Dēlos as the Vision of Freedom in Empedocles: On the Separation from Human Sorrows
Dr. Eric Schumacher

Abstract
This paper is an attempt to pull a description of freedom from the fragments of Empedocles. This description of freedom will center on Empedocles’ use of the term dēlos. Delos was the birthplace of Apollo. At Apollo’s birth, Delos transformed from a moving, hard to locate and unfertile island to something immovably fixed, clearly visible and productive. It is this emerging into clarity that captures Empedocles’ sense of dēlos. Clear vision for Empedocles is the result of proper perception. Such perception accounts for a sort of openness to receiving our environment. If one mis-takes their surroundings, then clarity (dēlos) is not achieved and miseries and human sorrows occur. Freedom, for Empedocles, seems to be the liberation from miseries and sorrow. So, this paper will focus on the achievement of clarity (dēlos) and the avoidance of human sorrow as the ground for a description of freedom in Empedocles.

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