The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary

by Heraclitus, Charles H. Kahn

Behind the superficial obscurity of what fragments we have of Heraclitus' thought, Professor Kahn claims that it is possible to detect a systematic view of human existence, a theory of language which sees ambiguity as a device for the expression of multiple meaning, and a vision of human life and death within the larger order of nature. The fragments are presented here in a readable order; translation and commentary aim to make accessible the power and originality of a systematic thinker and a great master of artistic prose. The commentary locates Heraclitus within the tradition of early Greek thought, but stresses the importance of his ideas for topical theories of language, literature and philosophy.

Genres: Philosophy, Classics, Nonfiction, Greece, History, Ebooks, Essays

354 pages, Paperback

First published December 13, 1979

About the author

Heraclitus of Ephesus (Greek: Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος,c.535 – c.475 BCE) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the apparently riddled and allegedly paradoxical nature of his philosophy and his stress upon the needless unconsciousness of humankind, he was called "The Obscure" and the "Weeping Philosopher".

Heraclitus was famous for his insistence on ever-present change as being the fundamental essence of the universe, as stated in the famous saying, "No man ever steps in the same river twice". This position was complemented by his stark commitment to a unity of opposites in the world,stating that "the path up and down are one and the same". Through these doctrines Heraclitus characterized all existing entities by pairs of contrary properties, whereby no entity may ever occupy a single state at a single time. This, along with his cryptic utterance that "all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos" (literally, "word", "reason", or "account") has been the subject of numerous interpretations.

Reviews

[Caroline]

This is a review of Charles Kahn’s ‘The Art and Thought of Heraclitus: A New Arrangement and Translation of the Fragments with Literary and Philosophical Commentary’. I state this because Goodreads appears to lump all reviews of Heraclitus together and displays all of them for any edition of his fragments.

I can't rate this book because it presents a very complete and academic exigesis of the fragments. I don’t have any Greek by which to evaluate the arguments for the very involved decisions about which meaning to attribute to the few words available either directly from Heraclitus or through references to him by other writers. However, I did choose this book after reading several reviews of works on Heraclitus, as being the most accurate (i.e. presenting what Heraclitus probably meant).

Kahn first presents the original Greek and his translation en face. He has arranged the fragments thematically. He then devotes the bulk of the book to exigesis, fragment by fragment, with many references to prior academic interpretations. There are also notes.

I did enjoy the mental challenge of Heraclitus’s hyponoia, the allegories or hints that, according to Charles Kahn, are meant to prevent us from taking a lazy route to the easiest, surface interpretation of a position or philosophical statement. Kahn develops a thorough basis for his interpretation of Heraclitus’s cosmology as a unity that imposes oneness on oppositional forces or states such as day and night, summer and winter, fire and water. He also carefully develops his interpretation of Heraclitus’s views on justice, the importance what is held in common, man’s fate (i.e. his psyche’s fate) after death, wisdom, and the gods.

[Nicolas Leon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kahn offers the fragments of Heraclitus in solid translation, with an extensive and thoughtful commentary that both takes account of a great deal of secondary literature and provides the author's own valuable insights.

Kahn's approach to the interpretation of Heraclitus is orthodox but sensitive. He appreciates Heraclitus' intentional and artful prose style, including his use of ambiguity and wordplay to create a multiplicity of meanings in many of the fragments. He also gives proper attention to the resonance between fragments, often picking up an echo of a word or image from one fragment while interpreting another.

I enjoyed and learned much from Kahn's commentary, though I would rate his overall success at drawing a systematic Heraclitean worldview from the fragments a limited success at best. In this I think he is surpassed by Roman Dilcher and perhaps M.L. West as well. However, Kahn's command of the ancient material, the secondary literature (in several languages), and the history and culture of the ancient world in general, is truly impressive. His erudition serves the reader very, very well, opening up a wealth of other sources and making connections that only someone with such a mastery of classical and archaic literature can. I would also strongly advise interested folks to hunt down the hundreds of footnotes in his already weighty commentary, as they frequently provide a gem of a comment or an important bibliographical reference.

All in all, this book is essential for any serious study of Heraclitus. Its staying power is testament to Kahn's superb work. I personally feel deeply in Professor Kahn's debt for his fine volume, and I'm sure I'm not alone in this. My one and only complaint has to do with his decision to reorder the fragments and number them with Roman numerals...it's truly and deeply annoying, but if this is the only fly in the ointment, I suppose we can forgive Charles Kahn. A wonderful book.

