Heraclitus

Heraclitus of Ephesus (Ἡράκλειτος, Herakleitos; c. 535 BC – 475 BC) was a Greek philosopher, known for his doctrine of change being central to the universe, and for establishing the term Logos (λόγος) in Western philosophy as meaning both the source and fundamental order of the Cosmos.

Quotes

As quoted by Plato in Cratylus

τὰ ὄντα ἰέναι τε πάντα καὶ μένειν οὐδέν
- All entities move and nothing remains still.
- As quoted by Plato in Cratylus, 401d

πάντα χωρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει
- Everything changes and nothing stands still.
- As quoted by Plato in Cratylus, 402a
- Variants and variant translations:
  Everything flows and nothing stays.
  Everything flows and nothing abides.
  Everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.
  Everything flows; nothing remains.
  All is flux, nothing is stationary.
  All is flux, nothing stays still.
  All flows, nothing stays.
- Πάντα ῥεῖ
  - Everything flows.
    - This statement occurs in Simplicius' Commentary on Aristotle's Physics, 1313.11; while some sources attribute to Simplicius the coining of the specific phrase "πάντα ῥεῖ (panta rhei)", meaning "everything flows/is in a state of flux", to characterize the concept in the philosophy of Heraclitus, the essential phrasing "everything changes" and variations on it, in contexts where Heraclitus's thought is being alluded to, was current in both Plato and Aristotle's writings.

δὶς ἐς τὸν αὐτὸν ποταμὸν οὐκ ἂν ἐμβαίης.
- You could not step twice into the same river.
- As quoted in Plato, Cratylus, 402a

As quoted by Aristotle

See also: Aristotle#Parts of Animals (εἶναι γὰρ καὶ ἐνταῦθα θεούς)

χαλεπώτερον ἡδονῇ μάχεσθαι ἢ θυμῷ
- It is harder to fight against pleasure than against anger.
- As quoted by Aristotle in Nicomachean Ethics, Book II (1105a)

As quoted by others

τὴν μεταβολὴν ὁδὸν ἄνω κάτω, τόν τε κόσμον γίνεσθαι κατ' αὐτήν.
- Change he called a pathway up and down, and this determines the birth of the world.
- From Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes Laërtius, Book IX, section 8

αἰὼν παῖς ἐστι παίζων, πεσσεύων· παιδὸς ἡ βασιληίη.
- Eternity is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child.
- Quoted by Hippolytus, Refutation of all heresies, IX, 9, 4 (Fragment 52), as translated in Reality (1994), by Carl Avren Levenson and Jonathan Westphal, p. 10
- Variants:
1. The Cosmos is child's play: a child playing chess as King.
  - Using English idioms to parallel the original's wordplay.
2. History is a child building a sand-castle by the sea, and that child is the whole majesty of man’s power in the world.
  - A very free translation, as quoted in Contemporary Literature in Translation (1976), p. 21
3. A lifetime is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child.
  - As quoted in The Beginning of All Wisdom: Timeless Advice from the Ancient Greeks (2003) by Steven Stavropoulos, p. 95
4. Time is a game played beautifully by children.
  - A free translation, as quoted in Fragments (2001) translated by Brooks Haxton
5. Lifetime is a child at play, moving pieces in a game. Kingship belongs to the child.
  - As quoted in The Art and Thought of Heraclitus (1979) translated by Charles H. Kahn

χρὴ γὰρ εὖ μάλα πολλῶν ἴστορας φιλοσόφους ἄνδρας εἶναι
- Men that love wisdom must be acquainted with very many things indeed.
- As quoted Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, V, 140, 6 (Fragment 35)

Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς, καὶ τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἔδειξε τοὺς δὲ ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν δούλους ἐποίησε τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους.
1. War is the father and king of all: some he has made gods, and some men; some slaves and some free.
2. War is the father and king of all, and has produced some as gods and some as men, and has made some slaves and some free. (G. T. W. Patrick, 1889)
  - Hippolytus, Ref. haer. ix. 9 (Fragment 53). Context: "And that the father of all created things is created and uncreated, the made and the maker, we hear him (Heraclitus) saying, 'War is the father and king of all,' etc."
  - Plutarch, de Iside 48, p. 370. Context, see frag. 43.
  - Proclus in Tim. 54 A (comp. 24 B).
  - Compare Chrysippus from Philodem. P. eusebeias, vii. p. 81, Gomperz.
  - Lucianus, Quomodo hist. conscrib. 2; Idem, Icaromen 8.
3. See also: πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς
4. Martin Heidegger, Parmenides (1942–1943)
Τίς γὰρ αὐτῶν νόος ἢ φρήν; [δήμων] ἀοιδοῖσι ἕπονται καὶ διδασκάλῳ χρέωνται ὁμίλῳ, οὐκ εἰδότες ὅτι πολλοὶ κακοὶ ὀλίγοι δὲ ἀγαθοί. αἱρεῦνται γὰρ ἓν ἀντία πάντων οἱ ἄριστοι, κλέος ἀέναον θνητῶν, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ κεκόρηνται ὅκωσπερ κτήνεα.
1. The best people renounce all for one goal, the eternal fame of mortals; but most people stuff themselves like cattle.
2. For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all – immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle. (G.T.W. Patrick, 1889)
  "The passage is restored as above by Bernays (Heraclitea i. p. 34), and Bywater (p. 43), from the following sources:
  - Clement of Alex. Strom. v. 9, p. 682.
  - Proclus in Alcib. p. 255 Creuzer, = 525 ed. Cous. ii.
  - Clement of Alex. Strom. iv. 7, p. 586."

