Quote by Heraclitus ~ Impulse

It is hard to fight against impulse; whatever it wants it buys at the expense of soul.

~ Heraclitus

 

 

 

 

Source:

http://www.swarthmore.edu/classics/heraclitus-and-divine

Quote by Heraclitus ~ Nous

  Polymathia does not teach one to have nous, else it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, and also Xenophanes and Hecataeus.

~ Hercalitus



Source:

http://www.philosophy.gr/presocratics/heraclitus.htm

What Socrates wrote in regard to reading Heraclitus

...the concepts I understand are great, but I believe that the concepts I cant understand are great too. However, the reader needs to be an excellent swimmer like those from Dilos, so not to be drown from his book.

~ Socrates

source:

http://www.philosophy.gr/presocratics/heraclitus.htm

In studying Heraclitus, we need to go deeper. He was referred by others as the "dark" philosopher. We are to understand here that dark must mean mysterious or mystical and not dark as in evil.

Heraclitus (fl. c. 500 B.C.E.)

A Greek philosopher of the late 6th century BCE, Heraclitus criticizes his predecessors and contemporaries for their failure to see the unity in experience. He claims to announce an everlasting Word (Logos) according to which all things are one, in some sense. Opposites are necessary for life, but they are unified in a system of balanced exchanges. The world itself consists of a law-like interchange of elements, symbolized by fire. Thus the world is not to be identified with any particular substance, but rather with an ongoing process governed by a law of change. The underlying law of nature also manifests itself as a moral law for human beings. Heraclitus is the first Western philosopher to go beyond physical theory in search of metaphysical foundations and moral applications.

Table of Contents

1. Life and Times
2. Theory of Knowledge
3. The Doctrine of Flux and the Unity of Opposites
4. Criticism of Ionian Philosophy
5. Physical Theory
6. Moral and Political Theory
7. Accomplishments and Influence
8. References and Further Reading

1. Life and Times

Heraclitus lived in Ephesus, an important city on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, not far from Miletus, the birthplace of philosophy. We know nothing about his life other than what can be gleaned from his own statements, for all ancient biographies of him consist of nothing more than inferences or imaginary constructions based on his sayings. Although Plato thought he wrote after Parmenides, it is more likely he wrote before Parmenides. For he criticizes by name important thinkers and writers with whom he disagrees, and he does not mention Parmenides. On the other hand, Parmenides in his poem arguably echoes the words of Heraclitus.  Heraclitus criticizes the mythographers Homer and Hesiod, as well as the philosophers Pythagoras and Xenophanes and the historian Hecataeus. All of these figures flourished in the 6th century BCE or earlier, suggesting a date for Heraclitus in the late 6th century. Although he does not speak in detail of his political views in the extant fragments, Heraclitus seems to reflect an aristocratic disdain for the masses and favor the rule of a few wise men, for instance when he recommends that his fellow-citizens hang themselves because they have banished their most prominent leader (DK22B121 in the Diels-Kranz collection of Presocratic sources).

2. Theory of Knowledge

Heraclitus sees the great majority of human beings as lacking understanding:

Of this Word's being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Word they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and declare how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep. (DK22B1)

Most people sleep-walk through life, not understanding what is going on about them. Yet experience of words and deeds can enlighten those who are receptive to their meaning. (The opening sentence is ambiguous: does the 'forever' go with the preceding or the following words? Heraclitus prefigures the semantic complexity of his message.)
On the one hand, Heraclitus commends sense experience: "The things of which there is sight, hearing, experience, I prefer" (DK22B55). On the other hand, "Poor witnesses for men are their eyes and ears if they have barbarian souls" (DK22B107). A barbarian is one who does not speak the Greek language. Thus while sense experience seems necessary for understanding, if we do not know the right language, we cannot interpret the information the senses provide. Heraclitus does not give a detailed and systematic account of the respective roles of experience and reason in knowledge. But we can learn something from his manner of expression.
Describing the practice of religious prophets, Heraclitus says, "The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign" (DK22B93). Similarly, Heraclitus does not reveal or conceal, but produces complex expressions that have encoded in them multiple messages for those who can interpret them. He uses puns, paradoxes, antitheses, parallels, and various rhetorical and literary devices to construct expressions that have meanings beyond the obvious. This practice, together with his emphasis on the Word (Logos) as an ordering principle of the world, suggests that he sees his own expressions as imitations of the world with its structural and semantic complexity. To read Heraclitus the reader must solve verbal puzzles, and to learn to solve these puzzles is to learn to read the signs of the world. Heraclitus stresses the inductive rather than the deductive method of grasping the world, a world that is rationally structured, if we can but discern its shape.
For those who can discern it, the Word has an overriding message to impart: "Listening not to me but to the Word it is wise to agree that all things are one" (DK22B50). It is perhaps Heraclitus's chief project to explain in what sense all things are one.

3. The Doctrine of Flux and the Unity of Opposites

According to both Plato and Aristotle, Heraclitus held extreme views that led to logical incoherence. For he held that (1) everything is constantly changing and (2) opposite things are identical, so that (3) everything is and is not at the same time. In other words, Universal Flux and the Identity of Opposites entail a denial of the Law of Non-Contradiction. Plato indicates the source of the flux doctrine: "Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things go and nothing stays, and comparing existents to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river" (Cratylus 402a = DK22A6).
What Heraclitus actually says is the following:

On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow. (DK22B12)

There is an antithesis between 'same' and 'other.' The sentence says that different waters flow in rivers staying the same. In other words, though the waters are always changing, the rivers stay the same. Indeed, it must be precisely because the waters are always changing that there are rivers at all, rather than lakes or ponds. The message is that rivers can stay the same over time even though, or indeed because, the waters change. The point, then, is not that everything is changing, but that the fact that some things change makes possible the continued existence of other things. Perhaps more generally, the change in elements or constituents supports the constancy of higher-level structures.As for the alleged doctrine of the Identity of Opposites, Heraclitus does believe in some kind of unity of opposites. For instance, "God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger . . ." (DK22B67). But if we look closer, we see that the unity in question is not identity:

As the same thing in us is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and conversely those having changed around are these. (DK22B88)

The second sentence in B88 gives the explanation for the first. If F is the same as G because F turns into G, then the two are not identical. And Heraclitus insists on the common-sense truth of change: "Cold things warm up, the hot cools off, wet becomes dry, dry becomes wet" (DK22B126). This sort of mutual change presupposes the non-identity of the terms. What Heraclitus wishes to maintain is not the identity of opposites but the fact that they replace each other in a series of transformations: they are interchangeable or transformationally equivalent.
Thus, Heraclitus does not hold Universal Flux, but recognizes a lawlike flux of elements; and he does not hold the Identity of Opposites, but the Transformational Equivalence of Opposites. The views that he does hold do not, jointly or separately, entail a denial of the Law of Non-Contradiction. Heraclitus does, to be sure, make paradoxical statements, but his views are no more self-contradictory than are the paradoxical claims of Socrates. They are, presumably, meant to wake us up from our dogmatic slumbers.

4. Criticism of Ionian Philosophy

Heraclitus' theory can be understood as a response to the philosophy of his Ionian predecessors. The philosophers of the city of Miletus (near Ephesus), Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, believed some original material turns into all other things. The world as we know it is the orderly articulation of different stuffs produced out of the original stuff. For the Milesians, to explain the world and its phenomena was just to show how everything came from the original stuff, such as Thales' water or Anaximenes' air.
Heraclitus seems to follow this pattern of explanation when he refers to the world as "everliving fire" (DK22B30, quoted in full in next section) and makes statements such as "Thunderbolt steers all things," alluding to the directive power of fire (DK22B64). But fire is a strange stuff to make the origin of all things, for it is the most inconstant and changeable. It is, indeed, a symbol of change and process. Heraclitus observes,

All things are an exchange for fire, and fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods. (DK22B90)

We can measure all things against fire as a standard; there is an equivalence between all things and gold, but all things are not identical to gold. Similarly, fire provides a standard of value for other stuffs, but it is not identical to them. Fire plays an important role in Heraclitus' system, but it is not the unique source of all things, because all stuffs are equivalent.
Ultimately, fire may be more important as a symbol than as a stuff. Fire is constantly changing-but so is every other stuff. One thing is transformed into another in a cycle of changes. What is constant is not some stuff, but the overall process of change itself. There is a constant law of transformations, which is, perhaps, to be identified with the Logos. Heraclitus may be saying that the Milesians correctly saw that one stuff turns into another in a series, but they incorrectly inferred from this that some one stuff is the source of everything else. But if A is the source of B and B of C, and C turns back into B and then A, then B is likewise the source of A and C, and C is the source of A and B. There is no particular reason to promote one stuff at the expense of the others. What is important about the stuffs is that they change into others. The one constant in the whole process is the law of change by which there is an order and sequence to the changes. If this is what Heraclitus has in mind, he goes beyond the physical theory of his early predecessors to arrive at something like a process philosophy with a sophisticated understanding of metaphysics.

