Heraclitus
The last Ionian presocratic philosopher in our series is the enigmatic Heraclitus. He was born in the 6 century B.C., and like his presocratic predecessors, only fragments of his writings survived. Because of how legends can arise to fill in gaps of a biography, researchers had to be careful to omit as many tall tales as possible. In The Presocratic Philosophers by Kirk and Raven, they provided a limited sketch of Heraclitus. “The only details about Heraclitus’s life which it might be safe to accept as true are that he spent it in Ephesus, that he came from an old aristocratic family, and that he was on bad terms with his fellow-citizens.” For example, Heraclitus renounced his claim to the hereditary kingship, which Antisthenes, the ancient historian, used as an example of arrogance.
From the remaining fragments we have by Heraclitus, and those who wrote about him, there certainly are patterns of contempt for those who could not understand him. Later critics called him “obscurus” in Latin, or called him a “riddler.” Heraclitus asked “what understanding or intelligence have they? They put their trust in popular bards and take the mob for their teacher, unaware that most people are bad, and few are good.” His contempt for the mob was shown by his bias for excellence, as he saw it. “One person is 10,000 to me if he is best.”
Logos
Heraclitus didn’t measure the value of a person in the typical measurements of how successful or wealthy one was. He measured them based on their grasp of the Logos. Like Thales’s water, Anaximander’s air, and Anaximenes’s earth, Heraclitus’s Logos, was used like a theory of everything to explain movement and change in the universe, including our experience. Of course, anything simple that tries to explain away the complexity of the universe, is not really that simple. “Divine things for the most part escape recognition because of unbelief…Although the Logos is common, most people live as if they had their own private understanding…Human nature has no insight, but divine nature has it…Nature loves to hide…Unless he hopes for the unhoped for, he will not find it, since it is not to be hunted out and is [without a path]…Men who are lovers of wisdom must be inquirers into many things indeed.”
One area that the Logos uncovered for Heraclitus was how interdependent everything was. “Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one.” Being stuck in “private understanding” meant that, as cause effect was being ignored in experience, it was easy for people to lose grasp of constant movement, and to be surprised by change. While we stop and think, cause and effect doesn’t pause. Because of how little attention people pay to cause and effect, the sense of things being One quickly moves into Other and opposites. Yet for Heraclitus, this provides an opportunity. “An unapparent [harmony] is stronger than an apparent one.” Even with clear distinctions between opposites, where most people fall into preferences, hatred, ignorance, and phobias, Heraclitus could still see an abundance of Oneness. “For all human laws are nourished by one law, the divine law; for it has as much power as it wishes and is sufficient for [all things or beings] and is still left over.”
“Listening not to me but to the Logos…”
The conflict of opposites for many people can be traumatic, but for Heraclitus there was a treasure trove of insight to be gleaned. “They do not understand how, by being at variance with itself it agrees with itself. It is [an] attunement like that of the bow and lyre.” Like Xenophanes’s insight on how our perception shifts as we discover more specimens to compare, Heraclitus focused on finding connections in the comparisons. “Things taken together are whole and not whole, being brought together and brought apart, in tune and out of tune; out of all things there comes a unity and out of a unity all things.” This unity can even include violence and destruction. “What is opposed brings together; the finest harmony is composed of things at variance, and everything comes to be in accordance with strife.” This last fragment hints at how our shadow, which is what we don’t understand or are not good at, has lessons we can learn that are valuable. That is how our striving pertains to our lives. “Souls slain in war are purer than those that perish in diseases.” If there were no clashing of differences in our perceptions, would we be able to perceive anything? “If there were no sun, as far as concerns all the other stars it would be night.” In the example of war, we may find a value in our interdependence with warriors because they protect our lives and property. What seems evil in one sense, may appear positive if we can connect something positive to the evil. For example, a doctor may have to increase pain in the short-term with painful procedures in order to alleviate a mortal illness.
“We step into and we do not step into the same rivers. We are and we are not.”
Here Heraclitus’s Oneness begins to upend the human perception of good and evil. All of us have to be cautious with this Oneness, and it doesn’t mean that we can’t discern what is good and bad in Oneness, but that we take it less personally so we can continue to learn. “The sea is the purest and most polluted water: to fishes drinkable and bringing safety, to humans undrinkable and destructive.”
