Heraclitus
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| Western Philosophy Ancient philosophy |
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 Heraclitus by Johannes Moreelse
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| Name: | Heraclitus |
| Birth: | 540 BC |
| Death: | 475 BC |
| School/tradition: | Although belonging to no school of thought, Heraclitus is generally seen as a precursor to process philosophy |
| Main interests: | Metaphysics, Epistemology, Ethics, Politics |
| Notable ideas: | Logos, Process Philosophy |
| Influenced: | Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Karl Popper, among many others |
Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ancient Greek Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος - Herákleitos ho Ephésios (Herakleitos the Ephesian)) (c. 535 - 475 BC), known as "The Obscure" (Ancient Greek ὁ Σκοτεινός - ho Skoteinós), was a pre-Socratic Ionian philosopher, a native of Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor (Present day Turkey, Efes). His father was named Bloson.[1] Any further details of his life remain shrouded in antiquity, as none of his commentators suggest any details of his life. Heraclitus was the first person in the Western world to create a robust philosophical system. His writings influenced the thought of Socrates, Plato, and modern process philosophy.
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[edit] Philosophical fragments
We know from Diogenes Laertius's Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers that Heraclitus wrote a book. Diogenes also tells us that he deposited his book as a dedication in the great temple of Artemis, the Artemesium, one of the largest temples of the 6th Century BC. Diogenes' report here is likely to be true; ancient temples were regularly used for storing treasures, and were open to private individuals under exceptional circumstances. Furthermore, many subsequent philosophers in this period refer to the work. "Down to the time of Plutarch and Clement, if not later, the little book of Heraclitus was available in its original form to any reader who chose to seek it out."[1] Furthermore, Heraclitus also became immensely popular in the period following his writing. Within a generation or two "the book acquired such fame that it produced partisans of his philosophy who were called Heracliteans."[2]
Unfortunately, as with other pre-Socratics, his writings only survive in fragments quoted by other authors. He disagreed with Thales, Anaximander, and Pythagoras about the nature of the ultimate substance, but instead claimed that the nature of everything is change itself; according to some interpretations he uses fire — with its connotations of both Promethean/human "fire", and the cosmic fire outlined by contemporaneous pre-Socratics — as a metaphor rather than his solution to material monism, however the nature of the evidence is so sparse that it is difficult to substantiate this claim.[citation needed] This led to the belief that change is real, and stability illusory. For Heraclitus everything is "in flux", as exemplified in his famous aphorism "Panta Rhei" ("Panta Rei"):
πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει (Plato, Cratylus 402a)
Everything flows and nothing is left (unchanged), or
Everything flows and nothing stands still, or
All things are in motion and nothing remains still.
Heraclitus is recognized as one of the earliest dialectical philosophers with his acknowledgment of the universality of change and development through internal contradictions, as in his statements:
"By cosmic rule, as day yields night, so winter summer, war peace, plenty famine. All things change. Air penetrates the lump of myrrh, until the joining bodies die and rise again in smoke called incense."
"Men do not know how that which is drawn in different directions harmonises with itself. The harmonious structure of the world depends upon opposite tension like that of the bow and the lyre."
"This universe, which is the same for all, has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures"
He is famous for (allegedly) expressing the notion that no man can cross the same river twice:
"Ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἶμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶμεν."
"We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."
The idea of the logos is also credited to him, as he proclaims that everything originates out of the logos. Further, Heraclitus said "I am as I am not", and "He who hears not me but the logos will say: All is one." Heraclitus held that an explanation of change was foundational to any theory of nature. This view was strongly opposed by Parmenides, who said that reality was permanent and unchanging. According to Lavine, Parmenides asked, "How can a thing change into something else? How can it be and not be?" According to Parmenides, change is merely an illusion.[3]
His promotion of change also led Heraclitus to believe that conflict (e.g., ἀγών agon in Greek) is necessary for change to occur and to argue against Homer: "War is the father of all and the king of all" and "Every animal is driven to pasture with a blow."
His view on the random chance inherent in the universe is famously the direct opposite of Einstein's (in which he stated "God does not play dice with the universe"): "Time is a child moving counters in a game; the kingly power is a child's."