5. Physical Theory

Heraclitus' criticisms and metaphysical speculations are grounded in a physical theory. He expresses the principles of his cosmology in a single sentence:

This world-order, the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: everliving fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures. (DK22B30)

This passage contains the earliest extant philosophical use of the word kosmos, "world-order," denoting the organized world in which we live, with earth, sea, atmosphere, and heavens. While ancient sources understand Heraclitus as saying the world comes to be and then perishes in a fiery holocaust, only to be born again (DK22A10), the present passage seems to contradict this reading: the world itself does not have a beginning or end. Parts of it are being consumed by fire at any given time, but the whole remains. Almost all other early cosmologists before and after Heraclitus explained the existence of the ordered world by recounting its origin out of elemental stuffs. Some also predicted the extinction of the world. But Heraclitus, the philosopher of flux, believes that as the stuffs turn into one another, the world itself remains stable. How can that be?
Heraclitus explains the order and proportion in which the stuffs change:

The turnings of fire: first sea, and of sea, half is earth, half firewind (prêstêr: some sort of fiery meteorological phenomenon). (DK22B31a)

Sea is liquefied and measured into the same proportion as it had before it became earth. (DK22B31b)

Fire is transformed into water ("sea") of which half turns back into fire ("firewind") and half into earth. Thus there is a sequence of stuffs: fire, water, earth, which are interconnected. When earth turns back into sea, it occupies the same volume as it had before it turned into earth. Thus we can recognize a primitive law of conservation-not precisely conservation of matter, at least the identity of the matter is not conserved, nor of mass, but at least an equivalence of matter is maintained. Although the fragments do not give detailed information about Heraclitus' physics, it seems likely that the amount of water that evaporates each day is balanced by the amount of stuff that precipitates as water, and so on, so that a balance of stuffs is maintained even though portions of stuff are constantly changing their identity.
For Heraclitus, flux and opposition are necessary for life. Aristotle reports,

Heraclitus criticizes the poet who said, 'would that strife might perish from among gods and men' [Homer Iliad 18.107]' for there would not be harmony without high and low notes, nor living things without female and male, which are opposites. (DK22A22)

Heraclitus views strife or conflict as maintaining the world:

We must recognize that war is common and strife is justice, and all things happen according to strife and necessity. (DK22B80)

War is the father of all and king of all, who manifested some as gods and some as men, who made some slaves and some freemen. (DK22B53)

In a tacit criticism of Anaximander, Heraclitus rejects the view that cosmic justice is designed to punish one opposite for its transgressions against another. If it were not for the constant conflict of opposites, there would be no alternations of day and night, hot and cold, summer and winter, even life and death. Indeed, if some things did not die, others would not be born. Conflict does not interfere with life, but rather is a precondition of life.
As we have seen, for Heraclitus fire changes into water and then into earth; earth changes into water and then into fire. At the level of either cosmic bodies (in which sea turns into fiery storms on the one hand and earth on the other) or domestic activities (in which, for instance, water boils out of a pot), there is constant flux among opposites. To maintain the balance of the world, we must posit an equal and opposite reaction to every change. Heraclitus observes,

The road up and down is one and the same. (DK22B60)

Here again we find a unity of opposites, but no contradiction. One road is used to pursue two different routes. Daily traffic carries some travelers out of the city, while it brings some back in. The image applies equally to physical theory: as earth changes to fire, fire changes to earth. And it may apply to psychology and other domains as well.

6. Moral and Political Theory

There has been some debate as to whether Heraclitus is chiefly a philosopher of nature (a view championed by G. S. Kirk) or a philosopher concerned with the human condition (C. H. Kahn). The opening words of Heraclitus' book (DK22B1, quoted above) seem to indicate that he will expound the nature of things in a way that will have profound implications for human life. In other words, he seems to see the theory of nature and the human condition as intimately connected. In fact, recently discovered papyri have shown that Heraclitus is concerned with technical questions of astronomy, not only with general theory. There is no reason, then, to think of him as solely a humanist or moral philosopher. On the other hand, it would be wrong to think of him as a straightforward natural philosopher in the manner of other Ionian philosophers, for he is deeply concerned with the moral implications of physical theory.
Heraclitus views the soul as fiery in nature:

To souls it is death to become water, to water death to become earth, but from earth water is born, and from water soul. (DK22B36)

Soul is generated out of other substances just as fire is. But it has a limitless dimension:
If you went in search of it, you would not find the boundaries of the soul, though you traveled every road-so deep is its measure [logos]. (DK22B45)

Drunkenness damages the soul by causing it to be moist, while a virtuous life keeps the soul dry and intelligent. Souls seem to be able to survive death and to fare according to their character.

The laws of a city-state are an important principle of order:

The people [of a city] should fight for their laws as they would for their city wall. (DK22B44)

Speaking with sense we must rely on a common sense of all things, as a city relies on its wall, and much more reliably. For all human laws are nourished by the one divine law. For it prevails as far as it will and suffices for all and overflows. (DK22B114)

The laws provide a defense for a city and its way of life. But the laws are not merely of local interest: they derive their force from a divine law. Here we see the notion of a law of nature that informs human society as well as nature. There is a human cosmos that like the natural cosmos reflects an underlying order. The laws by which human societies are governed are not mere conventions, but are grounded in the ultimate nature of things. One cannot break a human law with impunity. The notion of a law-like order in nature has antecedents in the theory of Anaximander, and the notion of an inherent moral law influences the Stoics in the 3rd century BCE.
Heraclitus recognizes a divine unity behind the cosmos, one that is difficult to identify and perhaps impossible to separate from the processes of the cosmos:

The wise, being one thing only, would and would not take the name of Zeus [or: Life]. (DK22B32)

God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger, and it alters just as when it is mixed with incense is named according to the aroma of each. (DK22B67)

Evidently the world either is god, or is a manifestation of the activity of god, which is somehow to be identified with the underlying order of things. God can be thought of as fire, but fire, as we have seen, is constantly changing, symbolic of transformation and process. Divinity is present in the world, but not as a conventional anthropomorphic being such as the Greeks worshiped.

7. Accomplishments and Influence

Heraclitus goes beyond the natural philosophy of the other Ionian philosophers to make profound criticisms and develop far-reaching implications of those criticisms. He suggests the first metaphysical foundation for philosophical speculation, anticipating process philosophy. And he makes human values a central concern of philosophy for the first time. His aphoristic manner of expression and his manner of propounding general truths through concrete examples remained unique.
Heraclitus's paradoxical exposition may have spurred Parmenides' rejection of Ionian philosophy. Empedocles and some medical writers echoed Heraclitean themes of alteration and ongoing process, while Democritus imitated his ethical observations. Influenced by the teachings of the Heraclitean Cratylus, Plato saw the sensible world as exemplifying a Heraclitean flux. Plato and Aristotle both criticized Heraclitus for a radical theory that led to a denial of the Law of Non-Contradiction. The Stoics adopted Heraclitus's physical principles as the basis for their theories.

