Book Description
This work offers the first complete reinterpretation of Empedocles - one of the founding figures of Western philosophy - since the publication of the Strasbourg papyrus in 1999 brought new fragments of his lost work to light. Starting from the unity of Empedocles' thought, Simon Trépanier reconstructs a single original philosophical poem, against previous interpretations which allocate our extant fragments on two works: a religious poem, The Purifications, and a scientific poem, On Nature. While remaining sensitive to philological detail and the full range of available evidence, this study presents a revolutionary approach to a challenging author.
