Is Matter Alive? Between Roots and Daemons: Empedocles' Philosophy of Life

The article aims to reconcile Empedocles’ physical and eschatological philosophy by rejecting the latter considers metempsychosis and demonstrating how both approaches concur on metensomatosis. In Section 1, I examine the revelational nature of Empedocles’ physical doctrine according to which birth and death are considered in terms of aggregation and disaggregation of the roots, thus suggesting it is about the continuity of life. In Section 2, I focus on fragment 115 and argue that the incarnations of demons too progress through metensomatosis. It so appears that Empedocles’ philosophy of life reflects a tension between a synchronic-objective view and a diachronic-subjective one. The two points of view are complementary to the Pre-Socratic philosopher, who engages the problem of pain and death by means of an eschatological analysis within a global perspective which includes all living beings and delivers soteriological wisdom.