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Fragmente: Griechisch - Deutsch (Sammlung Tusculum)
Heraklit, im Altertum der "Dunkle" genannt, ist einer der tiefsten Denker Griechenlands. Diese Ausgabe stellt die von ihm erhaltenen Fragmente vollständig zusammen und versucht, sie durch möglichst getreue Übersetzung dem heutigen Leser zugänglich zu machen. "Diese Weltordnung hier hat nicht der Götter noch der Menschen einer geschaffen, sondern sie war immer und ist und wird sein: immerlebendes Feuer, aufflammendend nach Maßen und verlöschend nach Maßen. Feuers Wende: zuerst Meer; des Meeres eine Hälfte Erde, die andere flammendes Wetter... Das Meer zerfließt und erfüllt sein Maß nach demselben Sinn, der auch galt, bevor es Erde wurde." B 30, 31
56 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 502
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About the author
Heraclitus
63 books771 followersHeraclitus 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.
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.
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May 13, 2025
“NATURE LOVES TO HIDE.”
- Heraclitus
Heraclitus was an Ancient Greek Wise Guy who lived at that early historical time when the tentative musings of the first rays of the Dawn of Civilisation were maturing into the sharp intellect of history’s bright and brilliant daylight.
Take the saying “Nature loves to hide.” It says a lot.
As animals scamper off at human approach, and just as all nature was vague, shadowy and supernatural without our modern scientific measurement and theorizing back in Heraclitus’ time, just so we hide our true nature at work from our coworkers - a prime source of our stresses - and, to a lesser extent in the more relaxed ambience of our homes, from our own wife and kids.
Yes, nature REALLY loves to hide.
Yikes.
Or take another: “Everything is in a state of constant change.”
The world around us is changing all the time. So are our friends and our enemies. After a while the whole world’s not the same anymore - you hear that a LOT from us oldtimers (well, it’s true, ain’t it?)!
Or another: “You can’t step into the same stream twice.”
Think about it. YOUR MIND is changing - your INNER nature. And that happens faster as you age, especially when you’ve got yourself out of the tight box of workplace discipline and control.
That’s the reason for old folks like me going into another room and FORGETTING WHY WE CAME IN - our INNER space has suddenly morphed. Who says getting old isn’t scary?
And, the BEST saying for the LAST: “The way up and the way down are the same.” Now, that’s a pretty rum thing, so I’ll try to illustrate its point...
When I was young, my body had its own central heating system: my warmly beating heart could heat up every nook and cranny of my physical self. Not any more.
My smoking years have damaged the fan power provided by my lungs and heart, so the furnace can be hot, but the nooks and crannies (my extremities) are frigid.
Or, more to Heraclitus’ point, the way up to our goals can often only be traversed by the way down into the hades of hard work - and by our own blood, sweat and tears! THAT is the way to self-mastery.
For once our emotions have been mastered we are at peace!
So Yes, YES, Heraclitus was wise.
And... want a great tip for those dreary rain-soaked weekends when you can’t quite get your head in gear?
Read ALL of these INFINITELY wise sayings of Heraclitus.
They'll wake you up fast!
- Heraclitus
Heraclitus was an Ancient Greek Wise Guy who lived at that early historical time when the tentative musings of the first rays of the Dawn of Civilisation were maturing into the sharp intellect of history’s bright and brilliant daylight.
Take the saying “Nature loves to hide.” It says a lot.
As animals scamper off at human approach, and just as all nature was vague, shadowy and supernatural without our modern scientific measurement and theorizing back in Heraclitus’ time, just so we hide our true nature at work from our coworkers - a prime source of our stresses - and, to a lesser extent in the more relaxed ambience of our homes, from our own wife and kids.
Yes, nature REALLY loves to hide.
Yikes.
Or take another: “Everything is in a state of constant change.”
The world around us is changing all the time. So are our friends and our enemies. After a while the whole world’s not the same anymore - you hear that a LOT from us oldtimers (well, it’s true, ain’t it?)!
Or another: “You can’t step into the same stream twice.”
Think about it. YOUR MIND is changing - your INNER nature. And that happens faster as you age, especially when you’ve got yourself out of the tight box of workplace discipline and control.
That’s the reason for old folks like me going into another room and FORGETTING WHY WE CAME IN - our INNER space has suddenly morphed. Who says getting old isn’t scary?
And, the BEST saying for the LAST: “The way up and the way down are the same.” Now, that’s a pretty rum thing, so I’ll try to illustrate its point...
When I was young, my body had its own central heating system: my warmly beating heart could heat up every nook and cranny of my physical self. Not any more.
My smoking years have damaged the fan power provided by my lungs and heart, so the furnace can be hot, but the nooks and crannies (my extremities) are frigid.
Or, more to Heraclitus’ point, the way up to our goals can often only be traversed by the way down into the hades of hard work - and by our own blood, sweat and tears! THAT is the way to self-mastery.
For once our emotions have been mastered we are at peace!
So Yes, YES, Heraclitus was wise.
And... want a great tip for those dreary rain-soaked weekends when you can’t quite get your head in gear?
Read ALL of these INFINITELY wise sayings of Heraclitus.
They'll wake you up fast!
August 9, 2007
Heraclitus' FRAGMENTS come here in the original with a facing-page translation by Brooks Haxton that tries to do to the pre-Socratic philosopher what no earlier translator has done, make him a New-Ageish wisdom poet in tune with our modern needs. It is a disastrous experiment, and I cannot recommend it either to students of Greek or readers interested in the pre-Socratics.
The problems here are legion. For one, Haxton doesn't use Diels' numbering scheme, favouring Bywater's dinosaur-era numbers, which means this work is out of touch with most collections of Heraclitus. The Greek typeface used is very idiosyncratic and not conformant to classical norms. But the translation itself is horrid.
A lot of what the reader is getting here simply isn't Heraclitus. Instead of providing a footnote with his opinion on what the fragment may mean in context, as reputable scholars would do, Haxton simply adds content to the translation. Unless he were to look at the translation notes in the back, the average reader would be unaware that much of what he was reading wasn't actual said by the philosopher, but is just one modern translator's opinion. Take, for example, Haxton's rendition of the fragment "Nyktipoloi, magoi, bakchoi, lenai, mustai", which is literally translated "Night-walkers, mages, bacchants, lenai, and the initiated", but which Haxton inexplicably expands to "Nightwalker [sic:], magus, and their entourage, bacchants and mystics of the wine press, with stained faces, and damp wits". One that really takes the cake is 89: "Ex homine in tricennio potest avus haberi," which simply means "A man could be a grandfather in thirty years." Haxton somehow comes up with "Look: the baby born under the new moon under the old moon holds her grandchild in her arms".
This translation is a crime. If you are interested in Heraclitus' thought, try getting a reputable scholarly translation. Dennis Sweet's HERACLITUS: Translation and Analysis (University Press of America, 1995) is quite easily readable and entertaining. Stay far away from Haxton's kookish work.
The problems here are legion. For one, Haxton doesn't use Diels' numbering scheme, favouring Bywater's dinosaur-era numbers, which means this work is out of touch with most collections of Heraclitus. The Greek typeface used is very idiosyncratic and not conformant to classical norms. But the translation itself is horrid.