8. References and Further Reading

• Barnes, Jonathan. The Presocratic Philosophers. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982, vol. 1, ch. 4.
  • Uses modern arguments to defend the traditional view, going back to Plato and Aristotle, that Heraclitus' commitment to the flux doctrine and the identity of opposites results in an incoherent theory.
• Graham, Daniel W. "Heraclitus' Criticism of Ionian Philosophy." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 15 (1997): 1-50.
  • Defends Heraclitus against the traditional view held by Barnes and others, and argues that his theory can be understood as a coherent criticism of earlier Ionian philosophy.
• Hussey, Edward. "Epistemology and Meaning in Heraclitus." Language and Logos. Ed. M. Schofield and M. C. Nussbaum. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1982. 33-59.
  • Studies Heraclitus' theory of knowledge.
• Kahn, Charles H. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1979.
  • An important reassessment of Heraclitus that recognizes the literary complexity of his language as a key to interpreting his message. Focuses on Heraclitus as a philosopher of the human condition.
• Kirk, G. S. Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1954.
  • Focuses on Heraclitus as a natural philosopher.
• Marcovich, Miroslav. Heraclitus: Greek Text with a Short Commentary. Merida, Venezuela: U. of the Andes, 1967.
  • A very thorough edition of Heraclitus, which effectively sorts out fragments from reports and reactions.
• Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. "Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Naive Metaphysics of Things." Exegesis and Argument. Ed. E. N. Lee et al. Assen: Van Gorcum, 1973. 16-48.
  • Examines Heraclitus' response to the pre-philosophical understanding of things.
• Nussbaum, Martha C. "Psychê in Heraclitus." Phronesis 17 (1972): 1-16, 153-70.
  • Good treatment of Heraclitus' conception of soul.
• Robinson, T. M. Heraclitus: Fragments. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1987.
  • Good brief edition with commentary.
• Vlastos, Gregory. "On Heraclitus." American Journal of Philology 76 (1955): 337-68. Reprinted in G. Vlastos, Studies in Greek Philosophy, vol. 1, Princeton: Princeton U. Pr., 1995.
  • Vigorous defense of the traditional interpretation of Heraclitus against Kirk and others.

Author Information

Daniel W. Graham
Email: daniel_graham@byu.edu
Brigham Young University
U. S. A.

Source:

http://www.iep.utm.edu/heraclit/

Heraclitus the Greek Philosopher of Ephesus

Understanding Heraclitus is a daunting task. His mystical writings seem to make comparisons of Lao Tzu and perhaps Gautama Buddha as well?

Heraclitus

First published Thu Feb 8, 2007; substantive revision Tue Jun 23, 2015

A Greek philosopher of Ephesus (near modern Kuşadası, Turkey) who was active around 500 BCE, Heraclitus propounded a distinctive theory which he expressed in oracular language. He is best known for his doctrines that things are constantly changing (universal flux), that opposites coincide (unity of opposites), and that fire is the basic material of the world. The exact interpretation of these doctrines is controversial, as is the inference often drawn from this theory that in the world as Heraclitus conceives it contradictory propositions must be true.

• 1. Life and Work
• 2. Method
• 3. Philosophical Principles
  • 3.1 Flux
  • 3.2 The Unity of Opposites
  • 3.3 Ontology
• 4. Cosmology
• 5. Knowledge
• 6. Value
• 7. Influence
• 8. Addendum
• Bibliography
  • Editions
  • Studies
• Academic Tools
• Other Internet Resources
• Related Entries

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1. Life and Work

Little is known of Heraclitus' life; most of what has been handed down consists of stories apparently invented to illustrate his character as inferred from his writings (Diogenes Laertius 9.1–17). His native Ephesus was a prominent city of Ionia, the Greek-inhabited coast of Asia Minor, but was subject to Persian rule in his lifetime. According to one account, he inherited the honorific title and office of “king” of the Ionians, which he resigned to his brother. He is generally considered to have favored aristocratic government as against democracy, based on his own political observations.
His city lies close to Miletus, where the first thinkers recognized in later tradition as philosophers lived; but there is no record of his having made the acquaintance of any of the Milesian thinkers (Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes) or having been taught by them, or of his ever having traveled.
He is said to have written a single book (papyrus roll), and deposited it in the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The story is plausible enough: temples often served as depositories for money and other valuables, and no libraries are known from the time of Heraclitus. The structure of Heraclitus' book is controversial. It could have consisted of a relatively coherent and consecutive argument. On the other hand, the numerous fragments (over one hundred) that have come down to us do not easily connect with each other, even though they probably constitute a sizable fraction of the whole. Thus it is possible and even likely that the book was composed more of sayings and epigrams than of continuous exposition. In its form, then, it might have looked more like a collection of proverbs such as were ascribed to the seven sages than like a cosmological treatise of the Milesians. Theophrastus, who knew his book, said that it seemed only half-finished, a kind of hodgepodge he attributed to the author's melancholy.  Diogenes Laertius reports that the work was divided (he does not say by whom) into three sections, one on cosmology, one on politics (and ethics), and one on theology (9.5–6). All these topics are treated in the extant fragments of Heraclitus, though it is often difficult to see what boundaries the work might have drawn between them, since Heraclitus seems to see deep interconnections between science, human affairs, and theology.
Unlike most other early philosophers, Heraclitus is usually seen as independent of the several schools and movements later students (somewhat anachronistically) assigned to the ancients, and he himself implies that he is self-taught (B101). He has been variously judged by ancient and modern commentators to be a material monist or a process philosopher; a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician, or a mainly religious thinker; an empiricist, a rationalist, or a mystic; a conventional thinker or a revolutionary; a developer of logic or one who denied the law of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopher or an anti-intellectual obscurantist. No doubt the sage of Ephesus will continue to remain controversial and difficult to interpret, but scholars have made significant progress in understanding and appreciating his work.

2. Method

Heraclitus made every effort to break out of the mold of contemporary thought. Although he was influenced in a number of ways by the thought and language of his predecessors, including the epic poets Homer and Hesiod, the poet and philosopher Xenophanes, the historian and antiquarian Hecataeus, the religious guru Pythagoras, the sage Bias of Priene, the poet Archilochus, and the Milesian philosophers, he criticized most of them either explicitly or implicitly, and struck out on his own path. He rejected polumathiê or information-gathering on the grounds that it “does not teach understanding” (B40). He treated the epic poets as fools and called Pythagoras a fraud.
In his fragments Heraclitus does not explicitly criticize the Milesians, and it is likely that he saw them as the most progressive of previous thinkers. He does tacitly criticize Anaximander for not appreciating the role of injustice in the world (B80), while he might have expressed some admiration for Thales (B38). His views can be seen to embody structural criticisms of Milesian principles, but even in correcting the Milesians he built on their foundations.
Heraclitus' most fundamental departure from previous philosophy lies in his emphasis on human affairs. While he continues many of the physical and cosmological theories of his predecessors, he shifts his focus from the cosmic to the human realm. We might well think of him as the first humanist, were it not for the fact that he does not seem to like humanity very well. From the outset he makes it clear that most people are too stupid to understand his theory.  He may be most concerned with the human relevance of philosophic theories, but he is an elitist like Plato, who thinks that only select readers are capable of benefitting from his teachings. And perhaps for this reason he, like Plato, does not teach his philosophical principles directly, but couches them in a literary form that distances the author from the reader. In any case he seems to regard himself not as the author of a philosophy so much as the spokesman for an independent truth:

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

Heraclitus stresses that the message is not his own invention, but a timeless truth available to any who attend to the way the world itself is. “Although this Word is common,” he warns, “the many live as if they had a private understanding” (B2). The Word (account, message) exists apart from Heraclitus' teaching, but he tries to convey that message to his audience.
The blindness of humans is one of Heraclitus' main themes.  He announces it at the beginning of his book:

Of this Word's being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Word, they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and show how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep. (B1)

He begins by warning his readers that most of them will not understand his message. He promises to “distinguish each thing according to its nature and show how it is,” a claim similar to the Milesians’. Yet like sleepers his readers will not understand the world around them. As this implies, in his book Heraclitus does have some things to say about the natural world, but much more to say about the human condition.
No less important than Heraclitus' message is the form in which he imparts it to his audience. Aristotle noticed that even in the first sentence of B1, quoted above, the force of the word ‘forever’ was unclear: did it go with the preceding or the subsequent words, with ‘being’ or ‘prove’ (Rhetoric 1407b11–18)?  He regarded the ambiguity as a weakness in Heraclitus' communication. But if we attend to Heraclitus' language we see that syntactical ambiguity is more than an accident: it is a common technique he uses to enrich his words and to infuse them with a unique verbal complexity like that of poetry. Charles Kahn (1979: 89) identifies two general traits of Heraclitus' style, linguistic density and resonance. The former is his ability to pack multiple meanings into a single word or phrase, the latter his ability to use one expression to evoke another. To take a simple example:

moroi mezones mezonas moiras lanchanousi. Deaths that are greater greater portions gain. (B25)

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

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

The second word, in the dative case “to” or “for” man, stands between the names of two very unlike objects, ‘character’ and ‘deity.’  Grammatically, it can attach to either indifferently, and seems intended to be heard with both, so that it counts twice. Because of its double role, the word forms a kind of syntactic glue between the otherwise diverse subjects, joining them together in a unity.  Traditionally having a good or a bad guardian spirit constitutes one's “luck”–one is eudaimôn or dusdaimôn, fortunate or wretched, at the mercy of one's divine overseer. But Heraclitus turns one's luck into a function of one's character, one's ethical stance, by making “man” the link.
Ultimately, Heraclitus loads his words with layers of meaning and complexities that are to be discovered in insights and solved like riddles. As he implies in the second sentence of his introduction, B1, his logoi are designed to be experienced, not just understood, and only those who experience them in their richness will grasp his message.

