Body and Soul in Ancient Philosophy

80
Brad Inwood
them off and transferrring them into one animal after another, especially
considering …
Column IV is totally missing
Column V
For it would be better to make the souls unqualifiedly indestructible on
their own and not to throw them into a long circuitous journey, where
in the end your phony story became more imposing. Or, Empedocles,
shall we instead refuse to believe you about these transmigrations?
After this fragment, Diogenes went back to the Stoics and on to Democritus
in fr. 43, but the further progress of the argument may be set aside
for now.
What can we make of this polemic? What does it tell us about Diogenes
and what does it tell us about Empedocles?
First, Diogenes’ argument presupposes that the transmigrating soul
which moves from body to body – that is, the entity which Diogenes
is interested in throughout his critique – is what Empedocles refers to
as a daimôn. This follows from the apparent allusion by Diogenes to
fr. 115 DK line 11 (embale; cf. column IV line 8 enbalein). The entities
which get tossed must be meant to be the same, and where Empedocles
is speaking of daimones Diogenes is dealing with souls. It also follows, I
think, from the identification of Empedocles himself in the first person
singular with these daimones (“I too am now one of these, an exile from
the gods and a wanderer”). That is, the subject of transmigration in Empedocles
is the “I” and a daimôn and this is what Diogenes identifies as a
psychÞ. As Oliver Primavesi has recently argued, 8 and as is apparent from
the direct quotations of Empedocles which survive, there is no evidence
that Empedocles ever referred to his migrating identity-bearer as a psychÞ.
9 If not earlier, then at least in Plato we find the strong and restrictive
identification of this identity bearer with a psychÞ and this eventually becomes
a fixed feature of the ancient tradition. The Stoic habit of using
‘soul’ to refer par excellence to the commanding power in the soul (hÞ-
8 Primavesi 2008. See also Primavesi 2006.
9 On the other hand, neither does he use the term xuw to refer to the harmonylike
amalgam of the four roots which Aristotle, for example, treats as Empedoclean
soul in de An. book I.