Flux

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First published Thu Feb 8, 2007; substantive revision Tue Sep 3, 2019

A Greek philosopher of Ephesus (near modern Kuşadası,Turkey) who was active around 500 BCE, Heraclitus propounded adistinctive theory which he expressed in oracular language. He is bestknown for his doctrines that things are constantly changing (universalflux), that opposites coincide (unity of opposites), and that fire isthe basic material of the world. The exact interpretation of thesedoctrines is controversial, as is the inference often drawn from thistheory that in the world as Heraclitus conceives it contradictorypropositions must be true.

  • 3. Philosophical Principles
  • Bibliography

1. Life and Work

Little is known of Heraclitus’ life; most of what has been handed downconsists of stories apparently invented to illustrate his character asinferred from his writings (Diogenes Laertius 9.1–17). His nativeEphesus was a prominent city of Ionia, the Greek-inhabited coast ofAsia Minor, but was subject to Persian rule in his lifetime. Accordingto one account, he inherited the honorific title and office of“king” of the Ionians, which he resigned to hisbrother. He is generally considered to have favored aristocraticgovernment as against democracy, based on his own politicalobservations.

His city lies close to Miletus, where the first thinkers recognizedin later tradition as philosophers lived; but there is no record of hishaving made the acquaintance of any of the Milesian thinkers (Thales,Anaximander, Anaximenes) or having been taught by them, or of his everhaving traveled.

He is said to have written a single book (papyrus roll), and depositedit in the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The story isplausible enough: temples often served as depositories for money andother valuables, and no libraries are known from the time ofHeraclitus. The structure of Heraclitus’ book iscontroversial. It could have consisted of a relatively coherentand consecutive argument. On the other hand, the numerousfragments (over one hundred) that have come down to us do not easilyconnect with each other, even though they probably constitute a sizablefraction of the whole. Thus it is possible and even likely thatthe book was composed more of sayings and epigrams than of continuousexposition. In its form, then, it might have looked more like acollection of proverbs such as were ascribed to the seven sages thanlike a cosmological treatise of the Milesians. Theophrastus, whoknew his book, said that it seemed only half-finished, a kind ofhodgepodge he attributed to the author’s melancholy. Diogenes Laertius reports that the work was divided (he does notsay by whom) into three sections, one on cosmology, one on politics(and ethics), and one on theology (9.5–6). All these topics aretreated in the extant fragments of Heraclitus, though it is oftendifficult to see what boundaries the work might have drawn betweenthem, since Heraclitus seems to see deep interconnections betweenscience, human affairs, and theology.

Unlike most other early philosophers, Heraclitus is usually seen asindependent of the several schools and movements later students(somewhat anachronistically) assigned to the ancients, and he himselfimplies that he is self-taught (B101). He has been variouslyjudged by ancient and modern commentators to be a material monist or aprocess philosopher; a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician, or amainly religious thinker; an empiricist, a rationalist, or a mystic; aconventional thinker or a revolutionary; a developer of logic or onewho denied the law of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopheror an anti-intellectual obscurantist. No doubt the sage ofEphesus will continue to remain controversial and difficult tointerpret, but scholars have made significant progress in understandingand appreciating his work.

2. Method

Heraclitus made every effort to break out of the mold ofcontemporary thought. Although he was influenced in a number ofways by the thought and language of his predecessors, including theepic poets Homer and Hesiod, the poet and philosopher Xenophanes, thehistorian and antiquarian Hecataeus, the religious guru Pythagoras, thesage Bias of Priene, the poet Archilochus, and the Milesianphilosophers, he criticized most of them either explicitly orimplicitly, and struck out on his own path. He rejectedpolumathiê or information-gathering on the grounds thatit “does not teach understanding” (B40). He treated theepic poets as fools and called Pythagoras a fraud.

In his fragments Heraclitus does not explicitly criticize theMilesians, and it is likely that he saw them as the most progressive ofprevious thinkers. He does tacitly criticize Anaximander for notappreciating the role of injustice in the world (B80), while he mighthave expressed some admiration for Thales (B38). His views can beseen to embody structural criticisms of Milesian principles, but evenin correcting the Milesians he built on their foundations.