3. Philosophical Principles

Although his words are meant to provide concrete vicarious encounters with the world, Heraclitus adheres to some abstract principles which govern the world. Already in antiquity he was famous for advocating the coincidence of opposites, the flux doctrine, and his view that fire is the source and nature of all things. In commenting on Heraclitus, Plato provided an early reading, followed tentatively by Aristotle, and popular down to the present (sharpened and forcefully advocated by Barnes 1982, ch. 4). According to Barnes’ version, Heraclitus is a material monist who believes that all things are modifications of fire. Everything is in flux (in the sense that “everything is always flowing in some respects,” 69), which entails the coincidence of opposites (interpreted as the view that “every pair of contraries is somewhere coinstantiated; and every object coinstantiates at least one pair of contraries,” 70). The coincidence of opposites, thus interpreted, entails contradictions, which Heraclitus cannot avoid. On this view Heraclitus is influenced by the prior theory of material monism and by empirical observations that tend to support flux and the coincidence of opposites. In a time before the development of logic, Barnes concludes, Heraclitus violates the principles of logic and makes knowledge impossible.
Obviously this reading is not charitable to Heraclitus. There are, moreover, reasons to question it. First, some of Heraclitus' views are incompatible with material monism (to be discussed later), so that the background of his theories must be rethought. Second, there is evidence that Heraclitus' flux theory is weaker than that attributed to him by this reading.  Third, there is evidence that his view of the coincidence of opposites is weaker than that attributed to him here.

3.1 Flux

Barnes bases his Platonic reading on Plato's own statement:

Heraclitus, I believe, says that all things pass and nothing stays, and comparing existing things to the flow of a river, he says you could not step twice into the same river. (Plato Cratylus 402a = A6)

The established scholarly method is to try to verify Plato's interpretation by looking at Heraclitus' own words, if possible. There are three alleged “river fragments”:

B12. potamoisi toisin autoisin embainousin hetera kai hetera hudata epirrei.

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

B49a. potamois tois autois … 

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

B91[a]. potamôi … tôi autôi …

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

Of these only the first has the linguistic density characteristic of Heraclitus' words. The second starts out with the same three words as B12, but in Attic, not in Heraclitus' Ionic dialect, and the second clause has no grammatical connection to the first. The third is patently a paraphrase by an author famous for quoting from memory rather than from books. Even it starts out in Greek with the word ‘river,’ but in the singular.  There is no evidence that repetitions of phrases with variations are part of Heraclitus' style (as they are of Empedocles’). To start with the word ‘river(s)’ goes against normal Greek prose style, and on the plausible assumption that all sources are trying to imitate Heraclitus, who does not repeat himself, we would be led to choose B12 as the one and only river fragment, the only actual quotation from Heraclitus' book.  This is the conclusion of  Kirk (1954) and  Marcovich (1967), based on an interpretation that goes back to  Reinhardt (1916). That B12 is genuine is suggested by the features it shares with Heraclitean fragments: syntactic ambiguity (toisin autoisin ‘the same’ [in the dative] can be construed either with ‘rivers’ [“the same rivers”] or with ‘those stepping in’ [“the same people”], with what comes before or after), chiasmus, sound-painting (the first phrase creates the sound of rushing water with its diphthongs and sibilants), rhyme and alliteration.^[1]
If B12 is accepted as genuine, it tends to disqualify the other two alleged fragments. The major theoretical connection in the fragment is that between ‘same rivers’ and ‘other waters.’  B12 is, among other things, a statement of the coincidence of opposites. But it specifies the rivers as the same. The statement is, on the surface, paradoxical, but there is no reason to take it as false or contradictory. It makes perfectly good sense: we call a body of water a river precisely because it consists of changing waters; if the waters should cease to flow it would not be a river, but a lake or a dry streambed. There is a sense, then, in which a river is a remarkable kind of existent, one that remains what it is by changing what it contains (cf. Hume Treatise 1.4.6, p. 258 Selby-Bigge). Heraclitus derives a striking insight from an everyday encounter. Further, he supplies, via the ambiguity in the first clause, another reading: on the same people stepping into rivers, other and other waters flow. With this reading it is people who remain the same in contrast to changing waters, as if the encounter with a flowing environment helped to constitute the perceiving subject as the same. (See Kahn 1979.)  B49a, by contrast, contradicts the claim that one can step into the same rivers (and also asserts that claim), and B91[a], like Plato in the Cratylus, denies that one can step in twice. Yet if the rivers remain the same, one surely can step in twice–not into the same waters, to be sure, but into the same rivers. Thus the other alleged fragments are incompatible with the one certifiably genuine fragment.
In fact, Marcovich (1967) has succeeded in showing how a misreading of B12 could lead to an interpretation such as that embodied in A6 and B91[a]. It is possible to see Cratylus, a late follower of Heraclitus, supplying the wayward reading, and then adding his famous rejoinder that one cannot step into the same river even once (although the reading may go back earlier to Hippias:  Mansfeld 1990: 43–55). Since Plato is alleged to have heard Cratylus’ lectures, he may well have derived his reading from Cratylus’ criticism.
If this interpretation is right, the message of the one river fragment, B12, is not that all things are changing so that we cannot encounter them twice, but something much more subtle and profound. It is that some things stay the same only by changing. One kind of long-lasting material reality exists by virtue of constant turnover in its constituent matter. Here constancy and change are not opposed but inextricably connected. A human body could be understood in precisely the same way, as living and continuing by virtue of constant metabolism–as Aristotle for instance later understood it.  On this reading, Heraclitus believes in flux, but not as destructive of constancy; rather it is, paradoxically, a necessary condition of constancy, at least in some cases (and arguably in all). In general, at least in some exemplary cases, high-level structures supervene on low-level material flux. The Platonic reading still has advocates (e.g. Tarán 1999), but it is no longer the only reading of Heraclitus advocated by scholars.

3.2 The Unity of Opposites

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

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

Barnes thinks Heraclitus gets his doctrine of the universal coinstantiation of contraries through fallaciously dropping qualifiers (such as: ‘for fish,’ ‘for men’). But B61 shows he is perfectly aware of them, and we might rather say that he understands them tacitly even when he does not utter them. When he says,

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

he does not contradict himself. There are perfectly good contexts in which everything he says is true. One can divide a collection into its parts or join the parts into a unified whole.
Most tellingly, Heraclitus explains just how contraries are connected:

As the same thing in us are living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these.(B88)

Contrary qualities are found in us “as the same thing.”  But they are the same by virtue of one thing changing around to another. We are asleep and we wake up; we are awake and we go to sleep. Thus sleep and waking are both found in us, but not at the same time or in the same respect. Indeed, if sleeping and waking were identical, there would be no change as required by the second sentence. Contraries are the same by virtue of constituting a system of connections: alive-dead, waking-sleeping, young-old. Subjects do not possess incompatible properties at the same time, but at different times.
In general, what we see in Heraclitus is not a conflation of opposites into an identity, but a series of subtle analyses revealing the interconnectedness of contrary states in life and in the world.  There is no need to impute to him a logical fallacy. Opposites are a reality, and their interconnections are real, but the correlative opposites are not identical to each other.

