Aristotle also credits Empedocles for highlighting the functional affinity between the parts of what appear to be different living things, such as the seed of a tree and an animal fetus. Empedocles’ belief in the continuum of living species perhaps finds its deepest expression in his groundbreaking view of the origin of life. He appears to have believed that the cosmos begins in a state of Love, in which all the roots are fused and combined in a perfect sphere. Then Strife enters the fray, and the sphere begins to be pulled apart in a centrifugal, whirling motion, eventually resulting in the complete separation and segregation of the roots. Then, at the highest degree of Strife, Love begins to exert her influence, pulling the homogeneous roots into an accord, synthesising like with unlike, until the world as we know it, with its sea, sky, Sun and Earth, begins to take shape. Love increasingly holds sway until, after a vast stretch of time, it consolidates once again into a perfect, undifferentiated sphere, only to be disrupted one day by Strife, and so on, endlessly.
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Empedocles’ solution to the prejudice, dogmatism and narrow-mindedness afflicting existence differs from that of the modern impartialists. The answer is not to try to adopt an impersonal, God’s-eye perspective, foregoing all and any relationships as the inexorable source of ethical harm. It is instead to strive to forge new bonds or to recognise bonds that already exist. It is Love that allows us to do this. Whereas Strife sorts like with like, atomising the cosmos into homogenous parts, Love combines unlike and like, forging a higher unity, bringing together what seems to be different. Thus, Love overcomes prejudice not by overcoming partiality but by providing it with a more inclusive, elevated form. The highest such form is partiality towards the living as such.
To achieve Empedoclean enlightenment is to divest yourself of your ingrained attachment to familiar body shapes and conventional kinds of conduct. It is to recognise the seemingly alien other as in fact fundamentally akin to you. Revising and widening the Stoic maxim, the Empedoclean position can be captured in the proposition: I am a living being, I consider nothing alive alien to me. From this higher standpoint, the relations that bind us to our family, friends, compatriots, humanity and to other animals appear much like the spiralling whorl of a mollusc shell, each form enclosed within broader forms, with the all-embracing form of life encompassing them all.
Tristan Moyle, Nothing alive is alien to me, aeon.
