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Hall of Greek Philosophers
Heraclitus
'Everything flows'; the logos
- c. 535 – 475 BCE
- Greek Philosophers · 6 of 10
Hall of Greek Philosophers
'Everything flows'; the logos
Fetching the article from Wikipedia…
Heraclitus (; Ancient Greek: Ἡράκλειτος, romanized: Hērákleitos; fl. c. 500 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire. He exerts a wide influence on Western philosophy, both ancient and modern, through the works of such authors as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger.
Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote a single work, of which only fragments survive. Even in ancient times, his paradoxical philosophy, appreciation for wordplay, and cryptic, oracular epigrams earned him the epithets "the dark" and "the obscure". He was considered arrogant and depressed, a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia. Consequently, he became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to the ancient atomist philosopher Democritus, who was known as "the laughing philosopher".
The central ideas of Heraclitus's philosophy are the unity of opposites and the concept of change. Heraclitus saw harmony and justice in strife. He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being". He expressed this in sayings like "Everything flows" and "No man ever steps in the same river twice". This insistence upon change contrasts with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in a reality of static "being".
Heraclitus believed fire was the arche, the fundamental element of the world. In choosing an arche Heraclitus followed the Milesians before him: Thales of Miletus with water, Anaximander with apeiron ("boundless" or "infinite"), and Anaximenes of Miletus with air. Heraclitus also thought the logos (lit. word, discourse, or reason) gave structure to the world or existed as a kind of divine law.
Heraclitus, the son of Blyson, was from the Ionian city of Ephesus, a port on the Cayster River, on the western coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). In the 6th century BC, Ephesus, like other cities in Ionia, lived under the effects of both the rise of Lydia under Croesus and his overthrow by Cyrus the Great c. 547 BC. Ephesus appears to have subsequently cultivated a close relationship with the Persian Empire; during the suppression of the Ionian revolt by Darius the Great in 494 BC, Ephesus was spared and emerged as the dominant Greek city in Ionia. Miletus, the home of the previous philosophers, was captured and sacked.
The main source for the life of Heraclitus is the doxographer Diogenes Laërtius. Although most of the information provided by Laertius is unreliable, and the ancient stories about Heraclitus are thought to be later fabrications based on interpretations of the preserved fragments; the anecdote that Heraclitus relinquished the hereditary title of "king" to his younger brother may at least imply that Heraclitus was from an aristocratic family in Ephesus. Heraclitus appears to have had little sympathy for democracy or the masses. However, it is unclear whether he was "an unconditional partisan of the rich", or if, like the sage Solon, he was "withdrawn from competing factions".
Since antiquity, Heraclitus has been labeled a solitary figure and an arrogant misanthrope. The skeptic Timon of Phlius called Heraclitus a "mob-abuser" (ochloloidoros). Heraclitus considered himself self-taught. He criticized fools for being "put in a flutter by every word". He did not consider others incapable, but unwilling: "And though reason is common, most people live as though they had an understanding peculiar to themselves." Heraclitus did not seem to like the prevailing religion of the time, criticizing the popular mystery cults, blood sacrifice, and prayer to statues. He also did not believe in funeral rites, saying "Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung." He further criticized Homer, Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus. He endorsed the sage Bias of Priene, who is quoted as saying "Most men are bad". He praised a man named Hermodorus as the best among the Ephesians, who he says should all kill themselves for exiling him.
Heraclitus is traditionally considered to have flourished in the 69th Olympiad (504–501 BC), but this date may simply be based on a prior account synchronizing his life with the reign of Darius the Great. However, this date can be considered "roughly accurate" based on a fragment that references Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus as older contemporaries, placing him near the end of the sixth century BC. According to Diogenes Laertius, Heraclitus died covered in dung after failing to cure himself from dropsy. This may be to parody his doctrine that for souls it is death to become water, and that a dry soul is best. Centuries prior to Diogenes, Tatian, a 2nd century Assyrian Christian also mentions this, and specifies that he plastered himself with cow-dung, which, as it hardened, contracted the flesh of his whole body, so that he was pulled in pieces, and died. Around the same time, Tertullian writes that he burned himself while doing so.
Heraclitus is said to have produced a single work on papyrus, which has not survived; however, over 100 fragments of this work survive in quotations by other authors. The title is unknown, but many later writers refer to this work, and works by other pre-Socratics, as On Nature. According to Diogenes Laërtius, Heraclitus deposited the book in the Artemision as a dedication. It was available at least until the 2nd century AD, when Plutarch and Clement quote directly from it, if not later. Yet by the 6th century, Simplicius of Cilicia, who mentions Heraclitus 32 times in his Commentaries on Aristotle, never quotes from him, implying that Heraclitus's work was so rare that it was apparently unavailable even to the Neoplatonist philosophers at the Platonic Academy in Athens.
The opening lines are quoted by Sextus Empiricus:
Of the logos being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this logos they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and declare how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep.
Scholar Martin Litchfield West claims that while the existing fragments do not give much of an idea of the overall structure, the beginning of the discourse can probably be determined.