A lot of what the reader is getting here simply isn't Heraclitus. Instead of providing a footnote with his opinion on what the fragment may mean in context, as reputable scholars would do, Haxton simply adds content to the translation. Unless he were to look at the translation notes in the back, the average reader would be unaware that much of what he was reading wasn't actual said by the philosopher, but is just one modern translator's opinion. Take, for example, Haxton's rendition of the fragment "Nyktipoloi, magoi, bakchoi, lenai, mustai", which is literally translated "Night-walkers, mages, bacchants, lenai, and the initiated", but which Haxton inexplicably expands to "Nightwalker [sic:], magus, and their entourage, bacchants and mystics of the wine press, with stained faces, and damp wits". One that really takes the cake is 89: "Ex homine in tricennio potest avus haberi," which simply means "A man could be a grandfather in thirty years." Haxton somehow comes up with "Look: the baby born under the new moon under the old moon holds her grandchild in her arms".
This translation is a crime. If you are interested in Heraclitus' thought, try getting a reputable scholarly translation. Dennis Sweet's HERACLITUS: Translation and Analysis (University Press of America, 1995) is quite easily readable and entertaining. Stay far away from Haxton's kookish work.
January 15, 2015
Philosopher-Poet-Prophet-Proverbist
Heraclitus is all rolled into one. His fragments are tantalizing, hinting at a wisdom lost to us, but I am sure that he meant them to be fragmentary, so that all he does for the reader is a quick nod in the direction of a distant window, leaving the reader to make the journey, to peep out, and to make of the sight what he will. In the sure knowledge that Heraclitus had pointed him there and whatever he sees there is worth interpreting.
“Things keep their secrets.”
Herclitus is often called a Wisdom-Poet, sharing kinship with the authors of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Job. Such Wisdom-Poetry specializes in a special sort of pessimism -- one that frees the reader from the shackles of a cherished belief. Heraclitus does this repeatedly:
They raise their voices
at stone idols
as a man might argue
with his doorpost,
they have understood
so little of the gods.
Like Buddha, Heraclitus is known to have given up his throne to seek wisdom. He became the author of what is today often considered to the first philosophical treatise of the Western mind -- that tries to arrive at the truth through a discourse.
However, the philosophy is nascent in these writings, being more prophetic and poetic than a structured discourse, with ideas leading one into the other.
These aphorisms tread lightly, avoiding being an elitist composition open only to the initiated. Heraclitus makes himself mysterious and accessible at the same time. it is no wonder that most philosophers after him refer to him with an awe reserved for a master who first teaches one to truly see the world anew.
My favorite:
Yet let’s not make
rash guesses
our most lucid thoughts.
August 28, 2021
The prophet's voice possessed of god
requires no ornament, no sweetening of tone,
but carries over a thousand years.
***
The eye, the ear,
the mind in action,
these I value.
***
Wisdom is the oneness
of mind that guides
and permeates all things.
***
From the strain
of binding opposites
comes harmony.
***
The harmony past knowing sounds
more deeply than the known
***
Just as the river where I step
is not the same, and is,
so I am as I am not.
***
Silence, healing.
requires no ornament, no sweetening of tone,
but carries over a thousand years.
***
The eye, the ear,
the mind in action,
these I value.
***
Wisdom is the oneness
of mind that guides
and permeates all things.
***
From the strain
of binding opposites
comes harmony.
***
The harmony past knowing sounds
more deeply than the known
***
Just as the river where I step
is not the same, and is,
so I am as I am not.
***
Silence, healing.
May 22, 2019
Obviously 5 stars for Heraclitus's fragments, but this translation is complete garbage and should not be read by anyone. Haxton is a terrible poet and a terrible translator; he adds lines that do not exist in Heraclitus, apparently does not own a Greek-English lexicon, etc.
Fragment 80, Ἐδιζησαόμην εμεωυτοόν, would be translated by any sane person as "I have sought myself," "I explored myself," "I sought to know myself," "I have inquired of myself," etc., which obviously refers to the Oracle at Delphi, an important bit of context for Heraclitus's life.
Haxton translates fragment 80 as "Applicants for wisdom / do what I have done: / inquire within." Yes, that's right, he just makes up a terrible short poem, including a cliché ('inquire within') -- it's always a great idea to include clichés in poetry, I've found -- and refers to it as a translation of Heraclitus. Apparently Heraclitus is a third-rate twentieth-century beat poet?
Or take fragment 89, again quite straightforward: "Ex homine in tricennio potest avus haberi." This could not be less complicated to translate: "A man could be a grandfather in thirty years." That's it. But no, Haxton comes up with: "Look: the baby born / under the new moon / under the old moon holds / her grandchild in her arms." THIS IS NOT WHAT HERACLITUS WROTE, FFS
Probably the most annoying translation choice, to me, is fragment 10, Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ, which is one of the foundational ideas of Western philosophy ("nature loves to hide") and has been written about many, many times by many intelligent commentators. Now, to be fair, Haxton at least avoids literally making up lines that don't exist in the Greek text, which is a step forward, but he translates this as "things keep their secrets."
Holy moly, Φύσις IS NOT "things." Phusis is nature; I don't even hate "Nature keeps its secrets," which is trite and awkward but at least technically correct; but "things"? Things would be a reasonably good translation of πράγματα, I guess? But Heraclitus most emphatically did not write πράγματα. The chair that I'm sitting on does not keep its secrets; it is an artifact! (I strongly doubt that Haxton is aware of this, but you can argue that Ionian philosophers used phusis to refer to "all natural things," and possibly, if you're going way out on a limb, "all things," but even there, phusis was opposed to nomos, and I just don't see how you can justify "things" as a translation in this particular case.)
In short, stick with Kirk and Raven.
Fragment 80, Ἐδιζησαόμην εμεωυτοόν, would be translated by any sane person as "I have sought myself," "I explored myself," "I sought to know myself," "I have inquired of myself," etc., which obviously refers to the Oracle at Delphi, an important bit of context for Heraclitus's life.
Haxton translates fragment 80 as "Applicants for wisdom / do what I have done: / inquire within." Yes, that's right, he just makes up a terrible short poem, including a cliché ('inquire within') -- it's always a great idea to include clichés in poetry, I've found -- and refers to it as a translation of Heraclitus. Apparently Heraclitus is a third-rate twentieth-century beat poet?
Or take fragment 89, again quite straightforward: "Ex homine in tricennio potest avus haberi." This could not be less complicated to translate: "A man could be a grandfather in thirty years." That's it. But no, Haxton comes up with: "Look: the baby born / under the new moon / under the old moon holds / her grandchild in her arms." THIS IS NOT WHAT HERACLITUS WROTE, FFS
Probably the most annoying translation choice, to me, is fragment 10, Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ, which is one of the foundational ideas of Western philosophy ("nature loves to hide") and has been written about many, many times by many intelligent commentators. Now, to be fair, Haxton at least avoids literally making up lines that don't exist in the Greek text, which is a step forward, but he translates this as "things keep their secrets."
Holy moly, Φύσις IS NOT "things." Phusis is nature; I don't even hate "Nature keeps its secrets," which is trite and awkward but at least technically correct; but "things"? Things would be a reasonably good translation of πράγματα, I guess? But Heraclitus most emphatically did not write πράγματα. The chair that I'm sitting on does not keep its secrets; it is an artifact! (I strongly doubt that Haxton is aware of this, but you can argue that Ionian philosophers used phusis to refer to "all natural things," and possibly, if you're going way out on a limb, "all things," but even there, phusis was opposed to nomos, and I just don't see how you can justify "things" as a translation in this particular case.)