Heraclitus’ most fundamental departure from previous philosophylies in his emphasis on human affairs. While he continues many ofthe physical and cosmological theories of his predecessors, he shiftshis focus from the cosmic to the human realm. We might well thinkof him as the first humanist, were it not for the fact that he does notseem to like humanity very well. From the outset he makes itclear that most people are too stupid to understand his theory. He may be most concerned with the human relevance of philosophictheories, but he is an elitist like Plato, who thinks that only selectreaders are capable of benefitting from his teachings. Andperhaps for this reason he, like Plato, does not teach hisphilosophical principles directly, but couches them in a literary formthat distances the author from the reader. In any case he seemsto regard himself not as the author of a philosophy so much as thespokesman for an independent truth:

Having harkened not to me but to the Word (Logos) it iswise to agree that all things are one. (B50)

Heraclitus stresses that the message is not his own invention, but atimeless truth available to any who attend to the way the world itselfis. “Although this Word is common,” he warns,“the many live as if they had a private understanding”(B2). The Word (account, message) exists apart fromHeraclitus’ teaching, but he tries to convey that message to hisaudience.

The blindness of humans is one of Heraclitus’ main themes. He announces it at the beginning of his book:

Of this Word’s being forever do men prove to beuncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heardit. For although all things happen according to this Word, theyare like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as Iexplain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and showhow it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they areawake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep.(B1)

He begins by warning his readers that most of them will notunderstand his message. He promises to “distinguish eachthing according to its nature and show how it is,” a claimsimilar to the Milesians’. Yet like sleepers his readerswill not understand the world around them. As this implies, inhis book Heraclitus does have some things to say about the naturalworld, but much more to say about the human condition.

No less important than Heraclitus’ message is the form in whichhe imparts it to his audience. Aristotle noticed that even in thefirst sentence of B1, quoted above, the force of the word‘forever’ was unclear: did it go with the preceding or thesubsequent words, with ‘being’ or ‘prove’(Rhetoric 1407b11–18)? He regarded the ambiguity as aweakness in Heraclitus’ communication. But if we attend toHeraclitus’ language we see that syntactical ambiguity is morethan an accident: it is a common technique he uses to enrich his wordsand to infuse them with a unique verbal complexity like that ofpoetry. Charles Kahn (1979: 89) identifies two general traits ofHeraclitus’ style, linguistic density and resonance. Theformer is his ability to pack multiple meanings into a single word orphrase, the latter his ability to use one expression to evokeanother. To take a simple example:

moroi mezones mezonas moiras lanchanousi.

Deaths that are greater greater portions gain. (B25)

Heraclitus uses alliteration (four m-words in a row) and chiasmus(an ABBA pattern) to link death and reward. The latter appears asa mirror image of the former, and in sound and sense they fusetogether. Another fragment consists of three words in Greek:

êthos anthrôpôi daimôn.

The character of man is his guardian spirit. (B119)

The second word, in the dative case “to” or“for” man, stands between the names of two very unlikeobjects, ‘character’ and ‘deity.’ Grammatically, it can attach to either indifferently, and seemsintended to be heard with both, so that it counts twice. Becauseof its double role, the word forms a kind of syntactic glue between theotherwise diverse subjects, joining them together in a unity. Traditionally having a good or a bad guardian spirit constitutesone’s “luck”–one is eudaimôn ordusdaimôn, fortunate or wretched, at the mercy ofone’s divine overseer. But Heraclitus turns one’sluck into a function of one’s character, one’s ethicalstance, by making “man” the link.

Ultimately, Heraclitus loads his words with layers of meaning andcomplexities that are to be discovered in insights and solved likeriddles. As he implies in the second sentence of hisintroduction, B1, his logoi are designed to be experienced,not just understood, and only those who experience them in theirrichness will grasp his message.

3. Philosophical Principles

Although his words are meant to provide concrete vicariousencounters with the world, Heraclitus adheres to some abstractprinciples which govern the world. Already in antiquity he wasfamous for advocating the coincidence of opposites, the flux doctrine,and his view that fire is the source and nature of all things. Incommenting on Heraclitus, Plato provided an early reading, followedtentatively by Aristotle, and popular down to the present (sharpenedand forcefully advocated by Barnes 1982, ch. 4). According toBarnes’ version, Heraclitus is a material monist who believesthat all things are modifications of fire. Everything is in flux(in the sense that “everything is always flowing in somerespects,” 69), which entails the coincidence of opposites(interpreted as the view that “every pair of contraries issomewhere coinstantiated; and every object coinstantiates at least onepair of contraries,” 70). The coincidence of opposites,thus interpreted, entails contradictions, which Heraclitus cannotavoid. On this view Heraclitus is influenced by the prior theoryof material monism and by empirical observations that tend to supportflux and the coincidence of opposites. In a time before thedevelopment of logic, Barnes concludes, Heraclitus violates theprinciples of logic and makes knowledge impossible.

