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Heraclitus (; ; ) was an
ancient Greek Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek ...
pre-Socratic Pre-Socratic philosophy, also known as early Greek philosophy, is ancient Greek philosophy before Socrates. Pre-Socratic philosophers were mostly interested in cosmology, the beginning and the substance of the universe, but the inquiries of the ...
philosopher from the city of
Ephesus Ephesus (; ; ; may ultimately derive from ) was an Ancient Greece, ancient Greek city on the coast of Ionia, in present-day Selçuk in İzmir Province, Turkey. It was built in the 10th century BC on the site of Apasa, the former Arzawan capital ...
, which was then part of the
Persian Empire The Achaemenid Empire or Achaemenian Empire, also known as the Persian Empire or First Persian Empire (; , , ), was an Iranian empire founded by Cyrus the Great of the Achaemenid dynasty in 550 BC. Based in modern-day Iran, it was the larg ...
. He exerts a wide influence on
Western philosophy Western philosophy refers to the Philosophy, philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the Pre ...
, both
ancient Ancient history is a time period from the beginning of writing and recorded human history through late antiquity. The span of recorded history is roughly 5,000 years, beginning with the development of Sumerian cuneiform script. Ancient h ...
and modern, through the works of such authors as
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
,
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
,
Hegel Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (27 August 1770 – 14 November 1831) was a 19th-century German idealism, German idealist. His influence extends across a wide range of topics from metaphysical issues in epistemology and ontology, to political phi ...
,
Nietzsche Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche (15 October 1844 – 25 August 1900) was a German philosopher. He began his career as a classical philologist, turning to philosophy early in his academic career. In 1869, aged 24, Nietzsche became the youngest pro ...
, and
Heidegger Martin Heidegger (; 26 September 1889 – 26 May 1976) was a German philosopher known for contributions to phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. His work covers a range of topics including metaphysics, art, and language. In April ...
. Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote a single work, only fragments of which have survived. Even in ancient times, his
paradoxical A paradox is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation. It is a statement that, despite apparently valid reasoning from true or apparently true premises, leads to a seemingly self-contradictor ...
philosophy, appreciation for
wordplay Word play or wordplay (also: play-on-words) is a literary technique and a form of wit in which words used become the main subject of the work, primarily for the purpose of intended effect or amusement. Examples of word play include puns, phone ...
, and cryptic, oracular
epigram An epigram is a brief, interesting, memorable, sometimes surprising or satirical statement. The word derives from the Greek (, "inscription", from [], "to write on, to inscribe"). This literary device has been practiced for over two millennia ...
s earned him the epithets "the dark" and "the obscure". He was considered arrogant and depressed, a
misanthrope Misanthropy is the general hatred, dislike, or distrust of the Human, human species, human behavior, or human nature. A misanthrope or misanthropist is someone who holds such views or feelings. Misanthropy involves a negative evaluative attitu ...
who was subject to
melancholia Melancholia or melancholy (from ',Burton, Bk. I, p. 147 meaning black bile) is a concept found throughout ancient, medieval, and premodern medicine in Europe that describes a condition characterized by markedly depressed mood, bodily complain ...
. Consequently, he became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to the ancient
atomist Atomism () is a natural philosophy proposing that the physical universe is composed of fundamental indivisible components known as atoms. References to the concept of atomism and its atoms appeared in both ancient Greek and ancient Indian philo ...
philosopher
Democritus Democritus (, ; , ''Dēmókritos'', meaning "chosen of the people"; – ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic philosopher from Abdera, Thrace, Abdera, primarily remembered today for his formulation of an ...
, who was known as "the laughing philosopher". The central ideas of Heraclitus's philosophy are the
unity of opposites The unity of opposites ( or ) is the philosophical idea that opposites are interconnected by the way each is defined in relation to the other. Their interdependence unites the seemingly opposed terms. The unity of opposites is sometimes equated wi ...
and the concept of
change Change, Changed or Changing may refer to the below. Other forms are listed at Alteration * Impermanence, a difference in a state of affairs at different points in time * Menopause, also referred to as "the change", the permanent cessation of t ...
. Heraclitus saw
harmony In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harm ...
and
justice In its broadest sense, justice is the idea that individuals should be treated fairly. According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', the most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the ''Institutes (Justinian), Inst ...
in strife. He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being". He expressed this in sayings like "Everything flows" (, ''panta rhei'') and "No man ever steps in the same river twice". This insistence upon change contrasts with that of the ancient philosopher
Parmenides Parmenides of Elea (; ; fl. late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic ancient Greece, Greek philosopher from Velia, Elea in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy). Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Veli ...
, who believed in a reality of static "
being Existence is the state of having being or reality in contrast to nonexistence and nonbeing. Existence is often contrasted with essence: the essence of an entity is its essential features or qualities, which can be understood even if one do ...
". Heraclitus believed fire was the ''
arche In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. First principles in philosophy are from first cause attitudes and taught by Aristotelians, and nuan ...
'', the fundamental stuff of the world. In choosing an ''arche'' Heraclitus followed the Milesians before him —
Thales Thales of Miletus ( ; ; ) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic Philosophy, philosopher from Miletus in Ionia, Asia Minor. Thales was one of the Seven Sages of Greece, Seven Sages, founding figure ...
with water,
Anaximander Anaximander ( ; ''Anaximandros''; ) was a Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus,"Anaximander" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes Ltd, George Newnes, 1961, Vol. ...
with ''
apeiron ''Apeiron'' (; ) is a Greek word meaning '(that which is) unlimited; boundless; infinite; indefinite' from ''a-'' 'without' and ''peirar'' 'end, limit; boundary', the Ionic Greek form of ''peras'' 'end, limit, boundary'. Origin of everything ...
'' ("boundless" or "infinite"), and Anaximenes with air. Heraclitus also thought the ''
logos ''Logos'' (, ; ) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric, as well as religion (notably Logos (Christianity), Christianity); among its connotations is that of a rationality, rational form of discourse that relies on inducti ...
'' ( lit.word, discourse, or reason) gave structure to the world.


Life

Heraclitus, the son of Blyson, was from the Ionian city of Ephesus, a
port A port is a maritime facility comprising one or more wharves or loading areas, where ships load and discharge cargo and passengers. Although usually situated on a sea coast or estuary, ports can also be found far inland, such as Hamburg, Manch ...
on the Cayster River, on the western coast of
Asia Minor Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean ...
(modern-day
Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...
). In the 6th century BC, Ephesus, like other cities in
Ionia Ionia ( ) was an ancient region encompassing the central part of the western coast of Anatolia. It consisted of the northernmost territories of the Ionian League of Greek settlements. Never a unified state, it was named after the Ionians who ...
, lived under the effects of both the rise of
Lydia Lydia (; ) was an Iron Age Monarchy, kingdom situated in western Anatolia, in modern-day Turkey. Later, it became an important province of the Achaemenid Empire and then the Roman Empire. Its capital was Sardis. At some point before 800 BC, ...
under
Croesus Croesus ( ; ; Latin: ; reigned: ) was the Monarch, king of Lydia, who reigned from 585 BC until his Siege of Sardis (547 BC), defeat by the Persian king Cyrus the Great in 547 or 546 BC. According to Herodotus, he reigned 14 years. Croesus was ...
and his overthrow by
Cyrus the Great Cyrus II of Persia ( ; 530 BC), commonly known as Cyrus the Great, was the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. Achaemenid dynasty (i. The clan and dynasty) Hailing from Persis, he brought the Achaemenid dynasty to power by defeating the Media ...
c. 547 BC. Ephesus appears to have subsequently cultivated a close relationship with the Persian Empire; during the suppression of the
Ionian revolt The Ionian Revolt, and associated revolts in Aeolis, Doris (Asia Minor), Doris, Ancient history of Cyprus, Cyprus and Caria, were military rebellions by several Greek regions of Asia Minor against Achaemenid Empire, Persian rule, lasting from 499 ...
by
Darius the Great Darius I ( ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of West A ...
in 494 BC, Ephesus was spared and emerged as the dominant
Greek Greek may refer to: Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor of all kno ...
city in Ionia.
Miletus Miletus (Ancient Greek: Μίλητος, Mílētos) was an influential ancient Greek city on the western coast of Anatolia, near the mouth of the Maeander River in present day Turkey. Renowned in antiquity for its wealth, maritime power, and ex ...
, the home to the previous philosophers, was captured and sacked. The main source for the life of Heraclitus is the
doxographer Doxography ( – "an opinion", "a point of view" +  – "to write", "to describe") is a term used especially for the works of classical historians, describing the points of view of past philosophers and scientists. The term was coined by ...
Diogenes Laërtius Diogenes Laërtius ( ; , ; ) was a biographer of the Greek philosophers. Little is definitively known about his life, but his surviving book ''Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers'' is a principal source for the history of ancient Greek ph ...
. Although most of the information provided by Laertius is unreliable, and the ancient stories about Heraclitus are thought to be later fabrications based on interpretations of the preserved fragments; the anecdote that Heraclitus relinquished the hereditary title of "king" to his younger brother may at least imply that Heraclitus was from an
aristocratic Aristocracy (; ) is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, privileged ruling class, the aristocrats. Across Europe, the aristocracy exercised immense economic, political, and social influence. In Western Christian co ...
family in Ephesus. Heraclitus appears to have had little sympathy for
democracy Democracy (from , ''dēmos'' 'people' and ''kratos'' 'rule') is a form of government in which political power is vested in the people or the population of a state. Under a minimalist definition of democracy, rulers are elected through competitiv ...
or
the masses ''The Masses'' was a graphically innovative American magazine of socialist politics published monthly from 1911 until 1917, when federal prosecutors brought charges against its editors for conspiring to obstruct conscription in the United Stat ...
. However, it is unclear whether he was "an unconditional partisan of the rich", or if, like the sage
Solon Solon (; ;  BC) was an Archaic Greece#Athens, archaic History of Athens, Athenian statesman, lawmaker, political philosopher, and poet. He is one of the Seven Sages of Greece and credited with laying the foundations for Athenian democracy. ...
, he was "withdrawn from competing factions". Since antiquity, Heraclitus has been labeled a solitary figure and an arrogant misanthrope. The
skeptic Skepticism ( US) or scepticism ( UK) is a questioning attitude or doubt toward knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war then the p ...
Timon of Phlius Timon of Phlius (; , , ; BCc. 235 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosopher from the Hellenistic period, who was the student of Pyrrho. Unlike Pyrrho, who wrote nothing, Timon wrote satirical philosophical poetry called ''Silloi'' () as well ...
called Heraclitus a "mob-abuser" (''ochloloidoros''). Heraclitus considered himself self-taught. He criticized fools for being "put in a flutter by every word". He did not consider others incapable, but unwilling: "And though reason is common, most people live as though they had an understanding peculiar to themselves." Heraclitus did not seem to like the prevailing religion of the time, criticizing the popular
mystery cults Mystery religions, mystery cults, sacred mysteries or simply mysteries (), were religious schools of the Greco-Roman world for which participation was reserved to initiates ''(mystai)''. The main characteristic of these religious schools was th ...
, blood sacrifice, and
prayer File:Prayers-collage.png, 300px, alt=Collage of various religionists praying – Clickable Image, Collage of various religionists praying ''(Clickable image – use cursor to identify.)'' rect 0 0 1000 1000 Shinto festivalgoer praying in front ...
to statues. He also did not believe in
funeral rites A funeral is a ceremony connected with the final disposition of a corpse, such as a burial or cremation, with the attendant observances. Funerary customs comprise the complex of beliefs and practices used by a culture to remember and respect th ...
, saying "Corpses are more fit to be cast out than dung." He further criticized
Homer Homer (; , ; possibly born ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek poet who is credited as the author of the ''Iliad'' and the ''Odyssey'', two epic poems that are foundational works of ancient Greek literature. Despite doubts about his autho ...
,
Hesiod Hesiod ( or ; ''Hēsíodos''; ) was an ancient Greece, Greek poet generally thought to have been active between 750 and 650 BC, around the same time as Homer.M. L. West, ''Hesiod: Theogony'', Oxford University Press (1966), p. 40.Jasper Gr ...
,
Pythagoras Pythagoras of Samos (;  BC) was an ancient Ionian Greek philosopher, polymath, and the eponymous founder of Pythagoreanism. His political and religious teachings were well known in Magna Graecia and influenced the philosophies of P ...
,
Xenophanes Xenophanes of Colophon ( ; ; – c. 478 BC) was a Greek philosopher, theologian, poet, and critic of Homer. He was born in Ionia and travelled throughout the Greek-speaking world in early classical antiquity. As a poet, Xenophanes was known f ...
, and Hecataeus. He endorsed the sage
Bias of Priene Bias (; ) of Priene was a Greek sage. He is widely accepted as one of the Seven Sages of Greece and spent his life working as a legal advocate free of charge for those who had been wronged. He also served as an envoy for Priene during mediation ...
, who is quoted as saying "Most men are bad". He praised a man named Hermodorus as the best among the Ephesians, who he says should all kill themselves for exiling him. Heraclitus is traditionally considered to have
flourished ''Floruit'' ( ; usually abbreviated fl. or occasionally flor.; from Latin for 'flourished') denotes a date or period during which a person was known to have been alive or active. In English, the unabbreviated word may also be used as a noun indic ...
in the 69th
Olympiad An olympiad (, ''Olympiás'') is a period of four years, particularly those associated with the Ancient Olympic Games, ancient and Olympic Games, modern Olympic Games. Although the ancient Olympics were established during Archaic Greece, Greece ...
(504–501 BC), but this date may simply be based on a prior account synchronizing his life with the reign of
Darius the Great Darius I ( ; – 486 BCE), commonly known as Darius the Great, was the third King of Kings of the Achaemenid Empire, reigning from 522 BCE until his death in 486 BCE. He ruled the empire at its territorial peak, when it included much of West A ...
. However, this date can be considered "roughly accurate" based on a fragment that references Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus as older contemporaries, placing him near the end of the sixth century BC. According to Diogenes Laertius, Heraclitus died covered in dung after failing to cure himself from
dropsy Edema (American English), also spelled oedema (British English), and also known as fluid retention, swelling, dropsy and hydropsy, is the build-up of fluid in the body's tissue. Most commonly, the legs or arms are affected. Symptoms may inclu ...
. This may be to parody his doctrine that for souls it is death to become water, and that a dry soul is best.


