Heraclitus

Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ancient Greek: Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος Herákleitos ho Ephésios; Ephesus, c. 540 BC-ibidem, c. 480 BCE), was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Ephesus, a city of Ionia, on the western coast of Asia Minor (present-day Turkey and then part of the Persian Empire).

The main source of his life comes to us through Diogenes Laertius. He was born into an aristocratic family, but avoided his wealthy life by becoming a self-taught hermit philosopher. Heraclitus's work is completely aphoristic and he is credited with a book entitled On Nature (περὶ φύσεως). Like the other Greek philosophers before Plato, there are only fragments of his works, and his contributions are largely known thanks to later testimonies. These were compiled by Hermann Diels and Walther Kranz in the work Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker under the Diels-Kranz numbering.

He was also known as The Dark One of Ephesus and The Soothsayer due to his oracular and paradoxical nature of his philosophy, and The Weeping Philosopher (in contrast to Democritus, "the Laughing Philosopher"), due to an alleged melancholic and sad personality. However, regarding this last epithet, Geoffrey Stephen Kirk and John Earle Raven have pointed out that it is based on "utterly trivial" which come firstly from mocking references to the Heraclitean idea that everything flows like the river, and secondly from a mistranslation of Theophrastus. The latter referred to Heraclitus using the word μελαγχολία in the sense of "impulsiveness" and not of "melancholy", a meaning that it later acquired, confusing Diogenes Laertius, and leading him to attribute to Theophrastus the theory that Heraclitus did not complete some of his works due to melancholy. now there are no reliable historical records to support Heraclitus's pessimistic character.

On the other hand, the cryptic expressions of Ephesian have been the subject of numerous interpretations. He has been seen in various ways: as a 'materialist monist' or process philosopher; a cosmological scientist, a metaphysician, or mainly a religious thinker; an empiricist, a rationalist or a mystic; a conventional thinker or a revolutionary; a logic developer or someone who denied the principle of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopher or an anti-intellectual obscurantist".

The central idea of Heraclitus' philosophy is the unity of opposites. Heraclitus believed that the future of the world was governed in accordance with what he called the Logos (translated as & # 34; word & # 34;, & # 34; reason & # 34; or & # 34; speech & # 34;). He also believed that the cosmos was a transmutation of fire. Heraclitus was famous for his insistence on change; he saw the world in constant flux, changing while staying the same, which he expressed in the saying: "No man plunges twice into the same river." (panta rei). In contrast, the Eleata Parmenides declared that "what is, cannot not be," thus denying the transience of being. Both thinkers influenced Plato and also, consequently, Western philosophy. Heraclitus is considered one of the founders of dialectic and partly of metaphysics and morality.

Biography

Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor, birthplace of Heráclito

The main source of the life of Heraclitus comes to us through the historian Diogenes Laertius in his work Lives, opinions and sentences of the most illustrious philosophers.

Heraclitus "flourished" at the 69th Olympiad, 504–501 B.C. C. Son of a certain Heración or Blisón, Heraclitus grew up in a hereditary aristocratic family of the position of Basileos c. 540 a. C. in Ephesus, part of the Persian Empire, in what is now Turkey. Such position Heraclitus ceded to his brother Diogenes relates that Heraclitus was a misanthrope. He believed that Hesiod, Pythagoras, Xenophanes and Hecataeus knew nothing and that Homer and Archilochus deserved to be defeated.He was not a disciple of anyone, although it is said that he was of Xenophanes. Diogenes Laertius relates that when Heraclitus was a boy he had said that he "knew nothing", but later claimed that he "knew everything". He hated the Athenians and his fellow Ephesians, desiring the last riches as punishment for their wicked ways and hanged for banishing their most prominent leader. Because of this, he retired to the mountains to live as a hermit. It is likely that he intervened in the affairs of the city in the period when the rule of Persia had given rise to autonomy.

Heraclitus' life as a philosopher was interrupted by dropsy. The doctors he consulted were unable to prescribe a cure.Diogenes lists several stories about the death of Heraclitus in two versions. In one Heraclitus was cured of dropsy and died of another illness. However, in one account, the philosopher buried himself in a stable waiting for the humid heat of the dung to drive the noxious moisture out of him, while another says that he was treated with a liniment of cow dung and, after a day prone to the sun, he died and was buried in the market. He died around the year 470 B.C. According to Neantes, after smearing himself with dung, Heraclitus was eaten by dogs.

Work

Details of the Athens School showing Heráclito.

The work of Heraclitus is completely aphoristic. His style refers to the sentences of the Oracle of Delphi and reproduces the ambiguous and confusing reality that he explains, using the oxymoron and the antithesis to give an idea of it. Diogenes Laertius (in Lives..., IX 1–3, 6–7, 16) attributes to him a book entitled On Nature (περὶ φύσεως), which was divided into three sections: "Cosmology", "Politics", and "Theology". Nothing else is known about this book.

