The Relation of Anaxagoras and Empedocles

Abstract

In the earlier years of the nineteenth century a few scholars questioned whether there was any direct relation between Anaxagoras and Empedocles. Since then these doubts have been voiced but rarely. Instead, opinion has been divided principally on which thinker was dependent on the other. Most scholars, following Zeller and Burnet, have thought that Anaxagoras was dependent on Empedocles. A minority, including Tannery, has held the opposite view.It is essential to distinguish two questions. Who wrote first? Did he, whichever of the two it was, influence the other? Both questions are answered by a piece of external evidence, which since Zeller's second edition has been largely neglected: Alcidamas is reported by Diogenes to have said that Empedocles ‘heard’ Anaxagoras. This should imply both that Anaxagoras wrote earlier than Empedocles, and that he influenced him. Examination of passages in Aristotle and in some later writers, notably Plutarch, confirms the priority. Internal evidence may be applied to the question of influence. I shall seek to argue in particular that Anaxagoras' and Empedocles' theories of vision are such that they imply the influence of whichever is the earlier philosopher on the later.