3.3 Ontology

The standard view of Heraclitus' ontology since Aristotle is that he is a material monist who holds that fire is the ultimate reality; all things are just manifestations of fire. According to Aristotle the Milesians in general were material monists who advocated other kinds of ultimate matter: Thales water, Anaximander the boundless, Anaximenes air (Metaphysics 983b6–984a8). So Heraclitus' theory was just another version of a common background theory. There are problems already with Aristotle's understanding of the Milesians: Aristotle lacks any textual evidence for Thales’ view and must reconstruct it out of almost nothing; he sometimes treats Anaximander as a pluralist like Anaxagoras who thinks the boundless is a mixture of qualities; at most Anaximenes might exemplify material monism–but Plato reads him as a pluralist (Timaeus 39 with Graham 2003b; Graham 2003a). In the case of Heraclitus, his own statements make material monism problematic as an interpretation. According to material monism, some kind of matter is the ultimate reality, and any variation in the world consists merely of qualitative or possibly quantitative change in it; for there is only one reality, for instance fire, which can never come into existence or perish, but can only change in its appearances. Heraclitus, however, advocates a radical kind of change:

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

(Here soul seems to occupy the place of fire.)  The language of birth and death in the world of living things is precisely the language used in Greek metaphysics for coming to be and perishing. It implies a radical transformation that rules out continuing identity (cf. B76, B62). Indeed, interpreters of Heraclitus cannot have it both ways: Heraclitus cannot be both a believer in radical flux (the change of everything into everything else: fire into water, water into earth, and so on) and an advocate of monism. Either he must believe in a merely illusory or at most a limited kind of change, or he must be a pluralist.
One further difficulty remains for the monist reading. In his alleged version of monism, fire is the ultimate reality. Yet fire (as the ancients recognized) is the least substantial and the most evanescent of elemental stuffs. It makes a better symbol of change than of permanence. Other alleged cases of material monism offer a basic kind of matter that could arguably be stable and permanent over long periods of time; but fire manifests “need and satiety” (B65), a kind of ongoing consumption that can live only by devouring fuel. Is not Heraclitus' choice of a basic reality itself paradoxical?  At best his appeal to fire seems to draw on material monism in a way that points beyond the theory to an account  in which the process of change is more real than the material substances that undergo change.

4. Cosmology

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

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

In this passage, he uses, for the first time in any extant Greek text, the word kosmos “order” to mean something like “world.”  He identifies the world with fire, but goes on to specify portions of fire that are kindling and being quenched. Although ancient sources, including Aristotle (On the Heavens 279b12–17) as well as the Stoics, attributed to Heraclitus a world that was periodically destroyed by fire and then reborn, the present statement seems to contradict that view, as Hegel already noticed. If the world always was and is and will be, then it does not perish and come back into existence, though portions of it (measures of fire) are constantly being transformed.
Heraclitus describes the transformations of elementary bodies:

The turnings of fire: first sea, and of sea half is earth, half fireburst. (B31[a]) <Earth> is liquefied as sea and measured into the same proportion as it had before it became earth. (B31[b])

Fire turns into water (“sea”), and then half of that quantity turns into earth and half into “fireburst” (prêstêr, a fiery, windy kind of storm phenomenon). The portion that becomes earth turns back into water, in the same quantity it had previously. Here Heraclitus envisages a lawlike transformation of stuff from fire to water to earth; the transformation is reversible, and in it the same relative quantities of stuff are preserved. There is, then, a kind of conservation of matter, or at least overall quantity of matter.  What would make the world to be continuous would be the fact that when one portion of fire turns into water, an equivalent portion of water turns into fire. The overall equilibrium is preserved, even if the water that is now in the sea is not the same water as was in it before. This picture bears a similarity to the image of the river, which remains the same despite its changing material contents.
In this view of the world, the mutual transformations of matter are not an accidental feature, but the very essence of nature. Without change, there would be no world. Heraclitus seems to acknowledge this in his praise of war and strife:

We must recognize that war is common, strife is justice, and all things happen according to strife and necessity. (B80) War is father of all and king of all; and some he manifested as gods, some as men; some he made slaves, some free. (B53)

Conflicting powers of opposites, including those of elemental bodies, make possible the world and all its variety; without that conflict we would have only lifeless uniformity. In the former passage Heraclitus is perhaps criticizing Anaximander for his view that cosmic justice consists of a punishment of powers that overstep their boundaries (Anaximander B1). Justice is not the correction of an excess, but the whole pattern of the domination of one opposite followed by that of the other.
There is, however, a guiding force in the world:

Thunderbolt steers all things. (B64)

The fiery shaft of lightning is a symbol of the direction of the world. Anaximander may have already used the image of the shipmaster of the universe (Kahn 1960: 238). Heraclitus identifies it with the thunderbolt, itself an attribute of Zeus the storm god.  The changes wrought by and symbolized by fire govern the world.  The ruling power of the universe can be identified with Zeus, but not in a straightforward way: “One being, the only wise one, would and would not be called by the name of Zeus” (B32). And here the word used for ‘Zeus’ can be rendered “Life.”  Like the Milesians, Heraclitus identifies the ruling power of the world with deity, but (like them also) his conception is not a conventional one.
Heraclitus provided some sort of discussion of meteorological and astronomical phenomena. He studied the disappearance and reappearance of the moon at the end and beginning of a month (Oxyrhynchus Papyri LIII 3710 ii. 43–47 and iii. 7–11–the clearest evidence that Heraclitus had a scientific interest in astronomy). He explained the sun and moon as bowls full of fire. As the moon's bowl rotated it caused the phases. Eclipses were the result of a rotation of the convex side of the bowls to face the earth. We have no reports about the earth itself, but we may suppose that, like his predecessors, Heraclitus viewed it as flat. Evaporations from the earth and sea apparently provided fuel for the heavenly bodies, which burned like oil lamps.
Divine power is manifest in all phenomena: “God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger, and he alters just as< fire> when it is mixed with spices is named according to the aroma of each of them” (B67). Again Heraclitus seems to stress the unity of divine power, even if humans assign different names and attributes to it. All things that happen are good, but humans do not perceive them to be so: “To God all things are fair, good and just, but men suppose some things are unjust, some just” (B102). Heraclitus does not attempt to provide a detailed theodicy, but seeks to view all things sub specie aeternitatis, in which conflict (including presumably human conflict) keeps the world going (B80, cited above).

5. Knowledge

Plato held that for Heraclitus knowledge is made impossible by the flux of sensible objects. Yet Heraclitus does not repudiate knowledge or the wisdom that comes from a proper understanding of the world. To be sure, he believes most people are not capable of wisdom; understanding is a rare and precious commodity, which even most reputed sages do not attain to (B28[a]). Yet wisdom is possible, and it is embodied in Heraclitus' message, for those who can discern it.
Heraclitus seems to accept the evidence of the senses as in some way valuable: “The things of which there is sight, hearing, experience, I prefer” (B55). Sight is the best of the senses: “The eyes are more accurate witnesses than the ears” (B101a). Yet in contrast to those who view knowledge as an accumulation of information or wisdom as a collection of sayings, he requires much more than sensation and memory:

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

In this statement Heraclitus reviews the leading authorities of his day, living (the last three) and dead, dealing with religious and secular knowledge, and finds them all wanting. They spend too much effort in collecting information and not enough in grasping its meaning. “What intelligence or understanding do they [the people] have?” asks Heraclitus. “They follow popular bards and treat the crowd as their instructor, not realizing that the many are base, while the few are noble” (B104). He criticizes Hesiod on specifics: “The teacher of the multitude is Hesiod; they believe he has the greatest knowledge–who did not comprehend day and night: for they are one” (B57). In his myths, Hesiod treats Day and Night as separate persons, taking turns traveling abroad, while one remains at home. But this fails to capture the interconnectedness of day and night, and falsifies reality. Heraclitus criticizes Homer, Pythagoras and Archilochus for their inadequacies.
In general, he holds that people do not learn what they should: “Many do not understand such things as they encounter, nor do they learn by their experience, but they think they do” (B17). Indeed, they do not process the information they receive: “Having heard without comprehension they are like the deaf; this saying bears witness to them: present they are absent” (B34). Heraclitus explains: “Poor witnesses for men are the eyes and ears of those who have barbarian souls” (B107). A barbarian was a non-Greek; just as a foreigner hears Greek words without understanding their meaning, most people perceive without understanding the world around them. Sense perception is necessary for knowledge, but not sufficient; without the ability to decipher information from the senses, one cannot understand the world.
What chance is there then to learn the secrets of the world?  Heraclitus is not wholly pessimistic about human cognitive abilities: “All men have a share in self-knowledge and sound thinking” (B116). What is needed is not simply more sense experience or more information, but an improved way of comprehending the message (logos) that the world offers. In this context his curious method of expression begins to make sense. He presents his statements in the form of puzzles, riddles, aperçus.  Many of them support two or more readings, and contain hidden insights. To comprehend them the reader must grasp their complexity and then discover their unity. To read Heraclitus appropriately is to have a rich cognitive experience, as the philosopher hints in his introduction (B1).
Heraclitus often presents a simple concrete situation or image which has implications for our understanding of the world: a river, a bow, a road. He does not generally pronounce generalizations and deduce consequences. Rather, his method can be seen as inductive: he offers an example which suggests general principles. Unlike most philosophers, he challenges the right brain rather than the left.  He does not teach in the conventional sense; he offers his readers materials for understanding and lets them educate themselves. He cites with approval a model of religious instruction:

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

The riddling statements of the Delphic oracle do not provide straightforward answers, but force people to interpret them. His truths come to the attentive reader as discoveries resulting from the solution of a puzzle.