Many later philosophers of this period refer to On Nature. Charles Kahn said: "Until the time of Plutarch and Clement, if not later, the little book of Heraclitus was available in its original form to any reader who wanted to look it up." Laertius comments on the notability of the text, stating: "His book became so famous that he had followers, called Heraclitians". Prominent philosophers identified today as Heracliteans include Cratylus and Antisthenes, who do not to be confused with the cynic.

The surviving fragments of his work were first collected and explained in contemporary times by Schleiermacher in his compilation Herakleitos der Dunkle von Ephesos of 1807. These are currently cataloged using the system Diels-Kranz numbering, compiled in the work Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (1903).

The first scholar to propose an arrangement of the fragments was P. Schuster (1873), putting at the head of all the one that was later arranged as B56 (Diels-Kranz) and which refers to the riddle that some children posed to Homer, and that this, "the wisest of all the Greeks", as Heraclitus paints it (see below), did not know how to solve. Ingram Bywater in 1877 rearranged the fragments according to the indication of Laercio, translated into Spanish by José Gaos. It is curious that Bywater does not consider important the fragment that Schuster puts at the head of all, and does not include it in his own ordering. Agustín García Calvo reconstructs the possible structure of the book in his edition of its fragments, entitled Common Reason, in which he distinguishes three sections: “General Reason”, “Political Reason” and “Theological Reason”. ».

Doctrines

Heraclitus is known as "the Dark One", due to his lapidary and enigmatic expression. Heraclitus held that the foundation of everything is in incessant change. The being becomes and everything is transformed in a process of continuous birth and destruction from which nothing escapes. Enrique Hülsz affirmed that "all the different themes that make up the whole of Heraclitus' philosophy are reciprocally contained in each other".

Diogenes Laertius summarizes the doctrines of Heraclitus as follows:

"Let all things be done by contempt, and they all flow like rivers. That the universe is finite. That the world is unique, it is produced from the fire and burns again of time in alternating time all this evo. That this is done by the fairy. On the contrary, the one who leads things to generation is called war and struggle or containment, and the one who to the fire, concord and peace. That mutation is a way up and down, and according to it the world occurs. That the adensed fire becomes liquor, and acquiring more consistency for water. That the condensed water becomes earth, and this is the way down. The land is cleaned again and the water is made from it, from which almost all other things come."

It is common to include Heraclitus among the first physical philosophers (φυσικοί, as Aristotle called them), who thought that the world came from a natural principle (such as water for Thales of Miletus, air for Anaximenes and the apeiron for Anaximander), and this misclassification is due to the fact that, for Heraclitus, this principle is fire, which should not be read in a literal sense, since it is a metaphor as, in turn, it was for Thales and Anaximenes. The principle of fire refers to the movement and constant change in which the world is. This permanent mobility is based on a structure of opposites. The contradiction is at the origin of all things.

The Logos

Nature is governed by a law that Heraclitus calls Logos (Λόγος), an ancient Greek word with a variety of meanings (reason, word or speech in Greek). Despite the various meanings of Logos", there is no compelling reason to suppose that he used it in a special technical sense, significantly different from the way it was used in ordinary Greek of his day.

This Logos not only governs the evolution of the world, but also speaks it (indicates, gives signs) to man, although most people "cannot listen or speak". The real order coincides with the order of reason, an "invisible harmony, better than the visible" because nature loves to hide, although Heraclitus laments that most people are deaf or asleep to the Logos, incapable of seeing what is real. Although Heraclitus believes in the use of the senses as essential to understand reality, he maintains that they are not enough and that the use of intelligence is equally necessary, as he affirms in the following important fragment:

Men are deceived [...] about the knowledge of manifest things, in the same way that Homer, who was [considered] the wisest of all the Greeks. To him, in fact, children who killed lice confused him, saying, 'How many we saw and caught, so many we left; how many we neither saw nor caught, so many of us took.'

Hippolyte of Rome, Refutatio, IX, 9, 5-10
in Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B56

This Logos is commonly found within the soul of each one and there is a possibility in every man to wake up, listen to it and become wise. The doctrine of the logos as universal reason is similar to the doctrine of the Tao and was adopted by the Stoics, who referred to it to support their belief that rational law governs the universe. Later theologians have identified Heraclitus's Logos with God.

Unity of opposites

"There is harmony in the bending backwards as in the bow and the lyre."

To the use of the senses and intelligence, we must add a critical and inquiring attitude. The mere accumulation of knowledge does not form the true sage, because for Heraclitus the sage is "one and only one thing", this is the theory of opposites (enantiodromia), an interpretation that shows his monism, although perhaps it is rather dialectical. Heraclitus himself will express it as follows:

Also nature tends to the opposite, and of it and not of the identical is from where it gets the chord.

