## 1. Life and Work



Little is known of Heraclitus' life; most of what has been
handed down consists of stories apparently invented to illustrate his
character as inferred from his writings (Diogenes Laertius
9.1-17). His native Ephesus was a prominent city of Ionia, the
Greek-inhabited coast of Asia Minor, but was subject to Persian rule
in his lifetime. According to one account, he inherited the honorific
title and office of "king" of the Ionians, which he
resigned to his brother. He is generally considered to have favored
aristocratic government as against democracy, based on his own
political observations. 



His city lies close to Miletus, where the first thinkers recognized in
later tradition as philosophers lived; but there is no record of his
having made the acquaintance of any of the Milesian thinkers (Thales,
Anaximander, Anaximenes) or having been taught by them, or of his ever
having traveled.



He is said to have written a single book (papyrus roll), and deposited
it in the great temple of Artemis at Ephesus. The story is plausible
enough: temples often served as depositories for money and other
valuables, and no libraries are known from the time of Heraclitus. The
structure of Heraclitus' book is controversial. It could have
consisted of a relatively coherent and consecutive argument. On the
other hand, the numerous fragments (over one hundred) that have come
down to us do not easily connect with each other, even though they
probably constitute a sizable fraction of the whole. Thus it is
possible and even likely that the book was composed more of sayings
and epigrams than of continuous exposition. In its form, then, it
might have looked more like a collection of proverbs such as were
ascribed to the seven sages than like a cosmological treatise of the
Milesians. Theophrastus, who knew his book, said that it seemed only
half-finished, a kind of hodgepodge he attributed to the
author's melancholy. Diogenes Laertius reports that the work was
divided (he does not say by whom) into three sections, one on
cosmology, one on politics (and ethics), and one on theology
(9.5-6). All these topics are treated in the extant fragments of
Heraclitus, though it is often difficult to see what boundaries the
work might have drawn between them, since Heraclitus seems to see deep
interconnections between science, human affairs, and theology.



Unlike most other early philosophers, Heraclitus is usually seen as
independent of the several schools and movements later students
(somewhat anachronistically) assigned to the ancients, and he himself
implies that he is self-taught (B101). He has been variously judged by
ancient and modern commentators to be a material monist or a process
philosopher; a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician, or a mainly
religious thinker; an empiricist, a rationalist, or a mystic; a
conventional thinker or a revolutionary; a developer of logic or one
who denied the law of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopher
or an anti-intellectual obscurantist. No doubt the sage of Ephesus
will continue to remain controversial and difficult to interpret, but
scholars have made significant progress in understanding and
appreciating his work.


## 2. Method



Heraclitus made every effort to break out of the mold of contemporary
thought. Although he was influenced in a number of ways by the thought
and language of his predecessors, including the epic poets Homer and
Hesiod, the poet and philosopher Xenophanes, the historian and
antiquarian Hecataeus, the religious guru Pythagoras, the sage Bias of
Priene, the poet Archilochus, and the Milesian philosophers, he
criticized most of them either explicitly or implicitly, and struck
out on his own path. He rejected *polumathie* or
information-gathering on the grounds that it "does not teach
understanding"
 (B40).[1]
 He treated the epic poets as fools and called Pythagoras a fraud.



In his fragments Heraclitus does not explicitly criticize the
Milesians, and it is likely that he saw them as the most progressive
of previous thinkers. He does tacitly criticize Anaximander for not
appreciating the role of injustice in the world (B80), while he might
have expressed some admiration for Thales (B38). His views can be seen
to embody structural criticisms of Milesian principles, but even in
correcting the Milesians he built on their foundations. 



Heraclitus' most fundamental departure from previous philosophy
lies in his emphasis on human affairs. While he continues many of the
physical and cosmological theories of his predecessors, he shifts his
focus from the cosmic to the human realm. We might well think of him
as the first humanist, were it not for the fact that he does not seem
to like humanity very well. From the outset he makes it clear that
most people are too stupid to understand his theory. He may be most
concerned with the human relevance of philosophic theories, but he is
an elitist like Plato, who thinks that only select readers are capable
of benefitting from his teachings. And perhaps for this reason he,
like Plato, does not teach his philosophical principles directly, but
couches them in a literary form that distances the author from the
reader. In any case he seems to regard himself not as the author of a
philosophy so much as the spokesman for an independent truth:



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



Heraclitus stresses that the message is not his own invention, but a
timeless truth available to any who attend to the way the world itself
is. "Although this Word is common," he warns, "the
many live as if they had a private understanding" (B2). The Word
(account, message) exists apart from Heraclitus' teaching, but
he tries to convey that message to his audience.