Obviously this reading is not charitable to Heraclitus. Thereare, moreover, reasons to question it. First, some ofHeraclitus’ views are incompatible with material monism (to bediscussed later), so that the background of his theories must berethought. Second, there is evidence that Heraclitus’ fluxtheory is weaker than that attributed to him by this reading. Third, there is evidence that his view of the coincidence of oppositesis weaker than that attributed to him here.

Flux

3.1 Flux

Barnes bases his Platonic reading on Plato’s ownstatement:

Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things pass and nothing stays,and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you couldnot step twice into the same river. (Plato Cratylus 402a= A6)

The established scholarly method is to try to verify Plato’sinterpretation by looking at Heraclitus’ own words, ifpossible. There are three alleged “riverfragments”:

Flux

B12. potamoisi toisin autoisin embainousin hetera kaihetera hudata epirrei.

On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and otherwaters flow. (Cleanthes from Arius Didymus from Eusebius)

B49a. potamois tois autois …

Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not.(Heraclitus Homericus)

B91[a]. potamôi … tôi autôi…

It is not possible to step twice into the same river according toHeraclitus, or to come into contact twice with a mortal being in thesame state. (Plutarch)

Of these only the first has the linguistic density characteristic ofHeraclitus’ words. The second starts out with the samethree words as B12, but in Attic, not in Heraclitus’ Ionicdialect, and the second clause has no grammatical connection to thefirst. The third is patently a paraphrase by an author famous forquoting from memory rather than from books. Even it starts out inGreek with the word ‘river,’ but in the singular. There is no evidence that repetitions of phrases with variationsare part of Heraclitus’ style (as they are ofEmpedocles’). To start with the word ‘river(s)’goes against normal Greek prose style, and on the plausible assumptionthat all sources are trying to imitate Heraclitus, who does not repeathimself, we would be led to choose B12 as the one and only riverfragment, the only actual quotation from Heraclitus’ book. This is the conclusion of Kirk (1954) and Marcovich (1967),based on an interpretation that goes back to Reinhardt(1916). That B12 is genuine is suggested by the features itshares with Heraclitean fragments: syntactic ambiguity (toisinautoisin ‘the same’ [in the dative] can be construedeither with ‘rivers’ [“the same rivers”] orwith ‘those stepping in’ [“the same people”],with what comes before or after), chiasmus, sound-painting (the firstphrase creates the sound of rushing water with its diphthongs andsibilants), rhyme and alliteration.[1]

If B12 is accepted as genuine, it tends to disqualify the other twoalleged fragments. The major theoretical connection in thefragment is that between ‘same rivers’ and ‘otherwaters.’ B12 is, among other things, a statement of thecoincidence of opposites. But it specifies the rivers as thesame. The statement is, on the surface, paradoxical, but there isno reason to take it as false or contradictory. It makesperfectly good sense: we call a body of water a river precisely becauseit consists of changing waters; if the waters should cease to flow itwould not be a river, but a lake or a dry streambed. There is asense, then, in which a river is a remarkable kind of existent, onethat remains what it is by changing what it contains (cf. HumeTreatise 1.4.6, p. 258 Selby-Bigge). Heraclitus derivesa striking insight from an everyday encounter. Further, hesupplies, via the ambiguity in the first clause, another reading: onthe same people stepping into rivers, other and other watersflow. With this reading it is people who remain the same incontrast to changing waters, as if the encounter with a flowingenvironment helped to constitute the perceiving subject as thesame. (See Kahn 1979.) B49a, by contrast, contradicts theclaim that one can step into the same rivers (and also asserts thatclaim), and B91[a], like Plato in the Cratylus, denies thatone can step in twice. Yet if the rivers remain the same, onesurely can step in twice–not into the same waters, to be sure,but into the same rivers. Thus the other alleged fragments areincompatible with the one certifiably genuine fragment.

In fact, Marcovich (1967) has succeeded in showing how a misreading ofB12 could lead to an interpretation such as that embodied in A6 andB91[a]. It is possible to see Cratylus, a late follower ofHeraclitus, supplying the wayward reading, and then adding his famousrejoinder that one cannot step into the same river even once (althoughthe reading may go back earlier to Hippias: Mansfeld 1990:43–55). Since Plato is alleged to have heard Cratylus’lectures, he may well have derived his reading from Cratylus’criticism.