In short, stick with Kirk and Raven.
August 4, 2020
"Ağının ortasında oturan örümcek
Sineğin takıldığını görür görmez
nasıl ona doğru koşarsa
ipliğinin kopmasından acı duyarcasına
insan ruhu da
gövdesinin bir yanı yaralanınca
hızla gider oraya
sımsıkı
ölçüyle
bağlandığı
gövdenin
yaralanmasına dayanamazcasına"
"Ruh ki
bir soluk veriştir
kavrayan
gövdeden ayrı
sürekli akan"
Sineğin takıldığını görür görmez
nasıl ona doğru koşarsa
ipliğinin kopmasından acı duyarcasına
insan ruhu da
gövdesinin bir yanı yaralanınca
hızla gider oraya
sımsıkı
ölçüyle
bağlandığı
gövdenin
yaralanmasına dayanamazcasına"
"Ruh ki
bir soluk veriştir
kavrayan
gövdeden ayrı
sürekli akan"
Read
June 4, 2018İki gün, ard arda iki kez okudum. Çok saf, çok duru. Azıcık kelime ile kurulmuş koca bir evren. Verdiği cevaplara hiç güvenmeyen, büyülenmiş gözlerle, etrafında dönüp duran şeyleri seyreden birisi Heraclitus; Sysyphos'un kayasını, almış kafasında taşıyor gibi. Diyor ki;
''Çocuk oyunudur insanların görüşleri''
İroniye tanıklık etmiş, ona güvenmiş ve aynı zamanda ondan korkmuş belli ki.
''Bilin ki
her şeyde ortak
savaş
Çekişmedir adalet
Çekişerek
var olup
yok olur
her şey''
''Çocuk oyunudur insanların görüşleri''
İroniye tanıklık etmiş, ona güvenmiş ve aynı zamanda ondan korkmuş belli ki.
''Bilin ki
her şeyde ortak
savaş
Çekişmedir adalet
Çekişerek
var olup
yok olur
her şey''
January 16, 2019
etrafta boş konuşmalar arttığında, herşey birbirine girdiğinde, kaos ve kakafoni ortalığı sardığında, birine bir soru sorduğunuzda cevaba doğduğu günü anlatmakla başladığında, gereksizlik alıp başını yürüdüğünde, olanlardan, olaylardan ve insanlardan sıkıldığınızda terapi niyetine okunacak kitap bence.
Taa M.Ö. 400 lerden kalma bir hazine, tabi kıymetini bilene..
Taa M.Ö. 400 lerden kalma bir hazine, tabi kıymetini bilene..
July 2, 2011
A MESSAGE FROM HERACLITUS
Never twice,
so hardly thrice,
will you step
into the cooling waters
and find the stream
the same.
Pass on
with gladness,
not looking back
expecting permanence.
Sink,
immerse yourself
in the ever-flux.
Swim,
when you must,
with the tide.
Do not fight
what you cannot change-
the Changeless Everchanging.
9th March,1985.
THE BECOMING
The mightiest rock is withering away;
A tiny mound growing to a famous hill.
Becoming and becoming shapes the world.
Becoming and becoming takes away.
And there's no knowing the whys and whys
and wherefores of it all,
The answers change and slip and slip away.
Nail the wind to your door
Tie water in the tightest knot
and still it will not stay.
And the weak grow strong
and the strong it melts away.
Touch one with a feather and it crumbles
Strike hard with a hammer
and yet the other stays.
June, 1985.
July 3, 2020
Ovih 130 aforizama su nešto najljepše što nam je antički svijet ostavio u amanet!
"Samo se u jednom sastoji mudrost: poznavati duhovnu moć koja upravlja svime kroz sve."
"Samo se u jednom sastoji mudrost: poznavati duhovnu moć koja upravlja svime kroz sve."
April 22, 2018
HERACLITUS Fragments
Heraclitus flourished about 500 BC.
He is the third of the ‘Pre-Socratic’ Philosophers known to us.
The first being Thales (around 585 BC) the second Pythagoras (about 532 BC).
Thales believed that the primordial element out of which everything was made, was water.
Anaximenes thought the air was the fundamental element.
Empedocles suggested that in compromise, earth, air, fire and water where the four primitive elements.
Heraclitus preferred fire.
Heraclitus also believed in perpetual change or permanent flux:
“You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.”
"Just as the river where I step is not the same, and is, so I am as I am not."
Another of his doctrines was the mingling of opposites:
"There would be no unity if there were not opposites to combine."
Some quotes from the fragments:
"The word proves those first hearing it
As numb to understanding
As the ones not heard.
Yet all things follow from the Word."
"For wisdom, listen not to me but the Word,
And know that all is one."
"If learning were a path of wisdom,
Those most learned about myth would not believe, with Hesiod,
That Pallas in her wisdom gloats over the noise of battle."
"Pythagoras may well have been the deepest in his learning of all men.
And still, he claimed to recollect details of former lives,
Being in one a cucumber and one time a sardine."
"The mind of Thales saw in forethought –
Precisely as in heaven – the eclipse."
"Many who have learned from Hesiod the countless names of Gods and monsters,
Never understand that night and day are one."
"War, father of all things, and king,
Names a few to serve as gods, and of the rest
makes these men slaves, those free."
"As for the Ephesians, I would have them, youths, elders and all those between,
go hang themselves, leaving the city in the abler hands of children.
With the banishment of Hermodoros they say, No man should be worthier than average.
Thus my fellow citizens declare, whoever would seek excellence can find it elsewhere
among others."
Heraclitus himself for all his belief in change allowed something everlasting. In his Philosophy, the ever-living fire never dies.
And its permanence is instead that of a process than that of substance.
The doctrine of the perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is painful, but science can do nothing to refute it.
This little book of FRAGMENTS is interesting as a new translation, but the fragments are few and difficult to connect.
It may leave the reader wishing for a complete picture of the Philosopher.
Heraclitus flourished about 500 BC.
He is the third of the ‘Pre-Socratic’ Philosophers known to us.
The first being Thales (around 585 BC) the second Pythagoras (about 532 BC).
Thales believed that the primordial element out of which everything was made, was water.
Anaximenes thought the air was the fundamental element.
Empedocles suggested that in compromise, earth, air, fire and water where the four primitive elements.
Heraclitus preferred fire.
Heraclitus also believed in perpetual change or permanent flux:
“You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.”
"Just as the river where I step is not the same, and is, so I am as I am not."
Another of his doctrines was the mingling of opposites:
"There would be no unity if there were not opposites to combine."
Some quotes from the fragments:
"The word proves those first hearing it
As numb to understanding
As the ones not heard.
Yet all things follow from the Word."
"For wisdom, listen not to me but the Word,
And know that all is one."
"If learning were a path of wisdom,
Those most learned about myth would not believe, with Hesiod,
That Pallas in her wisdom gloats over the noise of battle."
"Pythagoras may well have been the deepest in his learning of all men.
And still, he claimed to recollect details of former lives,
Being in one a cucumber and one time a sardine."