''On Nature''

Heraclitus is said to have produced a single work on
papyrus Papyrus ( ) is a material similar to thick paper that was used in ancient times as a writing surface. It was made from the pith of the papyrus plant, ''Cyperus papyrus'', a wetland sedge. ''Papyrus'' (plural: ''papyri'' or ''papyruses'') can a ...
, which has not survived; however, over 100 fragments of this work survive in quotations by other authors. The title is unknown, but many later writers refer to this work, and works by other pre-Socratics, as ''On Nature''. According to Diogenes Laërtius, Heraclitus deposited the book in the Artemision as a dedication. It was available at least until the 2nd century AD, when
Plutarch Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...
and Clement quote directly from it, if not later. Yet by the 6th-century,
Simplicius of Cilicia Simplicius of Cilicia (; ; – c. 540) was a disciple of Ammonius Hermiae and Damascius, and was one of the last of the Neoplatonists. He was among the pagan philosophers persecuted by Justinian in the early 6th century, and was forced for ...
, who mentions Heraclitus 32 times in his
Commentaries on Aristotle A great mass of literature has been produced to explain and clarify the works of Aristotle, especially during the ancient and medieval eras. The pupils of Aristotle (384322 BC) were the first to comment on his writings, a tradition which was ...
, never quotes from him, implying that Heraclitus's work was so rare that it was apparently unavailable even to the
Neoplatonist Neoplatonism is a version of Platonic philosophy that emerged in the 3rd century AD against the background of Hellenistic philosophy and religion. The term does not encapsulate a set of ideas as much as a series of thinkers. Among the common id ...
philosophers at the Platonic Academy in Athens. The opening lines are quoted by
Sextus Empiricus Sextus Empiricus (, ; ) was a Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher and Empiric school physician with Roman citizenship. His philosophical works are the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman Pyrrhonism, and because of the argument ...
:


Structure

Scholar
Martin Litchfield West Martin Litchfield West, (23 September 1937 – 13 July 2015) was a British philologist and classical scholar. In recognition of his contribution to scholarship, he was appointed to the Order of Merit in 2014. West wrote on ancient Greek music ...
claims that while the existing fragments do not give much of an idea of the overall structure, the beginning of the discourse can probably be determined. Diogenes Laërtius wrote that the book was divided into three parts: the
universe The universe is all of space and time and their contents. It comprises all of existence, any fundamental interaction, physical process and physical constant, and therefore all forms of matter and energy, and the structures they form, from s ...
,
politics Politics () is the set of activities that are associated with decision-making, making decisions in social group, groups, or other forms of power (social and political), power relations among individuals, such as the distribution of Social sta ...
, and
theology Theology is the study of religious belief from a Religion, religious perspective, with a focus on the nature of divinity. It is taught as an Discipline (academia), academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itse ...
, but, classicists have challenged that division. Classicist John Burnet has argued that "it is not to be supposed that this division is due to eraclitushimself; all we can infer is that the work fell naturally into these parts when the
Stoic Stoic may refer to: * An adherent of Stoicism Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome. The Stoics believed that the universe operated according to reason, ''i.e.'' by a God which is immersed i ...
commentators took their editions of it in hand". The Stoics divided their own philosophy into three parts: ethics, logic, and physics. The Stoic
Cleanthes Cleanthes (; ; c. 330 BC – c. 230 BC), of Assos, was a Greek Stoic philosopher and boxer who was the successor to Zeno of Citium as the second head ('' scholarch'') of the Stoic school in Athens. Originally a boxer, he came to Athens where ...
further divided philosophy into
dialectic Dialectic (; ), also known as the dialectical method, refers originally to dialogue between people holding different points of view about a subject but wishing to arrive at the truth through reasoned argument. Dialectic resembles debate, but the ...
s,
rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...
,
ethics Ethics is the philosophy, philosophical study of Morality, moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates Normativity, normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches inclu ...
, politics,
physics Physics is the scientific study of matter, its Elementary particle, fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior through space and time, and the related entities of energy and force. "Physical science is that department of knowledge whi ...
, and theology, and
philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources. It is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics with strong ties to etymology. Philology is also defined as the study of ...
Karl Deichgräber has argued the last three are the same as the alleged division of Heraclitus.The Cynics
by. Robert Brach Branham p. 51
The philosopher Paul Schuster has argued the division came from the ''
Pinakes The ''Pinakes'' ( 'tables', plural of ''pinax'') is a lost bibliographic work composed by Callimachus (310/305–240 BCE) that is popularly considered to be the first library catalog in the West; its contents were based upon the holdings of th ...
''.


Style

Heraclitus's style has been compared to a
Sibyl The sibyls were prophetesses or oracles in Ancient Greece. The sibyls prophet, prophesied at holy sites. A sibyl at Delphi has been dated to as early as the eleventh century BC by Pausanias (geographer), PausaniasPausanias 10.12.1 when he desc ...
,Nietzsche, Friedrich. ''Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks''. United States: Skyhorse Publishing. p. 64 who "with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her". Heraclitus also seemed to pattern his style after
oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...
s. Heraclitus wrote "nature loves to hide" and "a hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one". He also wrote "The lord whose
oracle An oracle is a person or thing considered to provide insight, wise counsel or prophetic predictions, most notably including precognition of the future, inspired by deities. If done through occultic means, it is a form of divination. Descript ...
is in
Delphi Delphi (; ), in legend previously called Pytho (Πυθώ), was an ancient sacred precinct and the seat of Pythia, the major oracle who was consulted about important decisions throughout the ancient Classical antiquity, classical world. The A ...
neither speaks nor conceals, but gives a sign." Heraclitus is the earliest known literary reference for the Delphic maxim to
know thyself "Know thyself" (Greek: , ) is a philosophical maxim which was inscribed upon the Temple of Apollo in the ancient Greek precinct of Delphi. The best-known of the Delphic maxims, it has been quoted and analyzed by numerous authors throughout histo ...
. Kahn characterized the main features of Heraclitus's writing as "linguistic density", meaning that single words and phrases have multiple meanings, and "resonance", meaning that expressions evoke one another. Heraclitus used literary devices like
alliteration Alliteration is the repetition of syllable-initial consonant sounds between nearby words, or of syllable-initial vowels if the syllables in question do not start with a consonant. It is often used as a literary device. A common example is " Pe ...
and
chiasmus In rhetoric, chiasmus ( ) or, less commonly, chiasm (Latin term from Greek , "crossing", from the Ancient Greek, Greek , , "to shape like the letter chi (letter), Χ"), is a "reversal of grammatical structures in successive phrases or clauses ...
.


The Obscure

Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
quotes part of the opening line of Heraclitus's work in the ''
Rhetoric Rhetoric is the art of persuasion. It is one of the three ancient arts of discourse ( trivium) along with grammar and logic/ dialectic. As an academic discipline within the humanities, rhetoric aims to study the techniques that speakers or w ...
'' to outline the difficulty in punctuating Heraclitus without ambiguity; he debated whether "forever" applied to "being" or to "prove". Aristotle's successor at the
lyceum The lyceum is a category of educational institution defined within the education system of many countries, mainly in Europe. The definition varies among countries; usually it is a type of secondary school. Basic science and some introduction to ...
Theophrastus Theophrastus (; ; c. 371 – c. 287 BC) was an ancient Greek Philosophy, philosopher and Natural history, naturalist. A native of Eresos in Lesbos, he was Aristotle's close colleague and successor as head of the Lyceum (classical), Lyceum, the ...
says about Heraclitus that "some parts of his work rehalf-finished, while other parts adea strange medley". Theophrastus thought an inability to finish the work showed Heraclitus was melancholic. Diogenes Laërtius relays the story that the playwright
Euripides Euripides () was a Greek tragedy, tragedian of classical Athens. Along with Aeschylus and Sophocles, he is one of the three ancient Greek tragedians for whom any plays have survived in full. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to ...
gave
Socrates Socrates (; ; – 399 BC) was a Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher from Classical Athens, Athens who is credited as the founder of Western philosophy and as among the first moral philosophers of the Ethics, ethical tradition ...
a copy of Heraclitus's work and asked for his opinion. Socrates replied: "The part I understand is excellent, and so too is, I dare say, the part I do not understand; but it needs a
Delian The Delian League was a confederacy of Greek city-states, numbering between 150 and 330, founded in 478 BC under the leadership ( hegemony) of Athens, whose purpose was to continue fighting the Persian Empire after the Greek victory in the Bat ...
diver to get to the bottom of it." Also according to Diogenes Laërtius, Timon of Phlius called Heraclitus "the Riddler" (; ). Timon said Heraclitus wrote his book "rather unclearly" (; ); according to Timon, this was intended to allow only the "capable" to attempt it. By the time of the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise ''
De Mundo ''On the Universe'' (; ) is a theological and scientific treatise included in the Corpus Aristotelicum but usually regarded as spurious. It was likely published between the and the . The work discusses cosmological, geological, and meteorologica ...
'', this epithet became in Greek "The Dark" (; ). In
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
this became "The Obscure". According to Cicero, Heraclitus had spoken ''nimis obscurē'' ("too obscurely") concerning nature and had done so deliberately in order to be misunderstood. According to
Plotinus Plotinus (; , ''Plōtînos'';  – 270 CE) was a Greek Platonist philosopher, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism. His teacher was the self-taught philosopher Ammonius ...
, it was "probably with the idea that it is for us to seek within ourselves, as he sought for himself and found".