If this interpretation is right, the message of the one river fragment,B12, is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounterthem twice, but something much more subtle and profound. It isthat some things stay the same only by changing. One kind oflong-lasting material reality exists by virtue of constant turnover inits constituent matter. Here constancy and change are not opposedbut inextricably connected. A human body could be understood inprecisely the same way, as living and continuing by virtue of constantmetabolism–as Aristotle for instance later understood it. On this reading, Heraclitus believes in flux, but not as destructive ofconstancy; rather it is, paradoxically, a necessary condition ofconstancy, at least in some cases (and arguably in all). Ingeneral, at least in some exemplary cases, high-level structuressupervene on low-level material flux. The Platonic reading stillhas advocates (e.g. Tarán 1999), but it is no longer theonly reading of Heraclitus advocated by scholars.

3.2 The Unity of Opposites

Heraclitus’ flux doctrine is a special case of the unity ofopposites, pointing to ways things are both the same and not the sameover time. He depicts two key opposites that are interconnected,but not identical. Heraclitus sometimes explains how things haveopposite qualities:

Sea is the purest and most polluted water: for fish drinkable andhealthy, for men undrinkable and harmful. (B61)

Barnes thinks Heraclitus gets his doctrine of the universalcoinstantiation of contraries through fallaciously dropping qualifiers(such as: ‘for fish,’ ‘for men’). But B61shows he is perfectly aware of them, and we might rather say that heunderstands them tacitly even when he does not utter them. Whenhe says,

Collections: wholes and not wholes; brought together, pulled apart;sung in unison, sung in conflict; from all things one and from one allthings (B10)

he does not contradict himself. There are perfectly goodcontexts in which everything he says is true. One can divide acollection into its parts or join the parts into a unifiedwhole.

Most tellingly, Heraclitus explains just how contraries areconnected:

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As the same thing in us are 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.(B88)

Contrary qualities are found in us “as the samething.” But they are the same by virtue of one thingchanging around to another. We are asleep and we wake up; we areawake and we go to sleep. Thus sleep and waking are both found inus, but not at the same time or in the same respect. Indeed, ifsleeping and waking were identical, there would be no change asrequired by the second sentence. Contraries are the same byvirtue of constituting a system of connections: alive-dead,waking-sleeping, young-old. Subjects do not possess incompatibleproperties at the same time, but at different times.

In general, what we see in Heraclitus is not a conflation of oppositesinto an identity, but a series of subtle analyses revealing theinterconnectedness of contrary states in life and in the world. There is no need to impute to him a logical fallacy. Oppositesare a reality, and their interconnections are real, but the correlativeopposites are not identical to each other.

3.3 Ontology

The standard view of Heraclitus’ ontology since Aristotle isthat he is a material monist who holds that fire is the ultimatereality; all things are just manifestations of fire. According toAristotle the Milesians in general were material monists who advocatedother kinds of ultimate matter: Thales water, Anaximander theboundless, Anaximenes air (Metaphysics 983b6–984a8). SoHeraclitus’ theory was just another version of a commonbackground theory. There are problems already withAristotle’s understanding of the Milesians: Aristotle lacks anytextual evidence for Thales’ view and must reconstruct it out ofalmost nothing; he sometimes treats Anaximander as a pluralist likeAnaxagoras who thinks the boundless is a mixture of qualities; at mostAnaximenes might exemplify material monism–but Plato reads him asa pluralist (Timaeus 39 with Graham 2003b; Graham2003a). In the case of Heraclitus, his own statements makematerial monism problematic as an interpretation. According tomaterial monism, some kind of matter is the ultimate reality, and anyvariation in the world consists merely of qualitative or possiblyquantitative change in it; for there is only one reality, for instancefire, which can never come into existence or perish, but can onlychange in its appearances. Heraclitus, however, advocates aradical kind of change:

For souls it is death to become water, for water death to becomeearth, but from earth water is born, and from water soul. (B36)

(Here soul seems to occupy the place of fire.) The language ofbirth and death in the world of living things is precisely the languageused in Greek metaphysics for coming to be and perishing. Itimplies a radical transformation that rules out continuing identity(cf. B76, B62). Indeed, interpreters of Heraclitus cannot have itboth ways: Heraclitus cannot be both a believer in radical flux (thechange of everything into everything else: fire into water, water intoearth, and so on) and an advocate of monism. Either he mustbelieve in a merely illusory or at most a limited kind of change, or hemust be a pluralist.