"The mind of Thales saw in forethought –
Precisely as in heaven – the eclipse."
"Many who have learned from Hesiod the countless names of Gods and monsters,
Never understand that night and day are one."
"War, father of all things, and king,
Names a few to serve as gods, and of the rest
makes these men slaves, those free."
"As for the Ephesians, I would have them, youths, elders and all those between,
go hang themselves, leaving the city in the abler hands of children.
With the banishment of Hermodoros they say, No man should be worthier than average.
Thus my fellow citizens declare, whoever would seek excellence can find it elsewhere
among others."
Heraclitus himself for all his belief in change allowed something everlasting. In his Philosophy, the ever-living fire never dies.
And its permanence is instead that of a process than that of substance.
The doctrine of the perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is painful, but science can do nothing to refute it.
This little book of FRAGMENTS is interesting as a new translation, but the fragments are few and difficult to connect.
It may leave the reader wishing for a complete picture of the Philosopher.
August 18, 2023
The world is in a constant state of change, and this is according to Heraclitus, the hidden wisdom and truth behind the cosmos. Nothing is ever as it was nor is it what it will be. Time forces the natural world around us to change. As a river, where the waters are in perpetual motion, the river is never the same, so that we never step into the same river twice. We might perceive it to be the same river, but it is not the same as when we first stepped in. Likewise we are never who we were, and in a single stroke, our perception of reality that is shaped by constant change alters our understanding and being, so that even now we are not who we were but only a second ago. Yet this constant state of flux is imperceptible to the eyes and the ears of man. It is only perceptible upon a deeper reflection of the natural world, and this principle is to Heraclitus what unites all things. It is like a fire, something that is ever changing, never the same. In a constant state of flux. We are from one second to the next at peace, then at war. In health, then in sickness. Both beginning and ending at the same time, and there is a unity in these opposites because they both are and are not due to this unifying principle of constant change.
July 12, 2025
"And if you listen very hard, the tune will come to you at last, that all is one and one is all, to be a rock and not to roll". Page/Plant, "Stairway to Heaven".
How curious and penetrating that Heraclitus should agree with the first part of that Led Zeppelin manifesto and completely reject the second half. What can a philosopher of over 2,000 years ago and of whom next to nothing is known have to teach us? Plenty, if you listen very hard. Heraclitus is most famous for his motto, "you cannot step into the same stream twice". In this magnificent translation that quote is rendered more beautifully and fully: "The river where you set your foot is gone now...and I am as I am not". Not only is the river different from yesterday but so are you! (Note the prefigurement of Borges here.) Heraclitus staked his philosophy on the notion that "all is one and one is all" not due to things always remaining the same at station, the insipid view of those imbeciles Parmenides and Zeno, who thought motion an illusion, but quite the opposite. The universe is constantly in flux and harmony comes out of strife or the unity of opposites. Yes, but how can you digest this? Above all else, free yourself from fear. Death is not to be feared, since the dead will return to life in an endless cycle. No, this is not the personal immortality of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim faiths; rather a reemergence, whether through dirt or a return to cosmic dust. God is not to be feared since he is the One, the ultimate unity, just not a being. The only thing Heraclitus hates more than the cosmogony myths of Hesiod are commentators and interpreters of those myths. Fear not the specialist, whether in medicine, the law or education. They have only, at best, grasped a partial truth from a human perspective, not cosmic. In other words, aim for wisdom, not knowledge. Beware of politicians, for all cater to the crowd and not the truth. Civilization exists for the sake of giving rise to great men, not passing political fads. You and your mate can never be separated, not even in death. In sum: "That which was, and is, and will be in everliving fire, the same for all, the cosmos, made by neither god nor man, replenishes in measure as it burns away". I want to believe Heraclitus; I try to live in the Heraclitan way, yet I cannot help but remember the warning of Ezra Pound:
"All things are a flowing,
Sage Heracleitus says;
But a tawdry cheapness
Shall reign throughout our days."
(HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLY). Now, there's something to be really afraid of, consumer products.
How curious and penetrating that Heraclitus should agree with the first part of that Led Zeppelin manifesto and completely reject the second half. What can a philosopher of over 2,000 years ago and of whom next to nothing is known have to teach us? Plenty, if you listen very hard. Heraclitus is most famous for his motto, "you cannot step into the same stream twice". In this magnificent translation that quote is rendered more beautifully and fully: "The river where you set your foot is gone now...and I am as I am not". Not only is the river different from yesterday but so are you! (Note the prefigurement of Borges here.) Heraclitus staked his philosophy on the notion that "all is one and one is all" not due to things always remaining the same at station, the insipid view of those imbeciles Parmenides and Zeno, who thought motion an illusion, but quite the opposite. The universe is constantly in flux and harmony comes out of strife or the unity of opposites. Yes, but how can you digest this? Above all else, free yourself from fear. Death is not to be feared, since the dead will return to life in an endless cycle. No, this is not the personal immortality of the Judeo-Christian-Muslim faiths; rather a reemergence, whether through dirt or a return to cosmic dust. God is not to be feared since he is the One, the ultimate unity, just not a being. The only thing Heraclitus hates more than the cosmogony myths of Hesiod are commentators and interpreters of those myths. Fear not the specialist, whether in medicine, the law or education. They have only, at best, grasped a partial truth from a human perspective, not cosmic. In other words, aim for wisdom, not knowledge. Beware of politicians, for all cater to the crowd and not the truth. Civilization exists for the sake of giving rise to great men, not passing political fads. You and your mate can never be separated, not even in death. In sum: "That which was, and is, and will be in everliving fire, the same for all, the cosmos, made by neither god nor man, replenishes in measure as it burns away". I want to believe Heraclitus; I try to live in the Heraclitan way, yet I cannot help but remember the warning of Ezra Pound:
"All things are a flowing,
Sage Heracleitus says;
But a tawdry cheapness
Shall reign throughout our days."
(HUGH SELWYN MAUBERLY). Now, there's something to be really afraid of, consumer products.
March 3, 2019
Remarkable coherent thoughts, musings and ramblings for something written so long ago. Heraclitus is one of those guys who sees everything in everything else, i.e. old is young, young is old - because its all relative, and so on. Which can get a little repetitive at times, but the depth of those thoughts is not lost nevertheless.
And every once in a while, a gem pops out. Like a person never stepping in the same river twice, or that dogs too bark at things they don't understand, or mixtures tend to separate if they don't stay in motion - these are timeless thoughts. I don't believe that these kind of words will ever stop speaking to humanity. And which is why, as one of the earliest efforts to put those musings to paper, high five to you signore Heraclitus.
And every once in a while, a gem pops out. Like a person never stepping in the same river twice, or that dogs too bark at things they don't understand, or mixtures tend to separate if they don't stay in motion - these are timeless thoughts. I don't believe that these kind of words will ever stop speaking to humanity. And which is why, as one of the earliest efforts to put those musings to paper, high five to you signore Heraclitus.
March 24, 2018
Heraklit is the prototype of a dark, cranky and cynical philosopher which is later embodied by Schopenhauer and Taleb; which is a type that speaks to me. His fragments are so profound on a melancholic, misanthropic level that I can't help to rate it five stars.
