Heraclitus:
Heraclitus was a Presocratic Greek philosopher of Ephesus, who lived
about BCE. 535-475. The date of Heraclitus is roughly fixed by his
reference in the past tense to Hekataios, Pythagoras, and Xenophanes
(fr. 16), and by the fact that Parmenides appears to allude to him in
turn (fr. 6). This means that he wrote early in the fifth century BCE.
He was an Ephesian noble, and had a sovereign contempt for the mass of
mankind. He lived during the time of the first Persian domination over
his native city. As one of the last of the family of Androclus, the
descendant of Codrus, who had founded the colony of Ephesus, Heraclitus
had certain honorary regal privileges, which he renounced in favor of
his brother. He likewise declined an invitation of King Darius to
visit his court. He was an adherent of the aristocracy, and when,
after the defeat of the Persians, the democratic party came into power,
he withdrew in ill-humor to a secluded estate in the country, and gave
himself up entirely to his studies. In his later years he wrote a
philosophical treatise, which he deposited in the temple of Artemis,
making it a condition that it should not be published till after his
death. He was buried in the marketplace of Ephesus, and for several
centuries later the Ephesians continued to engrave his image on their
coins.
His great work "On Nature" (peri phuseos), in three books,
was written in the Ionian dialect, and is the oldest monument of Greek
prose. Considerable fragments of it have come down to us. The language
is bold, harsh, and figurative; the style is so careless that the
syntactical relations of the words are often hard to perceive; and the
thoughts are profound. All this made Heraclitus so difficult a writer
that he went in antiquity by the name "the Obscure" (skoteinos),
and Lucretius attacks him on the ground (i. 638-644). From his gloomy
view of life he is often called "the Weeping Philosopher," as Democritus
is known as "the Laughing Philosopher." It is above all in dealing with
Heraclitus that we are made to feel the importance of personality in
shaping systems of philosophy. But it was not only the common run of men
that Heraclitus despised; he had not even a good word for any of his
predecessors. He agrees, of course, with Xenophanes in criticizing
Homer, but Xenophanes himself falls under an equal condemnation. In a
remarkable fragment (fr. 16) he mentions him along with Hesiod,
Pythagoras, and Hekataois as an instance of the truth that much learning
does not teach men to think. The researches of Pythagoras, by which we
are to understand his harmonic and arithmetical discoveries, are
rejected with special emphasis (fr. 17). Wisdom is not a knowledge of
many things; it is the clear knowledge of one thing only, and this
Heraclitus describes, in true prophetic style, as his Logos (word/fire),
which is 'true evermore', though men cannot understand it even when it
is told to them (fr. 2). Perfect knowledge is only given to the gods,
but a progress in knowledge is possible to men. We must try, then, to
discover, what Heraclitus meant by his Logos, the thing he felt he had
been born to say, whether anyone would listen to him or not.
As fire is the primary form of reality, the process of
combustion is the key both to human life and to that of the world. It is
a process that never rests; for a flame must always be fed by fresh
exhalations as fuel, and it is always turning into vapor or smoke. The
steadiness of the flame depends on the 'measures' of fuel kindled and
the 'measures' of fire extinguished in smoke remaining constant. Now the
world is 'an everliving fire' (fr. 20), and therefore there will be an
unceasing process of eternal flux (panta pei). For Hereclitus,
everything is in this process of flux, and nothing therefore, not
even the world in its momentary form, nor the gods themselves, can
escape final destruction. That will apply to the world at large
(macrocosm) and also to the soul of humans (microcosm). Concerning the
larger world, 'You cannot step twice into the same river' (fr. 41);
concerning the human soul, it is just as true that 'we are and are not'
at any given moment. As fire changes continually into water and then
into earth, so earth changes back to water and water again to fire. The
world, therefore, arose from fire, and in alternating periods is
resolved again into fire, to form itself anew out of this element. The
division of unified things into a multiplicity of opposing phenomena is
"the way downwards," and is the consequence of a war and a strife.
Harmony and peace lead back to unity by "the way upwards." Nature is
constantly dividing and uniting herself, so that the multiplicity of
opposites does not destroy the unity of the whole.
A glance at the fragments will show that the thought of
Heraclitus was dominated by the opposition of sleeping and waking, life
and death, and that this seemed to him the key to the traditional
Milesian problem of the opposites, hot and cold, wet and dry. He finds
these opposites both at the level of the human soul and the larger
cosmos. At the human level, the soul is only fully alive when it is
awake, and that sleep is really a stage between life and death. If we
look next at the macrocosm, we shall see the explanation is the same.
Night and day, summer and winter, alternate in the same way as sleep and
waking, life and death, and here too it is clear that the explanation is
to be found in the successive advance of the wet and the dry, the cold
and the hot. The existence of these opposites depends only on the
difference of the motion on "the way upwards" from that on "the way
downwards"; all things, therefore, are at once identical and not
identical. The principle of the universe is "becoming," which implies
that everything is and, at the same time, is not, so far as the same
relation is concerned. 'The way up and the way down', which are 'one and
the same' (fr. 69) are also the same for the microcosm and the
macrocosm. Fire, water, earth is the way down, and earth, water, fire is
the way up. And these two ways are forever being traversed in opposite
directions at once, so that everything really consists of two parts, one
part traveling up and the other traveling down.
Paradoxically the everlasting fire of the world which creates
its flux, also secures its stability. For the same 'measures' of fire
are always being kindled and going out (fr. 20). It is impossible for
fire to consume its nourishment without at the same time giving back
what it has consumed already. It is a process of eternal 'exchange' like
that of gold for wares and wares for gold (fr. 22); and 'the sun will
not exceed his measures; if he does, the Erinyes, the auxiliaries of
Justice, will find him out' (fr. 29). For all this strife is really
justice (fr. 22), not injustice, as Anaximander had supposed, and 'War
is the father of all things' (fr. 44). It is just this opposite tension
that keeps things together, like that of the string in the bow and the
lyre (fr. 45), and though it is a hidden attunement, it is better than
any open one (fr. 47). For all his condemnations of Pythagoras,
Heraclitus cannot get away from the tuned string.
With all his originality, Heraclitus remains an Ionian. In a
sense, Heraclitus substituted fire for the 'air' of Anaximenes, who in
turn had substituted 'air' for the water of Thales. Also, Hereclitus'
notion of flux is a development of that Anaximenes' notion of
rarefaction and condensation. Although Hereclitus has a doctrine of the
soul, his fire-soul is as little personal as the breath-soul of
Anaximenes. Some fragments superficially appear to assert the
immortality of the individual soul. But, when we examine them, we see
they cannot bear this interpretation. Soul is only immortal in so far as
it is part of the everliving fire which is the life of the world. Seeing
that the soul of every man is in constant flux like his body, what
meaning can immortality have? It is not only true that we cannot step
twice into the same river, but also that we are not the same for two
successive instants. That is just the side of his doctrine that struck
contemporaries most forcibly, and Epicharmos already made fun of it by
putting it as an argument into the mouth of a debtor who did not wish to
pay. How could he be liable, seeing he is not the same man that
contracted the debt?
Excerpt from the Encyclopedia Britannica without permission.