Philosophy

Heraclitus has been the subject of numerous interpretations. According to scholar Daniel W. Graham, Heraclitus has been seen as a " material monist or a process philosopher; a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician and a religious thinker; an
empiricist In philosophy, empiricism is an epistemological view which holds that true knowledge or justification comes only or primarily from sensory experience and empirical evidence. It is one of several competing views within epistemology, along ...
, a rationalist, a mystic; a conventional thinker and a revolutionary; a developer of
logic Logic is the study of correct reasoning. It includes both formal and informal logic. Formal logic is the study of deductively valid inferences or logical truths. It examines how conclusions follow from premises based on the structure o ...
– one who denied the law of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopher and an
anti-intellectual Anti-intellectualism is hostility to and mistrust of intellect, intellectuals, and intellectualism, commonly expressed as deprecation of education and philosophy and the dismissal of art, literature, history, and science as impractical, politica ...
obscurantist In philosophy, obscurantism or obscurationism is the anti-intellectual practice of deliberately presenting information in an abstruse and imprecise manner that limits further inquiry and understanding of a subject. ''Obscurantism'' has been defin ...
".


Unity of opposites and flux

The hallmarks of Heraclitus's philosophy are the unity of opposites and change, or
flux Flux describes any effect that appears to pass or travel (whether it actually moves or not) through a surface or substance. Flux is a concept in applied mathematics and vector calculus which has many applications in physics. For transport phe ...
. According to Aristotle, Heraclitus was a dialetheist, or one who denies the
law of noncontradiction In logic, the law of noncontradiction (LNC; also known as the law of contradiction, principle of non-contradiction (PNC), or the principle of contradiction) states that for any given proposition, the proposition and its negation cannot both be s ...
(a law of thought or logical principle which states that something cannot be true and false at the same time). Also according to Aristotle, Heraclitus was a
materialist Materialism is a form of philosophical monism according to which matter is the fundamental substance in nature, and all things, including mental states and consciousness, are results of material interactions. According to philosophical materia ...
.Aristotle. "M". ''Metaphysics'' 1078b Attempting to follow Aristotle's hylomorphic interpretation, scholar
W. K. C. Guthrie William Keith Chambers Guthrie (1August 190617May 1981) was a Scottish classical scholar, best known for his ''History of Greek Philosophy'', published in six volumes between 1962 and his death. He served as Laurence Professor of Ancient Philo ...
interprets the distinction between flux and stability as one between
matter In classical physics and general chemistry, matter is any substance that has mass and takes up space by having volume. All everyday objects that can be touched are ultimately composed of atoms, which are made up of interacting subatomic pa ...
and
form Form is the shape, visual appearance, or configuration of an object. In a wider sense, the form is the way something happens. Form may also refer to: *Form (document), a document (printed or electronic) with spaces in which to write or enter dat ...
. On this view, Heraclitus is a flux theorist because he is a materialist who believes matter always changes. There are no unchanging forms like with Plato or Aristotle. As one author puts it, "Plato took flux as the greatest warning against materialism". Several fragments seem to relate to the unity of opposites. For example: "The straight and the crooked path of the fuller's comb is one and the same"; "The way up is the way down"; "Beginning and end, on a
circle A circle is a shape consisting of all point (geometry), points in a plane (mathematics), plane that are at a given distance from a given point, the Centre (geometry), centre. The distance between any point of the circle and the centre is cal ...
's circumference, are common"; and "Thou shouldst unite things whole and things not whole, that which tends to unite and that which tends to separate, the harmonious and the discordant; from all things arises the one, and from the one all things." Over time, the opposites change into each other: "Mortals are immortals and immortals are mortals, the one living the others' death and dying the others' life"; "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 those in turn having changed around are these"; and "Cold things warm up, the hot cools off, wet becomes dry, dry becomes wet." It also seems they change into each other depending on one's
point of view Point of View or Points of View may refer to: Concept and technique * Point of view (literature) or narrative mode, the perspective of the narrative voice; the pronoun used in narration * Point of view (philosophy), an attitude how one sees or ...
, a case of
relativism Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to absolute objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assess ...
or
perspectivism Perspectivism (also called perspectivalism) is the epistemological principle that perception of and knowledge of something are always bound to the interpretive perspectives of those observing it. While perspectivism regard all perspectives and ...
. Heraclitus states: "Disease makes health sweet and good; hunger, satiety; toil, rest." While men drink and wash with water,
fish A fish (: fish or fishes) is an aquatic animal, aquatic, Anamniotes, anamniotic, gill-bearing vertebrate animal with swimming fish fin, fins and craniate, a hard skull, but lacking limb (anatomy), limbs with digit (anatomy), digits. Fish can ...
prefer to drink saltwater,
pig The pig (''Sus domesticus''), also called swine (: swine) or hog, is an omnivorous, domesticated, even-toed, hoofed mammal. It is named the domestic pig when distinguishing it from other members of the genus '' Sus''. Some authorities cons ...
s prefer to wash in mud, and
fowl Fowl are birds belonging to one of two biological orders, namely the gamefowl or landfowl ( Galliformes) and the waterfowl ( Anseriformes). Anatomical and molecular similarities suggest these two groups are close evolutionary relatives; toget ...
s prefer to wash in dust. " Oxen are happy when they find bitter
vetches ''Vicia'' is a genus of over 240 species of flowering plants that are part of the legume family (Fabaceae), and which are commonly known as vetches. Member species are native to Europe, North America, South America, Asia and Africa. Some other g ...
to eat" and "
asses Ass most commonly refers to: * Buttocks (in informal American English) * Donkey or ass, ''Equus africanus asinus'' **any other member of the subgenus ''Asinus'' Ass or ASS may also refer to: Art and entertainment * ''Ass'' (album), 1973 alb ...
would rather have refuse than
gold Gold is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol Au (from Latin ) and atomic number 79. In its pure form, it is a brightness, bright, slightly orange-yellow, dense, soft, malleable, and ductile metal. Chemically, gold is a transition metal ...
."


''Panta rhei''

Diogenes Laërtius summarizes Heraclitus's philosophy as follows: "All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things ( ''ta hola'' ('the whole')) flows like a stream." Classicist
Jonathan Barnes Jonathan Barnes, FBA (born 26 December 1942 in Wenlock, Shropshire) is an English scholar of Aristotelian and ancient philosophy. Education and career Barnes, born on December 26, 1942, he was educated at the City of London School and Ballio ...
states that "''Panta rhei'', 'everything flows' is probably the most familiar of Heraclitus's sayings, yet few modern scholars think he said it". Barnes observes that although the ''exact'' phrase was not ascribed to Heraclitus until the 6th century by Simplicius, a similar saying expressing the same idea, ''panta chorei'', or "everything moves" is ascribed to Heraclitus by Plato in the ''
Cratylus Cratylus ( ; , ''Kratylos'') was an ancient Athenian philosopher from the mid-late 5th century BC, known mostly through his portrayal in Plato's dialogue '' Cratylus''. He was a radical proponent of Heraclitean philosophy and influenced the you ...
''.


You cannot step into the same river twice

Since Plato, Heraclitus's theory of flux has been associated with the metaphor of a flowing river, which cannot be stepped into twice. This fragment from Heraclitus's writings has survived in three different forms: * "On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow" –
Arius Didymus Arius Didymus ( ''Areios Didymos''; fl. 1st century BC) was a Stoic philosopher and teacher of Augustus. Fragments of his handbooks summarizing Stoic and Peripatetic doctrines are preserved by Stobaeus and Eusebius. Life Arius was a citizen of ...
, quoted in
Stobaeus Joannes Stobaeus (; ; 5th-century AD), from Stobi in Macedonia (Roman province), Macedonia, was the compiler of a valuable series of extracts from Greek authors. The work was originally divided into two volumes containing two books each. The tw ...
* "We both step and do not step into the same river, we both are and are not" – Heraclitus Homericus, ''Homeric Allegories'' * "It is not possible to step into the same river twice" –
Plutarch Plutarch (; , ''Ploútarchos'', ; – 120s) was a Greek Middle Platonist philosopher, historian, biographer, essayist, and priest at the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), Temple of Apollo in Delphi. He is known primarily for his ''Parallel Lives'', ...
, ''On the E at Delphi'' The classicist Karl Reinhardt identified the first river quote as the genuine one. The river fragments (especially the second "we both are and are not") seem to suggest not only is the river constantly changing, but we do as well, perhaps commenting on
existential Existentialism is a family of philosophical views and inquiry that explore the human individual's struggle to lead an authentic life despite the apparent absurdity or incomprehensibility of existence. In examining meaning, purpose, and value ...
questions about humanity and personhood. Scholars such as Reinhardt also interpreted the metaphor as illustrating what is stable, rather than the usual interpretation of illustrating change. Classicist has said: "You will not find anything, in which the river remains constant ... Just the fact, that there is a particular river bed, that there is a source and an estuary etc. is something, that stays identical. And this is ... the concept of a river." According to American philosopher
W. V. O. Quine W. may refer to: * SoHo (Australian TV channel) (previously W.), an Australian pay television channel * ''W.'' (film), a 2008 American biographical drama film based on the life of George W. Bush * "W.", the fifth track from Codeine's 1992 EP ''Bar ...
, the river parable illustrates that the river is a process through time. One cannot step twice into the same river-stage. Professor M. M. McCabe has argued that the three statements on rivers should all be read as fragments from a discourse. McCabe suggests reading them as though they arose in succession. The three fragments "could be retained, and arranged in an argumentative sequence". In McCabe's reading of the fragments, Heraclitus can be read as a philosopher capable of sustained
argument An argument is a series of sentences, statements, or propositions some of which are called premises and one is the conclusion. The purpose of an argument is to give reasons for one's conclusion via justification, explanation, and/or persu ...
, rather than just
aphorism An aphorism (from Greek ἀφορισμός: ''aphorismos'', denoting 'delimitation', 'distinction', and 'definition') is a concise, terse, laconic, or memorable expression of a general truth or principle. Aphorisms are often handed down by tra ...
.