6. Value

The aim of Heraclitus' unusual approach is to produce readers who have a proper grasp of the world and their place in it.  “Sound thinking is the greatest virtue and wisdom: to speak the truth and to act on the basis of an understanding of the nature of things” (B112). Such an understanding can result only from an ability to interpret the language of nature. The proper understanding allows one to act in a harmonious way.
Heraclitus urges moderation and self-control in a somewhat conventional way (B85, B43). He also recommends the conventional Greek goal of seeking fame: “The best choose one thing above all, the everlasting fame of mortals; the many gorge themselves like cattle” (B29). To die in battle is a superior kind of death (B24). Those who drink to excess make their souls wet, and accordingly harm them (B117), for a healthy soul is dry (B118).  Those who experience better deaths attain better rewards (B25).  Those who lie will be punished (B28[b]). “For men who die there await things they do not expect or anticipate” (B27).  Some of these remarks tend to suggest an afterlife with rewards and punishment, although his belief in a continued existence is controversial (see Nussbaum 1972). In any case, Heraclitus views the soul as the moral and cognitive center of human experience.
In political theory he maintains that one good man is worth ten thousand ordinary people (B49). He criticizes his fellow citizens for banishing a distinguished leader:

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

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

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. (B114)

The divine law, on Heraclitus' view, is probably continuous with the laws governing the cosmos, which maintain justice through opposition (B80).

7. Influence

Although Heraclitus is not known to have had students, his writings seem to have been influential from an early time. He may have provoked Parmenides to develop a contrasting philosophy (Patin 1899; Graham 2002), although their views have much more in common than is generally recognized (Nehamas 2002). Empedocles seems to have invoked Heraclitean themes, and some Hippocratic treatises imitated Heraclitean language and presented applications of Heraclitean themes. Democritus echoed many of Heraclitus' ethical pronouncements in his own ethics. From an early time Heraclitus was seen as the representative of universal flux in contrast to Parmenides, the representative of universal stasis. Cratylus brought Heraclitus' philosophy to Athens, where Plato heard it.  Plato seems to have used Heraclitus' theory (as interpreted by Cratylus) as a model for the sensible world, as he used Parmenides’ theory for the intelligible world. As mentioned, both Plato and Aristotle viewed Heraclitus as violating the law of non-contradiction, and propounding an incoherent theory of knowledge based on a radical flux. Yet Aristotle also treated him as a coherent material monist who posited fire as an ultimate principle. The Stoics used Heraclitus' physics as the inspiration for their own, understanding him to advocate a periodic destruction of the world by fire, followed by a regeneration of the world; Cleanthes in particular commented on Heraclitus.  Aenesidemus interpreted Heraclitus as a kind of proto-skeptic (see Polito 2004).
Ever since Plato, Heraclitus has been seen as a philosopher of flux. The challenge in interpreting the philosopher of Ephesus has always been to find a coherent theory in his paradoxical utterances. Since Hegel, he has been seen as a paradigmatic process philosopher–perhaps with some justification.

8. Addendum

The recently published Derveni Papyrus, discovered in a tomb in northern Greece, contains a commentary on an Orphic poem. The commentator discusses some passages of Heraclitus in connection with the poem, namely B3 + B94 (which may have been thus joined in Heraclitus' book) (column 4). See Betegh 2004. The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (vol. 53, no. 3710) also show that Heraclitus was interested in determining the days of the lunar month and thus in scientific questions. See Burkert 1993.
In recent work, scholars have devoted increased attention to Heraclitus’ moral and political theory (Fattal 2011, Sider 2013), and to questions of logos and rationality (Hülsz 2013, Long 2013), where these two areas overlap in significant ways. Heraclitus recognizes a close connection between a rational comprehension of the universe and a wise course of life (B112).

Bibliography

Editions

• Bollack, J. and H. Wismann, 1972, Héraclite ou la séparation, Paris: Les Édition de Minuit.
• Conche, M., 1998, Héraclite: Fragments, 4^th ed., Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
• Kahn, C. H., 1979, The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Marcovich, Miroslav, 1967, Heraclitus, Mérida, Venezuela: University of the Andes Press; 2^nd ed., Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2001.
• Mouraviev, Serge, 1999–2008, Heraclitea, 10 vols., Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.
• Robinson, T. M., 1987, Heraclitus, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Studies

• Barnes, J., 1982, The Presocratic Philosophers, revised ed., London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
• Betegh, G., 2004, The Derveni Papyrus: Cosmology, Theology and Interpretation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• –––, 2007, “On the Physical Aspect of Heraclitus' Psychology,” Phronesis, 52: 3–32.
• Burkert, W., 1993, “Heraclitus and the Moon: The New Fragment P.Oxy, 3710,” Illinois Classical Studies, 18: 49–55.
• Dilcher, R., 1995, Studies in Heraclitus, Hildesheim: Georg Olms.
• Fattal, M., 2011, Parole et actes chez Héraclite, Paris: L'Harmattan.
• Graham, D. W., 2002, “Heraclitus and Parmenides,” in Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, V. Caston and D. W. Graham (eds.), 27–44, Aldershot: Ashgate.
• –––, 2003a, “A New Look at Anaximenes,” History of Philosophy Quarterly, 20: 1–20.
• –––, 2003b, “A Testimony of Anaximenes in Plato,” Classical Quarterly, 53: 327–37.
• –––, 2006, Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy, Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• –––, 2008, “Heraclitus: Flux, Order, and Knowledge,” in The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy, P. Curd and D. W. Graham (eds.), 169–188, New York: Oxford University Press.
• Hülsz Piccone, Enrique, 2009, Nuevos ensayos sobre Heráclito: Actas del segundo Symposium Heracliteum, Mexico City: UNAM, 2009.
• –––, 2013, “Heraclitus on Logos: Language, Rationality and the Real,” in Sider and Obbink 2013, 281-301.
• Hussey, E., 1982, “Epistemology and Meaning in Heraclitus,” in Language and Logos, M. Schofield and M. Nussbaum (eds.), 33–59, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Kahn, C. H., 1960, Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology, New York: Columbia University Press; reprint Indianapolis: Hackett, 1994.
• –––, 1964, “A New Look at Heraclitus,” American Philosophical Quarterly 1: 189–203.
• Kirk, G. S., 1954, Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Long, A. A., 2013, “Heraclitus on Measure and the Explicit Emergence of Rationality,” in Sider and Obbink 2013, 201-223.
• Mansfeld, Jaap, 1990, Studies in the Historiography of Greek Philosophy, Assen: Van Gorcum.
• Nehamas, A., 2002, “Parmenidean Being/ Heraclitean Fire,” in Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos, V. Caston and D. W. Graham (eds.), 45–64, Aldershot: Ashgate.
• Nussbaum, M. C. 1972, “Psyche in Heraclitus,” Phronesis, 17: 1–16; 153–70.
• Patin, A., 1899, Parmenides im Kampfe gegen Heraklit, Leipzig: B. G. Teubner.
• Polito, R., 2004, The Sceptical Road: Aenesidemus' Appropriation of Heraclitus, Leiden: Brill.
• Reinhardt, K., 1916, Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie, Bonn: Friedrich Cohen.
• Sider, D., 2013, “Heraclitus' Ethics,” in Sider and Obbink 2013, 321-344.
• Sider, D. and D. Obbink (eds.), 2013, Doctrine and Doxography: Studies on Heraclitus and Pythagoras, Berlin: De Gruyter.
• Tarán, L., 1999, “Heraclitus: The River Fragments and Their Implications,” Elenchos, 20: 9–52.
• Vlastos, G., 1955. “On Heraclitus,” American Journal of Philology, 76: 337–378.