Even with dangers in the world, Heraclitus maintained his perception. Our environment and our bodies are in constant flux. Our minds solidify short-term memories of objects, giving the illusion of permanent solidity. Yet what is more solid in practical life, is simply vibrating at a slower speed. Heraclitus maintains that sense of granularity of particles touching each other, while at the same time connecting one and all, because what I’m touching is also touching what’s adjacent to it. I’m touching particles that are touching adjacent particles endlessly, while this oneness maintains variety.
“Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow.” He even applies this to the sky. “The sun is new each day.” This simultaneous separation and connection also applies to our bodies. “We step into and we do not step into the same rivers. We are and we are not.” These perceptions flatten distinctions by focusing on how things connect. Heraclitus uses an example of a circle. “The beginning and the end are common on the circumference of a circle.” It helps the reader to understand maxims like: “The road up and the road down are one and the same.”
Some of the confusion people have with differences has to do with our preferences. When looking at other objects, and especially animals, or humans, we have to accept that they have different preferences too, and there may be a hidden harmony that’s not readily apparent. “Pigs rejoice in mud more than in pure water…Asses would choose rubbish rather than gold.”
Fire
Taking an elemental approach, as his predecessors did, Heraclitus posited this energy of movement, cause and effect, Logos, as fire. “[When visitors unexpectedly found Heraclitus warming himself by the cooking fire:] Here, too, are Gods.” Without modern scientific measurements, one is left with one’s senses, but that is what Heraclitus favored. “All that can be seen, heard, experienced—these are what I prefer.” Even with religion, Heraclitus criticized conceptual religious beliefs that disconnected from objective reality. “They pray to images, much as if they were to talk to houses; for they do not know what gods and heroes are.” Through Heraclitus’s observational method, one can finally see his form of thinking. “Right thinking is the greatest excellence, and wisdom is to speak the truth and act in accordance with nature while paying attention to it.” Yet we have to navigate contradictions and update our views when we solve them. In other words, we have to let go of habitual thinking so we can learn from new insights. Unfortunately, it’s easy to learn something new, but due to comfortable habits, one can rest on an old understanding, and behaviour remains the same.
“Although the Logos is eternally valid, yet men are not able to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time. That is to say, although all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be quite without any experience of it…My own method is to distinguish each thing according to its nature, and to specify how it behaves; other men on the contrary, are as forgetful and heedless in their waking moments of what is going on around and within them as they are during sleep.” Heraclitus also hints at why people lose their sense of awareness. It’s the need to feed. “The best renounce all for one thing, the eternal fame of mortals, the many stuff themselves like cattle.”
Heraclitus wants the wisdom to improve our ability to judge. “Wisdom is one thing, to be skilled in true judgment, how all things are steered through all things.” By watching transformations, one can learn more from the Logos. “Cold things grow hot, a hot thing cold, a moist thing withers, a parched thing is wetted.” Because Heraclitus didn’t have access to microscopes, or didn’t have knowledge of chemical reactions, he was limited to an energetic transactional awareness. “All things are an exchange for fire and fire for all things, as goods for gold and gold for goods.” Ultimately, “thunderbolt steers all things.” For Heraclitus, he is able to find peace in this violent movement. Without movement, the universe would have no meaning. “Changing, it is at rest.” Yet we must stay vigilant with the unpredictability of certain changes. “Unless you expect the unexpected you will never find [truth], for it is hard to discover and hard to attain.” This Heraclitus found especially in opposites.
Ethics of Logos
In the realm of human ethics, Logos can be found there as well. How we are able to discern the good and the bad in our environment is through comparison. As Xenophanes said about perception, “If god had not created yellow honey, they would say that figs are far sweeter,” Heraclitus went further with more valent comparisons to pull us out of our habitual thinking. “They would not have known the name of justice if these [unjust things] did not exist…Disease makes health pleasant and good, hunger [does the same for satisfaction], weariness [for] rest.” By comparing experiences, we can now know more of what we want, and more of what we don’t want. A more relatable example would be exploring the world as a youth and then settling down years later, when one can recognize favourite experiences to repeat, and hated experiences to avoid. Kirk and Raven read Heraclitus as believing that “wisdom – satisfactory living – consists in understanding the Logos, the common element of arrangement in things, embodying the measure which ensures that change does not produce disconnected, [chaos.”]