Strife is justice

Heraclitus said "strife is justice" and "all things take place by strife". He called the opposites in conflict (), " strife", and theorized that the apparently unitary state, (), "
justice In its broadest sense, justice is the idea that individuals should be treated fairly. According to the ''Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', the most plausible candidate for a core definition comes from the ''Institutes (Justinian), Inst ...
", results in "the most beautiful
harmony In music, harmony is the concept of combining different sounds in order to create new, distinct musical ideas. Theories of harmony seek to describe or explain the effects created by distinct pitches or tones coinciding with one another; harm ...
", in contrast to
Anaximander Anaximander ( ; ''Anaximandros''; ) was a Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic Ancient Greek philosophy, Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus,"Anaximander" in ''Chambers's Encyclopædia''. London: George Newnes Ltd, George Newnes, 1961, Vol. ...
, who described the same as injustice. Aristotle said Heraclitus disagreed with Homer because Homer wished that strife would leave the world, which according to Heraclitus would destroy the world; "there would be no harmony without high and low notes, and no animals without male and female, which are opposites". It may also explain why he disagreed with the Pythagorean emphasis on harmony, but not on strife.W. K. C. Guthrie "Pre-Socratic Philosophy" ''Cambridge Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (1961) p. 443 Heraclitus suggests that the world and its various parts are kept together through the tension produced by the unity of opposites, like the string of a bow or a
lyre The lyre () (from Greek λύρα and Latin ''lyra)'' is a string instrument, stringed musical instrument that is classified by Hornbostel–Sachs as a member of the History of lute-family instruments, lute family of instruments. In organology, a ...
. On one account, this is the earliest use of the concept of
force In physics, a force is an influence that can cause an Physical object, object to change its velocity unless counterbalanced by other forces. In mechanics, force makes ideas like 'pushing' or 'pulling' mathematically precise. Because the Magnitu ...
.Cambridge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Force, by M. Jammer (1961) A quote about the bow shows his appreciation for wordplay: "The bow's name is life, but its work is death." Each substance contains its opposite, making for a continual circular exchange of generation, destruction, and motion that results in the stability of the world. This can be illustrated by the quote "Even the ''
kykeon Kykeon (, ; from , ; "to stir, to mix") was an Ancient Greek drink of varied description. Some were made of water, barley and naturally occurring substances. Others were made with wine and grated cheese. It is widely believed that kykeon refers t ...
'' separates if it is not stirred." According to Abraham Schoener: "War is the central principle in Heraclitus' thought." Another of Heraclitus's famous sayings highlights the idea that the unity of opposites is also a conflict of opposites: "War is father of all and king of all; and some he manifested as gods, some as men; some he made slaves, some free"; war is a creative tension that brings things into existence. Heraclitus says further "Gods and men honour those slain in war"; "Greater deaths gain greater portions"; and "Every beast is tended by blows."


''Logos''

A core concept for Heraclitus is ''
logos ''Logos'' (, ; ) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric, as well as religion (notably Logos (Christianity), Christianity); among its connotations is that of a rationality, rational form of discourse that relies on inducti ...
'', an ancient Greek word literally meaning "word, speech, discourse, or meaning". For Heraclitus, the ''logos'' seems to designate the rational structure or ordered composition of the world.Hoffman, David. (2006). Structural Logos in Heraclitus and the Sophists. Advances in the History of Rhetoric. 9. 1–32. . As well as the opening quote of his book, one fragment reads: "Listening not to me but to the ''logos'', it is wise to agree (''homologein'') that all things are one." Another fragment reads: " 'hoi polloi''">hoi_polloi.html" ;"title="'hoi polloi">'hoi polloi''... do not know how to listen [to ''Logos''] or how to speak [the truth]." The word ''logos'' has a wide variety of other uses, such that Heraclitus might have a different meaning of the word for each usage in his book. Kahn has argued that Heraclitus used the word in multiple senses, whereas Guthrie has argued that there is no evidence Heraclitus used it in a way that was significantly different from that in which it was used by contemporaneous speakers of Greek. Professor Michael Stokes interprets Heraclitus's use of ''logos'' as a public
fact A fact is a truth, true data, datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance. Standard reference works are often used to Fact-checking, check facts. Science, Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by ...
like a
proposition A proposition is a statement that can be either true or false. It is a central concept in the philosophy of language, semantics, logic, and related fields. Propositions are the object s denoted by declarative sentences; for example, "The sky ...
or
formula In science, a formula is a concise way of expressing information symbolically, as in a mathematical formula or a ''chemical formula''. The informal use of the term ''formula'' in science refers to the general construct of a relationship betwe ...
; like Guthrie, he views Heraclitus as a materialist, so he grants Heraclitus would not have considered these as
abstract objects In philosophy and the arts, a fundamental distinction exists between abstract and concrete entities. While there is no universally accepted definition, common examples illustrate the difference: numbers, sets, and ideas are typically classified ...
or
immaterial Immaterial may refer to: * The opposite of matter, material, materialism, or materialistic * Maya (illusion), a concept in all Indian religions, that all matter is a grand illusion * Incorporeality * Immaterialism, including subjective idealism (a ...
things. Another possibility is the ''logos'' referred to the
truth Truth or verity is the Property (philosophy), property of being in accord with fact or reality.Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionarytruth, 2005 In everyday language, it is typically ascribed to things that aim to represent reality or otherwise cor ...
, or to the book itself. Classicist
Walther Kranz Walther Kranz (; 23 November 1884 in Georgsmarienhütte – 18 September 1960 in Bonn) was a German classical philologist (the study of classical antiquity) and historian of philosophy. Biography Kranz studied classical philology at the Univers ...
translated it as "
sense A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the surroundings through the detection of Stimulus (physiology), stimuli. Although, in some cultures, five human senses were traditio ...
". Heraclitus's ''logos'' doctrine may also be the origin of the doctrine of
natural law Natural law (, ) is a Philosophy, philosophical and legal theory that posits the existence of a set of inherent laws derived from nature and universal moral principles, which are discoverable through reason. In ethics, natural law theory asserts ...
. Heraclitus stated "People ought to fight to keep their law as to defend the city walls. For all human laws get nourishment from the one divine law." "Far from arguing like the latter Sophists, that the human law, because it is a conventional law, deserves to be abandoned in favor of the law of nature, Herakleitos argued that the human law partakes of the law of nature, which is at the same time a divine law."


Fire as the ''arche''

The Milesians before Heraclitus had a view called
material monism In philosophy and science, a first principle is a basic proposition or assumption that cannot be deduced from any other proposition or assumption. First principles in philosophy are from first cause attitudes and taught by Aristotelians, and nuan ...
which conceived of certain elements as the ''arche'' – Thales with water, Anaximander with ''apeiron'', and Anaximenes with air. Since antiquity, philosophers have concluded that Heraclitus construed of fire as the ''arche'', the ultimate reality or the fundamental element that gave rise to the other elements. Pre-Socratic scholar
Eduard Zeller Eduard Gottlob Zeller (; ; 22 January 181419 March 1908) was a German philosopher and Protestant theologian of the Tübingen School of theology. He was well known for his writings on Ancient Greek philosophy, especially Pre-Socratic Philosophy, ...
has argued that Heraclitus believed that heat in general and dry exhalation in particular, rather than visible fire, was the ''arche''. In one fragment, Heraclitus writes: This is the oldest extant quote using ''kosmos'', or order, to mean the world. Heraclitus seems to say fire is the one thing eternal in the universe. From fire all things originate and all things return again in a process of never-ending cycles. Plato and Aristotle attribute to Heraclitus a periodic destruction of the world by a great conflagration, known as ''ekpyrosis,'' which happens every
Great Year The term Great Year has multiple meanings. In scientific astronomy, it refers to the time required for the equinoxes to complete one full cycle around the ecliptic, a period of approximately 25,800 years. According to Ptolemy, his teacher Hipparc ...
– according to Plato, every 36,000 years.Mondolfo, Rodolfo, and D. J. Allan. "Evidence of Plato and Aristotle Relating to the Ekpyrosis in Heraclitus." Phronesis, vol. 3, no. 2, 1958, pp. 75–82. . Accessed 30 May 2024. Heraclitus more than once describes the transformations to and from fire:


Fire as symbolic

However, it is also argued by many that Heraclitus never identified fire as the ''arche''; rather, he only used fire to explain his notion of flux, as the basic stuff which changes or moves the most. Others conclude he used it as the physical form of ''logos''. On yet another interpretation, Heraclitus is not a material monist explicating flux nor stability, but a revolutionary process philosopher who chooses fire in an attempt to say there is no ''arche''. Fire is a symbol or metaphor for change, rather than the basic stuff which changes the most. Perspectives of this sort emphasize his statements on change such as "The way up is the way down", as well as the quote "All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for wares", which has been understood as stating that while all can be transformed into fire, not everything comes from fire, just as not everything comes from gold.


Cosmology

While considered an ancient cosmologist, Heraclitus did not seem as interested in
astronomy Astronomy is a natural science that studies celestial objects and the phenomena that occur in the cosmos. It uses mathematics, physics, and chemistry in order to explain their origin and their overall evolution. Objects of interest includ ...
,
meteorology Meteorology is the scientific study of the Earth's atmosphere and short-term atmospheric phenomena (i.e. weather), with a focus on weather forecasting. It has applications in the military, aviation, energy production, transport, agricultur ...
, or
mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...
as his predecessors. It is surmised Heraclitus believed that the earth was flat and extended infinitely in all directions. Heraclitus held all things occur according to
fate Destiny, sometimes also called fate (), is a predetermined course of events. It may be conceived as a predeterminism, predetermined future, whether in general or of an individual. Fate Although often used interchangeably, the words wiktionary ...
. He said "Time ('' Aion'') is a child playing
draughts Checkers (American English), also known as draughts (; Commonwealth English), is a group of strategy board games for two players which involve forward movements of uniform game pieces and mandatory captures by jumping over opponent pieces. ...
, the kingly power is a child's." It is disputed whether this means time and life is determined by
rules Rule or ruling may refer to: Human activity * The exercise of political or personal control by someone with authority or power * Business rule, a rule pertaining to the structure or behavior internal to a business * School rule, a rule tha ...
like a
game A game is a structured type of play usually undertaken for entertainment or fun, and sometimes used as an educational tool. Many games are also considered to be work (such as professional players of spectator sports or video games) or art ...
, by conflict like a game, or by arbitrary whims of the gods like a child plays.


Sun

Similar to his views on rivers, Heraclitus believed "the
Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as visible light a ...
is new each day." He also said the Sun never sets. According to
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...
, this was "obviously inspired by scientific reflection, and no doubt seemed to him to obviate the difficulty of understanding how the sun can work its way underground from west to east during the night". The physician
Galen Aelius Galenus or Claudius Galenus (; September 129 – AD), often Anglicization, anglicized as Galen () or Galen of Pergamon, was a Ancient Rome, Roman and Greeks, Greek physician, surgeon, and Philosophy, philosopher. Considered to be one o ...
explains: "Heraclitus says that the sun is a burning mass, kindled at its rising, and quenched at its setting."Lewis, G. C. (1862). An Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients. Kiribati: Parker, Son, and Bourn. p. 96-97 Heraclitus also believed that the Sun is as large as it looks, and said Hesiod "did not know
night Night, or nighttime, is the period of darkness when the Sun is below the horizon. Sunlight illuminates one side of the Earth, leaving the other in darkness. The opposite of nighttime is daytime. Earth's rotation causes the appearance of ...
and
day A day is the time rotation period, period of a full Earth's rotation, rotation of the Earth with respect to the Sun. On average, this is 24 hours (86,400 seconds). As a day passes at a given location it experiences morning, afternoon, evening, ...
, for they are one." However, he also explained the phenomenon of day and night by if the Sun "oversteps his measures", then "
Erinyes The Erinyes ( ; , ), also known as the Eumenides (, the "Gracious ones"), are chthonic goddesses of vengeance in ancient Greek religion and mythology. A formulaic oath in the ''Iliad'' invokes them as "the Erinyes, that under earth tak ...
, the ministers of Justice, will find him out". Heraclitus further wrote the Sun is in charge of the seasons.