April 17, 2017
It's so funny when he bashes on Homer... the highlight of the book in my onion
November 24, 2020
One of my favourite aspects of the wisdom texts that I read is the mountains of meaning behind aphorism. In many cases, a lifetime of experience will have led to one sentence. This sentence can be interpreted in a number of ways, but those that do not respect the lifetime of experience will take it to be obvious, a given, a platitude. I try to respect the history of a person’s experiencing, and coupled with that, realize that all we have of Heraclitus are fragments. Lord, some of these are beautiful.
Take, for instance, (79) “Time is a game played beautifully by children.” There is also (7) “Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse.” And of course, perhaps the one thing that Heraclitus is forever associated with, (41) “The river where you set your foot just now is gone – those waters giving way to this, now this.”
Throughout reading the fragments, I had the vague sense that Heraclitus had taken some slight inspiration from the ancient Persians and Zoroastrians – for one, he kept referring to fire as the logos, and his writing was rich with allusions to contradictions and grey areas in life, that the holding together of opposites created harmony. Reading the foreword and the introduction after completion, I realized that I was not too far from the “truth”. Certainly the timelines matched up, and although historical connections are doubtful, the references are plenty and strong.
Take, for instance, (79) “Time is a game played beautifully by children.” There is also (7) “Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse.” And of course, perhaps the one thing that Heraclitus is forever associated with, (41) “The river where you set your foot just now is gone – those waters giving way to this, now this.”
Throughout reading the fragments, I had the vague sense that Heraclitus had taken some slight inspiration from the ancient Persians and Zoroastrians – for one, he kept referring to fire as the logos, and his writing was rich with allusions to contradictions and grey areas in life, that the holding together of opposites created harmony. Reading the foreword and the introduction after completion, I realized that I was not too far from the “truth”. Certainly the timelines matched up, and although historical connections are doubtful, the references are plenty and strong.
July 12, 2014
Heraclitus ("the glory of Hera"), contemporary of Buddha, Lao Tzu and Confucius, was one of the first philosophers of Ancient Greece. He was the one who said "one can't step into the same river twice". These fragments, mostly in Greek but a few times in Latin (which are printed on the left-side page alongside the English of the right-side page), once were parts of a very often quoted book "On Nature", which since has gone missing. But just from the few bits that are here can be gained very deep quotes which have had a great influence beyong Ancient Greek and Rome.
It's a quick read, but one can remain chewing on the tiniest bits for a long time. The book can be a good point to start reading Greek philosophy, it's not exhausting and is easily re-readable. So I loved it and recommend it.
It's a quick read, but one can remain chewing on the tiniest bits for a long time. The book can be a good point to start reading Greek philosophy, it's not exhausting and is easily re-readable. So I loved it and recommend it.
August 25, 2023
Daha çok ırmak metaforuyla (“İki kez giremezsin aynı ırmağa”) bilinen toprağımızın insanı (Efesli ama zengin ve kibirli Efeslilerden hazzetmediği de anlaşılıyor; “Hep zengin kalasınız ey Ephesoslular, belli olsun diye kötülüğünüz”) Herakleitos’un, kendine has bir şiir/yazı dünyası olan şairlerimizden Alova’nın çevirisi Kırık Taşlar’ı keyifle okunan, bazen gülümseten, çokça düşündüren, küçük ve de hoş bir kitap. Diyalektik düşüncenin öncüsü olarak Hegel ve Marx’a da esin kaynağı olan, bu adını çok duyduğumuz, ama pek okumadığımız filozofu ısklamamak lazım derim, hem şiir, hem de duru ama derin bir felsefe tadı almak bakımından…
November 16, 2020
Bu kadar az kelime ile beni uzun uzun derin düşüncelere daldırdın sevgili Herakleitos...
Ateş havanın
ölümünü yaşar
hava ateşin
su toprağın
toprak suyun
Ateş havanın
ölümünü yaşar
hava ateşin
su toprağın
toprak suyun
January 10, 2020
Sonunda Herakleitos, Fragmanlar çevirim Türkiye İş Bankası Kültür Yayınları’ndan çıktı. Kitabın editörü değerli dostum Ali Alkan İnal. Sunuş bölümünde Presokratik döneme ve Herakleitos’un felsefesine dair kapsamlı bir giriş bulunuyor. Bu çevirimin Türkçe Herakleitos külliyatına katkı sunmasını dilerim.
Sunuş’tan:
“Bireye karşıtların birlikteliğini ve uyumunu anlatmak, diğer Sokrates öncesi filozofların çoğunda olduğu gibi, bir ölçüde onu doğadaki süreçleri anlamaya davet etmektir. Bu, bireyi olayları tanrıların istek ve davranışlar��yla açıklama eğilimden kurtararak ona sorumluluk duygusunu kazandırmak anlamını da taşır. Nitekim Herakleitos insanın karakterinin (ἦθος) onun kaderi (δαίμων) olduğunu söyler [D118]. Burada δαίμων basitçe insanın ‘kişisel kaderi’dir, evrensel ama dışsal nitelikli bir talih veya kader olgusunun değil, bireyin kendi ‘karakter’inin şekillendirdiği bir kaderdir bu. Bu yüzden Herakleitos insanlara, karakterlerini ve davranışlarını olumlu yönde değiştirmelerini ve böylece yazgılarını şekillendirmelerini sağlayacak temel ilkeler sunar: Kibir yangından daha hızlı söndürülmelidir [D119], kişisel cehaleti gizlemek sergilemekten daha iyidir [D120], ölçülü olmak en büyük erdemdir [D121], bilgelik hakikati söylemek ve doğayı anlayarak ona uygun hareket etmektir [D121].”
Sunuş’tan:
“Bireye karşıtların birlikteliğini ve uyumunu anlatmak, diğer Sokrates öncesi filozofların çoğunda olduğu gibi, bir ölçüde onu doğadaki süreçleri anlamaya davet etmektir. Bu, bireyi olayları tanrıların istek ve davranışlar��yla açıklama eğilimden kurtararak ona sorumluluk duygusunu kazandırmak anlamını da taşır. Nitekim Herakleitos insanın karakterinin (ἦθος) onun kaderi (δαίμων) olduğunu söyler [D118]. Burada δαίμων basitçe insanın ‘kişisel kaderi’dir, evrensel ama dışsal nitelikli bir talih veya kader olgusunun değil, bireyin kendi ‘karakter’inin şekillendirdiği bir kaderdir bu. Bu yüzden Herakleitos insanlara, karakterlerini ve davranışlarını olumlu yönde değiştirmelerini ve böylece yazgılarını şekillendirmelerini sağlayacak temel ilkeler sunar: Kibir yangından daha hızlı söndürülmelidir [D119], kişisel cehaleti gizlemek sergilemekten daha iyidir [D120], ölçülü olmak en büyük erdemdir [D121], bilgelik hakikati söylemek ve doğayı anlayarak ona uygun hareket etmektir [D121].”
July 24, 2007
such clear thinking from such an ancient time makes me wonder why basic political structures didn't develop along more reasonable lines much much earlier than they did.
June 19, 2012
One star for Heraclitus?
The low rating has nothing to do with Heraclitus himself and everything to do with this translation. Laughable.
The low rating has nothing to do with Heraclitus himself and everything to do with this translation. Laughable.
April 28, 2023
“Just as the river where I step is not the same, and is, so I am as I am not.”