The blindness of humans is one of Heraclitus' main themes. He
announces it at the beginning of his book:



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



He begins by warning his readers that most of them will not understand
his message. He promises to "distinguish each thing according to
its nature and show how it is," a claim similar to the
Milesians'. Yet like sleepers his readers will not understand
the world around them. As this implies, in his book Heraclitus does
have some things to say about the natural world, but much more to say
about the human condition.



No less important than Heraclitus' message is the form in which
he imparts it to his audience. Aristotle noticed that even in the
first sentence of B1, quoted above, the force of the word
'forever' was unclear: did it go with the preceding or the
subsequent words, with 'being' or 'prove'
(*Rhetoric* 1407b11-18)? He regarded the ambiguity as a
weakness in Heraclitus' communication. But if we attend to
Heraclitus' language we see that syntactical ambiguity is more
than an accident: it is a common technique he uses to enrich his words
and to infuse them with a unique verbal complexity like that of
poetry. Charles Kahn (1979: 89) identifies two general traits of
Heraclitus' style, linguistic density and resonance. The former
is his ability to pack multiple meanings into a single word or phrase,
the latter his ability to use one expression to evoke another. To take
a simple example:



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



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



> 
> *ethos anthropoi daimon.*
> 
> The character of man is his guardian spirit. (B119)
> 
> 
> 



The second word, in the dative case "to" or
"for" man, stands between the names of two very unlike
objects, 'character' and 'deity.'
Grammatically, it can attach to either indifferently, and seems
intended to be heard with both, so that it counts twice. Because of
its double role, the word forms a kind of syntactic glue between the
otherwise diverse subjects, joining them together in a unity.
Traditionally having a good or a bad guardian spirit constitutes
one's "luck"-one is *eudaimon* or
*dusdaimon*, fortunate or wretched, at the mercy of
one's divine overseer. But Heraclitus turns one's luck
into a function of one's character, one's ethical stance,
by making "man" the link.



Ultimately, Heraclitus loads his words with layers of meaning and
complexities that are to be discovered in insights and solved like
riddles. As he implies in the second sentence of his introduction, B1,
his *logoi* are designed to be experienced, not just
understood, and only those who experience them in their richness will
grasp his message.


## 3. Philosophical Principles



Although his words are meant to provide concrete vicarious encounters
with the world, Heraclitus adheres to some abstract principles which
govern the world. Already in antiquity he was famous for advocating
the coincidence of opposites, the flux doctrine, and his view that
fire is the source and nature of all things. In commenting on
Heraclitus, Plato provided an early reading, followed tentatively by
Aristotle, and popular down to the present (sharpened and forcefully
advocated by Barnes 1982, ch. 4). According to Barnes' version,
Heraclitus is a material monist who believes that all things are
modifications of fire. Everything is in flux (in the sense that
"everything is always flowing in *some* respects,"
69), which entails the coincidence of opposites (interpreted as the
view that "every pair of contraries is somewhere coinstantiated;
and every object coinstantiates at least one pair of
contraries," 70). The coincidence of opposites, thus
interpreted, entails contradictions, which Heraclitus cannot avoid. On
this view Heraclitus is influenced by the prior theory of material
monism and by empirical observations that tend to support flux and the
coincidence of opposites. In a time before the development of logic,
Barnes concludes, Heraclitus violates the principles of logic and
makes knowledge impossible.



Obviously this reading is not charitable to Heraclitus. There are,
moreover, reasons to question it. First, some of Heraclitus'
views are incompatible with material monism (to be discussed later),
so that the background of his theories must be rethought. Second,
there is evidence that Heraclitus' flux theory is weaker than
that attributed to him by this reading. Third, there is evidence that
his view of the coincidence of opposites is weaker than that
attributed to him here. 