Diogenes Laërtius wrote that the book was divided into three parts: the universe, politics, and theology, but, classicists have challenged that division. Classicist John Burnet has argued that "it is not to be supposed that this division is due to [Heraclitus] himself; all we can infer is that the work fell naturally into these parts when the Stoic commentators took their editions of it in hand". The Stoics divided their own philosophy into three parts: ethics, logic, and physics. The Stoic Cleanthes further divided philosophy into dialectics, rhetoric, ethics, politics, physics, and theology, and philologist Karl Deichgräber has argued the last three are the same as the alleged division of Heraclitus. The philosopher Paul Schuster has argued the division came from the Pinakes.
Heraclitus's style has been compared to a Sibyl, who "with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her".
Heraclitus also seems to have patterned his style after oracles. Heraclitus wrote "nature loves to hide" and "a hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one". He also wrote "The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither speaks nor conceals, but gives a sign." Heraclitus is the earliest known literary reference for the Delphic maxim to know thyself.
Kahn characterized the main features of Heraclitus's writing as "linguistic density", meaning that single words and phrases have multiple meanings, and "resonance", meaning that expressions evoke one another. Heraclitus used literary devices like alliteration and chiasmus.
Aristotle quotes part of the opening line of Heraclitus's work in the Rhetoric to outline the difficulty in punctuating Heraclitus without ambiguity; he debated whether "forever" applied to "being" or to "prove". Aristotle's successor at the lyceum Theophrastus says about Heraclitus that "some parts of his work [are] half-finished, while other parts [made] a strange medley". Theophrastus thought an inability to finish the work showed Heraclitus was melancholic.
Diogenes Laërtius relays the story that the playwright Euripides gave Socrates a copy of Heraclitus's work and asked for his opinion. Socrates replied: "The part I understand is excellent, and so too is, I dare say, the part I do not understand; but it needs a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it."
Also according to Diogenes Laërtius, Timon of Phlius called Heraclitus "the Riddler" (αἰνικτής; ainiktēs). Timon said Heraclitus wrote his book "rather unclearly" (ασαφεστερον; asaphesteron); according to Timon, this was intended to allow only the "capable" to attempt it.
By the time of the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise De Mundo, this epithet became in Greek "The Dark" (ὁ Σκοτεινός; ho Skoteinós). In Latin this became "The Obscure". According to Cicero, Heraclitus had spoken nimis obscurē ("too obscurely") concerning nature and had done so deliberately in order to be misunderstood. According to Plotinus, it was "probably with the idea that it is for us to seek within ourselves, as he sought for himself and found".
Heraclitus has been the subject of numerous competing interpretations. According to scholar Daniel W. Graham, Heraclitus has been seen as a "material monist or a process philosopher; a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician and a religious thinker; an empiricist, a rationalist, a mystic; a conventional thinker and a revolutionary; a developer of logic – one who denied the law of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopher and an anti-intellectual obscurantist".
The hallmarks of Heraclitus's philosophy are the unity of opposites and change, or flux. According to Aristotle, Heraclitus was a dialetheist, or one who denies the law of noncontradiction (a logical principle which states that something cannot be true and false at the same time). Also according to Aristotle, Heraclitus was a materialist. Attempting to follow Aristotle's hylomorphic interpretation, scholar W. K. C. Guthrie interprets the distinction between flux and stability as one between matter and form. On this view, Heraclitus is a flux theorist because he is a materialist who believes matter always changes. There are no unchanging forms like with Plato or Aristotle. As one author puts it, "Plato took flux as the greatest warning against materialism".
Several fragments seem to relate to the unity of opposites. For example: "The straight and the crooked path of the fuller's comb is one and the same"; "The way up is the way down"; "Beginning and end, on a circle's circumference, are common"; and "Thou shouldst unite things whole and things not whole, that which tends to unite and that which tends to separate, the harmonious and the discordant; from all things arises the one, and from the one all things."
Over time, the opposites change into each other: "Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life"; "As the same thing in us is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these"; and "Cold things warm up, the hot cools off, wet becomes dry, dry becomes wet."
It also seems they change into each other depending on one's point of view, a case of relativism or perspectivism. Heraclitus states: "Disease makes health sweet and good; hunger, satiety; toil, rest." While men drink and wash with water, fish prefer to drink saltwater, pigs prefer to wash in mud, and fowls prefer to wash in dust. "Oxen are happy when they find bitter vetches to eat" and "asses would rather have refuse than gold".
Diogenes Laërtius summarizes Heraclitus's philosophy as follows: "All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things (τὰ ὅλα; ta hola ('the whole')) flows like a stream." Classicist Jonathan Barnes states that "Panta rhei, 'everything flows' is probably the most familiar of Heraclitus's sayings, yet few modern scholars think he said it". Barnes observes that although the exact phrase was not ascribed to Heraclitus until the 6th century by Simplicius, a similar saying expressing the same idea, panta chorei, or "everything moves" is ascribed to Heraclitus by Plato in the Cratylus.
Since Plato, Heraclitus's theory of flux has been associated with the metaphor of a flowing river, which cannot be stepped into twice. This fragment from Heraclitus's writings has survived in three different forms:
The classicist Karl Reinhardt identified the first river quote as the genuine one. The river fragments (especially the second "we both are and are not") seem to suggest not only is the river constantly changing, but we do as well, perhaps commenting on existential questions about humanity and personhood.
Text from the Wikipedia article “Heraclitus”, available under CC BY-SA 4.0.