[Jeff Samuelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great content, horrendously bad writing style.

[Casey]

Listen, this is the most important translation. The issue here is the order of the fragments. When you are dealing with a puzzle box and you only have a few of the pieces it can be tempting to let them all sit out in a jumble. But, by ordering and grouping these fragments we get to see how each piece deepens our understanding, couches our view, or contradicts completely how we look at the other fragments.

Best Heraclitus Fragment for a locker room wall:

All beasts are driven by blows.

[LaMarx · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love him.

[Rachel · Rating 5 out of 5]

this one is just really interesting in its development and commentary and i’m glad it exists :)

[joycesu]

if i can get my hands on a copy of this... it's gonna get read. :[

[Dawson Escott · Rating 2 out of 5]

In my project of working through early Greek philosophy, Heraclitus is definitely the first philosopher I've encountered that I feel is truly impressive and a thinker that like, modern philosophers may still have to contend with in a real way. His style is best described by his line "The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither speaks out nor conceals, but gives a sign." When Heraclitus expresses his truth, he doesn't just express it outright, but instead gives us mystical and sometimes baffling indirect statements. His writing is passed down to us mostly in just aphorisms, one or two sentence lines that are often paradoxical and very finely crafted. By disguising his truth behind these poetic tactics, reading him isn't just about finding out an interesting new perspective on life. It's like a puzzle box that actually challenges the reader to figure out the truth for themselves through chewing through the sentence. His ultimate conclusions rest on the paradox that the world is forever in a state of change, but that it is through this process of change itself that the world is able to be unified and ordered. "On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow." A river, like the world, is only able to be a river because it is constantly in a state of flowing. On a big picture level, really cool and honestly still believable and compelling.

Kahn's approach to interpreting Heraclitus emphasizes the philosopher's skill as a writer and poet. Arguably, Heraclitus is the first philosopher to care about things like word choice and sentence structure, and implicitly from this to devote attention to how his audience would receive his work. He comes off both as an elusive mystic and a creative perfectionist. He deftly references back and forth across his aphorisms, building a tightly interlinked web of resonance. In his most paradoxical or cryptic statements, I even pick up on a kind of contagious delight he had in frustrating his readers. As far as the translated passages themselves, I totally recommend reading them and looking at the commentary for any entry that you're particularly curious about.

Where this book falls apart a little more for me is in the translator's analysis. The positive: I like that Kahn reorganized the aphorisms into what their potential order in the overall now-lost book would have been, rather than keeping them in the random Diels order. His argument that a random order is, in its own way, still giving the fragments a certain ideological slant, is well taken. I also think that the angle which approaches Heraclitus as a radical new kind of philosopher who is as much a writer and rhetorician as he is a thinker, the first to really compose his writing, is cool.
However, for the general reader, which at times Kahn is openly trying to reach, getting into the swamp of Ancient Greek grammar, etymology, etc. can be a bit alienating and dry.

Also, and perhaps this is just an issue latent in looking at Heraclitus, because all of his doctrine is ultimately very (and deliberately!) intertwined into one big thesis, going through each aphorism in order and providing an interpretation of each, especially in the case of Kahn who really believes a lot of these fragments are expressing the same thing in different ways, is redundant to the point of total fatigue as a reader. I think about 200 pages in I got the gist and was ready to be done with the book, and aside from a couple interesting looks into word choice or little insights on contemporary Greek culture, I did not get much new perspective on Heraclitus' thinking the further I trekked into the book. Also, even if it's potentially not as accurate of a reading, the more "flux" interpretations of Heraclitus are to me just way more exciting and compelling than the strictly monist readings like Kahn's. He dismisses a lot of interpretations that I had read in other sources and found pretty cool, which leads to a more boring, even if convincingly argued, look at what is definitely the most interesting philosopher I've encountered yet. So yeah, not necessarily worth reading cover to cover, but I still appreciated Kahn's exhaustive insight and Heraclitus is lowkey an awesome writer.

[Talbot Hook · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a review of Kahn, not of Heraclitus. (I don't even know how one would review a philosophical insight like, "The sun is the size of a human foot." That was the most comical, alongside "All beasts are driven by blows.")

