EMPEDOCLES THE LOVE POET: Empédocle, une poétique philosophique. (Kaïnon, Anthropologie de la pensée ancienne 6.) Pp. 931. Paris: Classiques Garnier, 2017. Paper, €98 (Cased, €135). ISBN: 978-2-406-05713-0 (978-2-406-05714-7 hbk)

[...]despite its official focus on poetics, by Part 3 this work becomes a general treatment of Empedocles’ art and thought. Since Empedocles remains largely up for grabs, with fundamental disagreements over the corpus and the unity or not of his thought, it is neither possible nor desirable to study any one aspect of him in isolation, as if the rest were a known or at least agreed-upon quantity. For B 100, the clepsydra or water-strainer, on respiration, G. does not take sides on the main debate (is breathing through the nose or skin or both?) and thinks the main disanalogy (unlike the water-strainer, blood does not normally flow out of the body) is not a flaw, but deliberate. G.’s thesis is the equivalent, in the realm of poetics, of Bollack's 1960's revisionist cosmic cycle, in which Strife plays no positive role and merely separates out the elements, getting them ready for Love to begin her assembly-work, Strife as apprentice to Love's master-craftsman.