Commentary

This fragment expresses the central principle of Empedocles' physics, that what is called birth and death are in reality the mixing and separation of unchanging elements. The denial of genuine coming-to-be and passing away was a response to Parmenides, and Empedocles adapts it to preserve the observable phenomena of change. Kirk, Raven, and Schofield argue that the fragment shows how Empedocles accommodated the Eleatic argument without accepting its rejection of plurality. Daniel Graham, in his account of the poem, stresses that mixture and separation are the physical processes that replace the naive notion of generation. Richard Wright's edition emphasises the polemical character of the passage, which opposes the common language of birth and death. Alexander Mourelatos has discussed Empedocles' debt to Parmenides, in The Route of Parmenides (1970), and his reading helps locate the fragment within that dialogue. The English is approximate, and the Greek should be consulted, since the terms for mixing and separating have specific technical senses in the poem.