophy. The newly discovered texts supplemented the fragmentary tradition of Empedocles' natural philosophical poem Physika (the title commonly used in antiquity) at crucial points. However, the potential of the papyrus to clarify unresolved problems of interpretation has not yet been fully utilised in the research discussion that followed its publication. In the present work, an overall reconstruction of the Empedoclean theoretical structure is presented on the basis of a continuous analysis of the content and language of the text. In particular, the cyclical structure of all becoming, the functions of love and conflict, the individual stages of cosmogony and zoogony and the relationship between Physika and another of the author's poems, the Katharmoi, are analysed. Finally, the results are also brought together in a new translation of the parts of the poem recovered through the inclusion of the Strasbourg papyrus.

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9783110633726

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Tom Wellmann, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin.

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