The Heraclitean emphasis on the nature of things and existence as one of constant change, expressed with language of polarity, is particularly reminiscent of another ancient philosophical tradition, that of Taoism: the Tao (or "the Way") often refers to a space-time sequence, and is similarly expressed with seemingly-contradictory language (e.g., "The Way is like an empty vessel / that may still be drawn from / without ever needing to be filled"). Indeed, parallels have been drawn between the fundamental concepts of the logos (as it was understood during Heraclitus's time) and the Tao.[4]
Heraclitus is described as having a melancholy disposition, and is sometimes referred to as the "weeping philosopher", as opposed to Democritus, who is known as the "laughing philosopher".[5][6]
There are several legendary stories about Heraclitus, especially concerning his eventual death from illness, including his supposed attempt to stave off death using dung and ignoring doctors. These mostly stem from mis-interpretations of the metaphors in his fragments and an attempt to construct a narrative based on these fragments.[7]
[edit] Influence
The interpretation of Heraclitus varies, partly due to the fragmentary nature of his statements, and partly due to the perspectives of his interpreters. Although many philosophers have acknowledged his influence, including Plato and Aristotle, his concept of Becoming, in which ontological opposites are seen as fundamentally interrelated, is central to his philosophy. More particularly, he wrote: "Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony" (frag. 98; trans William Harris). Both Plato and Aristotle would have disagreed. Plato believed that each thing has one unchanging essence. Aristotle was the first philosopher to formally state the law of non-contradiction as "one cannot say of something that it is and that it is not in the same respect and at the same time." Therefore Aristotelian logic is in direct opposition to logos, because statements like "I am as I am not" clearly violate the law of non-contradiction.
- Plato understood Heraclitus as the theorist of "panta rhei" (universal flux), as contrasted with Parmenedes' conception of a fixed and stable reality.[8] As a point of clarification, Heraclitus does not appear to have proposed that reality as a whole is unstable, but since Heraclitus recognized nothing but existence itself as stable (existence being one), his philosophy came into conflict with Plato's inclination toward multiple universal absolutes. Plato's theory of forms has been seen as a response to Heraclitus.
- Aristotle saw Heraclitus as "a material monist who derived the entire physical world from fire as its underlying element,"[8] and also as a kind of dialectical philosopher of harmonic opposition.[9][10] Origen and Hippolytus of Rome also appear to have adopted the "dialectical" interpretation.[11][12]
- The Stoics based their cosmology on Aristotle's materialistic interpretation of Heraclitus, and interpreted the Logos as transcendent Reason, immanent in the world. Kahn sees the Stoics as "the true Heracliteans of antiquity."[8]
- Friedrich Nietzsche saw Heraclitus from a process perspective: "Insofar as the senses show becoming, passing away, and change, they do not lie."[13] Heraclitus is commonly recognized as the first advocate of process philosophy the West, and a direct precursor to Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.
- Alfred North Whitehead, known for having seen all of Western philosophy as the legacy of Plato, saw Heraclitus as Plato did, yet referred to both the forms of Plato and the flux model of Heraclitus in developing his own thoughts on process philosophy.
- Martin Heidegger in his 1943/44 lectures expansively discusses Heraclitus in the context of "the origin of occidental thought" and "logic - Heraclitus' teaching of logos",[14] and credits the very coining of the term "philosophy" to Heraclitus, evidently because of Heraclitus' high regard for "sophon" (wisdom; what is wise).
- Karl Popper accused Heraclitus as having played a part in laying the foundations for a closed society. In particular, Popper concludes that Heraclitus relativises moral values, quoting Heraclitus: "The good and the bad are identical", relating to Heraclitus's theory of the unity of opposites. Popper also alleges Heraclitus of having formulated a historicist doctrine based on the "justice of war and the verdict of history a tribalist and romantic ethic of Fame, Fate, and the superiority of the Great Man".[15]
- Carl Jung developed the psychological concept of enantiodromia (in a manner similar to Heraclitus' usage) to illustrate his notion that whenever an individual forms an asymmetrical, conscious ideation as fundamentally predominant, for example, "masculine" values and suppositions of a father archetypalfigure, there will necessarily be opposing forces, and that they will make themselves apparent within the unconscious in various ways as a means to maintain an individual's psychic balance.
[edit] Notes
- ^ a b Kahn, Charles. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: Fragments with Translation and Commentary. London: Cambridge University Press, 1979. ISBN 0-521-28645-X. p. 1 – 23.
- ^ Laertius, Diogenes. The Lives of Eminent Philosophers. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1965
- ^ Lavine, T. Z. (March 1984). "Shadow and Substance - Plato's Sources: The Pre-Socratics", From Socrates to Satire: The Philosophic Quest. New York, New York: Bantam Books, 24. ISBN 0-553-25161-9.