Ten thousand do not turn the scale against a single man of worth.
- in Eric Hoffer, Between the Devil and the Dragon (New York: 1982), p. 107

Greater fates gain greater rewards
- As quoted by The Fragments of the Work of Heraclitus of Ephesus on Nature; Translated from the Greek Text of Bywater, with an Introduction Historical and Critical, by G. T. W. Patrick. Page 108
- Alternative translation: Big results require big ambitions.
The many are mean; only the few are noble.
- in Eric Hoffer, Between the Devil and the Dragon (New York: 1982), p. 108

Numbered fragments

Different sources sometimes number many of these fragments of the expressions of Heraclitus differently.

You could not step twice into the same river; for other waters are ever flowing on to you.

τοῦ λόγου δ' ἐόντος ξυνοῦ ζώουσιν οἱ πολλοὶ ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες φρόνησιν
- Though wisdom is common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.
- Fragment 2, as quoted in Against the Mathematicians by Sextus Empiricus
- Variant translation: So we must follow the common, yet the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.

οὐ γὰρ φρονέουσι τοιαῦτα [οἱ] πολλοί, ὁκόσοι ἐγκυρεῦσιν, οὐδὲ μαθόντες γινώσκουσιν, ἑωυτοῖσι δὲ δοκέουσι.
- The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.
- Source: Clement, Stromates, II, 8, 1
- Fragment 5, as translated by G. W. T. Patrick

συνάψιες ὅλα καὶ οὐχ ὅλα, συμφερόμενον διαφερόμενον, συνᾷδον διᾷδον, καὶ ἐκ πάντων ἓν καὶ ἐξ ἑνὸς πάντα.
- Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.
- Fragment 10
- Variant translation: From out of all the many particulars comes oneness, and out of oneness come all the many particulars.

ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμϐαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ.
- Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers.
- Fragment 12

ἐὰν μὴ ἔλπηται ἀνέλπιστον, οὐκ ἐξευρήσει
- He who does not expect will not find out the unexpected, for it is trackless and unexplored.
- Fragment 18, as quoted in The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments (1981) edited by Charles H. Kahn, p. 105
- Variants:
- He who does not expect the unexpected will not find it out.
  - The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments (1981) edited by Charles H. Kahn, p. 129
- He who does not expect the unexpected will not find it, since it is trackless and unexplored.
  - As quoted in Helen by Euripides, edited by William Allan (2008), p. 278
- Unless you expect the unexpected, you will not find it, for it is hidden and thickly tangled.
  - Rendering ἐὰν μή "unless" is more English-friendly without being inaccurate. As for the last clause, the point is that you can neither find it nor navigate your way through it. The alpha-privatives suggest using similar metaphoric adjectives to keep the Greek 'feel.' (S. N. Jenks, 2014)

ἄνθρωπος ἐν εὐφρόνῃ φάος ἅπτεται ἑαυτῷ [ἀποθανὼν] ἀποσβεσθεὶς
- Man, like a light in the night, is kindled and put out.
- Fragment 26

κόσμον τόνδε, τὸν αὐτὸν ἁπάντων, οὔτε τις θεῶν οὐτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ' ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον, ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσβεννύμενον μέτρα
- 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.
- Fragment 30
- Variant translations:
  The world, an entity out of everything, was created by neither gods nor men, but was, is and will be eternally living fire, regularly becoming ignited and regularly becoming extinguished.
  This world . . . ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living Fire, in measures being kindled and in measure going out.
- That which always was,
  and is, and will be everlasting fire,
  the same for all, the cosmos,
  made neither by god nor man,
  replenishes in measure
  as it burns away.
  - Translated by Brooks Haxton

ἓν τὸ σοφὸν μοῦνον λέγεσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει Ζηνὸς ὄνομα
- The wise is one only. It is unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus.
- Fragment 32

πολυμαθίη νόον οὐ διδάσκει
- Much learning does not teach understanding.
- Fragment 40

μάχεσθαι χρὴ τὸν δῆμον ὑπὲρ τοῦ νόμου ὅκωσπερ τείχεος
- The people must fight for its law as for its walls.
- Fragment 44

B49a. potamois tois autois …
Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not. (Heraclitus Homericus)
- Fragment 49a.
- Translated by Daniel W. Graham, "Heraclitus", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2021 Edition), <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2021/entries/heraclitus/>.

οὐκ ἐμοῦ, ἀλλὰ τοῦ λόγου ἀκούσαντας ὁμολογεῖν σοφόν ἐστιν ἓν πάντα εἶναί
- It is wise to listen, not to me but to the Word, and to confess that all things are one.
- Fragment 50, as translated in the Loeb Classics edition
- Variant translations:
  Listening not to me but to reason, it is wise to agree that all is one.
  Listening not to me but to the Word it is wise to agree that all things are one.
  He who hears not me but the logos will say: All is one.
  It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Word, and to confess that all things are one.
- The word translated in these quotes and many others as "The Word" or "Reason", is the greek word λόγος (Logos).

ὁδὸς ἄνω κάτω μία καὶ ὡυτή
- The road up and the road down is one and the same.
- Fragment 60
- Variant translations:
  The road up and the road down are one and the same.
  The road uphill and the road downhill are one and the same.
  The way up and the way down are one and the same.