Diels. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. I. 1912.

This term establishes in the philosophy of Heraclitus «the game of opposites in becoming, that is, the notion that everything that is passes to its opposite».

All is divisible and indivisible, begotten and not begotten, mortal and immortal, eternal word, father, son, righteous god. It is prudent to hear the Logos, not me, and to recognize that all things are one.

Hippolyte of Rome, Refutatio, IX, 9, 1
in Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B50

According to Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus held illogical views because opposites are identical, so everything is and is not at the same time. "Discord, contrast, and opposition are the very principle of concordance, harmony and unity of things themselves. Although, according to Oswald Spengler, in Heraclitus one cannot speak of the identity of opposites, but rather of antinomies, since no opposite can exist without the other."

The conflict of opposites generates a harmony present in nature and human affairs (light and darkness, heat and cold, man and woman...) that give meaning and richness to existence. In this union of opposites, both generation and destruction, Heraclitus called the opposition processes ἔρις (eris), "struggle", and hypothesizes that the apparently stable state, δίκη (dikê ), "justice", is a harmony of it, which Anaximander described as injustice.

There is a harmony in the bending backwards as in the case of the arch and the lyre.

Hippolyte of Rome, Refutatio, IX, 9, 2
in Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B51

Aristotle said that Heraclitus disliked Homer because he wanted fighting to leave the world, which according to Heraclitus would destroy the world; "there would be no harmony without high and low notes, nor animals without male and female, which are opposites". Reality is one and multiple at the same time due to the essence of all things, causing an identity to exist or a concrete universal idea based on difference. Heraclitus's doctrine is reminiscent of Laozi's tao in his doctrine of the "unity of opposites".

Panta rei

Presumed bust of Heráclito, which is at the "Sala dei filosofi" of the Capitoline Museums of Rome.

Heraclitus has gone down in history as the model of the affirmation of becoming. His philosophy is based on the thesis of the universal flow of beings: « Panta rei » (πάντα ρεῖ), everything flows. Evolution is animated by conflict: "War (polemos) is the father of all things", a conflict that is at the same time harmony, not in the sense of a mere numerical relationship, as in the Pythagoreans, but in that of an adjustment of opposing forces, like those that keep a bowstring taut. Perhaps the best-known fragment of his work reads:

ποταμος τος τος α.τος εονομεν εν καεν κ ο.κ ίνομεν, εν, ειμεν τεν τεν τεν καεν εν εν εν εν εν τεν εν εν εν εν εν εν εν εν εν εν εν εν εν.

In the same rivers we enter and do not enter, [because] we are and are not [the same].

Cleantes, Stoicorum Veterum FragmentaI, 519
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B12

«It is not possible to bathe twice in the same river»

The fragment (frequently misquoted as you cannot enter the same river twice, following the version given by Plato in the Cratylus) exemplifies the Heraclitean doctrine of change: the river —which is still the same river— has, however, changed almost completely, as has the bather. Although one part of the river flows and changes, there is another (the bed, which should also be interpreted and not taken in a literal sense) that is relatively permanent and that guides the movement of the water.

"The sun is new every day."

At first glance this may seem contradictory, but it should be remembered that Heraclitus holds that opposites do not contradict each other but form a harmonious (but not static) unity. It is reasonable, then, that the other face of water is fire, as he himself advances in his fragments. Philosophical historiography imposed a Platonized Heraclitus with a primitive empiricism by supporting the evidence of the change experienced by the senses.

The things whose learning is seen and heard, those are the ones I prefer

Hippolyte of Rome, Refutatio, IX, 9, 6
in Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B55

Eyes are more accurate witnesses than ears.

Polibio, X, 27, 1
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B101a

However, Heraclitus warned that sight gives falsehoods and ears are bad witnesses for men who have "barbarian souls". True knowledge consists in understanding this omnipresent harmony as it is embodied in the variety of perception.

κακος μάρτορεος φνθρίοισιν γθαλμοσιν καερτα ττα βαρβάρους ερουουος καεοισιν καοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν εοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν κοιν γιν κοιν

Bad witnesses for men eyes and ears of those who have spirits who do not understand their language.

Empirical sex, VII, 126
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B107

The doctrines of Heraclitus and Parmenides of Elea have always been opposed (with a certain margin of error), since that of the former is usually called "of becoming" or (with some misunderstanding) "of everything flows", while the latter Parmenidean being is presented as a static and immobile sphere.

The fire

"The fire, coming, will judge and condemn all things"

Heraclitus sees in fire the best symbolic expression of the two pillars of his philosophy: perpetual evolution and the struggle of opposites, since fire only keeps consuming and destroying, and constantly changes matter. Diogenes Laertius cites that for Heraclitus "fire is an element, and that all its vicissitudes or mutations are made by rarity and density". Some authors see in the example of the river the channel as the Logos that "rules everything", universal measure that orders the cosmos, and in the water of the river, fire.