- ^ E.g. Christoph Harbsmeier, Science and civilisation in China, vol. VII:1 (Cambridge UP, 1998), p. 258; Graham Parkes, Heidegger and Asian thought (U of Hawaii P, 1987), p. 140; Jonathan R. Herman, I and Tao: Martin Buber's Encounter with Chuang Tzu (SUNY Press, 1996), p. 95.
- ^ Kenny, Anthony. A Brief History of Western Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1998. ISBN 0-631-20132-7
- ^ Montaigne, Michel de. "Of Democritus and Heraclitus". The Essays of Michel de Montaigne.
- ^ Kirk, G.S. Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments London: Cambridge University Press, 1954. ISBN 0-521-05245-9
- ^ a b c Kahn, Charles H.; "The Art and Thought of Heraclitus;" Introduction.
- ^ Aristotle; Nicomachean Ethics; Book VIII, Chapter 1.
- ^ Aristotle; Eudemian Ethics; Book VII, Chapter 1.
- ^ Origen; "Contra Celsus"; Book VI, Chapter 42.
- ^ Hippolytus of Rome; "Refutation (of All Heresies)"; Book 9, Chapter 4: "An Account of the System of Heraclitus".
- ^ Nietzsche, Friedrich; The Twilight of the Idols; "Reason in Philosophy;" section 2.
- ^ Heidegger, Martin. Heraklit. Gesamtausgabe, vol. 55. Frankfurt/Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1979.
- ^ Popper, Karl, The Open Society and Its Enemies: Vol. 1 The Spell of Plato London: Routledge Classics, 1965.
[edit] References
- Guy Davenport (translator), Herakleitos and Diogenes. Bolinas: Grey Fox Press, 1979. ISBN 0-912516-36-4 (Complete fragments of Heraclitus in English)
- Brooks Haxton (translator), Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus. forward by James Hillman, Viking Penguin 2001 ISBN 0-670-89195-9 (parallel Greek & English)
- Charles H. Seibert (translator), Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, Heraclitus Seminar. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1993). ISBN 0-8101-1067-9. (Transcript of seminar in which two German philosophers analyze and discuss Heraclitus' texts)
- Bakalis Nikolaos. 2005. Handbook of Greek Philosophy: From Thales to the Stoics Analysis and Fragments, Trafford Publishing ISBN 1-4120-4843-5
- Barnes J. 1982. The Presocratic Philosophers, Routledge Revised Edition ISBN 0-415-05079-0
- Burnet J. 2003. Early Greek Philosophy, Kessinger Publishing ISBN 0-7661-2826-1
- Wright M. R. 1985. The Presocratics-The main Fragments ISBN 0-86292-079-5
- Robinson T. M. 1987. Heraclitus-Fragments, University of Toronto Press ISBN 0-8020-6913-4
- Pyle, C. M. 1997. 'Democritus and Heracleitus: An Excursus on the Cover of this Book,' Milan and Lombardy in the Renaissance. Essays in Cultural History. Rome, La Fenice. (Istituto di Filologia Moderna, Università di Parma: Testi e Studi, Nuova Serie: Studi 1.) [Fortuna of the Laughing and Weeping Philosophers topos]
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Heraclitus at the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Heraclitus Fragments in Greek (Unicode) and English
- Heraclitus: The Complete Fragments, William Harris (translator), Greek and English (DK numbers) with commentary (PDF file)
- Heraclitus' Epistemological Views
- Fragments of Heraclitus parallel Greek with links to Perseus, French, and English (Burnet) includes Heraclitus article from Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition
- Heraclitus Bilingual Anthology (in Greek and English, side by side)
- Heraclitus at Washington State University (selected fragments)
- The Flux and Fire Philosophy of Heraclitus (essay)
- John Burnet Early Greek Philosophy brief analysis of the fragments
- Tom Bearden Fourth Law of Logic an approach to Heraclitus's change paradox
- Heraclitus of Ephesus by Giannis Stamatellos
| Persondata | |
|---|---|
| NAME | Heraclitus |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Heraclitus the Ephesian; Heraclitus of Ephebes; Heraclitus the Obscure; Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος - Herákleitos ho Ephésios |
| SHORT DESCRIPTION | Greek philosopher |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 535 BC |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Ephebes, Asia Minor |
| DATE OF DEATH | 475 BC |
| PLACE OF DEATH | |