Moon

On one account, Heraclitus believed the Sun and
Moon The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite. It Orbit of the Moon, orbits around Earth at Lunar distance, an average distance of (; about 30 times Earth diameter, Earth's diameter). The Moon rotation, rotates, with a rotation period (lunar ...
were
bowl A bowl is a typically round dish or container generally used for preparing, serving, storing, or consuming food. The interior of a bowl is characteristically shaped like a spherical cap, with the edges and the bottom, forming a seamless curve ...
s containing fire, with
lunar phase A lunar phase or Moon phase is the apparent shape of the Moon's directly sunlit portion as viewed from the Earth. Because the Moon is tidally locked with the Earth, the same hemisphere is always facing the Earth. In common usage, the four maj ...
s explained by the turning of the bowl. His study of the moon near the end of the month is contained in one of the
Oxyrhynchus Papyri The Oxyrhynchus Papyri are a group of manuscripts discovered during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by papyrology, papyrologists Bernard Pyne Grenfell and Arthur Surridge Hunt at an ancient Landfill, rubbish dump near Oxyrhync ...
, a group of
manuscript A manuscript (abbreviated MS for singular and MSS for plural) was, traditionally, any document written by hand or typewritten, as opposed to mechanically printed or reproduced in some indirect or automated way. More recently, the term has ...
s found in an ancient
landfill A landfill is a site for the disposal of waste materials. It is the oldest and most common form of waste disposal, although the systematic burial of waste with daily, intermediate and final covers only began in the 1940s. In the past, waste was ...
. This is the best evidence of Heraclitean astronomy.


God

Heraclitus said "
thunderbolt A thunderbolt or lightning bolt is a symbolic representation of lightning when accompanied by a loud thunderclap. In Indo-European mythology, the thunderbolt was identified with the 'Sky Father'; this association is also found in later Hel ...
steers all things", a rare comment on meteorology and likely a reference to
Zeus Zeus (, ) is the chief deity of the List of Greek deities, Greek pantheon. He is a sky father, sky and thunder god in ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, who rules as king of the gods on Mount Olympus. Zeus is the child ...
as the supreme being. Even his theology proves contradictory: "One being, the only wise one, would and would not be called by the name of Zeus." He invokes relativism with the divine too: God sees man the same way man sees children and apes; and he seems to give a
theodicy In the philosophy of religion, a theodicy (; meaning 'vindication of God', from Ancient Greek θεός ''theos'', "god" and δίκη ''dikē'', "justice") is an argument that attempts to resolve the problem of evil that arises when all powe ...
, "for god all things are fair and good and just, but men suppose that some are unjust and others just". Yet another interpretation for Heraclitus's use of fire is it refers to the sun god,
Apollo Apollo is one of the Twelve Olympians, Olympian deities in Ancient Greek religion, ancient Greek and Ancient Roman religion, Roman religion and Greek mythology, Greek and Roman mythology. Apollo has been recognized as a god of archery, mu ...
; "The lord whose oracle is in Delphi." According to one writer, "When Heraclitus speaks of "God" he does not mean a single deity as an omnipotent and omniscient or God as Creator, the universe being eternal; he meant the divine as opposed to human, the immortal as opposed to the mortal, and the cyclical as opposed to the transient. Thus, it is arguably more accurate to speak of "the Divine" and not of "God". In ''
Parts of Animals ''Parts of Animals'' (or ''On the Parts of Animals''; Greek Περὶ ζῴων μορίων; Latin ''De Partibus Animalium'') is one of Aristotle's major texts on biology. It was written around 350 BC. The whole work is roughly a study in animal ...
'', Aristotle relays this story: "Heraclitus, when the strangers who came to visit him found him warming himself at the furnace in the kitchen and hesitated to go in, reported to have bidden them not to be afraid to enter, as even in that kitchen divinities were present, so we should venture on the study of every kind of animal without distaste; for each and all will reveal to us something natural and something beautiful." The phrase ἦθος ἀνθρώπῳ δαίμων (''ethos anthropoi daimon'') is attributed to Heraclitus. It is variously translated as "a man's character is his fate", "character is destiny", or perhaps most literally as "a man's character is his guardian divinity." The word ''
ethos ''Ethos'' is a Greek word meaning 'character' that is used to describe the guiding beliefs or ideals that characterize a community, nation, or ideology; and the balance between caution and passion. The Greeks also used this word to refer to the ...
'' means "character", while ''
daimon The daimon (), also spelled daemon (meaning "god", "godlike", "power", "fate"), denotes an "unknown superfactor", which can be either good or hostile. In ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology a daimon was imagined to be a lesser ...
'' has various meanings, one of which being "the power controlling the destiny of individuals: hence, one's lot or fortune."


The Soul

Heraclitus believed the
soul The soul is the purported Mind–body dualism, immaterial aspect or essence of a Outline of life forms, living being. It is typically believed to be Immortality, immortal and to exist apart from the material world. The three main theories that ...
('' psyche'') was complex, stating: "The limits of the soul you could not discover, though traversing every path." Heraclitus regarded the soul as a mixture of fire and water, and believed that fire was the noble part of the soul and water the ignoble part. He considered mastery of one's worldly desires to be a noble pursuit that purified the soul's fire, while
drunkenness Alcohol intoxication, commonly described in higher doses as drunkenness or inebriation, and known in overdose as alcohol poisoning, is the behavior and physical effects caused by recent consumption of alcohol. The technical term ''intoxication ...
damages the soul by causing it to be moist. Heraclitus seems to advise against anger: "It is hard to fight with anger, for what it wants it buys at the price of the soul." Heraclitus associates being awake with comprehension; as Sextus Empiricus explains "It is by drawing in this divine reason in
respiration Respiration may refer to: Biology * Cellular respiration, the process in which nutrients are converted into useful energy in a cell ** Anaerobic respiration, cellular respiration without oxygen ** Maintenance respiration, the amount of cellul ...
that we become endowed with
mind The mind is that which thinks, feels, perceives, imagines, remembers, and wills. It covers the totality of mental phenomena, including both conscious processes, through which an individual is aware of external and internal circumstances ...
and in sleep we become forgetful, but in waking we regain our
sense A sense is a biological system used by an organism for sensation, the process of gathering information about the surroundings through the detection of Stimulus (physiology), stimuli. Although, in some cultures, five human senses were traditio ...
s. For in sleep the passages of
perception Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception involves signals that go through the nervous syste ...
are shut, and hence the mind ... the only thing preserved is the connection through
breathing Breathing (spiration or ventilation) is the rhythmical process of moving air into ( inhalation) and out of ( exhalation) the lungs to facilitate gas exchange with the internal environment, mostly to flush out carbon dioxide and bring in oxy ...
." Heraclitus stated: "If all things should become
smoke Smoke is an aerosol (a suspension of airborne particulates and gases) emitted when a material undergoes combustion or pyrolysis, together with the quantity of air that is entrained or otherwise mixed into the mass. It is commonly an unwante ...
, then perception would be by the nostrils". Heraclitus compares the soul to a
spider Spiders (order (biology), order Araneae) are air-breathing arthropods that have eight limbs, chelicerae with fangs generally able to inject venom, and spinnerets that extrude spider silk, silk. They are the largest order of arachnids and ran ...
and the body to the
web Web most often refers to: * Spider web, a silken structure created by the animal * World Wide Web or the Web, an Internet-based hypertext system Web, WEB, or the Web may also refer to: Computing * WEB, a literate programming system created by ...
. Heraclitus believed the soul is what unifies the body and also what grants linguistic understanding, departing from Homer's conception of it as merely the breath of life.Nussbaum, Martha C. "ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus, II." Phronesis, vol. 17, no. 2, 1972, pp. 153–170. . Accessed 18 June 2023. Heraclitus ridicules Homer's conception of souls in the afterlife as shades by saying "Souls smell in
Hades Hades (; , , later ), in the ancient Greek religion and Greek mythology, mythology, is the god of the dead and the king of the Greek underworld, underworld, with which his name became synonymous. Hades was the eldest son of Cronus and Rhea ...
". His own views on the afterlife remain unclear, but Heraclitus did state: "There await men after they are dead things which they do not expect or imagine." The Aristotelian tradition is responsible for a great part of the transmission of Heraclitus's physical conception of the soul. Aristotle wrote in ''
De Anima ''On the Soul'' (Greek: , ''Peri Psychēs''; Latin: ) is a major treatise written by Aristotle . His discussion centres on the kinds of souls possessed by different kinds of living things, distinguished by their different operations. Thus plant ...
'': "Heraclitus too says that the first principle—the 'warm exhalation' of which, according to him, everything else is composed—is soul; further, that this exhalation is most incorporeal and in ceaseless flux".


Foreign influence

Heraclitus's originality and placement near the beginning of Greek philosophy has resulted in several writers looking for possible influence from the surrounding nations.


Persia

The Persian Empire had a close connection with Ephesus and
Zoroastrianism Zoroastrianism ( ), also called Mazdayasnā () or Beh-dīn (), is an Iranian religions, Iranian religion centred on the Avesta and the teachings of Zoroaster, Zarathushtra Spitama, who is more commonly referred to by the Greek translation, ...
was the state religion of the Persian Empire. Heraclitus's emphasis on fire has been investigated for influence from Zoroastrian
fire worship Worship or deification of fire (also pyrodulia, pyrolatry or pyrolatria), or fire rituals, religious rituals centred on a fire, are known from various religions. Fire has been an important part of homo, human culture since the Lower Paleolithic. ...
and specifically the concept of ''
Atar Atar, Ahtra, Atash, Azar () or ''Dāštāɣni'',, s.v. ''agni-.'' is the Zoroastrian concept of holy fire, sometimes described in abstract terms as "burning and unburning fire" or "visible and invisible fire" (Mirza, 1987:389). It is conside ...
''. While many of the doctrines of Zoroastrian fire do not match exactly with those of Heraclitus, such as the relation of fire to
earth Earth is the third planet from the Sun and the only astronomical object known to Planetary habitability, harbor life. This is enabled by Earth being an ocean world, the only one in the Solar System sustaining liquid surface water. Almost all ...
, it is still argued he may have taken some inspiration from them. Zoroastrian parallels to Heraclitus are often difficult to identify specifically due to a lack of surviving Zoroastrian literature from the period and mutual influence with Greek philosophy.


India

The interchange of other elements with fire has parallels in
Vedic upright=1.2, The Vedas are ancient Sanskrit texts of Hinduism. Above: A page from the '' Atharvaveda''. The Vedas ( or ; ), sometimes collectively called the Veda, are a large body of religious texts originating in ancient India. Composed ...
literature from the same time period, such as the
Upanishads The Upanishads (; , , ) are late Vedic and post-Vedic Sanskrit texts that "document the transition from the archaic ritualism of the Veda into new religious ideas and institutions" and the emergence of the central religious concepts of Hind ...
. The ''
Brihadaranyaka Upanishad The ''Brihadaranyaka Upanishad'' (, ) is one of the Mukhya Upanishads, Principal Upanishads and one of the first Upanishadic scriptures of Hinduism. A key scripture to various schools of Hinduism, the ''Brihadaranyaka Upanisad'' is tenth in the ...
'' states that "Death is fire and the food of water" and the ''
Taittiriya Upanishad The Taittiriya Upanishad (, ) is a Vedic era Sanskrit text, embedded as three chapters (''adhyāya'') of the Yajurveda. It is a '' mukhya'' (primary, principal) Upanishad, and likely composed about 6th century BCE. The Taittirīya Upanishad is ...
'' states "from wind fire, from fire water, from water earth." Heraclitus may have also been influenced by a Vedic
meditation Meditation is a practice in which an individual uses a technique to train attention and awareness and detach from reflexive, "discursive thinking", achieving a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state, while not judging the meditat ...
known as the " Doctrine of the Five Fires." West however stresses that these doctrines of the interchange of elements were common throughout written works on philosophy that have survived from that period; so Heraclitus's doctrine of fire can not be definitively said to have been influenced by any other particular Iranian or Indian influence, but may have been part of a mutual interchange of influence over time across the Ancient Near East.