### 3.1 Flux



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



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



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



> 
> 
> B12. *potamoisi toisin autoisin embainousin hetera kai hetera
> hudata epirrei.*
> 
> 
> 
> > 
> > On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters
> > flow. (Cleanthes from Arius Didymus from Eusebius)
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> B49a. *potamois tois autois ...* 
> 
> 
> 
> > 
> > Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not.
> > (Heraclitus Homericus)
> > 
> 
> 
> 
> B91[a]. *potamoi ... toi autoi
> ...*
> 
> 
> 
> > 
> > It is not possible to step twice into the same river according to
> > Heraclitus, or to come into contact twice with a mortal being in the
> > same state. (Plutarch)
> > 
> 
> 
> 



Of these only the first has the linguistic density characteristic of
Heraclitus' words. The second starts out with the same three
words as B12, but in Attic, not in Heraclitus' Ionic dialect,
and the second clause has no grammatical connection to the first. The
third is patently a paraphrase by an author famous for quoting from
memory rather than from books. Even it starts out in Greek with the
word 'river,' but in the singular. There is no evidence
that repetitions of phrases with variations are part of
Heraclitus' style (as they are of Empedocles'). To start
with the word 'river(s)' goes against normal Greek prose
style, and on the plausible assumption that all sources are trying to
imitate Heraclitus, who does not repeat himself, we would be led to
choose B12 as the one and only river fragment, the only actual
quotation from Heraclitus' book. This is the conclusion of Kirk
(1954) and Marcovich (1967), based on an interpretation that goes back
to Reinhardt (1916). That B12 is genuine is suggested by the features
it shares with Heraclitean fragments: syntactic ambiguity (*toisin
autoisin* 'the same' [in the dative] can be construed
either with 'rivers' ["the same rivers"] or
with 'those stepping in' ["the same people"],
with what comes before or after), chiasmus, sound-painting (the first
phrase creates the sound of rushing water with its diphthongs and
sibilants), rhyme and
 alliteration.[2]



If B12 is accepted as genuine, it tends to disqualify the other two
alleged fragments. The major theoretical connection in the fragment is
that between 'same rivers' and 'other waters.'
B12 is, among other things, a statement of the coincidence of
opposites. But it specifies the rivers as the same. The statement is,
on the surface, paradoxical, but there is no reason to take it as
false or contradictory. It makes perfectly good sense: we call a body
of water a river precisely because it consists of changing waters; if
the waters should cease to flow it would not be a river, but a lake or
a dry streambed. There is a sense, then, in which a river is a
remarkable kind of existent, one that remains what it is by changing
what it contains (cf. Hume *Treatise* 1.4.6, p. 258
Selby-Bigge). Heraclitus derives a striking insight from an everyday
encounter. Further, he supplies, via the ambiguity in the first
clause, another reading: on the same people stepping into rivers,
other and other waters flow. With this reading it is people who remain
the same in contrast to changing waters, as if the encounter with a
flowing environment helped to constitute the perceiving subject as the
same. (See Kahn 1979.) B49a, by contrast, contradicts the claim that
one can step into the same rivers (and also asserts that claim), and
B91[a], like Plato in the *Cratylus*, denies that one can step
in twice. Yet if the rivers remain the same, one surely can step in
twice-not into the same waters, to be sure, but into the same
rivers. Thus the other alleged fragments are incompatible with the one
certifiably genuine fragment.



In fact, Marcovich (1967) has succeeded in showing how a misreading of
B12 could lead to an interpretation such as that embodied in A6 and
B91[a]. It is possible to see Cratylus, a late follower of Heraclitus,
supplying the wayward reading, and then adding his famous rejoinder
that one cannot step into the same river even once (although the
reading may go back earlier to Hippias: Mansfeld 1990: 43-55).
Since Plato is alleged to have heard Cratylus' lectures, he may
well have derived his reading from Cratylus' criticism. 



