For this lecture, please read the Fragments of Heraclitus.
Heraclitus (535 – 475 BCE), my favorite ancient Greek philosopher, is so similar to the Buddha that some German scholars in the 1800s argued that Heraclitus was actually the Buddha in India and others that Buddha was actually Heraclitus in Greece. Hegel disagreed, but claimed that Heraclitus was the first true philosopher in human history for recognizing that opposites such as good and bad change with perspective over time, just like day and night. Heraclitus may not have been the first philosopher ever, but he was one of the first thinkers in Greece who spoke words about what life means that many others passed on, with fragments of his text and teachings in the work of many who quoted him such as Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoic Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius.
Heraclitus lived in Ephesus, which was part of the Persian empire for most of Heraclitus’ life, on what is today the West coast of Turkey, around the same time that Pythagoras and Parmenides, two of the other famous first philosophers, lived in what is today Italy. Pythagoras and Parmenides argued that true Being is unchanging, with Pythagoras focused on the harmony of mathematics and Parmenides the impossibility of non-being and thus change. Heraclitus argued that the only constant is change, all things are in continuous flux, and so we can never step in the same river twice, his most famous statement.
Heraclitus said that Pythagoras had more knowledge than anyone, but was still a fool who believed that he had been a sardine in one previous life and a cucumber in another. Because Parmenides warned his followers about those who confuse being and not-being as one and the same thing, which sounds more like Heraclitus than any other candidate, Pythagoras seems to have come first, Heraclitus slightly after, and Parmenides slightly after that, having heard of each other in the years before their schools of thought were popular. These three then had a powerful impact on later philosophers in the golden age of Athens such as Socrates, Plato and Aristotle, who dominated Christian European understandings of Greek philosophy before Germans such as Hegel and Nietzsche got increasingly into Heraclitus and other Presocratics in the 1800s.
The Fragments of Heraclitus are actually the 22nd of 88 parts of a modern German work, Diels’ The Fragments of the Pre-Socratics (1903) which standardized the quotes of Greek philosophers before Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Diels and then later Kranz give us the Diels-Kranz number system, which standardized the Presocratic texts as an academic resource, such that Heraclitus fragment 12 is “You can never step in the same river twice,” even though they did no job at all of thematizing the quotes of Heraclitus or anyone else into a philosophical position or argument, which anyone who reads the text can see.
The first quote, however, is supposed to be the opening of the single work that Heraclitus wrote, On Nature, the title of far too many philosophical texts of the Greeks, effectively “How Stuff Works” at a time when physicians would look to the stars to understand your personal health. Heraclitus left his single written work as an offering at the Temple of Artemis, one of the legendary wonders of the ancient world. Before we read the first fragment and others, however, it is important to understand what Heraclitus means when he says the word ‘word’.
The word that Heraclitus used for ‘word’ is logos, the Greek origin of our word logic. While modern people sometimes understand logic as a mathematical or computer language, for ancient Greek thinkers such as Heraclitus, Plato and Aristotle, logic is arguing, explaining and understanding things, a human practice that seeks agreement with others about what is common in things through argument, much as philosophers debating in India and China were doing, who are also often called “logicians”. It is clear from the first fragment and others that Heraclitus believes there is a single mind and logic to the Cosmos, a plan that intelligently designs all things continuously, not at a single point in the past but as the ongoing, evolving truth, but he also uses the word “logic” or “word” (logos) to refer to his own reasoning, as well as the reasonings of philosophers he opposes and common fools.
Experts, the sort of people Heraclitus warns us about who spout tricky, lying words, argue that Heraclitus identified consciousness with the element air, the breath of life. When Heraclitus uses the word ‘word’, he is referring to the stuff of air, breath, speech and life, such that talking cosmology and philosophy is kindling our minds and civilization. Our mind fires see things in visions and mean things with words, heating air with fire to talk to each other, so when Heraclitus opens his text saying “This Word” is eternal but hard to understand, with ‘Word’ often capitalized and sounding biblical, he means his word and explanation of how the Universe works, as well as the plan of the Universe which causes everything to continuously happen, including Heraclitus himself speaking, a small tongue of flame that spouts air about the endless fire.
Later Christian and other Abrahamic thinkers speak of the Greek logos as “The Word of the Lord”, as a plan and command of a king. Like Heraclitus, they do not mean the Bible or any other text, but rather life itself, which inhales cool air and exhales warm breath and words just as winter turns to summer and then back to winter again. Scholars generally agree that whoever wrote the Gospel of John in Greek was influenced by Stoicism, which was influenced by Heraclitus, which is why the beginning says the Word was with God, before God uses the word to order day and night to separate and create the order of the cosmos. A person’s word is their opinion, what they understand about things with their mind using their words. Heraclitus argues that human words are baby talk to the gods, so the best that his words can do is point us beyond human words to the unending mind of the Universe.
Heraclitus does not argue that all things are made of air, as Anaximenes had argued in nearby Miletus, nor that all things are made of water, as Thales had argued, also in Miletus. Like the Persian Zoroastrians, Heraclitus’ arche, his primary element, is fire, which turns into the other three elements and these recombine with fire to form everything complex. Heraclitus sounds like a Greek polytheist wrestling with the fire-centered monotheism of the Persian Zoroastrians.
This wisdom (word, logos) is forever true, but we are unable to understand it before we hear it and are still unable to understand it even after we have hear it, even though all of existence follows from it. Some foolishly try to explain what I put in front of you by dividing things and saying how each thing truly is by itself, while the rest of humanity makes no attempt at all to understand, and do not see what they do while awake anymore than they remember what they did when asleep.