κόσμον τόνδε, τ,ν α,τ,ν,πειν, ο,τε τιος θειν ο,τε πνθρπειν ποιεισενεισενενιενενιενειενενενειειειενιενιειειενιενιενιειειειειειενιειειειειειειειενιειειειειειειειειειειειενιειειειειειειειειειειειειενιειειειειειεν, σιειειεν, πιειειειειειειειειειειειειεν, ειε

This world, the same for all beings, was not created by men or by gods, but was, is, and will always be a living fire, which burns with measure and is extinguished with measure.

Clemente of Alexandria, StromateisV, 104, 2
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B30

Aristotle interpreted the fire of Heraclitus and Hippasus of Metapontus as the arché of reality, being eternal where all things are mutations of fire.

πυρ.ς τε φνταμοιβ. ε τα πάντα κα π.ρ.πάντων.κωσπερ χρυσο. χρυσο. χρεατατα κατα κριεν χρυσός.

All things are an exchange for fire, and fire for all things, like gold and gold for goods.

Plutarco, De E apud Delphos388 E
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B90

However, the monistic reading of fire is difficult because of its doctrine of change. Fire is more of a symbol of change. It provides a standard of value for other things, but is not identical to them. He said that both God and fire are "will and exceed". By "God", Heraclitus did not state the Christian version of a single God as the immobile motor of all things, God as Creator, because the universe is eternal, "always was and will be"; but the divine is opposed to the human; the immortal versus the mortal, the cyclical versus the transitory.

Arguably it is more accurate to speak of "the Divine" and not of "God." Hippolytus sees it as a reference to divine judgment and hell. Despite his use of religious language, his theological vision was quite pantheistic, yet in some fragments he speaks of a personal God.

ο ου ου ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ονον ονοον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ονον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ονον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ονον ον ον ον ον ον ον ον ονονον ον ο

God is: day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger; he takes different forms, the same as fire, that by blending with the sahumerios (incense) is called according to the aroma of each one of these.

Hippolyte of Rome, Refutatio, IX, 10, 6
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B67

His attitude towards the religions of his time, especially Bacchic, was hostile.

Politics and Ethics

Democrit, the "guilosoph who laughs" and Heráclito, the "philosophous who weeps" for human condition.

Man can discover this Logos within himself, since the Logos is common and immanent to man and to things (Heraclitus's doctrine was interpreted, forgetting this affirmation of the Logos, in immediately subsequent philosophy —especially in Plato— as a denial of the possibility of knowledge: if nothing is stable, the possibility of definitive knowledge is denied). Nevertheless:

θορβκαρ.δοναι μ.λλον. καθαρ. θδατι.

Pigs enjoy more with mud than with clean water.

Clemente of Alexandria, StromateisI, 2, 2
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B13

His contempt for men led him to think that only force will compel men to act for their own good. He used to say that "every animal must be beaten to pasture", and "donkeys prefer straw to gold". Heraclitus affirms that war is something good, common for all, since the fight is justice.

War is the father of all and the king of all things; some beings have made gods and others men; slaves and others free.

Hippolyte of Rome, Refutatio, IX, 9, 4
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B53

Heraclitus was not a democrat, since he did not believe in the opinion of the majority to guide a people, because the majority is bad and few are good. For example, referring to Pythagoras, he believed that what he passed off as wisdom it was not erudition, but the art of deception. He only esteemed Bias, "whose name is more respectable than that of others".

Master of the majority was Hesiod. They think he knew many things; he, who knew not to distinguish the day of the night. In fact, one thing is.

Hippolyte of Rome, Refutatio, IX, 10, 2
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B57

Heraclitus distinguishes between human laws (nomos) and divine law. He speaks out against traditional customary law, as opposed to state-given law (polis). However, it removes the human sense of justice from their concept of God, for to God all things are fair, good, and just. Law is obeying the plan of one man, and human laws they are fed by the divine law (the Logos) that men must defend. True virtue consists in the subordination of the individual to the laws of harmony of the Logos, where true freedom is found.

His ethics is a proud asceticism, similar to that of Nietzsche. A man is worth a thousand if he knows the Logos. Virtue is being moderate and wisdom is knowing and acting according to nature. Heraclitus considered the human soul to be a mixture of fire (noble) and water (ignoble). It can be interpreted that Heraclitus appreciated self-control more, and despised the pleasures that distract man. Pleasure is cold and wet; this can be seen in drunks.

αυγ. φρ. σοφωτάτικα. καίστη.

The dry soul is the wisest and the best.