One further difficulty remains for the monist reading. In hisalleged version of monism, fire is the ultimate reality. Yet fire(as the ancients recognized) is the least substantial and the mostevanescent of elemental stuffs. It makes a better symbol ofchange than of permanence. Other alleged cases of material monismoffer a basic kind of matter that could arguably be stable andpermanent over long periods of time; but fire manifests “need andsatiety” (B65), a kind of ongoing consumption that can live onlyby devouring fuel. Is not Heraclitus’ choice of a basic reality itselfparadoxical? At best his appeal to fire seems to draw on materialmonism in a way that points beyond the theory to an account inwhich the process of change is more real than the material substancesthat undergo change.

4. Cosmology

Although Heraclitus is more than a cosmologist, he does offer acosmology. His most fundamental statement on cosmology is foundin B30:

This world-order [kosmos], the same of all, no god nor mandid create, but it ever was and is and will be: everliving fire,kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.

In this passage, he uses, for the first time in any extant Greektext, the word kosmos “order” to mean somethinglike “world.” He identifies the world with fire, butgoes on to specify portions of fire that are kindling and beingquenched. Although ancient sources, including Aristotle (Onthe Heavens 279b12–17) as well as the Stoics, attributed toHeraclitus a world that was periodically destroyed by fire and thenreborn, the present statement seems to contradict that view, as Hegelalready noticed. If the world always was and is and will be, thenit does not perish and come back into existence, though portions of it(measures of fire) are constantly being transformed.

Heraclitus describes the transformations of elementary bodies:

The turnings of fire: first sea, and of sea half is earth, halffireburst. (B31[a])

<Earth> is liquefied as sea and measured into the sameproportion as it had before it became earth. (B31[b])

Fire turns into water (“sea”), and then half of thatquantity turns into earth and half into “fireburst”(prêstêr, a fiery, windy kind of stormphenomenon). The portion that becomes earth turns back intowater, in the same quantity it had previously. Here Heraclitusenvisages a lawlike transformation of stuff from fire to water toearth; the transformation is reversible, and in it the same relativequantities of stuff are preserved. There is, then, a kind ofconservation of matter, or at least overall quantity of matter. What would make the world to be continuous would be the fact that whenone portion of fire turns into water, an equivalent portion of waterturns into fire. The overall equilibrium is preserved, even ifthe water that is now in the sea is not the same water as was in itbefore. This picture bears a similarity to the image of theriver, which remains the same despite its changing materialcontents.

In this view of the world, the mutual transformations of matter are notan accidental feature, but the very essence of nature. Withoutchange, there would be no world. Heraclitus seems to acknowledgethis in his praise of war and strife:

We must recognize that war is common, strife is justice, and allthings happen according to strife and necessity.(B80)

War is father of all and king of all; and some he manifested asgods, some as men; some he made slaves, some free. (B53)

Conflicting powers of opposites, including those of elementalbodies, make possible the world and all its variety; without thatconflict we would have only lifeless uniformity. In the formerpassage Heraclitus is perhaps criticizing Anaximander for his view thatcosmic justice consists of a punishment of powers that overstep theirboundaries (Anaximander B1). Justice is not the correction of anexcess, but the whole pattern of the domination of one oppositefollowed by that of the other.

There is, however, a guiding force in the world:

Thunderbolt steers all things. (B64)

The fiery shaft of lightning is a symbol of the direction of theworld. Anaximander may have already used the image of theshipmaster of the universe (Kahn 1960: 238). Heraclitus identifies itwith the thunderbolt, itself an attribute of Zeus the storm god. The changes wrought by and symbolized by fire govern the world. The ruling power of the universe can be identified with Zeus, but notin a straightforward way: “One being, the only wise one, wouldand would not be called by the name of Zeus” (B32). Andhere the word used for ‘Zeus’ can be rendered“Life.” Like the Milesians, Heraclitus identifies theruling power of the world with deity, but (like them also) hisconception is not a conventional one.

Heraclitus provided some sort of discussion of meteorological andastronomical phenomena. He studied the disappearance andreappearance of the moon at the end and beginning of a month(Oxyrhynchus Papyri LIII 3710 ii. 43–47 and iii. 7–11–theclearest evidence that Heraclitus had a scientific interest inastronomy). He explained the sun and moon as bowls full offire. As the moon’s bowl rotated it caused thephases. Eclipses were the result of a rotation of the convex sideof the bowls to face the earth. We have no reports about theearth itself, but we may suppose that, like his predecessors,Heraclitus viewed it as flat. Evaporations from the earth and seaapparently provided fuel for the heavenly bodies, which burned like oillamps.