ὁ θεὸς ἡμέρη εὐφρόνη, χειμὼν θέρος, πόλεμος εἰρήνη, κόρος λιμός
- God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.
- Fragment 67

ταὐτό τ' ἔνι ζῶν καὶ τεθνηκὸς καὶ [τὸ] ἐγρηγορὸς καὶ καθεῦδον καὶ νέον καὶ γηραιόν
- And it is the same thing in us that is quick and dead, awake and asleep, young and old.
- Fragment 88

τοῖς ἐγρηγορόσιν ἕνα καὶ κοινὸν κόσμον εἶναι, τῶν δὲ κοιμωμένων ἕκαστον εἰς ἴδιον ἀποστρέφεσθαι
- The waking have one world in common; sleepers have each a private world of his own.
- Fragment 89
- Plutarch, Of Superstition

ποταμῷ γὰρ οὐκ ἔστιν ἐμβῆναι δὶς τῷ αὐτῷ
- You cannot step twice into the same river.
- Fragment 91
- Plutarch, On the EI at Delphi

Although the Law of Reason is common, the majority of people live as though they had an understanding of their own.
- Fragment 92, as translated by G.W.T. Patrick, trans. Note this is the same as Fragment 2.

Men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that administers the whole universe.
- Fragment 93
- Friedrich Nietzsche's translation: The law under which most of them ceaselessly have commerce they reject for themselves. (The Pre-Platonic Philosophers, Chapter 10)]

νέκυες γὰρ κοπρίων ἐκβλητότεροι
- Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung.
- Fragment 96

κύνες γὰρ καὶ βαΰζουσινὃν, ἂν μὴ γινώσκωσι.
- Dogs, also, bark at what they do not know.
- Fragment 97

ἀμαθίην κρύπτειν ἄμεινον
- It is better to conceal ignorance than to expose it.
- Fragment 109
- Variant translation: Hide our ignorance as we will, an evening of wine soon reveals it.

ἀνθρώποις γίνεσθαι ὁκόσα θέλουσιν οὐκ ἄμεινον
- It would not be better if things happened to people just as they wish.
- Fragment 110
- Variant translation: It would not be better if things happened to men just as they wish.

Τίς γὰρ αὐτῶν νόος ἢ φρήν; δήμων ἀοιδοῖσι ἕπονται καὶ διδασκάλῳ χρέωνται ὁμίλῳ, οὐκ εἰδότες ὅτι πολλοὶ κακοὶ ὀλίγοι δὲ ἀγαθοί. αἱρεῦνται γὰρ ἓν ἀντία πάντων οἱ ἄριστοι, κλέος ἀέναον θνητῶν, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ κεκόρηνται ὅκωσπερ κτήνεα.
- For what sense or understanding have they? They follow minstrels and take the multitude for a teacher, not knowing that many are bad and few good. For the best men choose one thing above all—immortal glory among mortals; but the masses stuff themselves like cattle.
- Fragment 111, as translated by G.W.T. Patrick

Speaking with sense we must fortify ourselves in the common sense of all, as a city is fortified by its law, and even more forcefully. For all human laws are nourished by the one divine law. For it prevails as far as it will and suffices for all and is superabundant.
- Fragment 114, as Translated by Daniel W. Graham

All human laws are nourished by one divine law.
- Fragment 114

ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων
- Character is destiny.
- Fragment 119
- Variant translations:
  Character is fate.
  Man's character is his fate.
  A man's character is his fate.
  A man's character is his guardian divinity.
  One's bearing shapes one's fate.

φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ
- Nature is wont to hide herself.
- Fragment 123

Disputed

Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.
- As translated by Philip Wheelwright in Heraclitus (1959)

Many statements paraphrase or extend upon his famous assertions that "everything changes" in ways which arguably diverge from valid translation, and yet have become widely attributed to Heraclitus:

Change is the only constant.

There is nothing permanent except change.

Misattributed

Of Every One-Hundred Men, Ten shouldn't even be there, Eighty are nothing but targets, Nine are real fighters... We are lucky to have them... They make the battle. Ah but the One, One of them is a Warrior... and He will bring the others back.
- Attributed to "Hericletus c. 500 B.C." [sic] in The Tactical Rifle (1999) by Gabriel Suarez; no earlier source has been found.

Quotes about Heraclitus

It was not Zeno, the founder of the Stoics, alone, who taught that the Universe evolves, and its primary substance is transformed from the state of fire into that of air, then into that of water, etc. Heraclitus of Ephesus maintained that the one principle that underlies all phenomena in Nature is fire. The intelligence that moves the Universe is fire, and fire is intelligence. And while Anaximenes said the same of air, and Thales of Miletus (600 years b.c.) of water, the Esoteric Doctrine reconciles all these philosophers, by showing that though each was right, the system of none was complete.
- H.P. Blavatsky, The Secret Doctrine, Vol. 1 of 4 (1888)

In... Heraclitus... Becoming occupies the foremost place. He regarded that which moves, the fire, as the basic element. The difficulty, to reconcile the... one fundamental principle with the infinite variety of phenomena, is solved... by recognizing... strife of... opposites is... a kind of harmony. ...[T]he world is ...one and many ..."the opposite tension" of ...opposites ...constitutes the unity of the One. He says: "...war is common to all and strife is justice ...all things come into being and pass away through strife." ...[T]hat infinite and eternal undifferentiated Being ...cannot ...explain the infinite variety of things. This leads to the antithesis of Being and Becoming and ...to the solution of Heraclitus ...change ...is the fundamental principle; the "imperishable change, that renovates the world," as the poets have called it. But ...change ...is not a material cause and therefore is represented ...by the fire ...both matter and a moving force. ...[P]hysics is ...extremely near to ...Heraclitus ...[i]f we replace ..."fire" by ..."energy" ...Energy is a substance, since its total ...does not change, and ...elementary particles can ...be made from this ...Energy may be called the fundamental cause for all change in the world. ...Energy is ...that which moves; it may be called the primary cause of all change, and ...can be transformed into matter or heat or light. The strife between opposites in the philosophy of Heraclitus can be found in the strife between two different forms of energy.
- Werner Heisenberg, Physics and Philosophy (1958) pp. 62-71.