Stove, III, 5, 8
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B118

What happens to these dry souls is good. To think well is the highest excellence, and wisdom is to act and speak what is true, perceiving things according to their nature. The doctrine of the immortality of the soul features prominently in his ethics. Heraclitus has also been interpreted as advocating for a moral relativism:

Good and evil are one.

Hippolyte of Rome, Refutatio, IX, 10, 3
in Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B58

Cosmology

The first citation of the earliest use of kosmos in any extant Greek text comes from Heraclitus. For Heraclitus the Universe is finite and the world is one. He described the celestial vault as an upside down bowl that forms flames, these being the stars. He pointed out that the Sun is the clearest and hottest flame being far away from us, and the Moon closer. With this he explained solar eclipses and meteorological phenomena.

He called the entire cosmos "an eternal fire". Heraclitus refers to the advance of fire with the phenomenon of ekpyrosis, where everything is destroyed in the fire. This process clearly defines the fate of the Universe that is born from fire and then perishes in fire. He calls this "extinction" process the "way down." However, becoming is not irrational, since the Logos, universal reason, governs it: «Everything arises according to measure and according to measure it is extinguished». It is the "way up". Heraclitus has been described as a hylozoist and is credited with the cosmological doctrine of eternal recurrence. He also seems to advocate reincarnation after death.

πυρ...ς τροπαίον πον θεον θάλασαα, θαλάσικος δ... τ... μ...ν...μισυγ σγ τ... δ... δ......ισυ πρμστρεριριριρ... θάλασα διαχέεται και και μεετργεται εγι είς εν α τλν λόγόγον πρόθεν νν γεν γεν

The transformations of the fire are: first the sea, and half of the sea was transformed into a land and the other half into a whirlwind. The earth becomes a liquid sea and is measured with the same Logos that existed before its conversion to land.

Clemente of Alexandria, StromateisV, 104, 3 and 5
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B31

πυρ,ς θάνατος πρι γένεσιος, καίος ωνατος θάνατος θδατιγ

The fire lives in the death of the earth, the air lives in the death of the fire, the water lives in the death of the air and the earth in the death of the water.

Maximum Tyre, XII, 4
Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 22 B76

Quotes

Beautiful in the Nuremberg Chronicles.

Here are some quotes from Heraclitus:

• "The sun is new every day."

• "In circumference, the beginning and the end coincide."

• "This world, the same for all, did not make it any of the gods or of men, but it has been eternally and is and will be an eternally living fire, which turns on according to measures and is extinguished according to measures."

• "Invisible harmony is greater than visible harmony."
• "You will not even go all the way to find the limits of the soul; so deep Logos He has».
• «But even though the Logos It is common, almost all live as if they have a particular intelligence (φρόν)».
• "We must know that war is common to all things and that justice is discord."
• "Doctors cut, burn, torture, and make the sick a good, which seems worse, they demand a reward that they hardly deserve."
• Heracle reproaches the poet who said, "I wish the discord of the gods and men would be extinguished!" he replied: "There would be no harmony if there was no sharp and grave, nor animals if there were no female and male, who are in mutual opposition" (Fragment 9a Walzer = 22 Diels-Kranz).

List of appointments

Influence

Zoroastrianism

Heraclitus' description of a doctrine of purification by fire has also been investigated for the influence of the Zoroastrian concept of Atar. Many of Zoroaster's doctrines of fire do not exactly match those of Heraclitus., such as the relationship of fire to earth, but may have been inspired by them. Zoroastrian parallels with Heraclitus are often difficult to identify specifically due to the lack of surviving Zoroastrian literature from the period and mutual influence with philosophy. Greek; the Dadestan-i Denig of the IX century preserves information on Zoroastrian cosmology, but also shows borrowings direct from Aristotle. The exchange of other elements with fire also has parallels in Vedic literature of the same time period, such as the Kaushitaki Upanishad and the Taittiriya Upanishad. West emphasizes that these doctrines of the exchange of elements were common throughout written work on philosophy that has survived from that period, so it cannot be said definitively that Heraclitus' doctrine of fire was influenced by any other Iranian or Indian influence, but it may have been part of a mutual exchange of influence over the years. throughout time in the Ancient East.

Ancient Philosophy

Presocratics

Parménides' bust, whose doctrine of the immutability of being has been contrasted with the universal fujo of Heráclito.

Heraclitus's most famous follower was Cratylus, whom Plato introduced as a linguistic naturalist, one who believed that names should naturally apply to their objects. According to Aristotle, Cratylus considered that nothing can be said about the ever-changing world and "ended up thinking that one need not say anything, and just wagged his finger". Cratylus may have thought that continuous change justifies the skepticism because you cannot define a thing that does not have a permanent nature. Linguistic philosophy of the 20th century saw an increase in the considerations raised by Cratylus in Plato's dialogue and offered the doctrine called "cratilism".