If this interpretation is right, the message of the one river
fragment, B12, is not that all things are changing so that we cannot
encounter them twice, but something much more subtle and profound. It
is that some things stay the same only by changing. One kind of
long-lasting material reality exists by virtue of constant turnover in
its constituent matter. Here constancy and change are not opposed but
inextricably connected. A human body could be understood in precisely
the same way, as living and continuing by virtue of constant
metabolism-as Aristotle for instance later understood it. On
this reading, Heraclitus believes in flux, but not as destructive of
constancy; rather it is, paradoxically, a necessary condition of
constancy, at least in some cases (and arguably in all). In general,
at least in some exemplary cases, high-level structures supervene on
low-level material flux. The Platonic reading still has advocates
(e.g. Taran 1999), but it is no longer the only reading of
Heraclitus advocated by scholars.


### 3.2 The Unity of Opposites



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



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



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



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



he does not contradict himself. There are perfectly good contexts in
which everything he says is true. One can divide a collection into its
parts or join the parts into a unified whole. 



Most tellingly, Heraclitus explains just how contraries are
connected:



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



Contrary qualities are found in us "as the same thing."
But they are the same by virtue of one thing changing around to
another. We are asleep and we wake up; we are awake and we go to
sleep. Thus sleep and waking are both found in us, but not at the same
time or in the same respect. Indeed, if sleeping and waking were
identical, there would be no change as required by the second
sentence. Contraries are the same by virtue of constituting a system
of connections: alive-dead, waking-sleeping, young-old. Subjects do
not possess incompatible properties at the same time, but at different
times.



In general, what we see in Heraclitus is not a conflation of opposites
into an identity, but a series of subtle analyses revealing the
interconnectedness of contrary states in life and in the world. There
is no need to impute to him a logical fallacy. Opposites are a
reality, and their interconnections are real, but the correlative
opposites are not identical to each other.


### 3.3 Ontology



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



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



(Here soul seems to occupy the place of fire.) The language of birth
and death in the world of living things is precisely the language used
in Greek metaphysics for coming to be and perishing. It implies a
radical transformation that rules out continuing identity (cf. B76,
B62). Indeed, interpreters of Heraclitus cannot have it both ways:
Heraclitus cannot be both a believer in radical flux (the change of
everything into everything else: fire into water, water into earth,
and so on) and an advocate of monism. Either he must believe in a
merely illusory or at most a limited kind of change, or he must be a
pluralist. 



One further difficulty remains for the monist reading. In his alleged
version of monism, fire is the ultimate reality. Yet fire (as the
ancients recognized) is the least substantial and the most evanescent
of elemental stuffs. It makes a better symbol of change than of
permanence. Other alleged cases of material monism offer a basic kind
of matter that could arguably be stable and permanent over long
periods of time; but fire manifests "need and satiety"
(B65), a kind of ongoing consumption that can live only by devouring
fuel. Is not Heraclitus' choice of a basic reality itself
paradoxical? At best his appeal to fire seems to draw on material
monism in a way that points beyond the theory to an account in which
the process of change is more real than the material substances that
undergo change.


## 4. Cosmology



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



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



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



Heraclitus describes the transformations of elementary bodies:



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



Fire turns into water ("sea"), and then half of that
quantity turns into earth and half into "fireburst"
(*prester*, a fiery, windy kind of storm
phenomenon). The portion that becomes earth turns back into water, in
the same quantity it had previously. Here Heraclitus envisages a
lawlike transformation of stuff from fire to water to earth; the
transformation is reversible, and in it the same relative quantities
of stuff are preserved. There is, then, a kind of conservation of
matter, or at least overall quantity of matter. What would make the
world to be continuous would be the fact that when one portion of fire
turns into water, an equivalent portion of water turns into fire. The
overall equilibrium is preserved, even if the water that is now in the
sea is not the same water as was in it before. This picture bears a
similarity to the image of the river, which remains the same despite
its changing material contents. 



In this view of the world, the mutual transformations of matter are
not an accidental feature, but the very essence of nature. Without
change, there would be no world. Heraclitus seems to acknowledge this
in his praise of war and strife:



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



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



There is, however, a guiding force in the world:



> 
> Thunderbolt steers all things. (B64)
> 



The fiery shaft of lightning is a symbol of the direction of the
world. Anaximander may have already used the image of the shipmaster
of the universe (Kahn 1960: 238). Heraclitus identifies it with the
thunderbolt, itself an attribute of Zeus the storm god. The changes
wrought by and symbolized by fire govern the world. The ruling power
of the universe can be identified with Zeus, but not in a
straightforward way: "One being, the only wise one, would and
would not be called by the name of Zeus" (B32). And here the
word used for 'Zeus' can be rendered "Life."
Like the Milesians, Heraclitus identifies the ruling power of the
world with deity, but (like them also) his conception is not a
conventional one. 