[With Heraclitus] we see land; there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Lectures on the History of Philosophy (1892), trans. E. S. Haldane, p. 279

I walked on to the next corner, sat on a bench at a bus stop, and read in my new book about Heraclitus. All things flow like a river, he said; nothing abides. Parmenides, on the other hand, believed that nothing ever changed, it only seemed so. Both views appealed to me.
- Ross Macdonald, The Chill (1963), Vintage Crime/Black Lizard edition, pp. 209-210.

In other countries, too, the idea of a creation was sternly rejected, as, for instance, by Heraclitus, who declares that no god and no man made this world, but that it was always and is and will be, an eternal fire, assuming forms and destroying them. And this protest, it should be remembered, came from a man who was able to say with equal honesty that 'God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger—and that he is called according to the pleasure of every one.'
- Max Müller, Natural Religion (1892) p. 253.

Herakleitos, about 460 B.C., one of the boldest thinkers of ancient Greece, declared that Homer deserved to be ejected from public assemblies and flogged...
- Max Müller, Introduction to the Science of Religion (1873) p. 343.

If the flow is steady, the field velocity vectors and the system of streamlines remain unaffected by the progress of time. Looking at the vector field and its streamlines we do not notice any change. Yet if we could distinguish the different particles of fluid from each other, we could observe incessant change...
We have here two aspects of a steady flow, one of unchanging persistence, the other of incessant change. ...Heraclitus was called the "Dark Philosopher"; his views of human affairs were sombre and his sayings obscure. ...
"You cannot look twice at the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in."
"We look and do not look at the same rivers; we are, and we are not."
What is the intended meaning of these sentences? I do not venture to find out. Yet I think that the originator of these senteces came pretty close to formulating the concept "steady flow of a fluid."
- George Pólya, Mathematical Methods in Science (1977)

When... Heraclitus names the world an ever-living fire that... extinguishes itself and again kindles itself, when... all is exchanged for fire and fire for all... he can only understand by this that fire, this restless, all-consuming, all-transmuting, and equally (in heat) all-vivifying element, represents the constant force of this eternal alteration and transformation, the notion of life, in the most vivid and energetic manner. ...the means of which the power of motion that is precedent to all matter avails itself for the production of the living process of things. Heraclitus... explains the multiplicity of things... [fire] condenses itself into material elements, first air, then water, then earth. ...These two processes of extinction and ignition... alternate... in perpetual rotation with each other and... in stated periods the world resolves itself into the primal fire, in order to re-create itself out of it again. ...[F]ire is to him... the principle of movement, of physical as of spiritual vitality; the soul itself is a fiery vapour; its power and perfection depend on its being pure from all grosser and duller elements.
- Albert Schwegler, Handbook of the History of Philosophy (1868) pp. 21-22.

The part I understand is excellent, and so too is, I dare say, the part I do not understand; but it needs a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it.
- Socrates, when asked his opinion of Heraclitus's treatise, as quoted in Diogenes Laërtius's Lives of Eminent Philosophers (ed. R. D. Hicks), Book II, Ch. 5, sec. 22.

I cannot approve of Heraclitus, who, being self-taught and arrogant, said, "I have explored myself." Nor can I praise him for hiding his poem in the temple of Artemis, in order that it might be published afterwards as a mystery; and those who take an interest in such things say that Euripides the tragic poet came there and read it, and, gradually learning it by heart, carefully handed down to posterity this darkness of Heraclitus.
- Tatian, Address to the Greek P. 7 Pratten translation

If neither sub-atomic particles nor organic species exemplify the 'permanent entities' of Greek metaphysics, what else in the real world does so? ...Two hundred years of historical research have had their effect. Whether we turn to social or intellectual history, evolutionary zoology, historical geology or astronomy—whether we consider explanatory theories or star-clusters, societies or cultures, languages or disciplines, organic species or the Earth itself—the verdict is not Parmenidean but Heraclitean. As we now understand it, nothing in the empirical world possesses the permanent unchanging identity which all Greek natural philosophers (the Epicureans apart) presupposed in the ultimate elements of Nature. So, if we... are to entertain metaphysical thoughts about the nature of things-in-general consistent with the rest of our late-twentieth-century ideas, we must explore the consequences of the modern, post-Darwinian or 'populational' approach, as applied not just to species, but to historical entities of all kinds. Confronted with the question, 'How do permanent entities preserve their identity through all their apparent changes?', we must simply deny the validity of the question itself. In its place, we must substitute the question, 'How do historical entities maintain their coherence and continuity, despite all the real changes they undergo?'
- Stephen Toulmin, Human Understanding (1972) Vol. 1 The Collective Use and Evolution of Concepts.

Early Greek Philosophy (1908)

by John Burnet Quotes are from 2nd edition, Ch. III. Herakleitos of Ephesos pp. 143-191.

[L]ikely he was not a disciple of any one; but... he was acquainted both with the Milesian cosmology and with the poems of Xenophanes. He... knew something of the theories taught by Pythagoras (fr. 17).

