Love and strife meaning

1. On Nature

On Nature is a bold and ambitious work. It is based on the claim that everything is composed of four material elements (“roots”); these elements are moved by two opposing forces.

The elements are fire, air, earth, and water; the forces are Love and Strife. “Air” refers to aither, the upper, atmospheric air, rather than the air that we breathe here on earth.

Empedocles birth and death

Aristotle credits Empedocles with being the first to distinguish clearly these four elements, traditional in Greek physical theory (Aristotle, Met. A4, 985a31–3). These elements and forces are eternal and equally balanced, although the influence of Love and of Strife waxes and wanes (B6 and B17, lines 14–20).

Empedocles seems to have Parmenides' arguments in mind when he denies that these elements or forces come to be or pass away. Everything else comes to be and passes away because each is composed of elements that successively combine to form them and separate