Empedocles

Empedocles in his fragments tries to express being and not being, which is such a mysterious, larger than life issue that it is beyond articulation. Empedocles was a great pre-Socratic thinker who pioneered the principle of the four elements as the original roots of all being and the uniting of the four by love and their separation by strife. He illustrates to the reader his unique understanding of the world and his role in it. He believes in Gods and seems to be obsessed with portraying himself as one of the members of mount Olympus. He tries to develop a teacher and student relationship with his audience, attempting to answer the fundamental question of life through his fragments.
Empedocles appears to have a reservoir of knowledge of physics and generally, of how the world works, for a person living in his century. He may have personified the four elements of earth, air, fire and wind because it was necessary for him to make analogies. Empedocles needed these because he was tryin...