[P]erhaps... he belonged to the ancient royal house and resigned the nominal position of Basileus in favour of his brother.
- Footnote: Diog. ix. 6 (R. P. 31).

We do not know the title of the work of Herakleitos... We are told that it was divided into three discourses: one dealing with the universe, one political, and one theological. It is not likely that this division is due to Herakleitos... The style... is... obscure, and... later... got him the nickname... "the Dark."

[F]ragments about the Delphic god and the Sibyl (frs. 11 and 12) seem to show... an oracular style... [I]t was the manner of the time. The stirring events of the age, and... religious revival, gave... a prophetic tone to all the leaders of thought. Pindar and Aischylos have it too. They all feel... inspired. It is also the age of... individualities... apt to be solitary and disdainful. Herakleitos... [writes] If men cared to dig for the gold they might find it (fr. 8); if not, they must be content with straw (fr. 51).

Theophrastos... said... the headstrong temperament of Herakleitos sometimes led him into incompleteness and inconsistencies of statement. ...[A] very different thing from studied obscurity and the disciplina arcana sometimes attributed to him; if Herakleitos does not go out of his way to make his meaning clear, neither does he hide it (fr. 11).

[S]ome... fragments are far from clear, and there are probably not a few of which the meaning will never be recovered. ...[T]he doxographers... are far less instructive with... Herakleitos... [T]he two accounts of... Herakleitos... in Diogenes, which goes back to the Vetusta Placita... is... pretty full and accurate. All our other sources are... tainted.

Most... commentators on Herakleitos... in Diogenes were Stoics, and... their paraphrases were sometimes taken for the original. ...Stoics ...sought to interpret him ...in accordance with their ...system. ...[T]hey were fond of "accommodating"... views... to their own...

Herakleitos looks down not only on the mass of men, but on all previous inquirers into nature.

[H]e believed himself to have attained insight into... truth... not hitherto... recognised, though... staring men in the face (fr. 93). ...[W]e must ...find out what he was thinking ...when he launched into ...denunciations of human dulness and ignorance. The answer... in ...fragments, 18 and 45 ... the many apparently independent and conflicting things we know are really one, and ...this one is also many. The "strife of opposites" is really an "attunement" ...[W]isdom is not a knowledge of many things, but the perception of the underlying unity of the warring opposites.

Philo... says: "For that which is made up of both the opposites is one; and, when the one is divided, the opposites are disclosed. Is not this... what the Greeks say their great and much belauded Herakleitos put in the forefront of his philosophy as summing it all up, and boasted of as a new discovery?"

Anaximander had taught... the opposites were separated... from the Boundless, but passed away into it once more... paying the penalty for... unjust encroachments on one another. It is... implied... there is something wrong in the war of opposites, and... existence of the Many is a breach in the unity of the One. ...Herakleitos proclaimed ...there is no One without the Many, and no Many without the One. The world is at once one and many, and ...the "opposite tension" of the Many ...constitutes the unity of the One.

[In] Plato.., the Sophist (242 d), the Eleatic stranger, after explaining how the Eleatics maintained that what we call many is really one, proceeds:—
But certain Ionian and (at a later date) certain Sicilian Muses remarked that it was safest to unite these two things, and to say that reality is both many and one, and is kept together by Hate and Love. "For," say the more severe Muses, "in its division it is always being brought together" (cf. fr. 59); while the softer Muses relaxed the requirement that this should always be so, and said that the All was alternately one and at peace through the power of Aphrodite, and many and at war with itself because of something they called Strife.
...the Ionian Muses stand ...for Herakleitos, and the Sicilian for Empedokles.

[T]he differentiation of the one into many, and the integration of the many into one, are both eternal and simultaneous, and... this is the ground upon which... Herakleitos is contrasted with... Empedokles. ...[A]ccording to Plato, Herakleitos taught that reality was at once many and one.

We must be careful... not to imagine that Herakleitos thus discovered... a logical principle. The identity in and through difference... was purely physical; logic did not yet exist, and... the principle of identity had not been formulated, it would have been impossible to protest against an abstract application of it.

The identity ...as consisting in difference is simply that of the primary substance in all its manifestations.

This identity had been realised... by the Milesians, but they... found a difficulty in the difference. Anaximander had treated the strife of opposites as an "injustice," and... Herakleitos set himself to show... it was the highest justice (fr, 62).

[T]his made it necessary for him to seek... a new primary substance... not merely... out of which the diversified world... might... be made, or from which opposites could be "separated out," but... which of its own nature would pass into everything else, while everything else would pass in turn into it. This he found in Fire...

The quantity of fire in a flame... appears to remain the same, the flame seems to be... a "thing"... yet the substance... is continually changing. ...[P]assing away in smoke ...its place ...always being taken by fresh ...fuel that feeds it. ...If we regard the world as an "ever-living fire" (fr. 20), we can understand ...it ...always becoming all things, while all things are always returning to it.

This necessarily brings... a certain way of looking at the change and movement of the world. ...It follows that ...reality is like an ever-flowing stream ...nothing is ever at rest ...The substance of ...things ...is in constant change.

This theory is usually summed up... "All things are flowing"... though... it cannot be proved that this is a quotation from Herakleitos.

Plato... expresses the idea... clearly. "Nothing ever is, everything is becoming"; "All things are in motion like streams"; "All things are passing, and nothing abides"; "Herakleitos says somewhere that all things pass and naught abides; and, comparing things to the current of a river, he says that you cannot step twice into the same stream". (cf. fr. 41)—these are the terms in which he describes the system.