Divine power is manifest in all phenomena: “God is day night,winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger, and he alters just as<fire> when it is mixed with spices is named according to thearoma of each of them” (B67). Again Heraclitus seems tostress the unity of divine power, even if humans assign different namesand attributes to it. All things that happen are good, but humansdo not perceive them to be so: “To God all things are fair, goodand just, but men suppose some things are unjust, some just”(B102). Heraclitus does not attempt to provide a detailedtheodicy, but seeks to view all things sub specieaeternitatis, in which conflict (including presumably humanconflict) keeps the world going (B80, cited above).

5. Knowledge

Plato held that for Heraclitus knowledge is made impossible by theflux of sensible objects. Yet Heraclitus does not repudiateknowledge or the wisdom that comes from a proper understanding of theworld. To be sure, he believes most people are not capable ofwisdom; understanding is a rare and precious commodity, which even mostreputed sages do not attain to (B28[a]). Yet wisdom is possible,and it is embodied in Heraclitus’ message, for those who candiscern it.

Heraclitus seems to accept the evidence of the senses as in some wayvaluable: “The things of which there is sight, hearing,experience, I prefer” (B55). Sight is the best of thesenses: “The eyes are more accurate witnesses than theears” (B101a). Yet in contrast to those who view knowledgeas an accumulation of information or wisdom as a collection of sayings,he requires much more than sensation and memory:

Learning many things does not teach understanding. Else itwould have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, as well as Xenophanes andHecataeus. (B40)

In this statement Heraclitus reviews the leading authorities of hisday, living (the last three) and dead, dealing with religious andsecular knowledge, and finds them all wanting. They spend toomuch effort in collecting information and not enough in grasping itsmeaning. “What intelligence or understanding do they [thepeople] have?” asks Heraclitus. “They follow popularbards and treat the crowd as their instructor, not realizing that themany are base, while the few are noble” (B104). Hecriticizes Hesiod on specifics: “The teacher of the multitude isHesiod; they believe he has the greatest knowledge–who did notcomprehend day and night: for they are one” (B57). In hismyths, Hesiod treats Day and Night as separate persons, taking turnstraveling abroad, while one remains at home. But this fails tocapture the interconnectedness of day and night, and falsifiesreality. Heraclitus criticizes Homer, Pythagoras and Archilochusfor their inadequacies.

In general, he holds that people do not learn what they should:“Many do not understand such things as they encounter, nor dothey learn by their experience, but they think they do”(B17). Indeed, they do not process the information they receive:“Having heard without comprehension they are like the deaf; thissaying bears witness to them: present they are absent”(B34). Heraclitus explains: “Poor witnesses for men are theeyes and ears of those who have barbarian souls” (B107). Abarbarian was a non-Greek; just as a foreigner hears Greek wordswithout understanding their meaning, most people perceive withoutunderstanding the world around them. Sense perception isnecessary for knowledge, but not sufficient; without the ability todecipher information from the senses, one cannot understand theworld.

What chance is there then to learn the secrets of the world? Heraclitus is not wholly pessimistic about human cognitive abilities:“All men have a share in self-knowledge and sound thinking”(B116). What is needed is not simply more sense experience ormore information, but an improved way of comprehending the message(logos) that the world offers. In this context hiscurious method of expression begins to make sense. He presentshis statements in the form of puzzles, riddles, aperçus. Many of them support two or more readings, and contain hiddeninsights. To comprehend them the reader must grasp theircomplexity and then discover their unity. To read Heraclitusappropriately is to have a rich cognitive experience, as thephilosopher hints in his introduction (B1).

Heraclitus often presents a simple concrete situation or image whichhas implications for our understanding of the world: a river, a bow, aroad. He does not generally pronounce generalizations and deduceconsequences. Rather, his method can be seen as inductive: he offersan example which suggests general principles. Unlike mostphilosophers, he challenges the right brain rather than theleft. He does not teach in the conventional sense; he offers hisreaders materials for understanding and lets them educatethemselves. He cites with approval a model of religiousinstruction:

The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, butgives a sign. (B93)

The riddling statements of the Delphic oracle do not providestraightforward answers, but force people to interpret them. Histruths come to the attentive reader as discoveries resulting from thesolution of a puzzle.

6. Value

The aim of Heraclitus’ unusual approach is to produce readerswho have a proper grasp of the world and their place in it. “Sound thinking is the greatest virtue and wisdom: to speak thetruth and to act on the basis of an understanding of the nature ofthings” (B112). Such an understanding can result only froman ability to interpret the language of nature. The properunderstanding allows one to act in a harmonious way.