Heraclitus provided some sort of discussion of meteorological and
astronomical phenomena. He studied the disappearance and reappearance
of the moon at the end and beginning of a month (Oxyrhynchus Papyri
LIII 3710 ii. 43-47 and iii. 7-11-the clearest
evidence that Heraclitus had a scientific interest in astronomy). He
explained the sun and moon as bowls full of fire. As the moon's
bowl rotated it caused the phases. Eclipses were the result of a
rotation of the convex side of the bowls to face the earth. We have no
reports about the earth itself, but we may suppose that, like his
predecessors, Heraclitus viewed it as flat. Evaporations from the
earth and sea apparently provided fuel for the heavenly bodies, which
burned like oil lamps. 



Divine power is manifest in all phenomena: "God is day night,
winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger, and he alters just as
<fire> when it is mixed with spices is named according to the
aroma of each of them" (B67). Again Heraclitus seems to stress
the unity of divine power, even if humans assign different names and
attributes to it. All things that happen are good, but humans do not
perceive them to be so: "To God all things are fair, good and
just, but men suppose some things are unjust, some just" (B102).
Heraclitus does not attempt to provide a detailed theodicy, but seeks
to view all things *sub specie aeternitatis*, in which conflict
(including presumably human conflict) keeps the world going (B80,
cited above). 


## 5. Knowledge



Plato held that for Heraclitus knowledge is made impossible by the
flux of sensible objects. Yet Heraclitus does not repudiate knowledge
or the wisdom that comes from a proper understanding of the world. To
be sure, he believes most people are not capable of wisdom;
understanding is a rare and precious commodity, which even most
reputed sages do not attain to (B28[a]). Yet wisdom is possible, and
it is embodied in Heraclitus' message, for those who can discern
it.



Heraclitus seems to accept the evidence of the senses as in some way
valuable: "The things of which there is sight, hearing,
experience, I prefer" (B55). Sight is the best of the senses:
"The eyes are more accurate witnesses than the ears"
(B101a). Yet in contrast to those who view knowledge as an
accumulation of information or wisdom as a collection of sayings, he
requires much more than sensation and memory:



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



In this statement Heraclitus reviews the leading authorities of his
day, living (the last three) and dead, dealing with religious and
secular knowledge, and finds them all wanting. They spend too much
effort in collecting information and not enough in grasping its
meaning. "What intelligence or understanding do they [the
people] have?" asks Heraclitus. "They follow popular bards
and treat the crowd as their instructor, not realizing that the many
are base, while the few are noble" (B104). He criticizes Hesiod
on specifics: "The teacher of the multitude is Hesiod; they
believe he has the greatest knowledge-who did not comprehend day
and night: for they are one" (B57). In his myths, Hesiod treats
Day and Night as separate persons, taking turns traveling abroad,
while one remains at home. But this fails to capture the
interconnectedness of day and night, and falsifies reality. Heraclitus
criticizes Homer, Pythagoras and Archilochus for their inadequacies.




In general, he holds that people do not learn what they should:
"Many do not understand such things as they encounter, nor do
they learn by their experience, but they think they do" (B17).
Indeed, they do not process the information they receive:
"Having heard without comprehension they are like the deaf; this
saying bears witness to them: present they are absent" (B34).
Heraclitus explains: "Poor witnesses for men are the eyes and
ears of those who have barbarian souls" (B107). A barbarian was
a non-Greek; just as a foreigner hears Greek words without
understanding their meaning, most people perceive without
understanding the world around them. Sense perception is necessary for
knowledge, but not sufficient; without the ability to decipher
information from the senses, one cannot understand the world.



What chance is there then to learn the secrets of the world?
Heraclitus is not wholly pessimistic about human cognitive abilities:
"All men have a share in self-knowledge and sound
thinking" (B116). What is needed is not simply more sense
experience or more information, but an improved way of comprehending
the message (*logos*) that the world offers. In this context
his curious method of expression begins to make sense. He presents his
statements in the form of puzzles, riddles, apercus. Many of
them support two or more readings, and contain hidden insights. To
comprehend them the reader must grasp their complexity and then
discover their unity. To read Heraclitus appropriately is to have a
rich cognitive experience, as the philosopher hints in his
introduction (B1).



