Get 20M+ Full-Text Papers For Less Than $1.50/day. Start a 14-Day Trial for You or Your Team.

Learn More →

Revelation and Reasoning in Kalliopeia’s Address to Empedocles

Revelation and Reasoning in Kalliopeia’s Address to Empedocles Abstract: The speaker who self-identifies as a god after the painter analogy in Empedocles’ On nature cannot be Empedocles himself, since other fragments make it clear that he does not regard himself as a god. This paper accordingly advances and explores the hypothesis that the speaker here is the Muse Kalliopeia, who is elsewhere invoked by Empedocles and identified for Pausanias as the source of his more than mortal understanding. This hypothesis is seen to resolve several tensions and difficulties in the fragments, particularly with respect to the otherwise contradictory attitude toward humans’ cognitive potential. It also brings into focus a number of connections between Empedocles’ On nature and its generic models in Parmenides and the Hesiodic Theogony . Recognizing that the majority of On nature ’s main didactic content likely took the form of a report by Empedocles of a revelation he once received from Kalliopeia also brings into focus the identity and function of what he describes for Pausanias as her assurances. These are the appeals to things belonging to the domain of everyday experience in which her human auditor can discern the operation of the same principles operative in the larger cosmos that are only accessible by revelation. The appeal to the familiar operation of Love in his own body to engender confidence in her claim regarding Love’s operation as a principle of unification and harmony throughout the cosmos is the most important example. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Rhizomata de Gruyter

Revelation and Reasoning in Kalliopeia’s Address to Empedocles

Palmer, John
Rhizomata , Volume 1 (2) – Dec 1, 2013
Download PDF
22 pages

Loading next page...
 
/lp/de-gruyter/revelation-and-reasoning-in-kalliopeia-s-address-to-empedocles-Qco2qFn8I0

References (5)

Publisher
de Gruyter
Copyright
Copyright © 2013 by the
ISSN
2196-5102
eISSN
2196-5110
DOI
10.1515/rhiz-2013-0013
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

Abstract: The speaker who self-identifies as a god after the painter analogy in Empedocles’ On nature cannot be Empedocles himself, since other fragments make it clear that he does not regard himself as a god. This paper accordingly advances and explores the hypothesis that the speaker here is the Muse Kalliopeia, who is elsewhere invoked by Empedocles and identified for Pausanias as the source of his more than mortal understanding. This hypothesis is seen to resolve several tensions and difficulties in the fragments, particularly with respect to the otherwise contradictory attitude toward humans’ cognitive potential. It also brings into focus a number of connections between Empedocles’ On nature and its generic models in Parmenides and the Hesiodic Theogony . Recognizing that the majority of On nature ’s main didactic content likely took the form of a report by Empedocles of a revelation he once received from Kalliopeia also brings into focus the identity and function of what he describes for Pausanias as her assurances. These are the appeals to things belonging to the domain of everyday experience in which her human auditor can discern the operation of the same principles operative in the larger cosmos that are only accessible by revelation. The appeal to the familiar operation of Love in his own body to engender confidence in her claim regarding Love’s operation as a principle of unification and harmony throughout the cosmos is the most important example.

Journal

Rhizomata – de Gruyter

Published: Dec 1, 2013

There are no references for this article.