In contrast to the doctrine of becoming, the philosopher Parmenides, a contemporary of Heraclitus, argues that the impossibility of change; He may have referred to Heraclitus with such passages in his poem as "multitudes that do not distinguish, that hold that it is and is not the same, and all things travel in opposite directions!". Different philosophers have It has been argued that either of them may have substantially influenced each other, some taking Heraclitus as responding to Parmenides, others that Parmenides is responding to Heraclitus, and some arguing that any direct chain of influence between the two is impossible to determine. Although Heraclitus is refers to older figures such as Pythagoras, neither Parmenides nor Heraclitus refer directly to each other in any surviving fragments, so any speculation about influence must be based on interpretations of the surviving fragments. Despite their differences, Heraclitus describes the Logos like Parmenides describes "what is", divine, eternal and immutable. Similarities should also not be taken as an indication of direct influence.

Pluralists were the first to try to reconcile Heraclitus and Parmenides. Anaxagoras may have been influenced by Heraclitus in his refusal to separate opposites. Empedocles' Forces of Love and Hate were probably influenced by Heraclitus' Harmony and Conflict. Empedocles is also credited with introducing the concept of the four classical elements, uniting his predecessors' conceptions of the arché : earth, air, fire, and water.

Sophists like Protagoras were also influenced by Heraclitus. They seemed to share his vision of the logos.

Plato and Aristotle

Plato is the most famous philosopher who tried to reconcile Heraclitus and Parmenides; through Plato, both figures influenced virtually all subsequent Western philosophy. The contrast between the "panta rei" had a decisive influence on Plato, who in order to resolve the contradictions with the theory of being of Parmenides, a contemporary of Heraclitus, who was a critic of his who concluded that "non-being" it exists only in a relative sense, thus giving a philosophical foundation to the Greek sense of becoming. In The Banquet, Plato looks a lot like Heraclitus:

"Even during the period during which it is said that any living being lives and preserves his identity, since a man, for example, is called the same man from childhood to old age, in fact does not retain the same attributes, although he is called the same person: he is always becoming a new being and going through a process of loss and reparation, which affects his hair, his flesh, his bones, his blood and his whole body. And not only his body, but also his soul. The character, habits, opinions, desires, pleasures, pains and fears of no man remain the same: new ones arise and the old ones disappear. "

Plato met Heraclitus through Cratylus and wrote his eponymous dialogue. Plato considered Heraclitus the intellectual predecessor of the sophists. He thought Heraclitus's views meant that no entity can occupy a single state at the same time and argued in against Heraclitus as follows:

"How can that be something real that is never in the same state? [...] because at the time the observer approaches, then they become others [...] so that you can no longer advance in the knowledge of their nature or state [...] but if what you know and what is known exists ever [...] then I don't think that they may seem to a process or flow [...]"

Under the influence of Cratylus' Heraclitism, Plato came to the conclusion that the Socratic definitions, the universals, do not correspond to sensible things and therefore he introduced the Forms. This conception of universal Reason, ordering everything, appears in the system of the Stoics, who took their cosmology from Heraclitus.

Aristotle accuses Heraclitus of speaking in contradiction and accused the sophists of applying contradiction to "all the arts." Later the Aristotelian philosophical tradition would value Heraclitus as incompatible with the principles of logic formal, although Aristotle himself (like Plato before) had not accepted the theory of becoming in an attempt to reconcile with the rigid statism of Parmenides and thus introducing the doctrine of the perpetual transition from potency to act, which would find better acceptance among Neoplatonic mystics. According to Plotinus, who also upheld the principles of Eleatic logic, "Heraclitus knew that the One is eternal and spiritual: since only what has a body becomes eternal and flows" Enneads V, 9).

Cynics

Cynicism was also influenced by Heraclitus, who is credited with several letters in the Cynic Epistles.

Pyrrhonics

Aenesidemus, one of the leading ancient Pyrrhonist philosophers, asserted in a now lost work that Pyrrhonism was a pathway to Heraclitean philosophy because Pyrrhonist practice helps to see how opposites appear to be the case about the same thing. Once one sees this, it leads to understanding that the Heraclitean view of opposites is the same case. A later Pyrrhonist philosopher, Sextus Empiricus, disagreed, arguing that the opposites appearing to be the case about the same thing is not a Pyrrhonist dogma, but a matter that happens to Pyrrhonists, other philosophers, and all of humanity. humanity.

Epicureans

The Epicurean doxography was highly critical of other philosophers, including Heraclitus. Epicurus was referred to as the "confounder" and the Roman Epicurean Lucretius is referred to as "celebrated for his obscure language among the superficial Greeks, more than by the wise who seek the truth". Lucretius criticized in his poem De rerum natura the cosmology of Heraclitus where everything is transmutations of fire because the plurality of entities could not exist "if its parts were composed of the same essence" and if "the collected parts of fire are extinguished and moved, the elemental fire would reduce to nothing, and everything would be born from nothing". These criticisms seem to be directed at the Stoics who were influenced by Heraclitus, but I D. Purley argues that there is no evidence for this and proposes that Lucretius attacks material monism.