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Priest Philip LeMasters ~ May Christians Kill?

  

May Christians Kill?

Source: In Communion

Priest Philip LeMasters | 05 May 2015

• Illness – Health; Peace and War
• Metropolitan Hilarion: All Wars Begin in People’s Minds

Eastern Christianity does not view morality in fundamentally legal terms or within the context of abstract philosophy, but as part of the holistic vocation of humanity for theosis: participation by grace in the eternal life of the Holy Trinity. Hence, the Orthodox vision must be considered on its own terms, and not distorted by the imposition of Western categories. The question for the Orthodox is not, “What approach to warfare is most persuasive rationally or incumbent upon all Christians as a matter of moral law?” Instead, the East asks, “In light of the human vocation for growth in holiness and communion with God, how should Christians respond to the prospect of warfare?”
The prominence of petitions for peace in the Liturgy sheds light on the Orthodox response to war. Since the Church believes that the Liturgy is a participation in the worship of heaven, and grounds the knowledge of God in worship and mystical experience, it is fitting to place the issue of war and peace within the context of the liturgical life of Eastern Christianity, for it is in worship that the Church participates most fully in communion with the Holy Trinity.
In the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the first petitions of the Great Ektenia are for “the peace from above, and for the salvation of our souls” and “the peace of the whole world; for the good estate of the churches of God, and for the union of all.” At every Liturgy we pray for our parish, the clergy and laity, for government officials and all those in public service, for the place we live and for all towns and cities, for peaceful times, for travelers, the sick, the suffering, for captives and their salvation, and for our deliverance from all tribulation, wrath, danger, and need. “Help us; save us; have mercy on us, and keep us, O God, by Your grace,” we beg, finally commending “ourselves and each other, and all our life unto Christ our God.”
These are not simply decorative words. Neither are they prayers which refer merely to the inner tranquility of worshipers, nor to an entirely future Kingdom of Heaven. Instead, they embody an Orthodox vision of salvation and call upon the Lord to enable us to experience his heavenly peace right now in every dimension of life: personal, public, religious, temporal, and political. Whoever prays these prayers is asking already to participate in the Kingdom of God on earth, to find the healing and blessing of salvation in every dimension of one’s life indeed, in every aspect of God’s creation.
The entire Liturgy is an epiphany of God’s Kingdom on earth. The priest begins the service with a proclamation, “Blessed is the Kingdom of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: now and ever and unto ages of ages,” which declares that the assembly is now participating in the worship of Heaven. The Church is raised to the life of the Kingdom as her members gather to glorify and commune with the Holy Trinity.
Because we believe in the Incarnation and the goodness of God’s physical creation, we pray for peace and salvation upon people in “real life” situations of peril and suffering, for deliverance from the kinds of calamities and hardships that beset our mortal bodies in this life.
The peace for which we pray includes every dimension of our existence before the Lord. God created us for communion with Himself in all aspects of our personhood: body, soul, and spirit. Christian salvation entails the resurrection of the complete, embodied self in the blessed communion of Heaven and the transformation of the entire creation in subjection to the Holy Trinity.
The peace for which we pray is our participation in that all-inclusive salvation. There is no true peace other than that found in the healing and transformation brought to human beings by the God-Man in whom our humanity is united with divinity. Since God intends to save us in every dimension of our existence, his healing concerns the full range of human life. Even as bread and wine become the means of our communion with the Lord, we are to offer every bit of ourselves and of this world to the Father in union with the sacrifice of the Son by the power of the Holy Spirit. We will then find life-giving communion with the Holy Trinity in everything we say and do; our life will become a eucharistic offering as we grow in holiness and union with God.
If the Liturgy is a participation in the eschatological peace of the Kingdom of God, it is fair to ask whether the members of the Church recognize and live out this vision of heavenly peace. An immediate note of realism comes to mind, as the members of the Church are sinners who have not manifested fully the new life of Christ. Nonetheless, the presence of the Holy Spirit enables the Church to embody a foretaste of the eschatological peace of the Kingdom of Heaven, and there is much in the history and ongoing life of the Church which witnesses to the saving peace of God here and now.
Though there is some ambiguity in the Church’s teaching on Christian participation in war, the Orthodox vision of peace prizes selfless love and forgiveness over violence, viewing war, in some situations, as a lesser evil with damaging spiritual consequences for all involved.
In contrast with Orthodoxy, it is easier to describe the traditional Western Christian justifications of war, which have included both the granting of plenary indulgences to those who fought in the crusades and the affirmation of a just-war theory. The former envisioned the killing of infidels as such a righteous act that the crusaders were released from all temporal punishments for their sins, including exemption from purgatory. The latter, which has been widely influential in Western culture, provides moral sanction to wars which meet certain philosophical criteria.
Orthodoxy has never embraced the crusade ethic. Orthodoxy has viewed war always as an evil, even if, as the theologian Olivier Clément expressed it, “The Church has accepted warfare sorrowfully as a sometimes necessary evil, but without concealing that it is an evil which must be avoided or limited as much as possible.” Elsewhere he notes, “The only normative ideal is that of peace, and hence the Orthodox Church has never made rules on the subject of ius belli and of ius in bello.”
Canon 13 of St. Basil’s 92 Canonical Epistles states:

Our fathers did not consider killings committed in the course of wars to be classifiable as murders at all, on the score, it seems to me, of allowing a pardon to men fighting in defense of sobriety and piety. Perhaps, though, it might be advisable to refuse them communion for three years, on the ground that their hands are not clean.

Father John McGuckin observes that St. Basil refers to St. Athanasius as the father who wrote, in his “Letter to Amun,” that killing the enemy was legitimate in wartime. McGuckin argues, however, that St. Athanasius was advising Amun on the question of the sinfulness of nocturnal emissions. “In fact the original letter had nothing whatsoever to do with war… The military image is entirely incidental, and Athanasius in context merely uses it to illustrate his chief point in the letter,” which is to show that the moral significance of actions may not be discerned without reference to the contexts in which they occurred.
Against any simplistic readings of the letter as a blanket justification of killing in war, St. Basil places the issue in a specific context. As McGuckin writes on St. Basil in “War and Repentance,” “what he speaks about is the canonical regulation of war in which a Christian can engage and find canonical forgiveness for a canonically prohibited act…”
Killing in war had been forbidden completely in earlier canons, such as Canon 14 of Hippolytus in the fourth century, which states:

A Christian is not to become a soldier. A Christian must not become a soldier, unless he is compelled by a chief bearing the sword. He is not to burden himself with the sin of blood. But if he has shed blood, he is not to partake of the mysteries, unless he is purified by a punishment, tears, and wailing. He is not to come forward deceitfully but in the fear of God.

St. Basil distinguishes between outright murder and killing “for the defense of Christian borders from the ravages of pagan marauders.” By limiting fighting to such circumstances, he sought to “restrict the bloodshed to a necessary minimum.” In contrast to the lifelong exclusion from the sacraments imposed on murderers, St. Basil recommends three years of exclusion from the chalice, thus providing a public sign that the Gospel standard is violated by war.
The Christian soldier who has killed in war is to “undergo the cathartic experience of temporary return to the lifestyle of penance… Basil’s restriction of the time of penance to three years, seemingly harsh to us moderns, was actually a commonly recognized sign of merciful leniency in the ancient rule book of the early Church.” (It is not uncommon to meet veterans who are tormented for the rest of their lives by the horrors of war. I recall the father of a childhood friend who suffered from nightmares thirty years after the conclusion of his military service during World War II. Those who are trained to kill sometimes have difficulty returning to the mores of civilian life, not to mention the life of theosis.)
McGuckin concludes that this canon of St. Basil excludes the development of just war theory in Orthodoxy. Though particular wars may be necessary or unavoidable, they are never justified, as shedding the blood of other human beings is contradictory to the way of the Kingdom of God.
In his book, The Price of Prophecy, Fr. Alexander Webster agrees that a theory of justified war “has never been systematically elucidated in Orthodox moral theology.” He describes participation in such a war as “a lesser moral option than absolute pacifism, for those unwilling or unable to pay the full price of prophecy.” He suggests that Orthodox criteria for a just war include a “proper political ethos,” meaning that the nation going to war should follow “the natural-law ethic and have positive relations with the Orthodox community.” The war should also take place for the “defense of the People of God” from injustice, invasion, or oppression “by those hostile to the free exercise of the Orthodox faith.” A proper “spiritual intent” should also lead to “forgiveness and rehabilitation” of enemies as persons who bear the image of God, and not “mere revenge, self-righteousness, or conquest.” Webster states that

Whereas the pacifist seeks to emulate Jesus as the Good Shepherd who allowed Himself to be slain unjustly by and for sinners, the just warrior perceives a higher duty: to defend the relatively innocent from unjust aggression. If the Orthodox pacifist can never do anything evil even for a reasonably just end, the Orthodox warrior cannot preserve his personal holiness by allowing evil to triumph through his own inaction.