This thinking style of Heraclitus goes deep into our sense of a soul, and how it thrives when it is in divine harmony with the Logos. “A person’s character is his divinity.” If humanity can harmonize their aspirations with their surroundings, and the divine law, then we can see a healthy form of dualism that can co-exist with oneness. It doesn’t have to be either/or, which relieves the fear of hypocrisy, and allows us to adjust our responses according to the circumstances.
“A person’s character is his divinity.”
“The people must fight for the law as for the city wall.” Yet if we lose our way, it’s because we are fighting for a lost cause, and Heraclitus pulls back in these situations from being a warmonger. If we have less skills than those we criticize, our revolutions will fail because the replacement systems have less logos. “Willful violence must be quenched more than a fire…It is difficult to fight against anger, for whatever it wants it buys at the price of the soul.” Kirk and Raven see Heraclitus as the presocratic that weaves ethics into his physical theories.
Like in the natural world, everything offsets everything else to create a fluxing balance. That balance appears in recognizable limitations where empires are toppled and revolutions agitate. Too much, or too little, of one thing or another, unbalances the system in the physical world and in the human world. Humans have unending desires and naturally they bump into each other when they fight over what cannot be shared. “It is not better for humans to get all they want.”
Heidegger’s Logos
German philosopher Martin Heidegger analyzed presocratic philosophers to trace how thinking started in the west and developed to the modern age. One of the early discussions with the presocratics as well as later Greek philosophers was the answer to “What is truth?” “Logos is the noun to the verb Legein. Logic understands Legein in the sense of saying something about something. The assertion of something about something.” But Heidegger wants to include a mood to this type of recognition of the presence of phenomena. Dasein, or being-there, is a human presence that is not a static noun. It’s a verb. We have moods and purposes.
For Heidegger, the action of Legein has a mood of “gathering for safekeeping.” Typical of the problem of language, concepts only point to the experience, but aren’t the experience itself, and this is why Heidegger is hard to read and requires a lot of interpretation which can lead to differences of opinion with readers. “The logos of itself brings what appears, what comes forth to lie before us, to appear, to show itself, to luminous self-showing.” We see what’s interesting and try to keep it safe in our moods, kind of like a feeling of cuteness and appreciation when we approach what is good, or concern if it’s threatening.
His studies of Aristotle showed that this type of thinking was more multilayered, but was eventually forgotten and Aristotle’s categorization of how things show themselves to us, took over, leading to a utilitarian mentality. The safekeeping of good qualities is a very important part of life and should not be downplayed, but there’s always an element of truth that is hidden from us. “Delusion believes that it sees, and that it sees in the only possible manner, even while this belief robs it of sight.”
This presencing in logos doesn’t show a complete truth. Heraclitus said “nature loves to hide.” As we examine what is present before us, there’s always more detail that is hidden. What is hidden from us also exists, or IS. This to Heidegger is Heraclitus’s strife. It’s part of the reason why we can be fooled by a superficial presence that leaves out hidden detail. We can also discount the knowledge of others because of how alien and threatening they are perceived by us. The hidden detail can make all the difference to our perceived truth, for good or ill.
“…what calls on us to think?”
Our sense of oneness must admit ignorance to truth that is hidden, including within ourselves. We are allowed to enjoy mystery. Heidegger also asks the question “what calls on us to think?” Why are we saying something about something? It has to do with our needs and our search for usefulness. Heidegger tries to define a healthy kind of usefulness so we don’t devolve into a narrow interpretation of contemporary exploitation.
“Using does not mean the mere utilizing, using up, exploiting. Utilization is only the degenerate and debauched form of use. When we handle a thing, for example, our hand must fit itself to the thing. Use implies fitting response. Proper use is determined and defined by leaving the used thing in its essential nature. But leaving it that way does not mean carelessness, much less neglect. On the contrary: only proper use brings the thing to its essential nature and keeps it there. To use something is to let it enter into its essential nature, to keep it safe in its essence.”