Heraclitus is an undisputed king of Wisdom. A master magician of human heart. An ahead time philosopher who anticipated Plato and Nietzsche. Can we imagine Nietzschean irony without Heraclitus? No. Here is an example:
“If everything were turned to smoke, the nose would be the seat of judgment.”
Thousands of years ago,among those mystics and religious poets,Heraclitus was a fresh breathe of air,who is scientifically relevant even now. Take this fragment for example:
“That which always was, and is, and will be everliving fire, the same for all, the cosmos, made neither by god nor man, replenishes in measure as it burns away.”
And he must have been the first philosopher who was aware of the unconscious psychological nature humans. He was the one who was aware of having the awareness. Like this:
“The soul is undiscovered, though explored forever to a depth beyond report.”
Heraclitus is an undisputed king of Wisdom. A master magician of human heart. An ahead time philosopher who anticipated Plato and Nietzsche. Can we imagine Nietzschean irony without Heraclitus? No. Here is an example:
“If everything were turned to smoke, the nose would be the seat of judgment.”
Thousands of years ago,among those mystics and religious poets,Heraclitus was a fresh breathe of air,who is scientifically relevant even now. Take this fragment for example:
“That which always was, and is, and will be everliving fire, the same for all, the cosmos, made neither by god nor man, replenishes in measure as it burns away.”
And he must have been the first philosopher who was aware of the unconscious psychological nature humans. He was the one who was aware of having the awareness. Like this:
“The soul is undiscovered, though explored forever to a depth beyond report.”
September 18, 2025
Proto-Nietzschean ideas: Everything is always changing and thus all is becoming. There is no being since everything is continually mutating.
The flux and flow concept also sort of reminds me of Deleuze and Guattari.
Remarkable short poetic fragments in which one can repeatedly discover new ways of thinking. Really refreshing to see that the post-modern sensibility (so to speak) has existed 2500 years ago.
People were always people and capable of the same ideas as today, though expressed very differently.
The flux and flow concept also sort of reminds me of Deleuze and Guattari.
Remarkable short poetic fragments in which one can repeatedly discover new ways of thinking. Really refreshing to see that the post-modern sensibility (so to speak) has existed 2500 years ago.
People were always people and capable of the same ideas as today, though expressed very differently.
September 15, 2012
Quand je pense à Héraclite d'Ephèse, il me vient immédiatement à l'esprit l'image d'un homme profondément malheureux, qui pleure du spectacle de la folie des hommes. Tout l'inverse de la folie d'un Démocrite d'Abdère, véritable misanthrope, riant de la même cause. Philosophe du tout début du cinquième siècle avant notre ère, Héraclite serait l'auteur d'un ouvrage hélas aujourd'hui perdu, mais qui fut assez célèbre pour être cité en continu depuis Platon et Aristote, jusqu'aux auteurs patristiques du début du troisième siècle de notre ère comme Clément d'Alexandrie ou Hippolyte de Rome. Ces citations éparses ne nous permettent pas vraiment de nous faire une idée précise de ce que fut l'ouvrage d'ensemble: d'une part, les citations peuvent tordre le sens original, et on ne peut deviner si Héraclite ne faisait pas d'ironie. Combien de palinodies chez Platon? Réputé pour son obscurité, et son goût pour parler par énigme ou images, ses aphorismes sont parfaitement adaptées pour être employés comme des adages, l'ancienneté de l'auteur comme la renommée de ses premiers commentateurs et détracteurs étant gage d'autorité.
Les thèmes abordés sont la physique, l'étude de l'esprit, la théorie de la connaissance, la politique, bref, le panorama complet des questions qui ont agité Aristote et Platon, qui se sont beaucoup positionnés par rapport à ses assertions. La palme du nombre de citations revient sans conteste aux Stromates de Clément, qui a fait un large usage de cet auteur pour montrer l'ancienneté de l'intuition du christianisme chez les païens et compatriotes grecs. Il semblerait qu'Héraclite ait été astronome, et qu'il aurait eu des sentiments plutôt aristocratiques, ce qui explique qu'il ait vécu à l'écart de ses compatriotes démocratiques.
J'ai bien aimé la composition de cette édition: après une introduction vraiment lumineuse, suivent l'ensemble des fragments non pas bruts, mais insérés dans les passages dont ils ont été extraits, avec le nom de l'œuvre, de l'auteur, et même un petit résumé du sujet du passage. En notes sont renvoyés le texte grec, la glose et les interprétations et commentaire de l'auteur qui sont d'une abondance remarquable pour de si petits extraits. Leur rareté et leur obscurité a comme excité l'industrieuse érudition de nos savants. Cette idée de remettre les citations dans leur contexte est très éclairante.
Les thèmes abordés sont la physique, l'étude de l'esprit, la théorie de la connaissance, la politique, bref, le panorama complet des questions qui ont agité Aristote et Platon, qui se sont beaucoup positionnés par rapport à ses assertions. La palme du nombre de citations revient sans conteste aux Stromates de Clément, qui a fait un large usage de cet auteur pour montrer l'ancienneté de l'intuition du christianisme chez les païens et compatriotes grecs. Il semblerait qu'Héraclite ait été astronome, et qu'il aurait eu des sentiments plutôt aristocratiques, ce qui explique qu'il ait vécu à l'écart de ses compatriotes démocratiques.
J'ai bien aimé la composition de cette édition: après une introduction vraiment lumineuse, suivent l'ensemble des fragments non pas bruts, mais insérés dans les passages dont ils ont été extraits, avec le nom de l'œuvre, de l'auteur, et même un petit résumé du sujet du passage. En notes sont renvoyés le texte grec, la glose et les interprétations et commentaire de l'auteur qui sont d'une abondance remarquable pour de si petits extraits. Leur rareté et leur obscurité a comme excité l'industrieuse érudition de nos savants. Cette idée de remettre les citations dans leur contexte est très éclairante.
May 30, 2020
“The cosmos works
by harmony of tensions,
like the lyre and bow.
Therefore, good
and ill are one.”
To look beyond the ordinary understandings on the basis of limited human rationality, that seems to be what Heraclitus is preaching. ‘Seems to be’, I emphasise, since in the forward to the book it is clearly mentioned that “as Haxton says in his admirably condensed introduction, it is mainly from philosophers (ancient writers and Church Fathers) that the fragments have been culled and passed on. Therefore, everything we read and refer to as “Heraclitus” is second- or thirdhand—even fourth, in that the Greek and Latin have been turned into English.”
The play with language in the field of cosmology is said to have begun with him. And philosophy of language as a separate system was founded only in the nineties. The moral relativism-
“Without injustices,
the name of justice
would mean what?”
and the fervour with which he tries to break the mould of fixed meanings of words
“Therefore, good
and ill are one.”
-can also be said to have a germ of deconstruction.
His fragments are a condensed form of his thoughts, and need to be read between and beyond the lines. He doesn’t make it easy with his style of writing, but the result is completely worth the effort.
by harmony of tensions,
like the lyre and bow.
Therefore, good
and ill are one.”