Stoics

Potato in the History of Philosophy Thomas Stanley.

The Stoics believed that the main tenets of their philosophy were derived from the thought of Heraclitus, "Heraclitus's importance to later Stoics is most evident in Marcus Aurelius". Explicit connections from the earliest are lacking. Stoics with Heraclitus that show how they arrived at their interpretation, but can be inferred from the Stoic fragments, which Long concludes are "modifications of Heraclitus".

Although many of the later Stoics interpreted Heraclitus as having a "doctrine of the logos" where the "logos" it was a first principle that ran through all things, West observes that Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Empiricus Sextus all make no mention of this doctrine, and concludes that language and thought are "obviously Stoic"; and not attributable to Heraclitus. Kahn emphasizes that Heraclitus used the word in multiple senses, and W. K. C. Guthrie notes that there is no evidence that Heraclitus used it in a significantly different way than it was used by contemporary Greek speakers. Guthrie he considers the logos as a public fact as a proposition or formula, although he admits that Heraclitus would not have considered these facts as abstract objects or immaterial things.

The Stoics were interested in Heraclitus' treatment of fire. The oldest surviving Stoic work, Cleanthes's Hymn to Zeus, a transitional work from pagan polytheism to modern religions and philosophies, while making no explicit reference to Heraclitus, adopts what appears to be a modified version of the logos of Heraclitus. Zeus rules the universe with law (nomos), exercising in his name the 'forked servant', the 'fire'; of the "eternal lightning"; none of this differs from Homer's Zeus. According to Cleanthes, Zeus uses fire to "set the common logos straight" traveling (phoitan "to haunt") mingling with the greater and lesser lights (heavenly bodies); Heraclitus's logos was now confused with the common "nomos, which Zeus uses to "do the wrong thing (perissa, left or odd) right (artia, right or even)" and "order (kosmein) the unordered (akosma)".

The Stoic modification of Heraclitus's idea of the logos influenced Jewish philosophers such as Philo of Alexandria, who related it to "Personified Wisdom" as God's creative principle.^{[<citation needed]} Philo uses the term logos throughout his treatises on the Hebrew scriptures in a clearly influenced by the Stoics.^{[citation needed]} On the subject of Stoic modification of Heraclitus, Burnet writes:

Another difficulty we have to face is that most of Herakleitos' commentators mentioned in Diogenes were stoic. Now, the Stoics had the ephesy in a peculiar veneration and sought to interpret it to the extent possible according to their own system. In addition, they liked to "accomodate" the views of the thinkers prior to theirs, and this has had serious consequences. In particular, the stoic theories of logos and ekpyrosis are constantly attributed to Herakleitos, and the same fragments are adulterated with stoic terminology.

Church Fathers

The Church Fathers were the leaders of the early Church during its first five centuries of existence, roughly contemporaneous with Stoicism under the Roman Empire. The works of dozens of writers have survived in hundreds of pages; they all mentioned the Christian form of the Logos.

Although early Christian philosophers, following the Stoics, interpreted the logos in terms of a personal God, modern scholars do not believe that these associations are represented in Heraclitus's original thought. When Heraclitus speaks of "God" it does not refer to a single deity as omnipotent and omniscient or to God as Creator, the universe being eternal; he meant the divine as opposed to the human, the immortal as opposed to the mortal, and the cyclical as opposed to the transitory; for him, it could be said that it is more accurate to speak of "the Divine" and not of "God".

The Catholic Church found it necessary to distinguish between the Christian logos and that of Heraclitus in order to distance itself from pagans and convert them to Christianity. Many Church Fathers were converted philosophers. Hippolytus of Rome interpreted the logos with the Gospel of John:

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God."

Gospel according to Saint John 1:1

The logos is Christ. Now, since Heraclitus already speaks of the logos, the Greeks reached the very threshold of absolute truth, that is, the revealed truth of Christianity. Hippolytus identified Heraclitus along with the other pre-Socratics and academics as sources of heresy. In Refutation of all heresies, one of the best sources on Heraclitus quotes, Hippolytus says; "What blasphemous folly is Noetus, and that he devoted himself to the principles of Heraclitus the Dark, not to those of Christ." Hippolytus then presents a quote; "God (theos) is day and night, winter and summer [...] but takes various forms, just as fire, when mixed with spices, is named after the flavor of each". The fragment appears to support pantheism if taken literally. German physicist and philosopher Max Bernard Weinstein classified Hippolytus' view of Rome as a predecessor of Pandeism.