“Utilization is only the degenerate and debauched form of use.”
Of course this is an ideal we can aim at, like reforesting a depleted mine, but humans have to feed and consume. “Utilizing and needing always fall short of proper use. Proper use is rarely manifest, and in general is not the business of mortals. Mortals are best illumined by the radiance of use.” For Heidegger, at perception it’s enough to note “it is useful” in the sense for humans that they can find a place to stay and feel welcome. He quotes Hölderlin’s poem The Ister River: “It is useful for the rock to have shafts,| And for the earth, furrows, | It would be without welcome, without stay.”
“In this passage, the ‘useful’ designates an essential community of rock and shaft, earth and furrow. This essential community is in turn determined by the nature of welcome and stay. The welcoming, and the staying, are what marks the dwelling of mortals on this earth.” From an ethical standpoint our oneness with the planet is contingent on our ability to stay and feel welcome as we continue to develop our different cultures away from war, and towards a proper harvesting of the planet that allows for as much renewal as technically possible.
“…thinking alone is true thanks, does not need to repay, nor be deserved, in order to give thanks.”
Like a park, maybe we go to a hot dog stand, because unless we don’t want to be hypocritical, we can’t feed on air! Yet much of the park we can enjoy without consuming all of it. We don’t have to chop down all the trees and make buildings out of them. We can enjoy the potentials of the flora and fauna and let be. And what we eat, like a farmer, we have to be able to regenerate, exchange with others, or our sense of welcome and staying will change to conflict and over-exploitation.
Like a meditation, a lot of our thinking is superfluous, draining, and distracting from what IS. Stressful, hungry, defense mechanism thinking covers over positive forms of thinking. As we peel back the complaints “what do I get out of this? What’s the point? I wish this problem would go away…” we can just sit with the tree in the park. As the mind quiets down, fond memories may arise of other trees from childhood, and eventually you begin fusing with the lovely tree. An absence of conditioned-verbal-diarrhea covering up the experience. The newness and freshness of childhood returns, and it’s not just a memory.
Here the mind may spoil it further, but Heidegger looks at thinking, or thanking, in a different way. Thanking happens on its own just with the attention being placed on an object using the non-intention of letting be and appreciation. It’s not mandatory doing. We can also scan our body to try to find that ruminating part of the mind and find only vibrations. The is-ness of vibrations of the environment, and oneself, commingle to a one-ness of vibratory experience. The particles that are adjacent to each other, connecting the universe, also include you and what you feel is “inside.” Instead of me, over here, feeling wonder over why a beautiful tree is over there, there’s instead a wonder and a thanks that both myself and the park exist at all. We are not comparing something extraordinary over here to something mundane over there. We are comparing something to nothing. That means our existence is also a gift along with the existences of other beings. There are potential exchanges in this oneness, whether we call it “fire” or “energy” that can be mutually beneficial, or destructive. The gift allows us to make our contribution towards a healthy oneness.
How to avoid intellectualizing your practice [Anicca]: https://rumble.com/v1gr219-mindfulness-gone.-anicca.html
“To the most thought-provoking, we devote our thinking to what is to-be-thought. But this devoted thought is not something that we ourselves produce and bring along, to repay gift with gift…This thinking which recalls, and what [in the character of] thinking alone is true thanks, does not need to repay, nor be deserved, in order to give thanks. Such thanks is not a recompense; but it remains an offering; and only by this offering do we allow that which properly gives food for thought to remain what it is in its essential nature…The thanc means man’s inmost mind, the heart, the heart’s core, that innermost essence of man which reaches outward most fully and to the outer-most limits, and so decisively that, rightly considered, the idea of an inner and an outer world does not arise.”
Heraclitus – Philip Wheelwright: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781397952837/
The Presocratics – Philip Wheelwright: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780672630910/
Philosophy Before Socrates – McKirahan, Richard D.: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781603841825/
The Presocratic Philosophers – G.S. Kirk: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780521274555/
What is called Thinking? – Martin Heidegger: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780060905286/
A Heidegger Dictionary – Daniel O. Dahlstrom: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781350190351/
Philosophy: https://psychreviews.org/category/philosophy03/