There are three levels of understanding that Heraclitus lays out for us, which in ways resemble Plato’s Republic: common people who are asleep, those who achieve fame, such as philosophers, poets and heroes, who try to distinguish things and thus gain glory, and the few who gain some wisdom, who share the vision of the gods, who rule the cosmos through us as an ever-evolving dialog. Our minds are a part of the thoughts of the cosmos, just as our words are a part of its speaking back and forth to itself.
Heraclitus says that most people don’t know how to listen or how to speak, (19) how to give and how to take, balancing self and other. We have the disease of pride, (46) which is more important to extinguish than our house when it catches fire. (43) We have trouble listening to what our own eyes and ears are telling us (107) and are often “absent when present”, hearing others as well as the deaf (34) and acting as if we are asleep, (73) dreaming things about the world that are delusional because we cut ourselves off from other things with our desires, separating our small fire from the big one. Thus, most people are “fluttered with every word,” (87) shaken because they seek permanence in isolation rather than integration, bringing not safety but rather anxiety.
Some follow the mind beyond the mortal world, seeking knowledge and wisdom about the cosmos overall, which you would think would set you in the right direction, but Heraclitus ridiculed the famous poets and philosophers of his day, saying that after listening to the words of many, he had heard not one who realized wisdom is beyond all other things. (108) Heraclitus says the poets Homer, Hesiod and Archilochos, who wove the stories of the gods into their traditional form, creating Greek culture, should be publicly beaten and stricken from history. (42) He says that Hesiod taught many the names of gods and monsters, but neither Hesiod nor they understand that day and night are one, (57) so we can see that much knowledge does not necessarily bring wisdom. Heraclitus is particularly upset that poets tell people the gods behave like a terrible drunken family rather than our ideal betters.
That covers the common and famous, those who don’t change and most of those who do, the ways of humanity that have no wisdom, unlike the gods. (78) Thankfully, we do sometimes recognize wisdom, because mere belief in the familiar does not satisfy us entirely. (86) Heraclitus speaks as if being wise is being super-human, transcending our species to the degree that we do it, becoming like gods. Given how asleep he thinks we are, this is much like the Buddha having the incredible psychic powers that paying attention to what is happening right in front of our eyes for a change gives us. Heraclitus says that to the gods, one day is like any other, (105) all things are fair, good and right rather than only some here and some there, (102) and thus the gods, who don’t wander around committing foolish, evil acts like the lying poets say they do, speak with justice and harmony that sounds true beyond all human lies and false testimony, (28) the wisdom Heraclitus hopes but doesn’t say that he speaks with.
We come back now to the same river twice. Heraclitus says that being and non-being are the two opposed and complementary sides of becoming, a thought found in the Jains and Buddhists of India and the Daoists of China. In the fragments, Heraclitus says we cannot step in the same river twice, (91) as new waters are always flowing in on us, (12) but also that we do and do not step into the same rivers, (49a) just as we are and are not, exist and lack fixed existence. This idea became important for later German and French philosophers, and it can be traced from Heraclitus through Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Heidegger to French Existentialism and Postmodernism.
Wisdom is one unlimited thing, the thunderbolt that steers all things and the one mind that lights what we see, (41) which Heraclitus claims likes and dislikes being called by the name Zeus, having mixed opinions. (32) We will never find the limits of the mind we share with each other, not even if we track it down every possible path we can think of, as it’s source has no perceivable depth. (45) As Zen master Zhaozhou said in Tang China, our questioning each other is the depth of the deep. As Merleau-Ponty said in the 50s in France, we experience physical reality with our bodies as an open, boundless, and innumerable number of things, not as a thing with fixed walls and set limits, much like a horizon.
Our character is our fate. (119) If we do not grow in wisdom, becoming familiar with many different things and seeing things increasingly in common, we and everything we cling to will fall apart into constituent elements and be recycled by the fire. (35) As Heraclitus reminds us, goat cheese congeals in wine if not well stirred, (125) just as the constant change of our pulse and breathing keeps our form together. Like dogs, we bark at the unfamiliar, (97) but we can gain the wisdom to see that it is not good to get everything we desire (110) and what fights us also helps us, with many never understanding that the harmony of the cosmos is good against bad like a bow on a string. (8, 51) As Nietzsche famously said, seeing himself as a modern German Heraclitus, “What does not kill me makes me stronger.” Heraclitus says that hunger makes satisfaction pleasant, as sickness does health and tired does rest, (111) and jokes that surely good and bad are the same thing to doctors, who demand payments for torturing the sick. (58) It is unclear whether or not Heraclitus thinks that horrible cures are useless, or proof that the cosmos works in contradictory ways.
We can see our perspective is limited, and in our perspective the Sun is the width of a human foot. (3) Just as our eyes are a higher sense that can see farther than our ears can hear or our nose can smell, (7, 98, 101a) we can see that “lowly” animals beneath us, such as the ape, have different likes and dislikes that seem strange and stupid to us, just as we look to the gods, which brings us wisdom and unity with the animals themselves, who share some degree of the fire, light and wisdom with us. The sea is both good and bad to drink depending on whether or not you are a fish or a human. (61) Oxen enjoy munching bitter thistles, (4) pigs bathe in mud, chickens bathe in dirt, (37) and donkeys prefer trash to gold, as at least they can eat it. (9) . All of this shows us that perspective is intelligent and unlimited in all of the ways it works and doesn’t.
Talking about Nietzsche and Rand together reminds me of that old Gary Larson cartoon where the maestro is deftly shown to his lodgings in Hell, which he will share with a bunch of banjo players wearing overalls and floppy hats. Perhaps Ayn and Friedrich are arguing past each other while they share a padded cell together in some heavenly asylum, stopping occasionally to trade insults with Hitler and Steve Jobs in the next cell over.