Egypt

Philosopher
Gustav Teichmüller Gustav Teichmüller (November 19, 1832 – May 22, 1888) was a German philosopher. His works, particularly his notion of perspectivism, influenced Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy. Biography Teichmüller was born in Braunschweig in the Duchy ...
sought to prove Heraclitus was influenced by the
Egyptians Egyptians (, ; , ; ) are an ethnic group native to the Nile, Nile Valley in Egypt. Egyptian identity is closely tied to Geography of Egypt, geography. The population is concentrated in the Nile Valley, a small strip of cultivable land stretchi ...
, either directly, by reading the ''
Book of the Dead The ''Book of the Dead'' is the name given to an Ancient Egyptian funerary texts, ancient Egyptian funerary text generally written on papyrus and used from the beginning of the New Kingdom of Egypt, New Kingdom (around 1550 BC) to around 50 BC ...
'', or indirectly through the Greek mystery cults. "As the sun of Heraclitus was daily generated from water, so
Horus Horus (), also known as Heru, Har, Her, or Hor () in Egyptian language, Ancient Egyptian, is one of the most significant ancient Egyptian deities who served many functions, most notably as the god of kingship, healing, protection, the sun, and t ...
, as Ra of the sun, daily proceeded from Lotus the water." Paul Tannery took up Teichmüller's interpretation. They both thought Heraclitus's book was an offering to the temple to be read only by few initiates, rather than deposited in the temple to the public for safe-keeping. Edmund Pfleiderer argued that Heraclitus was influenced by the mystery cults. He interprets Heraclitus's apparent condemning of the mystery cults as the condemning of abuses rather than the idea itself.


Legacy

Heraclitus's writings have exerted a wide influence on
Western philosophy Western philosophy refers to the Philosophy, philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the Pre ...
, including the works of
Plato Plato ( ; Greek language, Greek: , ; born  BC, died 348/347 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical Greece, Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the writte ...
and
Aristotle Aristotle (; 384–322 BC) was an Ancient Greek philosophy, Ancient Greek philosopher and polymath. His writings cover a broad range of subjects spanning the natural sciences, philosophy, linguistics, economics, politics, psychology, a ...
, who interpreted him in terms of their own doctrines. His influence also extends into art, literature, and even medicine, as writings in the
Hippocratic corpus The Hippocratic Corpus (Latin: ''Corpus Hippocraticum''), or Hippocratic Collection, is a collection of around 60 early Ancient Greek medical works strongly associated with the physician Hippocrates and his teachings. The Hippocratic Corpus cov ...
show signs of Heraclitean themes. Heraclitus is also considered a potential source for understanding the
Ancient Greek religion Religious practices in ancient Greece encompassed a collection of beliefs, rituals, and Greek mythology, mythology, in the form of both popular public religion and Cult (religious practice), cult practices. The application of the modern concept ...
since the discovery of the
Derveni papyrus The Derveni papyrus is an Ancient Greek papyrus roll that was discovered in 1962 at the archaeological site of Derveni, near Thessaloniki, in Central Macedonia. A philosophical treatise, the text is an allegorical commentary on an Orphic poem, a ...
, an
Orphic Orphism is the name given to a set of religious beliefs and practices originating in the ancient Greek and Hellenistic world, associated with literature ascribed to the mythical poet Orpheus, who descended into the Greek underworld and returned ...
poem which contains two fragments of Heraclitus.


Ancient


Pre-Socratics

It is unknown whether or not Heraclitus had any students in his lifetime. Diogenes Laertius states Heraclitus's book "won so great a fame that there arose followers of him called Heracliteans." Scholars took this to mean Heraclitus had no disciples and became renowned only after his death. According to one author, "The school of disciples founded by Heraclitus flourished for long after his death". According to another, "there were no doubt other Heracliteans whose names are now lost to us". In his dialogue ''Cratylus'', Plato presented
Cratylus Cratylus ( ; , ''Kratylos'') was an ancient Athenian philosopher from the mid-late 5th century BC, known mostly through his portrayal in Plato's dialogue '' Cratylus''. He was a radical proponent of Heraclitean philosophy and influenced the you ...
as a Heraclitean and as a linguistic naturalist who believed that names must apply naturally to their objects. According to Aristotle, Cratylus went a step beyond his master's doctrine and said that one cannot step into the same river once. He took the view that nothing can be said about the ever-changing world and "ended by thinking that one need not say anything, and only moved his finger". To explain both characterizations by Plato and Aristotle, Cratylus may have thought continuous change warrants skepticism because one cannot define a thing that does not have a permanent nature. Diogenes Laertius also lists an otherwise historically obscure Antisthenes who wrote a commentary on Heraclitus. The
Pythagorean Pythagorean, meaning of or pertaining to the ancient Ionian mathematician, philosopher, and music theorist Pythagoras, may refer to: Philosophy * Pythagoreanism, the esoteric and metaphysical beliefs purported to have been held by Pythagoras * Ne ...
and comic writer
Epicharmus of Kos Epicharmus of Kos or Epicharmus Comicus or Epicharmus Comicus Syracusanus (), thought to have lived between c. 550 and c. 460 BC, was a Greek dramatist and philosopher who is often credited with being one of the first comedic writers ...
has fragments which seem to reproduce the thought of Heraclitus, and wrote a play titled ''Heraclitus''.


= Eleatics

=
Parmenides Parmenides of Elea (; ; fl. late sixth or early fifth century BC) was a Pre-Socratic philosophy, pre-Socratic ancient Greece, Greek philosopher from Velia, Elea in Magna Graecia (Southern Italy). Parmenides was born in the Greek colony of Veli ...
of Elea, a philosopher and near-contemporary, proposed a doctrine of changelessness, in contrast to the doctrine of flux put forth by Heraclitus. He is generally agreed to either have influenced or been influenced by Heraclitus. Different philosophers have argued that either one of them may have substantially influenced each other, some taking Heraclitus to be responding to Parmenides, but more often Parmenides is seen as responding to Heraclitus. Some also argue that any direct chain of influence between the two is impossible to determine. Although Heraclitus refers to older figures such as Pythagoras, neither Parmenides or Heraclitus refer to each other by name in any surviving fragments, so any speculation on influence must be based on interpretation.


= Pluralists and atomists

= The surviving fragments of several other pre-Socratic philosophers show Heraclitean themes.
Diogenes of Apollonia Diogenes of Apollonia ( ; ; 5th century BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher, and was a native of the Milesian colony Apollonia in Thrace. He lived for some time in Athens. He believed air to be the one source of all being from which all oth ...
thought the action of one thing on another meant they were made of one substance. The pluralists may have been influenced by Heraclitus. The philosopher
Anaxagoras Anaxagoras (; , ''Anaxagóras'', 'lord of the assembly'; ) was a Pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. Born in Clazomenae at a time when Asia Minor was under the control of the Persian Empire, Anaxagoras came to Athens. In later life he was charged ...
refuses to separate the opposites in the "one cosmos".
Empedocles Empedocles (; ; , 444–443 BC) was a Ancient Greece, Greek pre-Socratic philosopher and a native citizen of Akragas, a Greek city in Sicily. Empedocles' philosophy is known best for originating the Cosmogony, cosmogonic theory of the four cla ...
has forces (arguably the first since Heraclitus's tension) which are in opposition, known as Love and Hate, or more accurately, Harmony and Strife. Democritus and the
atomists Atomism () is a natural philosophy proposing that the physical universe is composed of fundamental indivisible components known as atoms. References to the concept of atomism and its atoms appeared in both ancient Greek and ancient Indian philo ...
were also influenced by Heraclitus. The atomists and Heraclitus both believed that everything was in motion. On one interpretation: "Essentially what the atomists did was try to find a middle-way between the contradictory philosophical schemes of Heraclitus and Parmenides."


= Sophists

= The sophists, including
Protagoras Protagoras ( ; ; )Guthrie, p. 262–263. was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and rhetorical theorist. He is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue '' Protagoras'', Plato credits him with inventing the role of the professional ...
of Abdera and
Gorgias Gorgias ( ; ; – ) was an ancient Greek sophist, pre-Socratic philosopher, and rhetorician who was a native of Leontinoi in Sicily. Several doxographers report that he was a pupil of Empedocles, although he would only have been a few years ...
of Leontini, may also have been influenced by Heraclitus. Sophists in general seemed to share Heraclitus's conception of the ''logos''. One tradition associated the sophists' concern with politics and preventing party strife with Heraclitus.Heraclitus and others used "measure" to mean the balance and order of nature; hence Protagoras' famous statement "man is the measure of all things". In Plato's
dialogue Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American and British English spelling differences, American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literature, literary and theatrical form that depicts suc ...
'' Theaetetus'', Socrates sees Protagoras's "man is the measure" doctrine and Theaetetus' hypothesis that "knowledge is perception" as justified by Heraclitean flux. Gorgias seems to have been influenced by the ''logos'', when he argued in his work ''On Non-Being'', possibly parodying the Eleatics, that being cannot exist or be communicated. According to one author, Gorgias "in a sense ... completes Heraclitus."Rereading the Sophists by Susan Jarratt
p. 44


Classical and Hellenistic philosophy

Plato knew of the teachings of Heraclitus through the Heraclitean philosopher Cratylus. Plato held that for Heraclitus knowledge is made impossible by the flux of sensible objects, and thus the need for the imperceptible Forms as objects of knowledge. Scythinus of Teos, a contemporary of Plato, wrote out Heraclitus's philosophy in verse.Sironi, Francesco, "Heraclitus in Verse: The Poetic Fragments of Scythinus of Teos," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 59 (2019): 551–57. A four-volume work on Heraclitus was written by the academic
Heraclides Ponticus Heraclides Ponticus ( ''Herakleides''; c. 390 BC – c. 310 BC) was a Greek philosopher and astronomer who was born in Heraclea Pontica, now Karadeniz Ereğli, Turkey, and migrated to Athens. He is best remembered for proposing that the Earth ...
, but has not survived. Plutarch also wrote a lost treatise on Heraclitus. The Neoplatonists were influenced by Heraclitus on the topic of the One; quoting
Plotinus Plotinus (; , ''Plōtînos'';  – 270 CE) was a Greek Platonist philosopher, born and raised in Roman Egypt. Plotinus is regarded by modern scholarship as the founder of Neoplatonism. His teacher was the self-taught philosopher Ammonius ...
"Heraclitus, with his sense of bodily forms as things of ceaseless process and passage, knows the One as eternal and intellectual." Aristotle accused Heraclitus of denying the law of noncontradiction, and charges that he thereby failed in his reasoning. However, Aristotle's material monist and world conflagration (''ekpyrosis'') interpretation of Heraclitus influenced the Stoics.


