S3E49 - Empedocles, A Fugitive from God

In this episode we read the surviving fragments of the philosophy of Empedocles and explore the shamanistic and mystical foundations of Western thought. Empedocles carries on the Orphic and Pythagorean tradition in his quest for Ultimate Reality, for which Aristotle grants him the title of 'Natural Philosopher'. But a strange kind of natural philosopher indeed! He speaks of the union of opposites, of the thing that is paradoxically One and Many; he understands it to be eternal and uncreated; the source of the cosmos, the gods and men. And where did this information come from? From logic, rationality, deduction? Not a bit. It came directly from the divine, from the Great Goddess herself. Enjoy ;)