Aristotle says the same... "All things are in motion," "nothing steadfastly is."

Herakleitos held..., that any... thing, however stable in appearance, was merely a section in the stream, and... the matter composing it was never the same in any two consecutive moments... [T]he idea was not... novel, and... hardly the central point in the system of Herakleitos.

The Milesians held a similar view. The flux of Herakleitos was at most more unceasing and universal.

In the fragments... we find nothing about rarefaction and condensation. The expression used is "exchange" (fr. 22)... a very good name for... when fire gives out smoke and takes in fuel...

[O]ur best account of the Theophrastean doxography of Herakleitos is the fuller of the two accounts... in Laertios Diogenes... as follows:—
...He held that Fire was the element, and that all things were an exchange for fire, produced by condensation and rarefaction. But he explains nothing clearly. All things were produced in opposition, and all things were in flux like a river.
The all is finite and the world is one. It arises from fire, and is consumed again by fire alternately through all eternity in... cycles. This happens according to fate. That which leads to the becoming of the opposites is called War and Strife; that which leads to the final conflagration is Concord and Peace.
He called change the upward and the downward path, and held that the world comes into being in virtue of this. When fire is condensed it becomes moist, and when compressed it turns to water; water being congealed turns to earth, and this he calls the downward path. And, again, the earth is in turn liquefied, and from it water arises, and from that everything else; for he refers almost everything to the evaporation from the sea. This is the path upwards. R. P. 36
He held, too, that exhalations arose both from the sea and the land; some bright and pure, others dark. Fire was nourished by the bright ones, and moisture by the others.
He does not make it clear what is the nature of that which surrounds the world. He held, however, that there were bowls in it with the concave sides turned towards us, in which the bright exhalations were collected and produced flames. These were the heavenly bodies.
The flame of the sun was the brightest and warmest; for the other heavenly bodies were more distant from the earth; and for that reason gave less light and heat. The moon, on the other hand, was nearer the earth; but it moved through an impure region. The sun moved in a bright and unmixed region, and at the same time was at just the right distance from us. That is why it gives more heat and light. The eclipses of the sun and moon were due to the turning of the bowls upwards, while the monthly phases of the moon were produced by a gradual turning of its bowl.
Day and night, months and seasons and years, rains and winds, and things like these, were due to the different exhalations. The bright exhalation, when ignited in the circle of the sun, produced day, and the preponderance of the opposite exhalations produced night. The increase of warmth proceeding from the bright exhalation produced summer, and the preponderance of moisture from the dark exhalation produced winter. He assigns the causes of other things in conformity with this.
As to the earth, he makes no clear statement about its nature, any more than he does about that of the bowls. These, then, were his opinions. R. P. 39 b.

How is it that, in spite of this constant flux, things appear relatively stable? ...[I]t is owing to the observance of the "measures," in virtue of which the aggregate bulk of each form of matter in the long run remains the same, though its substance is constantly changing, Certain "measures" of the "ever-living fire" are always being kindled, while like "measures" are always going out (fr. 20)...

Αll things are "exchanged" for fire and fire for all things (fr. 22), and this implies that for everything it takes, fire will give as much. “The sun will not exceed his measures” (fr. 29).

Herakleitos... explained the world by man rather than man by the world. ...Aristotle implies that soul is identical with the dry exhalation, and this is ...confirmed by the fragments. Man is made... of... fire, water, and earth. But, just as in the macrocosm fire is... the one wisdom, so in the microcosm... fire alone is conscious. When it has left the body..., the mere earth and water, is... worthless (fr. 85).

[T]he fire which animates man is subject to the "upward and downward path," just as much as the fire of the world. ..."All things are passing, both human and divine, upwards and downwards by exchanges."

We are just as much in perpetual flux as anything else in the world. We are and are not the same for two consecutive instants (fr. 81). The fire in us is perpetually becoming water, and the water earth; but, as the opposite process goes on simultaneously, we appear to remain the same.

Man is subject to... oscillation in his "measures" of fire and water... [T]his gives rise to the alternations of sleeping and waking, life and death.

The locus classicus on this... is... Sextus Empiricus, which reproduces the account of the Herakleitean psychology given by Ainesidemos... (R. P. 41):—
The natural philosopher is of opinion that what surrounds us is rational and endowed with consciousness. According to Herakleitos, when we draw in this divine reason by... respiration, we become rational. In sleep we forget, but at our waking we become conscious once more. For in sleep... the mind... is cut off from... that which surrounds us, and only our connexion... by... respiration is preserved as a... root (from which the rest may spring again); and, when... thus separated, it loses the power of memory... When we awake again... it looks out through the openings of the senses, as if through windows, and coming together with the surrounding mind, it assumes the power of reason. Just... as embers... brought near the the fire, change and become red-hot, and go out when they are taken away... so does the portion of... mind... become irrational when... cut off, and... become of like nature to the whole... through the greatest number of openings.
In this passage there is... a... large admixture of later... ideas. In particular... identification of "that which surrounds us" with the air... for Herakleitos can have known nothing of air, which in his day was regarded as a form of water... The reference to the pores or openings of the senses is probably foreign... for the theory of pores is due to Alkmaion. ...[T]he distinction between mind and body is far too sharply drawn. ...[T]he important rôle assigned to respiration may very well be Herakleitean; for we ... met with it ...in Anaximenes. ...[T]he striking simile of the embers which glow when ...near the fire is genuine (cf. fr. 77).