= Stoics

= The Stoics believed major tenets of their philosophy derived from the thought of Heraclitus; especially the ''logos,'' used to support their belief that rational law governs the universe. Scholar A. A. Long concludes the earliest Stoic fragments are "modifications of Heraclitus". According to philosopher
Philip Hallie Philip Paul Hallie (1922–1994) was an author, philosopher and professor at Wesleyan University for 32 years. During World War II he served in the US Army. His degrees were from Harvard, Oxford (where he was a Fulbright Scholar at Jesus Colleg ...
, "Heraclitus of Ephesus was the father of
Stoic physics Stoicism is a school of Hellenistic philosophy that flourished in ancient Greece and Rome. The Stoics believed that the universe operated according to reason, ''i.e.'' by a God which is immersed in nature itself. Of all the schools of ancient ...
." A four-volume work titled ''Interpretation of Heraclitus'' was written by the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes, but has not survived. In surviving stoic writings, Heraclitean influence is most evident in the writings of
Marcus Aurelius Marcus Aurelius Antoninus ( ; ; 26 April 121 – 17 March 180) was Roman emperor from 161 to 180 and a Stoicism, Stoic philosopher. He was a member of the Nerva–Antonine dynasty, the last of the rulers later known as the Five Good Emperors ...
. Marcus Aurelius understood the ''Logos'' as "the account which governs everything". Heraclitus also states, "We should not act and speak like children of our parents", which Marcus Aurelius interpreted to mean one should not simply accept what others believe. Many of the later Stoics interpreted the ''logos'' as the ''arche'', as a creative fire that ran through all things due to sunlight; West observes that Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Sextus Empiricus all make no mention of this doctrine, and concludes that the language and thought are "obviously Stoic" and not attributable to Heraclitus. Burnet cautions that these Stoic modifications of Heraclitus make it harder to interpret Heraclitus himself, as the Stoics ascribed their own interpretations of terms like ''logos'' and ''ekpyrosis'' to Heraclitus.


= Cynics

= The Cynics were influenced by Heraclitus, such as by his condemnation of the mystery cults. According to one source, "the Cynic affinity with Heraclitus lies not so much in his philosophy as in his cultural criticism and (idealised) lifestyle." The Cynics attributed several of the later
Cynic epistles The Cynic epistles are a collection of letters expounding the principles and practices of Cynic philosophy mostly written, rewritten, or translated, in the time of the Roman Empire, but purporting to have been written by much earlier philosophers. ...
to his authorship.J. F. Kindstrand, "The Cynics and Heraclitus", ''Eranos'' 82 (1984), 149–178 Heraclitus is sometimes even depicted as a cynic. Heraclitus' idea that most people live as if in a deep state of sleep resembles what the Cynics said about a cloud of mist or fog shrouding all of existence. Heraclitus wrote: "Dogs bark at every one they do not know." Similarly,
Diogenes the Cynic Diogenes the Cynic, also known as Diogenes of Sinope (c. 413/403–c. 324/321 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher and one of the founders of Cynicism (philosophy), Cynicism. Renowned for his ascetic lifestyle, biting wit, and radical critique ...
, when asked by
Alexander Alexander () is a male name of Greek origin. The most prominent bearer of the name is Alexander the Great, the king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia who created one of the largest empires in ancient history. Variants listed here ar ...
why he considered himself a dog, responded that he "barks at those who give me nothing".


= Pyrrhonists

= The skeptical philosophers known as
Pyrrhonists Pyrrho of Elis (; ; ) was a Greek philosopher of Classical antiquity, credited as being the first Greek skeptic philosopher and founder of Pyrrhonism. Life Pyrrho of Elis is estimated to have lived from around 365/360 until 275/270 BCE. Pyr ...
were also influenced by Heraclitus. He may be the predecessor to
Pyrrho Pyrrho of Elis (; ; ) was a Greek philosopher of Classical antiquity, credited as being the first Greek skeptic philosopher and founder of Pyrrhonism. Life Pyrrho of Elis is estimated to have lived from around 365/360 until 275/270 BCE. Py ...
's relativistic doctrine "No More This than That ", that nothing is one way rather than another way. According to Pyrrhonist Sextus Empiricus,
Aenesidemus Aenesidemus ( or Αἰνεσίδημος) was a 1st-century BC Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher from Knossos who revived the doctrines of Pyrrho and introduced ten skeptical "modes" (''tropai'') for the suspension of judgment. He broke with the Acad ...
, one of the major ancient Pyrrhonist philosophers, claimed in a now-lost work that Pyrrhonism was a way to Heraclitean philosophy because Pyrrhonist practice helps one to see how opposites appear to be the case about the same thing, leading to the Heraclitean view that opposites actually are true about the same thing. Sextus Empiricus disagreed, arguing opposites appearing to be the case about the same thing is not a
dogma Dogma, in its broadest sense, is any belief held definitively and without the possibility of reform. It may be in the form of an official system of principles or doctrines of a religion, such as Judaism, Roman Catholicism, Protestantism, or Islam ...
of the Pyrrhonists but a matter occurring to the Pyrrhonists, to the other philosophers, and to all of humanity.
Sextus Empiricus Sextus Empiricus (, ; ) was a Greek Pyrrhonist philosopher and Empiric school physician with Roman citizenship. His philosophical works are the most complete surviving account of ancient Greek and Roman Pyrrhonism, and because of the argument ...
''Outlines of Pyrrhonism'' Book I, Chapter 29, Sections 210–211


Early Christianity

Hippolytus of Rome Hippolytus of Rome ( , ; Romanized: , – ) was a Bishop of Rome and one of the most important second–third centuries Christian theologians, whose provenance, identity and corpus remain elusive to scholars and historians. Suggested communitie ...
, one of the early
Church Fathers The Church Fathers, Early Church Fathers, Christian Fathers, or Fathers of the Church were ancient and influential Christian theologians and writers who established the intellectual and doctrinal foundations of Christianity. The historical peri ...
of the
Christian Church In ecclesiology, the Christian Church is what different Christian denominations conceive of as being the true body of Christians or the original institution established by Jesus Christ. "Christian Church" has also been used in academia as a syn ...
, identified Heraclitus along with the other pre-Socratics and
Academics Academic means of or related to an academy, an institution learning. Academic or academics may also refer to: * Academic staff, or faculty, teachers or research staff * school of philosophers associated with the Platonic Academy in ancient Greece ...
as a source of
heresy Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, particularly the accepted beliefs or religious law of a religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of heresy. Heresy in Heresy in Christian ...
, in Heraclitus's case namely the heresy of
Noetus Noetus () was a presbyter of the church of Asia Minor about AD 230. He was a native of Smyrna, where (or perhaps in Ephesus) he became a prominent representative of the particular type of Christology now called modalistic monarchianism or patripass ...
. The Christian apologist
Justin Martyr Justin, known posthumously as Justin Martyr (; ), also known as Justin the Philosopher, was an early Christian apologist and Philosophy, philosopher. Most of his works are lost, but two apologies and a dialogue did survive. The ''First Apolog ...
took a more positive view of Heraclitus. In his First Apology, he said both Socrates and Heraclitus were Christians before Christ: "those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them." He was among those who interpreted the ''logos'' as meaning the Christian "Word of
God In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the un ...
", such as in John 1:1: "In the beginning was the Word (''
logos ''Logos'' (, ; ) is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric, as well as religion (notably Logos (Christianity), Christianity); among its connotations is that of a rationality, rational form of discourse that relies on inducti ...
'') and the Word was God." Modern scholars such as John Burnet have viewed the relationship between Heraclitean ''logos'' and Johannine ''logos'' as fallacious, saying; "the Johannine doctrine of the ''logos'' has nothing to do with Herakleitos or with anything at all in Greek philosophy, but comes from the Hebrew Wisdom literature". The Christian Clement of Alexandria notes Heraclitus's similarity to the Christian prophets, and is cited as a source for more Heraclitus fragments than any other author.


Weeping philosopher

Heraclitus's influence also extends outside of philosophy. A motif found in art and literature is Heraclitus as the "weeping philosopher" and Democritus as the "laughing philosopher", which may have originated with the Cynic philosopher
Menippus Menippus of Gadara (; ''Menippos ho Gadareus''; fl. 3rd century BC) was a Cynic satirist. The Menippean satire genre is named after him. His works, all of which are lost, were an important influence on Varro and Lucian, who ranks Menippus wi ...
, and generally references their reactions to the folly of mankind. For example, in
Lucian of Samosata Lucian of Samosata (Λουκιανὸς ὁ Σαμοσατεύς, 125 – after 180) was a Hellenized Syria (region), Syrian satire, satirist, rhetorician and pamphleteer who is best known for his characteristic tongue-in-cheek style, with whi ...
's "Philosophies for Sale", Heraclitus is auctioned off as the "weeping philosopher" and Democritus as the "laughing philosopher". The Roman poet
Juvenal Decimus Junius Juvenalis (), known in English as Juvenal ( ; 55–128), was a Roman poet. He is the author of the '' Satires'', a collection of satirical poems. The details of Juvenal's life are unclear, but references in his works to people f ...
wrote: "Heraclitus, weep at life much more than you did while alive, for now life is more pitiable." The
Renaissance The Renaissance ( , ) is a Periodization, period of history and a European cultural movement covering the 15th and 16th centuries. It marked the transition from the Middle Ages to modernity and was characterized by an effort to revive and sur ...
saw a revived interest in ancient philosophy and its depiction in art. A
fresco Fresco ( or frescoes) is a technique of mural painting executed upon freshly laid ("wet") lime plaster. Water is used as the vehicle for the dry-powder pigment to merge with the plaster, and with the setting of the plaster, the painting become ...
on the wall of
Marsilio Ficino Marsilio Ficino (; Latin name: ; 19 October 1433 – 1 October 1499) was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. He was an astrologer, a reviver of Neo ...
's
Platonic Academy The Academy (), variously known as Plato's Academy, or the Platonic Academy, was founded in Classical Athens, Athens by Plato ''wikt:circa, circa'' 387 BC. The academy is regarded as the first institution of higher education in the west, where ...
in
Florence Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025. Florence ...
depicted Heraclitus and Democritus.
Donato Bramante Donato Bramante (1444 – 11 April 1514), born as Donato di Pascuccio d'Antonio and also known as Bramante Lazzari, was an Italian architect and painter. He introduced Renaissance architecture to Milan and the High Renaissance style to Rom ...
painted Heraclitus and Democritus (1486) as the weeping and laughing philosopher, and may have depicted Heraclitus as
Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 - 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath of the High Renaissance who was active as a painter, draughtsman, engineer, scientist, theorist, sculptor, and architect. While his fame initially rested o ...
. Heraclitus appears in painter
Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( , ), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of paintings by Raphael, His work is admired for its cl ...
's ''
School of Athens A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most countries have systems of f ...
'' (1511), in which he is represented by
Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 147518February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspir ...
, since they shared a "sour temper and bitter scorn for all rivals".


Modern

Modern interest in early Greek philosophy can be traced back to 1573, when French printer
Henri Estienne Henri Estienne ( , ; 1528 or 15311598), also known as Henricus Stephanus ( ), was a French printer and classical scholar. He was the eldest son of Robert Estienne. He was instructed in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew by his father and would eventually ...
(also known as Henricus Stephanus) collected a number of pre-Socratic fragments, including some forty of those of Heraclitus, and published them in
Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
in ''Poesis philosophica.'' Renaissance skeptic
Michel de Montaigne Michel Eyquem, Seigneur de Montaigne ( ; ; ; 28 February 1533 – 13 September 1592), commonly known as Michel de Montaigne, was one of the most significant philosophers of the French Renaissance. He is known for popularising the the essay ...
's Essays (Montaigne), essay ''On Democritus and Heraclitus,'' in which he sided with the laughing philosopher over the weeping philosopher, was probably written soon after. Heraclitus also influenced French poets Michel d'Ambroise and Etienne Forcadel. Huguenots, Huguenot minister Pierre du Moulin wrote ''Heraclitus, or, Meditations vpon the vanity & misery of humane life'' in 1609. English playwright William Shakespeare may have known of Heraclitus through Montaigne.'' The Merchant of Venice'' (1598) features the melancholic character of Antonio (The Merchant of Venice), Antonio, who some critics contend is modeled after Heraclitus. Additionally, in one scene of the play Portia (The Merchant of Venice), Portia assesses her potential suitors, and says of one County Palatine: "I fear he will prove the weeping philosopher when he grows old". Several baroque artists such as Peter Paul Rubens, Hendrick ter Brugghen, Hendrik ter Brugghen, and Johannes Moreelse painted Heraclitus and Democritus. Rubens' ''Heraclitus and Democritus (Rubens), Heraclitus and Democritus'' (1603) was painted for the Francisco de Sandoval y Rojas, 1st Duke of Lerma, Duke of Lerma.