Heraclitus urges moderation and self-control in a somewhatconventional way (B85, B43). He also recommends the conventional Greekgoal of seeking fame: “The best choose one thing above all, theeverlasting fame of mortals; the many gorge themselves likecattle” (B29). To die in battle is a superior kind of death(B24). Those who drink to excess make their souls wet, and accordinglyharm them (B117), for a healthy soul is dry (B118). Those whoexperience better deaths attain better rewards (B25). Those wholie will be punished (B28[b]). “For men who die there awaitthings they do not expect or anticipate” (B27). Some ofthese remarks tend to suggest an afterlife with rewards andpunishment, although his belief in a continued existence iscontroversial (see Nussbaum 1972). In any case, Heraclitus views thesoul as the moral and cognitive center of human experience.

In political theory he maintains that one good man is worth tenthousand ordinary people (B49). He criticizes his fellow citizensfor banishing a distinguished leader:

The adult citizens of Ephesus should hang themselves, every one, andleave the city to children, since they have banished Hermodorus, a manpre-eminent among them, saying, Let no one stand out among us; or lethim stand out elsewhere among others. (B121)

Evidently he trusts the few and distrusts the many. He seesgood laws as being reflections of universal principles:

Speaking with sense we must fortify ourselves in the common sense ofall, as a city is fortified by its law, and even more forcefully. For all human laws are nourished by the one divine law. For itprevails as far as it will and suffices for all and is superabundant.(B114)

The divine law, on Heraclitus’ view, is probably continuouswith the laws governing the cosmos, which maintain justice throughopposition (B80).

7. Influence

Although Heraclitus is not known to have had students, his writingsseem to have been influential from an early time. He may haveprovoked Parmenides to develop a contrasting philosophy (Patin 1899;Graham 2002), although their views have much more in common than isgenerally recognized (Nehamas 2002). Empedocles seems to haveinvoked Heraclitean themes, and some Hippocratic treatises imitatedHeraclitean language and presented applications of Heracliteanthemes. Democritus echoed many of Heraclitus’ ethicalpronouncements in his own ethics. From an early time Heraclitus wasseen as the representative of universal flux in contrast to Parmenides,the representative of universal stasis. Cratylus broughtHeraclitus’ philosophy to Athens, where Plato heard it. Plato seems to have used Heraclitus’ theory (as interpreted byCratylus) as a model for the sensible world, as he usedParmenides’ theory for the intelligible world. Asmentioned, both Plato and Aristotle viewed Heraclitus as violating thelaw of non-contradiction, and propounding an incoherent theory ofknowledge based on a radical flux. Yet Aristotle also treated himas a coherent material monist who posited fire as an ultimateprinciple. The Stoics used Heraclitus’ physics as theinspiration for their own, understanding him to advocate a periodicdestruction of the world by fire, followed by a regeneration of theworld; Cleanthes in particular commented on Heraclitus. Aenesidemus interpreted Heraclitus as a kind of proto-skeptic (seePolito 2004).

Ever since Plato, Heraclitus has been seen as a philosopher offlux. The challenge in interpreting the philosopher of Ephesus hasalways been to find a coherent theory in his paradoxicalutterances. Since Hegel, he has been seen as a paradigmatic processphilosopher–perhaps with some justification.

8. Addendum

The recently published Derveni Papyrus, discovered in a tomb innorthern Greece, contains a commentary on an Orphic poem. Thecommentator discusses some passages of Heraclitus in connection withthe poem, namely B3 + B94 (which may have been thus joined inHeraclitus’ book) (column 4). See Betegh 2004. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri(vol. 53, no. 3710) also show that Heraclitus was interested indetermining the days of the lunar month and thus in scientificquestions. See Burkert 1993.

In recent work, scholars have devoted special attention toHeraclitus’ moral and political theory (Fattal 2011, Sider2013, Robitzsch 2018), to questions of logos and rationality (Hülsz 2013,Long 2013), to the material character of soul (Betegh 2007), and to the theory of elemental change (Neels 2018).

There is an important new edition of the Presocratics, which contains a volume mostly dedicated to Heraclitus, with a generous selection of texts including many dedicated to reception (Laks and Most 2016). There is also an important new study of Heraclitus that defends a traditional interpretation of the sources (Finkelberg 2017).