Heraclitus often presents a simple concrete situation or image which
has implications for our understanding of the world: a river, a bow, a
road. He does not generally pronounce generalizations and deduce
consequences. Rather, his method can be seen as inductive: he offers
an example which suggests general principles. Unlike most
philosophers, he challenges the right brain rather than the left. He
does not teach in the conventional sense; he offers his readers
materials for understanding and lets them educate themselves. He cites
with approval a model of religious instruction:



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



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


## 6. Value



The aim of Heraclitus' unusual approach is to produce readers
who have a proper grasp of the world and their place in it.
"Sound thinking is the greatest virtue and wisdom: to speak the
truth and to act on the basis of an understanding of the nature of
things" (B112). Such an understanding can result only from an
ability to interpret the language of nature. The proper understanding
allows one to act in a harmonious way.



Heraclitus urges moderation and self-control in a somewhat
conventional way (B85, B43). He also recommends the conventional Greek
goal of seeking fame: "The best choose one thing above all, the
everlasting fame of mortals; the many gorge themselves like
cattle" (B29). To die in battle is a superior kind of death
(B24). Those who drink to excess make their souls wet, and accordingly
harm them (B117), for a healthy soul is dry (B118). Those who
experience better deaths attain better rewards (B25). Those who lie
will be punished (B28[b]). "For men who die there await things
they do not expect or anticipate" (B27). Some of these remarks
tend to suggest an afterlife with rewards and punishment, although his
belief in a continued existence is controversial (see Nussbaum 1972).
In any case, Heraclitus views the soul as the moral and cognitive
center of human experience.



In political theory he maintains that one good man is worth ten
thousand ordinary people (B49). He criticizes his fellow citizens for
banishing a distinguished leader:



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



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



> 
> Speaking with sense we must fortify ourselves in the common sense of
> all, as a city is fortified by its law, and even more forcefully. For
> all human laws are nourished by the one divine law. For it prevails as
> far as it will and suffices for all and is superabundant. (B114)
> 



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


## 7. Influence



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



Ever since Plato, Heraclitus has been seen as a philosopher of flux.
The challenge in interpreting the philosopher of Ephesus has always
been to find a coherent theory in his paradoxical utterances. Since
Hegel, he has been seen as a paradigmatic process
philosopher-perhaps with some justification. 


## 8. Addendum



The recently published Derveni Papyrus, discovered in a tomb in
northern Greece, contains a commentary on an Orphic poem. The
commentator discusses some passages of Heraclitus in connection with
the poem, namely B3 + B94 (which may have been thus joined in
Heraclitus' book) (column 4). See Betegh 2004. The Oxyrhynchus
Papyri (vol. 53, no. 3710) also show that Heraclitus was interested in
determining the days of the lunar month and thus in scientific
questions. See Burkert 1993. On the Derveni Papyrus material, see
Betegh & Piano 2019, 2022; Ranocchia 2019; and Hladky 2022.



In recent work, scholars have devoted special attention to
Heraclitus' moral and political theory (Fattal 2011, Sider 2013,
Robitzsch 2018), to questions of logos and rationality (Hulsz
2013, Long 2013), to the material character of soul (Betegh 2007), and
to the theory of elemental change (Neels 2018).



There is an important new edition of the Presocratics, which contains
a volume mostly dedicated to Heraclitus, with a generous selection of
texts including many dedicated to reception (Laks and Most 2016).
There is also an important new study of Heraclitus that defends a
traditional interpretation of the sources (Finkelberg 2017).



Heraclitus' influence on culture seems undiminished, appearing
prominently in studies of fields as diverse as business management and
veterinary medicine. Often cited as the philosopher of flux,
Heraclitus now seems to be emerging as the standard-bearer for process
philosophy, having displaced more recent icons such as Henri Bergson
and Alfred North Whitehead. See, for instance, van Geert and de Ruiter
2022, a major contribution to the discipline of psychology. (On
Heraclitus as a process philosopher, see Graham 2011.)