Hippolytus condemns his obscurity; he could not accuse Heraclitus of heresy, saying; "Did not [Heraclitus] the Dark One anticipate Noetus by framing a system [...]?" The apparent pantheistic deity of Heraclitus must be equal to the union of opposites and therefore must be corporeal and incorporeal, divine and non-divine, dead and alive, etc., and the Trinity can only be achieved through illusory shape-shifting..

The Christian apologist Justin Martyr had a more positive view of Heraclitus. In the First Apology of him, he said that both Socrates and Heraclitus were Christians before Christ: "Those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been considered atheists;" as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them".

Modern Philosophy

Heraclitus was considered an indispensable motif for philosophy during the modern period.^{[citation needed]} Michel de Montaigne proposed two archetypal views of human affairs based on them, selecting Democritus for himself. Heraclitus may even have been mentioned in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice.

Continental Philosophy

Beautiful by José de Ribera, 1630

G. W. F. Hegel praised Heraclitus; according to him, "the origin of philosophy goes back to Heraclitus". He attributed the dialectic to Heraclitus instead of, as Aristotle did, to Zeno of Elea saying: "There is no proposition of Heraclitus that I have not accepted in my Logic" (Hegel, Lectures on the history of philosophy). Heraclitus, however, unlike Hegel, did not conceive of becoming as a progressive awareness of the absolute; for him, becoming seems to consist rather in the changes of an identical substratum or Logos: «all things are One and the One is all things»; «This cosmos is the same for everyone... because it always is and will be». Stoicism would be especially influenced by this vision of the world.

Friedrich Engels, who was associated with the Young Hegelians, also credited Heraclitus with inventing the dialectic, relevant to his own dialectical materialism. Vladimir Lenin himself reaffirmed this. Ferdinand Lasalle was also an influenced socialist by Heraclitus.

The existentialist philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote of him:

Beautiful, the Dark One, who laid down his thoughts in his writings and writings in the temple of Diana (for his thoughts had been his armor during his life and so he hung them before the goddess), Heráclito, the Dark One, said: "No one can cross the same river twice." Heracle, the Dark One, had a disciple who did not content himself with staying at this point of view; he went further and added: "...not even once." Poor Heracle, who had such a disciple! Heráclito's maxim became an elatic aphorism that denies the movement, however this disciple only wished to be a disciple of Heráclito..., and go beyond..., but in no way return to a position that already Heráclito had abandoned.

Søren Kierkegaard, Fear and trembling

Friedrich Nietzsche was deeply influenced by Heraclitus, as can be seen in his Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks. Nietzsche saw Heraclitus as a strong opposition to Anaximander's pessimism. Oswald Spengler was influenced by Nietzsche and also wrote a dissertation on Heraclitus.

Martin Heidegger was also influenced by Heraclitus, as seen in his Introduction to Metaphysics, and took a very different interpretation from Nietzsche and several others. According to Heidegger; "In Heraclitus, who is credited with the doctrine of becoming so diametrically opposed to Parmenides' doctrine of being, says the same thing as Parmenides." In the late 1960s, Heidegger had a famous seminar about the Greek philosopher together with Eugen Fink in Freiburg, considers that the concept of truth, understood as ἀλήθεια, or "not hidden" (in German Unverborgenheit) is a kind of paraphrase of the fragment of the text of Heraclitus n. 93 DK: "The lord, the oracle is in Delphi, he neither says nor hides, but indicates". For Heidegger, the philosophy of Heraclitus serves as confirmation of his position.Heidegger believed that the thought of Heraclitus (and Parmenides) was the origin of philosophy and was misunderstood by Plato and Aristotle, which led to the whole of western philosophy by bad way.

Analytic Philosophy

J. M. E. McTaggart's illustration of the A and B series of time has been seen as an analogous application to time of Heraclitus' and Parmenides' views of all reality, respectively. Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy of process was resembles fragments of Heraclitus. Karl Popper wrote extensively about Heraclitus; both Popper and Heraclitus believed in invisible processes at work.

Jungian Psychology

Carl Jung wrote that Heraclitus "discovered the most marvelous of all psychological laws: the regulating function of opposites [...] by which he meant that sooner or later everything meets its opposite". Jung adopted this law, called enantiodromia, in his analytical psychology.He related it to the Chinese classics, stating; & # 34; If the Western world had followed his example, we would all be Chinese in our point of view instead of Christians. We can think of Heraclitus as making the switch between East and West". Jung suggested that Heraclitus be called "the dark one" not because his style was too difficult, but "because he spoke too clearly"; about the paradoxical nature of existence & # 34; and he called life itself an eternal fire & # 34;.

Eponymy

• The lunar crater Heraclitus bears this name in his honor.
• Also, the asteroid (5204) Herakleitos commemorates the philosopher.