Bibliography

Editions

  • Bollack, J. and H. Wismann, 1972, Héraclite ou laséparation, Paris: Les Édition de Minuit.
  • Conche, M., 1998, Héraclite: Fragments,4th ed., Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
  • Kahn, C. H., 1979, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Laks, André and Glenn W. Most, 2016, Early Greek Philosophy, vol. 3, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
  • Marcovich, Miroslav, 1967, Heraclitus, Mérida,Venezuela: University of the Andes Press; 2nd ed., SanktAugustin: Academia Verlag, 2001.
  • Mouraviev, Serge, 1999–2011, Heraclitea, 11 vols., SanktAugustin: Academia Verlag.
  • Robinson, T. M., 1987, Heraclitus, Toronto: University ofToronto Press.

Studies

  • Barnes, J., 1982, The Presocratic Philosophers, revised ed.,London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
  • Betegh, G., 2004, The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology andInterpretation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • –––, 2007, “On the Physical Aspect ofHeraclitus’ Psychology,” Phronesis, 52: 3–32.
  • Burkert, W., 1993, “Heraclitus and the Moon: The NewFragment P.Oxy, 3710,” Illinois ClassicalStudies, 18: 49–55.
  • Dilcher, R., 1995, Studies in Heraclitus, Hildesheim:Georg Olms.
  • Fattal, M., 2011, Parole et actes chez Héraclite,Paris: L’Harmattan.
  • Finkelberg, Aryeh, 2017, Heraclitus and Thales’ Conceptual Scheme: A Historical Study, Leiden: Brill.
  • Graham, D. W., 2002, “Heraclitus and Parmenides,”in Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of AlexanderMourelatos, V. Caston and D. W. Graham (eds.), 27–44, Aldershot:Ashgate.
  • –––, 2003a, “A New Look at Anaximenes,”History of Philosophy Quarterly, 20: 1–20.
  • –––, 2003b, “A Testimony of Anaximenes inPlato,” Classical Quarterly, 53: 327–37.
  • –––, 2006, Explaining the Cosmos: The IonianTradition of Scientific Philosophy, Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.
  • –––, 2008, “Heraclitus: Flux, Order, andKnowledge,” in The Oxford Handbook of PresocraticPhilosophy, P. Curd and D. W. Graham (eds.), 169–188, New York:Oxford University Press.
  • Hülsz Piccone, Enrique (ed.), 2009, Nuevos ensayos sobreHeráclito: Actas del segundo Symposium Heracliteum, MexicoCity: UNAM, 2009.
  • –––, 2013, “Heraclitus on Logos:Language, Rationality and the Real,” in Sider and Obbink 2013,281–301.
  • Hussey, E., 1982, “Epistemology and Meaning inHeraclitus,” in Language and Logos, M. Schofield and M.Nussbaum (eds.), 33–59, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Kahn, C. H., 1960, Anaximander and the Origins of GreekCosmology, New York: Columbia University Press; reprintIndianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
  • –––, 1964, “A New Look atHeraclitus,” American Philosophical Quarterly 1:189–203.
  • Kirk, G. S., 1954, Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Long, A. A., 2013, “Heraclitus on Measure and the ExplicitEmergence of Rationality,” in Sider and Obbink 2013,201–223.
  • Mansfeld, Jaap, 1990, Studies in the Historiography of GreekPhilosophy, Assen: Van Gorcum.
  • Neels, Richard, 2018, “Elements and Opposites in Heraclitus,” Apeiron, 51: 427–452.
  • Nehamas, A., 2002, “Parmenidean Being/ HeracliteanFire,” in Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of AlexanderMourelatos, V. Caston and D. W. Graham (eds.), 45–64, Aldershot:Ashgate.
  • Nussbaum, M. C. 1972, “Psyche in Heraclitus,”Phronesis, 17: 1–16; 153–70.
  • Patin, A., 1899, Parmenides im Kampfe gegen Heraklit,Leipzig: B. G. Teubner.
  • Polito, R., 2004, The Sceptical Road: Aenesidemus’ Appropriationof Heraclitus, Leiden: Brill.
  • Reinhardt, K., 1916, Parmenides und die Geschichte dergriechischen Philosophie, Bonn: Friedrich Cohen.
  • Robitzsch, Jan Maximilian, 2018, “Heraclitus’ Political Thought,” Apeiron, 51: 405–426.
  • Sider, D., 2013, “Heraclitus’ Ethics,” in Sider andObbink 2013, 321–344.
  • Sider, D. and D. Obbink (eds.), 2013, Doctrine and Doxography:Studies on Heraclitus and Pythagoras, Berlin: De Gruyter.
  • Tarán, L., 1999, “Heraclitus: The River Fragments and TheirImplications,” Elenchos, 20: 9–52.
  • Vlastos, G., 1955. “On Heraclitus,” American Journalof Philology, 76: 337–378.

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