The true Herakleitean doctrine doubtless was, that sleep was produced by the encroachment of moist, dark exhalations from the water in the body, which cause the fire to, burn low. In sleep, we lose contact with the fire in the world which is common to all, and retire to a world of our own (fr. 95). In a soul where the fire and water are evenly balanced, the equilibrium is restored in the morning by an equal advance of the bright exhalation.

[I]n no soul are the fire and water... evenly balanced for long. One... acquires predominance, and the result... is death.

It is death... to souls to become water (fr. 68); but that is... what happens to souls which seek after pleasure... a moistening of the soul (fr. 72), as... in... the drunken man, who... has moistened his soul to... an extent that he does not know where he is going (fr. 73). Even in gentle relaxation over our cups, it is... difficult to hide folly... (fr. 108).

That is why it is... necessary... to quench wantonness (fr. 103); for whatever our heart’s desire insists on it purchases at the price of life... [i.e.,] the fire within us (fr. 105).

The dry soul, that which has least moisture, is... best (fr. 74); but... preponderance of fire causes... a... different death... and wins "greater portions"... (fr. 101). ...[T]hose who fall in battle share their lot (fr. 102).

Those who die the fiery... death, become... gods... in a different sense from that in which the one Wisdom is god. It is probable that the corrupt fragment 123 refers to this unexpected fate (fr. 122)...

[A]s summer and winter are one, and... reproduce one another by their "opposite tension," so do life and death... and so... youth and age (fr. 78).

[T]he soul will be now living and now dead... it will only turn to fire or water... to recommence... its unceasing upward and downward path.

The soul that has died from excess of moisture sinks down to earth; but from the earth comes water, and from water is once more exhaled a soul (fr. 68).

So, too... (fr. 67)... gods and men are... one. They live each others' life, and die each others' death. Those mortals that die the fiery death become immortal... [i.e.,] the guardians of the quick and the dead (fr. 123); and those immortals become mortal in their turn.

Everything is... the death of something else (fr. 64).

The living and the dead are always changing places (fr. 78)... not only to the souls that have become water, but to those that have become fire and are now guardian spirits.

[R]eal weariness is continuance in the same state (fr. 82), and... real rest, is change (fr. 83). Rest in any other sense is... dissolution (fr. 84). So they too are born once more.

Plato’s contrast between Herakleitos and Empedokles ...is ...that, while Herakleitos said the One was always many, and the Many always one, Empedokles said the All was many and one by turns.

[T]he absence of anything to show that Herakleitos spoke of a general conflagration... becomes more patent when we turn to the few fragments which are supposed to prove it. The favourite is fr. 24, where... Fire was Want and Surfeit. [I]t has a perfectly intelligible meaning on our interpretation... confirmed by fr. 36. [I]t seems... artificial to understand the Surfeit as referring to the fact that fire has burnt everything else up, and... more so to interpret Want as meaning... fire... has turned into a world. The next is fr. 26 where... fire... will judge and convict all things. There is nothing... to suggest... fire will judge... at once rather than in turn, and... the advance of fire and water... we have seen... is... limited... These appear to be the only passages... the Stoics and the Christian apologists could discover, and... cannot bear the weight of their conclusion... [T]here was certainly nothing more definite to be found.

It is much easier to find fragments which are on the face of them inconsistent with a general conflagration.

[W]hen anything becomes fire, something... equal... must cease to be fire, if the "exchange" is... just... and... we are assured by... the Erinyes (fr. 29)... that the sun does not take more than he gives. Of course there is... variation; but... strictly confined within limits, and is compensated in the long run by a variation in the other direction.

[In] fr. 43... Herakleitos blames Homer for desiring the cessation of strife... The cessation of strife would mean that all things should take the upward or downward path... and cease to “run in opposite directions” If they all took the upward path, we should have a general conflagration.

[I]n fr. 20 it is this world, and not merely the "ever-living fire," which is... eternal; and... its eternity depends upon... always kindling and always going out in the same "measures"... [i.e.,] encroachment in one direction is compensated by... encroachment in the other.

[M]an, like the heavenly bodies, oscillates between fire and water; and that is... what Herakleitos taught.

[N]either fire nor water can prevail completely... The whole process depends... on the fact that Surfeit is... Want... [i.e.,] an advance of fire increases the moist exhalation, while an advance of water deprives the fire of the power to cause evaporation. The conflagration... would destroy the opposite tension on which the rise of a new world depends, and... motion would become impossible.

We know from Philo that Herakleitos supported his theory of the attainment of harmony through strife... There is... agreement between a passage of this kind in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise... The Kosmos, and the Hippokratean work... [B]oth drew from... Herakleitos... made practically certain by the fact that this agreement extends... to the Letters of Herakleitos, which, though spurious, were... composed by some one who had access to the original work.

The argument was that men... act just in the same way as Nature, and it is therefore surprising that they do not recognise the laws by which she works.

The painter produces his harmonious effects by the contrast of colours, the musician by that of high and low notes. "If one were to make all things alike, there would be no delight in them." There are many similar examples in the Hippokratean tract, some... come from Herakleitos; but it is not easy to separate them...

[A] number of Herakleitean fragments... form a class by themselves, and are among the most striking... Their common characteristic... they assert... the identity of... things... usually regarded as opposites.

Herakleitos meant to say, not that day was night or that night was day, but that they were two sides of the same process, namely, the oscillation of the "measures" of fire and water, and... neither would be possible without the other.