It is curious for Webster to suggest that the just warrior follows a “higher duty” than that of the pacifist, especially when the clear norm for the Church is the selfless, forgiving, nonresistant way of Christ. Likewise, the enumeration of moral categories for a justified war and the reference to governments which follow an ethic of natural law raise the question of whether this interpretation places questions of war and peace more within the context of human moral reasoning than in that of the journey to theosis. It is fair to ask whether Webster’s formulation gives sufficient attention to the spiritual vision of Orthodoxy, as opposed to the greater reliance on an ethics of human reason in Western Christianity.
Though Christlike response of “turning the other cheek” to assaults is the ideal, the Orthodox Church does not prescribe pacifism or nonviolence as an absolute requirement of the Christian life. The Church’s moral guidance serves the goal of theosis, of guiding the members of Christ’s Body to growth in holiness and union with the Trinity. The canons of the Church are applied pastorally in order to help particular people find salvation as they seek to be faithful in the given set of challenges and weaknesses which they face. The Church’s experience is that temporal authority and the use of force are necessary to restrain evil and promote good in our fallen world.
Though the witness of the early Church was largely, but not exclusively, pacifist, the Byzantine vision was of symphonia, or harmony, between God’s Kingdom and earthly realms. Hence, Christian emperors and armies fought wars and sustained a social order that sought to embody faithfulness to the Lord in all areas of life. Church and empire were to be united, in Webster’s words, “even as the divine and human natures of Christ are united in the One Person of the Incarnate Son of God.” In practice, however, that vision was never fully realized in Byzantium; human sinfulness corrupted its political and ecclesiastical leaders in many ways.
There have remained in Orthodoxy, however, indications of the ideal of peace. Monks and clergy, for example, may not bear arms and are forbidden to use deadly violence even in cases of self-defense. Canon V of St. Gregory of Nyssa “states that should a priest ‘fall into the defilement of murder even involuntarily (i.e., in self-defense), he will be deprived of the grace of the priesthood, which he will have profaned by this sacrilegious crime.’”
Those whose hands have shed blood are no longer the icons of Christ which priests are called to be, and are not suited to serve at the altar. As Webster writes in The Pacifist Option, “An Orthodox priest is supposed to be an exemplar for the Christian community, a man with a personal history free from all serious or grievous offenses including the taking of a human life for any reason.”
Even as the sacramental priesthood is a special vocation to which not all are called, the straightforward embodiment of Christlike, nonviolent love incumbent upon priests is not canonically required of all believers. In keeping with the practice of economia, the norm of nonresistant love may not be directly applicable to those whose vocations in our broken world require the defense of the innocent. These may grow in holiness by fighting as justly as possible, even as they mourn the harm done to themselves and others by their use of violence.
Whatever choices we make in our efforts to defend the innocent from attack and abuse, none are perfect. In a fallen world populated by sinful people, every Christian’s journey to the Kingdom will be marked by a measure of spiritual brokenness, and repentance is the only road to healing.
Particular countries and peoples have been so closely identified with the Orthodox faith that their defensive wars against Islamic invaders, though not Western-style crusades, have been described as “a difficult and painful defense of the Cross.” The appeal for “victory over their enemies” at the feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, and other instances of martial imagery in the liturgies, has at times been corrupted into a “national Messianism” in which a soldier who dies in battle is regarded as a martyr and the evil of war is forgotten.

It would be a mistake, however, to suggest that Orthodoxy has enthusiastically endorsed war. Even in cases of the defense of a Christian people from Islamic invasion, the spiritual gravity of warfare has not been forgotten. For example, St. Sergius of Radonezh in the fourteenth century gave his blessing to Grand Prince Dimitri to fight a defensive war against the Tatar Khan only after he received assurances that the prince had already exhausted every possible means of reconciliation.
Kutuzov’s strategy in response to Napoleon’s invasion was similar, abandoning Moscow to the French and merely harassing Napoleon’s forces during their withdrawal, having no other aim than to drive the invader back to the frontier.
Far from being examples of unbridled militarism, these are instances which reflect the reluctant acceptance of war at times as a necessary evil.
These notes of realism should not be allowed to obscure the Church’s insistence that “non-retribution, the avoidance of violence, the returning of good for evil … and the harmony of peoples” are a holistic “normative good which Christians must seek with God’s help,” in the words of Olivier Clément.
Fr. Stanley Harakas observes that “the Eastern Patristic tradition rarely praised war, and to my knowledge, almost never called it ‘just’ or a moral good…. The peace ideal continued to remain normative and no theoretical efforts were made to make conduct of war into a positive norm.”
The evidence for widespread pacifism in the Church is strongest before St. Constantine, when the Empire was pagan and Christians, including converts within the army, were persecuted for refusing to participate in the worship of false gods. Even after the Christianization of the Empire, with the eventual requirement that only Christians could be in the army, there remained teachers of pacifism in the Church, such as Pope St. Damasus, Prudentius, and St. Paulinus of Nola. Webster remarks that St. Paulinus, in the fifth century, was the last Church Father who explicitly addressed the moral issue of war from a pacifist perspective. From then on, pacifist sensibilities would manifest themselves in other contexts, such as the requirement of clerical and monastic nonresistance.
The contrast between the canonical requirement of pacifism for the clergy and the acceptance of military service by the laity requires further comment. Webster notes that the identification of clergy with the nonviolent norm and the allowance of participation in war on the part of the laity implies a two-tier ethic with a higher and a lower class of Christians, which could be taken to imply that the clergy are necessarily holier than the laity.
More faithful to Orthodox ecclesiology would be the affirmation that the norm now embodied by the clergy will at some future point become normative for all Orthodox. Here we are dealing with a point of eschatological tension that will be resolved in the Kingdom of Heaven, when all will be pacifists, for violence and other evils will be destroyed. In the present, as Webster writes in The Pacifist Option, the clergy are “expected to demonstrate the attainment of an advanced spiritual and moral state to which all Orthodox Christians are [ultimately] called.”
The recognition of pacifism as an ultimate norm or goal for all Christians should not be surprising. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus Christ calls His followers to theosis, to growth in holiness and perfection in union with God. “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” (Matt. 5:48) This teaching is the conclusion of a section focusing on the love of enemies, which is immediately preceded by the Lord’s repudiation of resistance against evil. “Do not resist an evildoer. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn the other also.” (5:39)
These passages indicate that the repudiation of violence in self-defense is a sign of growth in holiness. Our Lord’s example of offering Himself on the cross for our salvation is the paradigmatic epiphany of the selfless love in which human beings are to participate as they come to share by grace in the life of the Trinity.

Fr. Philip LeMasters is professor of Religion and director of the Honors Program at McMurry University in Abilene, Texas. A priest of the Antiochian Orthodox Archdiocese, he serves at St. Luke Orthodox Church in Abilene. This is an abridged version of a chapter in his book, The Goodness of God’s Creation (Regina Orthodox Press). The Patristic texts cited here and many others, plus essays by a number of Orthodox theologians, can be found in For the Peace from Above: An Orthodox Resource Book on War, Peace and Nationalism, Hildo Bos and Jim Forest, editors, Syndesmos, 1999. The full text of the book is posted on the OPF web site:http://incommunion.org/articles/for-the-peace-from-above/first-page

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http://www.pravmir.com/may-christians-kill/