Review. Empédocles y Edipo

Abstract

The book by Mario Elkin Ramírez * (2009) is of great interest. It compares the figures of Empedocles and Oedipus and introduce a parallelism between the philosophical conception of Empedocles and that which is at the base of the Oedipus Rex of Sophocles. Ramírez, the author carries out a meticulous investigation that leads him to elaborate singular deductions and finds, in the own text of Oedipus Rex, a manifestation of the philosophy that was contemporary to him, that is to say, the denominated "pre-Socratic" and, specifically, Empedoclean thought. Its elaboration is philosophical, however it has affinities with the spirit of Lacan, who also mentions an analogy in Seminary VIII says about Empedocles: "As Oedipus, he does not die, he returns to the heart of the world in the volcano's fire and the hiancia (béance)". Sophocles takes the myth of Oedipus, which dates back to the dawn of Greek civilization, and reinterprets it in the light of his time, the splendorous: "Century of Pericles"; he treats it from a new context where democracy already exists, the condition of the birth of philosophy. Democracy is linked to philosophy insofar as it implies that the knowledge sustained in the polis begins to appear in an desacralized way, more oriented towards the human logos. It is this last aspect that guides this investigation since the myth does not have the same sense as in the archaic times; something has happened in the meantime, namely, the presence of the so-called pre-Socratic philosophers, who, through the use of a mythical language, elaborated notions that began to develop little by little into a new logos. Among them is Empedocles.