Any explanation... of night will... be an explanation of day, and vice versa; for it will be an account of that which is common... manifests itself now as one and now as the other. ...[B]ecause it has manifested... in the one form... it must next appear in the other... [as] required by the law of compensation or Justice.

This is only a particular application of the universal principle that the primary fire is one even in its division. It itself is, even in its unity, both surfeit and want, war and peace (fr. 36).

[T]he "satiety" which makes fire pass into other forms, which makes it seek "rest in change" (frs. 82, 83), and "hide itself" (fr. 10) in the "hidden attunement" of opposition, is only one side of the process. The other is the "want" which leads it to consume the bright vapour as fuel. The upward path is nothing without the downward (fr. 69). If either were to cease, the other would cease... and the world would disappear; for it takes both to make... stable reality.

All other utterances of the kind are to be explained in the same way.

If there were no cold, there would be no heat; for a thing can only grow warm if... it is already cold.

[T]he same thing applies to the opposition of wet and dry (fr. 39).

These... are... the two primary oppositions of Anaximander, and Herakleitos is showing that the war... is really peace, for it is the common element in them (fr. 62) which appears as strife, and that... strife is justice, and not, as Anaximander had taught, an injustice... they commit one against the other, and which must be expiated by a reabsorption of both in their common ground.

The strife itself is the common ground (fr. 62), and is eternal.

The most startling of these sayings is that which affirms that good and evil are the same (fr. 57). This does not mean in the least... that good is evil or that evil is good, but... that they are the two inseparable halves of one and the same thing.

A thing can become good only in so far as it is already evil, and evil only in so far as it is already good... everything depends on the contrast.

Herakleitos is not a believer in absolute relativity. The process of the world is not merely a circle, but an "upward and downward path."

At the upper end, where the two paths meet, we have the pure fire, in which, as there is no separation, there is no relativity.

[W]hile to man some things are evil and some things are good, all things are good to God (fr.61). ...[B]y God ...Herakleitos meant fire. He also calls it the "one wise," and perhaps said... it "knows all things." ...[H]e meant to say ...in it the opposition and relativity which are universal in the world disappear. ...[T]o this ...frs. 96, 97, and 98 refer.

Herakleitos speaks of "wisdom" or the "wise" in two senses. ...[H]e said wisdom was "something apart from everything else" (fr. 18), meaning ...the perception of the unity of the many ...[H]e also applies the term to that unity... regarded as the "thought that directs the course of all things." This is synonymous with the pure fire which is not differentiated into two parts, one taking the upward and the other the downward path. That alone has wisdom; the partial things we see have not. We ourselves are only wise in so far as we are fiery (fr. 74).

With... reservations, Herakleitos was prepared to call the one Wisdom by the name of Zeus. Such... appears to be the meaning of fr. 65. It is not... to be pictured in the form of a man. In saying this, Herakleitos would only have been repeating... Anaximander and Xenophanes. He agrees further with Xenophanes in holding that this "god"... is one; but his polemic against popular religion was directed... against the rites and ceremonies... [rather] than their mere mythological outgrowth.

He gives a list (fr. 124) of some of the most characteristic religious figures of his time, and... threatened them with the wrath to come.

He comments upon the absurdity of praying to images (fr. 126), and... that blood-guiltiness can be washed out by the shedding of blood (fr. 130).

He seems also to have said that it was absurd to celebrate the worship of Dionysos by cheerful and licentious ceremonies, while Hades was propitiated by gloomy rites (fr. 127). According to the mystic doctrine itself, the two were really one; and the one Wisdom ought to be worshipped in its integrity.

The few fragments which deal with theology and religion hardly suggest to us that Herakleitos was in sympathy with the religious revival of the time, and yet we have been asked to consider his system "in the light of the idea of the mysteries."
- Footnote: E. Pfleiderer, Die Philosophie des Heraklit von Ephesus im Lichte der Mysterienidee (1886).

The moral teaching of Herakleitos has sometimes been regarded as an anticipation of the "commonsense" theory of Ethics.
- Footnote:Kostlin, Gesch. d. Ethik, i. pp. 160 sqq.

The "common" upon which Herakleitos insists is... very different from common sense, for which... he had the greatest... contempt (fr. 111). It is... his strongest objection to "the many," that they live each in his own world (fr. 95), as if they had a private wisdom of their own (fr. 92); and public opinion is therefore... opposite of "the common."

The Ethics of Herakleitos are to be regarded as a corollary of his anthropological and cosmological views. Their chief requirement... keep our souls dry, and thus assimilate them to the one Wisdom... fire. That is what is... "common," and the greatest fault is to act like men asleep (fr. 94)... by letting our souls grow moist, to cut ourselves off from the fire in the world.

The wise man would not try to secure good without its correlative evil. He would not seek for rest without exertion, nor expect to enjoy contentment without first suffering discontent. He would not complain that he had to take the bad with the good, but would consistently look at things as a whole.

Herakleitos prepared the way for the Stoic world-state by comparing "the common" to the laws of a city. And these are... more than a type of the divine law: they are imperfect embodiments of it. They cannot... exhaust it altogether; for in all human affairs there is an element of relativity (fr. 91). "Man is a baby compared to God" (fr. 97). Such as they are, however, the city must fight for them as for its walls; and, if it has the good fortune to possess a citizen with a dry soul, he is worth ten thousand (fr. 113); for in him alone is "the common" embodied.

External links

Wikipedia

Wikipedia has an article about:

Heraclitus

Wikisource

Wikisource has original text related to:

Fragments of Heraclitus

Commons

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: