Heraclitus

c. 540 - c. 480 BCE · Greek (Ephesian) · Presocratic metaphysics

We step and we do not step into the same rivers, we are and we are not.

At the end of the sixth century BCE, an aristocrat from Ephesus renounced his hereditary title, withdrew from civic life, and deposited a book in the temple of Artemis — deliberately obscure, contemptuous of polymaths and sleepwalkers. Roughly 125 fragments survive in quotations by Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, and later Christian writers.

Topics Heraclitus addresses

• the logos
• all things are one
• the unity of opposites
• the everliving fire
• fire kindled in measures and going out in measures
• the hidden harmony
• the bow and the lyre
• the way up and the way down
• the river fragments
• panta rhei and universal flux
• elemental transformations
• the ungenerated and indestructible kosmos
• polemos as father of all
• the depth of the psyche
• the dry soul
• ethos anthropoi daimon
• nature loves to hide
• the Delphic oracle that gives a sign
• sleep and waking
• eyes and ears as witnesses
• polymathie does not teach insight
• the wise one
• mortal-immortal exchange
• stability through change

Questions to put to Heraclitus

The Logos and the Common

• What do you mean by the logos?
• Why do most people fail to comprehend the logos even when they've heard it?
• What does it mean that the logos is common?
• How is your own discourse related to the logos you're describing?
• Why should I listen to the logos rather than to you?

Fire, Flux, and the Everliving Cosmos

• What do you mean when you say the cosmos is an everliving fire?
• Is fire the basic substance everything is made from?
• Can I step into the same river twice?
• Did Plato get your view of flux wrong?
• How can the cosmos be ungenerated and indestructible?

The Unity of Opposites

• What do you mean that the way up and the way down are one and the same?
• How does the bow and the lyre illustrate your teaching?
• Why is the hidden harmony better than the open one?
• Are you saying opposites are actually identical to each other?
• What does it mean that war is the father of all things?

The Soul and Self-Knowledge

• What did you find when you went in search of yourself?
• Why is the dry soul wisest and best?
• What do you mean that the soul has limits you cannot find?
• How does character relate to fate?
• Why are eyes and ears bad witnesses for those with barbarian souls?

Nature, Wisdom, and the Obscure

• What do you mean that nature loves to hide?
• Why do you speak in riddles and paradoxes?
• How is the Delphic oracle a model for your own discourse?
• Why doesn't much-learning teach insight?
• What's your criticism of Homer, Hesiod, and Pythagoras?

Converse with Heraclitus on Simposeum. Replies are grounded in the surviving fragments and reports of Heraclitus, cited to the page.