Heraclitus

Posted: 16 July 2017

Fragments. I’m not a Greek Scholar so I’m probably wrong about things. I read the 2001 Brooks Haxton translation.

Overall

Heraclitus was an important pre-socratic thinker. He seems closer to Eastern (like Lao Tzu) prose-philosophy than the more analytic western philosophy that came after him, and this lends an interesting perspective into how western thought developed when comparing Heraclitus to the more analytic thought of the Pythagoreans. He’s also interesting historically: no definitive works of his survive and his “Fragments” are collected from various other sources referencing him.

He expressed his ideas poetically and many of them center around balance/moderation and the cyclical nature of life. I can’t help but compare him to Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, both in their sarcastic tone as well as their nebulous approach to thought and being. Heraclitus seems more focused on the individual as a thinking being compared to Tzu’s “Master” as somebody who has transcended thought and become an active being.

Compared to Tzu’s “Master”, though, there is no clear idea of what Heraclitus wanted his teachings to accomplish. Today, he seems more like an academic curiosity than a source of wisdom. The fragments don’t really explain their reasoning, and there’s no central theme binding them together. The fragments are interesting to compare to the thoughts of philosophers to come, but they don’t lead to any clear, unified philosophical system.

Fragments

Conventional groupings of the Fragments begin with the Fragments about knowledge and wisdom.

Many fail to grasp what they have seen, and cannot judge what they have learned, although they tell themselves they know. Heraclitus 5

This resonates with more contemporary critical theory of media, with mass culture wanting to find commonly accepted ideas and seeking “information” with no interest in understanding. Judging is impossible because understanding was never the goal, the goal is being able to tell yourself and signal to others that you “know”, and that your information led you to the “correct” opinion. Understanding cannot be born from a gobbledygook stream of nonsense. It’s cool to see that this hasn’t changed in 2500 years of cynicism, echoing Kierkegaard’s claim in the epilogue of Fear and Trembling that the individuals in every generation of humanity have to re-learn the same lessons as previous generations.

Whoever cannot seek the unforeseen sees nothing, for the known way is an impasse. Heraclitus 7

It is easy to conform to your existing thoughts, and to imagine yourself learning and exploring new ideas when all you’re doing is inundating yourself with ideas you already believe. It is a lot easier to ignore or discard things that you disagree with than to figure out what about them you don’t like. You can look at the “success” of contemporary political movements such as the alt-right and how liberal and leftist media discard their thoughts as juvenile and wrong, but aren’t able to explain why. They’re essentially a hate group, but it’s impossible to have a meaningful response or answer to issues they bring up when the arguments aren’t given any thought. This in-group/out-group mentality reinforces itself and doesn’t lead to any kind of meaningful growth for anybody.

Now that we can travel anywhere, we no longer take the poets and myth-makers for sure witnesses about disputed facts. Heraclitus 14

It’s cool to see how access to information has changed throughout history, particularly with the shift to verifying “facts” as an individual. Poets and myth-makers are literary - their truth is an artistic truth. Wanting to verify something for yourself shifts the value of their art to it’s value as a source of information, as a single beacon of truth. These days we trust google as a source of information. “I found out” becomes a much different statement when the knowledge is engraved in the Internet instead of in the world or in people that you have to interact with. I’m not phrasing this well, but I think the individual as a seeker of information, and figuring out what you trust and how your own thoughts about yourself as the bearer of knowledge play into it, are really interesting. I also think there’s something to be said about this fragment and the shift from (spoken myth) -> (the self in the world) -> (the self in text) -> (the self in Internet) has played out in “validating” information.

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 in one a sardine. Heraclitus 17

Got em! Although to be fair to Pythagoras, none of his writings survive, so we can’t be sure if this was something he believed himself about his former lives, or if it’s something his successors invented.

Fragment 20 begins talking about the cyclical nature of things.

As all things change to fire, and fire exhausted falls back into things, the crops are sold for money spent on food. Heraclitus 22

When I first read the fragments four or five years ago, this was the one fragment that really stood out to me. As translated, the last two lines can be read as a criticism of market economics. Fire (energy) is in continuum with matter, but this precludes growth. Crops being sold for food becomes a Sisyphean endeavor in living a life. An alternate translation, by William Harris:

There is exchange of all things for fire and of fire for all things, as there is of wares for gold and of gold for wares.

