Empedocles at Mount Etna

A new experimental video of which there shall be many more. In autumn of 2022 I spent several months in Sicily and also got to travel to Mount Etna. I hiked up the active volcano where legend has it that Empedocles, one of the forefathers of philosophy, threw himself into the element of fire to prove his divinity. Or perhaps Empedocles rather wished for himself to experience the intensity of being and death. In any event myth stands higher than recorded history. And it is upon us to continue the narration of the myth of the future. The footage you can see here I recorded during my two days at Mount Etna. I’m reading from John Burnet’s translation of Empedocles’ fragments.

I shall publish more such videos on my YT channel and some also here on Substack. I also recorded an entire lecture course on Plato’s Republic in Athens and Delphi in October 2023. You can find the course here.

Image: The Death of Empedocles by Salvator Rosa. Source: Wikipedia.

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