To look beyond the ordinary understandings on the basis of limited human rationality, that seems to be what Heraclitus is preaching. ‘Seems to be’, I emphasise, since in the forward to the book it is clearly mentioned that “as Haxton says in his admirably condensed introduction, it is mainly from philosophers (ancient writers and Church Fathers) that the fragments have been culled and passed on. Therefore, everything we read and refer to as “Heraclitus” is second- or thirdhand—even fourth, in that the Greek and Latin have been turned into English.”
The play with language in the field of cosmology is said to have begun with him. And philosophy of language as a separate system was founded only in the nineties. The moral relativism-
“Without injustices,
the name of justice
would mean what?”
and the fervour with which he tries to break the mould of fixed meanings of words
“Therefore, good
and ill are one.”
-can also be said to have a germ of deconstruction.
His fragments are a condensed form of his thoughts, and need to be read between and beyond the lines. He doesn’t make it easy with his style of writing, but the result is completely worth the effort.
November 18, 2008
"Even sleepers are workers and collaborators on what goes on in the universe."
"Opposition brings concord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony."
And a real personal favorite:
"We are most nearly ourselves when we achieve the seriousness of the child at play."
"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."
- Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
October 14, 2013
Worst translation imaginable. Use those from the 19th century, when people still knew Greek.
August 31, 2024
Heraclitus is one of those philosophers who is rewarding to read because he is so hard to understand. After all, Diogenes Laertius did call him “Heraclitus the Obscure.”
Heraclitus challenges the very ways in which we think and try to understand the world, not just what we think but how. If we push ourselves and resist trying to reduce his thought to something familiar, we are changed by the experience.
Central to that experience for me is trying to understand the play of change and constancy, and diversity and unity in Heraclitus’ thought.
There is one common understanding of Heraclitus as the philosopher of change or “flux” and “strife” to the point of an anti-philosophical position. If all is endless flux and strife, nothing is truly constant, and there is no “way that things are” to be known.
The fragments though contradict any understanding of Heraclitus as rejecting the philosophical and the rational. Fragment 1 speaks of the logos (translated here as “account”). Robinson is careful to distinguish between Heraclitus’ sense of the logos and what comes to be known among the Stoics as the “rational principle” of reality — the logos for Heraclitus seems more to be just “the way things are” (whether a generative rational principle or not), or the “account” of the way things are.
But this “way things are” is a bit closer to Parmenides than we might have thought. Parmenides, coming a bit later than Heraclitus and usually taken as his opposite pole, claimed that Being was unchanging, undivided. But see Heraclitus’ Fragment 50, in which he says, “Not after listening to me, but after listening to the account [again, the logos], one does wisely in agreeing that all things are one.”
Even the best known fragment associated with Heraclitus — Fragment 91a, attributed to him by Plutarch (also attributed to Heraclitus by Plato), stating that “it is impossible to step into the same river twice” — may not support a rejection of constancy. Look at Fragment 12 — “As they step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow upon them.” There it is not the river that loses its identity in change. The river is constant, and the waters change within it. Other fragments seem to support the latter interpretation. See, for example, Fragment 84a — “While changing it rests.”
I think the more interesting position to consider for Heraclitus is one in which change and constancy are not strictly distinguished. The “way things are” encompasses change, and if “all things are one” that one thing is changing. The river in the famous metaphor is inherently changing — its very nature is change, even though it maintains its identity through change.
Likewise with unity and diversity. Look at Fragment 10 — “Out of all things one thing, and out of one thing all things.”
That would seemingly compel the question, what is it about the river then that is constant if not the waters that make it up? Robinson, in his Commentary, suggests that “structure” is constant, as maybe the course of the river remains the same as different waters flow along it.
Maybe. There are also Heraclitus’ comments on the elements. Fragment 76a says, “Fire lives the death of earth and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, earth that of water.” There is an order here — fire does not live the death of air, only of earth. And so forth for the other elements. The same ordering is repeated in Fragment 76c, from a different source. There is also evidence (e.g., Fragment 30) to give fire a priority among the elements, maybe as the agent of change itself.
I find it hard to resist, somewhat contrary to Robinson, abstracting the themes of change/constancy and diversity/unity as ones that recur and are themselves a kind of “principle” in Heraclitus’ thinking. They recur in discussions of the four elements, in his discussions of life and death, and in those more explicitly abstract-sounding fragments I quoted above.
It may be tempting to fall back to the idea that the only constant is change. Too easy. I don’t even know what that means, except a kind of illusion of insight (and one that ignores that Heraclitus claimed that change wasn’t just random change, but ordered). I think Heraclitus was after something more interesting.
You could imagine he was after something that Robinson suggests at one point — something like a “formula” that describes change, that all change follows the “formula” (akin to Robinson’s translation of “logos”).
But “formula” is too modern a notion, I think, for Heraclitus. A reminder that, in trying to understand ancient Greek thought, we need to keep in mind that ancient Greek solutions as to how to think about the world answered ancient Greek problems as to how to think about the world, not our own problems. We need to think our way to the question or the problem that Heraclitus was responding to as much (or more) as the answer.
I think maybe the most interesting way to interpret what Heraclitus says about unity/diversity and constancy/change is to start with the seemingly trivial observation that opposites have in common that they are opposites. Opposition does exclude — silent opposes loud but not green — and by doing so they work to identify. Sound is what is constant in the opposition between silent and loud, for example.
And opposition needn’t be polar opposition. Thus fire, earth, air, and water can oppose one another.
And, as above, oppositions, in Heraclitus’ thinking, have order. Fire lives the death of earth but not the death of air. Water lives the death of air, earth the death of water, and air the death of fire. Sleep follows waking, and waking follows sleep.
Oppositions, in other words, are unities. And the oppositions within unities move in an order of change.
None of this is to deny the reality of opposites, or their real distinctiveness. Fire is not the same as air, sleep is not the same as wakefulness, etc. The unity of opposites in fact resides in the play of opposition itself. A thing is its distinctive play of oppositions.
There is also good reason to believe that opposition is cyclical. Certainly the oppositions of fire, earth, air, and water describe, in Heraclitus’ account comprise a recurrent cycle.
The exercise of understanding Heraclitus is the reward for reading him, more so, I think than reaching a resolution.
All this is set aside from some basic difficulties. We shouldn’t forget, for example, that Heraclitus was Greek in the sense of being a participant, at some level, in the world of the Greek gods. See Fragment 32, where he seems to identify the “one thing, the only wise thing” with Zeus. (Actually, that fragment is a very provocative one. The full text reads, “One thing, the only wise thing, is unwilling and willing to be called by the name Zeus,” as if “being called by the name Zeus” were some sort of not-quite-right way of thinking of what we are trying to get at with “Zeus.”). Understanding Heraclitus will also mean understanding what it is to live in the world of Zeus.
The over-riding difficulty though with understanding Heraclitus is that we don’t have his original writings. We don’t have his “book” (if there even was one single treatise written by him). What we have are fragments from secondary sources. Some are undoubtedly influenced by later writers’ biases and purposes (Robinson cites the Stoics in particular, who claimed Heraclitus as a precursor).
But I still think we should try to understand Heraclitus as an original thinker to invest the exploration and interpretation required to get into the insights and elements that cohered in his own thought. Doing so promises to change the very patterns in which we ourselves think.
The book contains the original Greek fragments with Robinson’s English translations on facing pages. Robinson also provides a fragment-by-fragment commentary, primarily focused on translation issues and on the pedigrees of the fragments.