Rationalism

French Rationalism, rationalist philosopher René Descartes read Montaigne and wrote in ''Passions of the Soul, The Passions of the Soul'' that indignation can be joined by pity or Mockery, derision, "So the laughter of Democritus and the tears of Heraclitus could have come from the same cause". Kahn suggests Spinoza may have been influenced by Heraclitus via the Stoics. According to one author "What Heraclitus really meant by the common was...nothing different from what by Baruch Spinoza, Spinoza was expressed by "''sub specie aeternitatis''". According to German poet Heinrich Blücher, "If you read the whole system of Spinoza, it is nothing but the changed system of Heraclitus." Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz stated in ''The Monadology'' "all bodies are in a state of perpetual flux like rivers."


British empiricism

Bishop and Empiricism, empiricist philosopher George Berkeley claimed Sir Isaac Newton's alchemy was influenced by Heraclitus. He remarked in ''Siris'': "In Plutarch we find it was the opinion of Heraclitus, that the death of fire was a birth to air, and the death of air a birth to water. This opinion is also maintained by Sir Isaac Newton." Scottish skeptic David Hume seems to recapitulate Heraclitus while discussing personal identity: "Thus as the nature of a river consists in the motion and change of parts; tho' in less than four and twenty hours these be totally alter'd; this hinders not the river from continuing the same during several ages."


=Common sense

= While Heraclitus seems to criticize people in general, at other times he also seems to support common sense. On Scottish common sense realism, Scottish common sense philosopher Thomas Reid's account, Heraclitus was one of the first to extol a common sense philosophy with such quotes as "And though reason is common, most people live as though they had an understanding peculiar to themselves;" and "understanding is common to all".


Post-Kantianism

Ever since German philosopher Immanuel Kant, philosophers have sometimes been divided into rationalists and empiricists. Heraclitus has been considered each by different scholars. For rationalism, philosophers cite fragments like "Poor witnesses for men are the eyes and ears of those who have barbarian souls." For empiricism, they cite fragments like "The things that can be seen, heard, and learned are what I prize the most." Gottlob Mayer has argued that the philosophical pessimism of Arthur Schopenhauer recapitulated the thought of Heraclitus. The impression of Heraclitus on German idealism, German idealist Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, G. W. F. Hegel was so profound that he remarked in his ''Lectures on the History of Philosophy'': "there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my ''Science of Logic, Logic''." Hegel interpreted Heraclitus as a dialetheist and as a process philosopher, seeing the flux or "becoming" in Heraclitus as a natural result of the ontology of "being" and "non-being" in Parmenides. He also doubted the world conflagration (''ekpyrosis'') interpretation, which had been popular since Aristotle.


= Heraclitean studies

= The German theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher was one of the first to collect the fragments of Heraclitus specifically and write them out in his native tongue, the "pioneer of Heraclitean studies". Schleiermacher was also one of the first to posit Persian influence upon Heraclitus, a question taken up by succeeding scholars Georg Friedrich Creuzer, Friedrich Creuzer and August Gladisch. The Young Hegelians, Young Hegelian and Socialism, socialist Ferdinand Lassalle wrote Die Philosophie Herakleitos des Dunklen von Ephesos, a book on Heraclitus. "Lassalle follows Hegel in styling the doctrine of Heraclitus 'the philosophy of the logical law of the identity of contradictories."History of Philosophy, by Friedrich Ueberweg, p. 39 Lassalle also thought Persian theology influenced Heraclitus. Fellow Young Hegelian Karl Marx compared Lasalle's work to that of "a schoolboy" and Vladimir Lenin accused him of "sheer plagiarism"."Conspectus of Lassalle's Book The Philospohy of Heraclitus the Obscure of Ephesus" Lenin's Collected Works, 4th Edition, Moscow, 1976, Volume 38, pp. 337–353 Classics, Classical philologist Jakob Bernays also wrote a work on Heraclitus. Inspired by Bernays, the English scholar Ingram Bywater collected all fragments of Heraclitus in a critical edition, ''Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae'' (1877). Hermann Alexander Diels, Hermann Diels wrote "Bywater's book has come to be accounted ... as the only reliable collection of the remains of that philosopher."


Diels-Kranz

Diels published the first edition of the authoritative ''Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker'' (''The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics'') in 1903, later revised and expanded three times, and finally revised in two subsequent editions by Walther Kranz. Diels–Kranz is used in academia to cite pre-Socratic philosophers. In Diels–Kranz numbering, Diels–Kranz, each ancient personality and each passage is assigned a number to uniquely identify it; Heraclitus is traditionally catalogued as pre-Socratic philosopher number 22.


Continental

The Continental philosophy, continental existentialist and philologist Friedrich Nietzsche preferred Heraclitus above all the other pre-Socratics. Nietzsche saw the philosophers before Plato as "pure Archetype, types" and Heraclitus as the proud, lonely truth-finder. The Nationalism, nationalist Philosophy of history, philosopher of history Oswald Spengler wrote his (failed) dissertation on Heraclitus. Phenomenology (philosophy), Phenomenologist Edmund Husserl wrote that consciousness is "the realm of Heraclitean flux." Existentialist and phenomenologist Martin Heidegger was also influenced by Heraclitus, as seen in his ''Introduction to Metaphysics (Heidegger book), Introduction to Metaphysics''. Heidegger believed that the thinking of Heraclitus and Parmenides was the origin of philosophy and misunderstood by Plato and Aristotle, leading all of
Western philosophy Western philosophy refers to the Philosophy, philosophical thought, traditions and works of the Western world. Historically, the term refers to the philosophical thinking of Western culture, beginning with the ancient Greek philosophy of the Pre ...
astray. French philosophers Jacques Derrida and Gilles Deleuze's "differential ontology" is influenced by Heraclitus. According to Deleuze, Michel Foucault was a Heraclitean. The idea that war produces order through strife is similar to Foucault's notion that Power (social and political), power is a force dispersed through social relations. In the 1950s, a term originating with Heraclitus, "''idios kosmos''", meaning "private world" as distinguished from the "common world" () was adopted by phenomenological and Existential psychology, existential psychologists, such as Ludwig Binswanger and Rollo May, to refer to the experience of people with delusions. It was an important part of novelist Philip K. Dick's views on schizophrenia. Those thinkers have relied on Heraclitus's statement that "The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own." The Irish author and classicist Oscar Wilde was influenced by art critic Walter Pater, a friend of Bywater's whose "pre-Socratic hero" was Heraclitus. Harold Bloom noted that "Pater praises Plato for Classic correctness, for a conservative Centripetal force, centripetal impulse, against his [Pater's] own Heraclitean Romanticism." Wilde is credited with the saying "An Ideal Husband, expect the unexpected", though Heraclitus said "If you do not expect the unexpected, you will not find it; for it is hard to be sought out and difficult."


Analytic

The British process philosophy, process philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, A. N. Whitehead has been identified as a representative of the tradition of Heraclitus. In
Bertrand Russell Bertrand Arthur William Russell, 3rd Earl Russell, (18 May 1872 – 2 February 1970) was a British philosopher, logician, mathematician, and public intellectual. He had influence on mathematics, logic, set theory, and various areas of analytic ...
's essay ''Mysticism and Logic'', he contends Heraclitus proves himself a metaphysician by his blending of mystical and scientific impulses.
Mysticism and Logic and Other Essays
', by Bertrand Russell, pp. 1–3


= Wittgenstein

= Scholar Edward Hussey sees parallels between Heraclitus, the ''logos'', and the early Ludwig Wittgenstein's linguistic philosophy in the ''Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Tractatus'' (1922). Wittgenstein was known to read Plato and in his return to philosophy in 1929 he made several remarks resembling those of Heraclitus: "The fundamental thing expressed grammatically: What about the sentence: One cannot step into the same river twice?" He then seemed to make a dramatic shift by 1931, saying one can step twice into the same river. Wittgenstein also uses a river image in ''On Certainty'' (1950) to say even the river-bed may change as foundational logical principles might: "The mythology may change back into a state of flux, the river-bed of thoughts may shift ... And the bank of that river consists partly of hard rock, subject to no alteration or only to an imperceptible one, partly of sand, which now in one place now in another gets washed away or deposited."


= Contradiction

= Aristotle's arguments for the law of non-contradiction, which he saw as refuting the position started by Heraclitus, used to be considered authoritative, but have been in doubt ever since their criticism by Polish logician Jan Łukasiewicz, and the invention of Many-valued logic, many-valued and Paraconsistent logic, paraconsistent logics. Some philosophers such as Graham Priest and Jc Beall follow Heraclitus in advocating true contradictions or dialetheism,Priest, Graham, 'Aristotle on the Law of Non-Contradiction', Doubt Truth to be a Liar (Oxford, 2005; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 May 2006), https://doi.org/10.1093/0199263280.003.0002, seeing it as the most natural response to the liar paradox. Jc Beall, together with Greg Restall, is a pioneer of a widely discussed version of logical pluralism.


= Philosophy of Religion

= Beall argues for a contradictory account of Jesus, Jesus Christ as both man and divine. The philosopher Peter Geach was inspired by Heraclitus's comments on the river to formulate his idea of sortal, relative identity, which he used to defend the coherence of the Trinity.


= Philosophy of Time

= The British idealism, British idealist J. M. E. McTaggart is best known for his paper "The Unreality of Time" (1908), in which he argues that time is unreal. What he calls the "A series and B series#A series, A theory", also known as "temporal becoming", and closely related to Philosophical presentism, presentism, which conceptualizes of time as tensed (i.e., having the properties of being past, present, or future), is a view which has been seen as beginning with Heraclitus. By contrast, his " "B-theory of time, B theory", under which time is tenseless (i.e., earlier than, simultaneous to, or later than), has similarly been seen as beginning with Parmenides.


Notes


Explanatory notes


Fragment numbers


Citations


References


Ancient sources

This article uses the Diels–Kranz numbering system from ''Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker'' (''The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics'') for testimony (labeled A), fragments (labeled B), and imitation (labeled C).


Testimony

* A1. * A2. * A3. * A4. * A5. * A6. * A7. * A8. * A9. * A10. * A11-14. * A15. * A16. * A17. * A18. * A19. * A20. * A21. * A22. * A23.


Fragments

* B1-2. * B3. * B4. * B5. * B6. * B7. * B8-9. * B10-11. * B12. * B13. * B14-15. * B16. * B17-36. * B37. * B38. * B39. * B40-46. * B47. * B48. * B49. * B49a. * B50-67. * B67a. * B68-69. * B70. * B71-76. * B77. * B78-80. * B81. * B82-83. * B84a-84b. * B85-86. * B87. * B88. * B89. * B90-91. * B92-93. * B94. * B95-96. * B97. * B98. * B99. * B100. * B101. * B101a. * B102. * B103. * B104. * B105. * B106. * B107. * B108-119. * B120-121. * B122. * B123. * B124-125. * B125a. * B126.


Imitation

* C1. * C2. * C3. * C4. * C5.


Modern scholarship

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * Chapters 4-6 deal with Heraclitus *


External links

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