Kahn has clearly been steeped in ancient Greek language and thought, and his erudition, attention to detail, and interpretive powers are all on display here. The "apparatus of learning" is impressive. The audience of this book is a bit unclear. If one is desirous of learning about Heraclitus's art and thought, it is an interesting journey. The explanation of the fragments is the bulk of the book, and while we do get some philosophical interpretations, what we really get is a look at the intricacies of translation and the problems of inter-translator feuds. This weighs things down a bit heavily. So while there are certainly crystalline explanations of what Heraclitus may have meant by "never stepping into the same river twice," the reader must dig for this. It is buried under a mountain of textual and linguistic description. Again, this would not be bad for someone deeply interested in the translation of the work; it just doesn't work for the reader after the thought beyond the words. My recommendation for readers (because you should read Heraclitus; he is a unique and fascinating individual, whose system of thought was supremely influential) is: Read the intro and read the fragments; then, identify only those fragments meaningful to you. Once you have done this, locate those fragments' exposition in the following section and scan for philosophical context. This will get you closer to wisdom. I would absolutely recommend against reading the whole exposition straight through (like I did, stupidly). Be picky. They're fragments, after all!

A funny thing I noticed. In the book I read, someone with knowledge of Greek had gone through, and they had detailed annotations around many of the same things that I found fascinating. But, during the longer explanations of linguistic analysis, the annotations suddenly ceased. Nothing. It became an obvious wasteland. I interpreted this as the previous owner of this book also losing interest in Kahn waxing philological.

[Arthur]

I cannot speak for Kahn's detailed post-essay which I am skipping for now, but the introductory essay is superb at giving (intellectual, cultural) contextualization for those who need it, and the English fragments are robust while remaining poetical. Footnotes supply necessary details on the subtlety of the Greek, lost in translation.

Some of my favourite fragments:

"The world of the waking is one and shared, but the sleeping turn aside each into his private world"

'The [Kosmos], the same for all, no god nor man has made, but it ever was and ever will be: fire everliving, kindled in measures and in measures going out"

"A fool loves to get excited on any account"

"Man's character is his fate"

"Corpses should be thrown out quicker than dung"

[Karen Shilvock-Cinefro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heraclitus was a prose artist in the ancient world of Greek literature. He was a major thinker and a pre-Socratic philosopher. Unfortunately, most of his works have bern lost snd only fragments remain.
This author has through an intense study in Greece and through linguistic examination has put what is available of Heraclitus works in a meaningful order. This involved studying other texts and also translating Greek.
Interesting brief statements can lead to applying Heraclitus thoughts to today and our current thoughts.
Examples: “The sun is new every day.”
“A fool loves to get excited on any account.”
“He who does not expect will not find out the unexpected, for it is trackless and unexplored.”

[Gage Hoefer · Rating 4 out of 5]

I initially was interested in reading this only as preparatory material for some of Hegel's work, but once I started I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this. It was interesting to see just how much influence Heraclitus had and continues to have; piecing together an overall account of his thought was made much easier thanks to the faithful translation and insightful commentary supplied by Kahn.

[Raya Paul Gracchus · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this primarily for the Fragments of Heraclitus and fortunately Kahn does not intrude at all on that text. His commentary before and after the fragments themselves are more than twice as long and it isn't always useful or necessary but for the most part it was a welcome addition.

[Grant Morgan · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fantastic translation.

The commentaries were, generally, quite helpful – but, I think made a few leaps, forcing together parts of Heraclitus's thought that may (but may not) go together.

The fragments themselves are a must read for anybody interested in change, water, fire, death, etc.

[Shubham Kumar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Must have book for beings who are interested in Heraclitus writings.

[j]

the best not-book ever

[Ryan Coulter · Rating 3 out of 5]

Isn't the point of this to draw my own conclusions and not what some dust covered geriatric has to say?

[Audimaus · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read the translation, not the full book.

[TR · Rating 5 out of 5]

This translation is the best I've looked at (it's called the Marcovich, I think).

Heraclitus' aphorisms are truly wise and could be the basis for a religion. I've noticed the fragments are hard to find in book form. I guess some think there isn't enough there to sell a book. But these sayings are for the sensitive, and those who think as much or more than they read.

I haven't read Kahn's commentary yet, but he seems well-informed.

[Elisabeth Colucci · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pretty good.

[tyler · Rating 4 out of 5]

very detailed (far more detailed than i could understand, honestly, when i was looking for an overview of heraclitus' thought).