The commentary is followed by the Testamonia — discussions of Heraclitus by the various sources, including Diogenes Laertius, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and others.
Finally, Robinson gives a brief overview of Heraclitus’ thought, by Robinson’s own interpretation. This is not the strength of the book. I think the book is best treated as a definitive source for interpretation rather than an interpretation itself.
The primary audience for this book is classicists. I’m not a classicist, and even though I am a once-upon-a-time academic philosopher, my focus was not on ancient philosophy. Nevertheless, for the reasons I’ve given, the experience of trying to understand Heraclitus, even for a non-expert, is worth the investment.
Heraclitus challenges the very ways in which we think and try to understand the world, not just what we think but how. If we push ourselves and resist trying to reduce his thought to something familiar, we are changed by the experience.
Central to that experience for me is trying to understand the play of change and constancy, and diversity and unity in Heraclitus’ thought.
There is one common understanding of Heraclitus as the philosopher of change or “flux” and “strife” to the point of an anti-philosophical position. If all is endless flux and strife, nothing is truly constant, and there is no “way that things are” to be known.
The fragments though contradict any understanding of Heraclitus as rejecting the philosophical and the rational. Fragment 1 speaks of the logos (translated here as “account”). Robinson is careful to distinguish between Heraclitus’ sense of the logos and what comes to be known among the Stoics as the “rational principle” of reality — the logos for Heraclitus seems more to be just “the way things are” (whether a generative rational principle or not), or the “account” of the way things are.
But this “way things are” is a bit closer to Parmenides than we might have thought. Parmenides, coming a bit later than Heraclitus and usually taken as his opposite pole, claimed that Being was unchanging, undivided. But see Heraclitus’ Fragment 50, in which he says, “Not after listening to me, but after listening to the account [again, the logos], one does wisely in agreeing that all things are one.”
Even the best known fragment associated with Heraclitus — Fragment 91a, attributed to him by Plutarch (also attributed to Heraclitus by Plato), stating that “it is impossible to step into the same river twice” — may not support a rejection of constancy. Look at Fragment 12 — “As they step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow upon them.” There it is not the river that loses its identity in change. The river is constant, and the waters change within it. Other fragments seem to support the latter interpretation. See, for example, Fragment 84a — “While changing it rests.”
I think the more interesting position to consider for Heraclitus is one in which change and constancy are not strictly distinguished. The “way things are” encompasses change, and if “all things are one” that one thing is changing. The river in the famous metaphor is inherently changing — its very nature is change, even though it maintains its identity through change.
Likewise with unity and diversity. Look at Fragment 10 — “Out of all things one thing, and out of one thing all things.”
That would seemingly compel the question, what is it about the river then that is constant if not the waters that make it up? Robinson, in his Commentary, suggests that “structure” is constant, as maybe the course of the river remains the same as different waters flow along it.
Maybe. There are also Heraclitus’ comments on the elements. Fragment 76a says, “Fire lives the death of earth and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, earth that of water.” There is an order here — fire does not live the death of air, only of earth. And so forth for the other elements. The same ordering is repeated in Fragment 76c, from a different source. There is also evidence (e.g., Fragment 30) to give fire a priority among the elements, maybe as the agent of change itself.
I find it hard to resist, somewhat contrary to Robinson, abstracting the themes of change/constancy and diversity/unity as ones that recur and are themselves a kind of “principle” in Heraclitus’ thinking. They recur in discussions of the four elements, in his discussions of life and death, and in those more explicitly abstract-sounding fragments I quoted above.
It may be tempting to fall back to the idea that the only constant is change. Too easy. I don’t even know what that means, except a kind of illusion of insight (and one that ignores that Heraclitus claimed that change wasn’t just random change, but ordered). I think Heraclitus was after something more interesting.
You could imagine he was after something that Robinson suggests at one point — something like a “formula” that describes change, that all change follows the “formula” (akin to Robinson’s translation of “logos”).
But “formula” is too modern a notion, I think, for Heraclitus. A reminder that, in trying to understand ancient Greek thought, we need to keep in mind that ancient Greek solutions as to how to think about the world answered ancient Greek problems as to how to think about the world, not our own problems. We need to think our way to the question or the problem that Heraclitus was responding to as much (or more) as the answer.
I think maybe the most interesting way to interpret what Heraclitus says about unity/diversity and constancy/change is to start with the seemingly trivial observation that opposites have in common that they are opposites. Opposition does exclude — silent opposes loud but not green — and by doing so they work to identify. Sound is what is constant in the opposition between silent and loud, for example.
And opposition needn’t be polar opposition. Thus fire, earth, air, and water can oppose one another.
And, as above, oppositions, in Heraclitus’ thinking, have order. Fire lives the death of earth but not the death of air. Water lives the death of air, earth the death of water, and air the death of fire. Sleep follows waking, and waking follows sleep.
Oppositions, in other words, are unities. And the oppositions within unities move in an order of change.
None of this is to deny the reality of opposites, or their real distinctiveness. Fire is not the same as air, sleep is not the same as wakefulness, etc. The unity of opposites in fact resides in the play of opposition itself. A thing is its distinctive play of oppositions.
There is also good reason to believe that opposition is cyclical. Certainly the oppositions of fire, earth, air, and water describe, in Heraclitus’ account comprise a recurrent cycle.
The exercise of understanding Heraclitus is the reward for reading him, more so, I think than reaching a resolution.
All this is set aside from some basic difficulties. We shouldn’t forget, for example, that Heraclitus was Greek in the sense of being a participant, at some level, in the world of the Greek gods. See Fragment 32, where he seems to identify the “one thing, the only wise thing” with Zeus. (Actually, that fragment is a very provocative one. The full text reads, “One thing, the only wise thing, is unwilling and willing to be called by the name Zeus,” as if “being called by the name Zeus” were some sort of not-quite-right way of thinking of what we are trying to get at with “Zeus.”). Understanding Heraclitus will also mean understanding what it is to live in the world of Zeus.
The over-riding difficulty though with understanding Heraclitus is that we don’t have his original writings. We don’t have his “book” (if there even was one single treatise written by him). What we have are fragments from secondary sources. Some are undoubtedly influenced by later writers’ biases and purposes (Robinson cites the Stoics in particular, who claimed Heraclitus as a precursor).
But I still think we should try to understand Heraclitus as an original thinker to invest the exploration and interpretation required to get into the insights and elements that cohered in his own thought. Doing so promises to change the very patterns in which we ourselves think.
The book contains the original Greek fragments with Robinson’s English translations on facing pages. Robinson also provides a fragment-by-fragment commentary, primarily focused on translation issues and on the pedigrees of the fragments.
The commentary is followed by the Testamonia — discussions of Heraclitus by the various sources, including Diogenes Laertius, Plato, Aristotle, Plutarch, and others.
Finally, Robinson gives a brief overview of Heraclitus’ thought, by Robinson’s own interpretation. This is not the strength of the book. I think the book is best treated as a definitive source for interpretation rather than an interpretation itself.
The primary audience for this book is classicists. I’m not a classicist, and even though I am a once-upon-a-time academic philosopher, my focus was not on ancient philosophy. Nevertheless, for the reasons I’ve given, the experience of trying to understand Heraclitus, even for a non-expert, is worth the investment.
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