Changing the language to wares and gold seems like less of a commentary on trade, and I think makes the parallel a little clearer. This fragment is commonly used to show an early theory into the conservation of energy and Einstein’s famous e=mc2 equation, with the exchange of wares for gold serving as a way to explain that energy and matter are interchangeable. I think it just makes things more confusing.

A bunch of the fragments are about the sun, which is interesting from the more scientific “energy” way of looking at Heraclitus’ writings. I don’t particularly care for these readings, they’re delving into learning about the world, where I’m interested in learning about being.

The sun, timekeeper of the day and season, oversees all things. Heraclitus 34

Electricity eliminated any oversight the sun had into timekeeping, and global warming is eliminating the seasons. Truly a mystery how we came to have a president whose existence is as jumbled as our world, which we don’t recognize as having lost all semblance of order decades ago.

What was scattered gathers. What was gathered falls apart. Heraclitus 40

Things need to be lost to open up space for change, and we’re constantly seeking to change things. Life is a process of losing and regaining. Compare to the Tao Te Ching:

If you want to shrink something, you must first allow it to expand. If you want to get rid of something, you must first allow it to flourish. If you want to take something, you must first allow it to be given. Tao Te Ching 36

Being and non-being exist in flux. If you’re afraid to lose something, it’s probably never going to get better.

The poet was a fool who wanted no conflict among us, gods or people. Harmony needs low and high, as progeny needs man and woman. Heraclitus 43

This seems like two distinct thoughts. Conflict as the source of any human motivation in the first half, and harmony in the second. Again very similar to thoughts from the Tao Te Ching, “there is no good without bad”. The idea about harmony I think is interesting when looking at later Greek thought, particularly virtue ethics. In virtue ethics, the virtuous way of behaving is the mean between extremes - this can be thought of as the harmony between high and low.

Hungry livestock, though in sight of pasture, need the prod. Heraclitus 55

This one’s real pessimistic. Heraclitus supposedly gave up the opportunity to rule in Ephesus for a life of philosophy, but it’s interesting to consider how much of his thought was done through the lens of politics - it’s easy to pass judgment on something you fled.

Good and ill to the physician surely must be one, since he derives his fee from torturing the sick. Heraclitus 58

Ha

While cosmic wisdom understands all things are good and just, intelligence may find injustice here, and justice somewhere else. Heraclitus 61

This one’s difficult. I can only assume that cosmic wisdom finds all things good because they’re ultimately inconsequential - we’re all going to die, and there is some intention behind all action. The bit about “intelligence” is interesting in it’s word choice, because it’s critical of reason. In a contemporary political context, we have Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s candidate for the Supreme Court. He considers himself to be a textualist, wishing to remove non-textual interpretation from our understanding of law. This is, in a perverted way, an appeal to reason (which we conflate with intelligence) - we remove emotion and loose ideas like “intention” from interpretation and follow the “word” to get a more pure understanding of law. Our boy Heraclitus disagrees with this! An individual applying himself and his Harvard Law Degree is going to be biased anyway. A textual reading doesn’t preclude outside factors or bias, because attempting to remove ambiguity in interpretation only reveals the existence of ambiguity to begin with. As an individual, you’re still deciding which words are more important than others. You find injustice in one word and ignore justice in another. Justice will never exist outside of human interpretation and professing otherwise in the name of logic and raeson is deceptive and harmful.

The way up is the way back. Heraclitus 69

This translation combines two alternate translations. “The way up is the way down, the way forward is the way back.” There is no translation note explaining why this particular wording was used, which I consider to be a less clear translation.

Moisture makes the soul succumb to joy. Heraclitus 72

An old drunk leaning on a youngster, saturated with bad wine, head weaker than his feet… Heraclitus 73

Dry, the soul grows wise and good. Heraclitus 74

72-74 are about moisture/dryness and the soul and I find them confusing. Moisture can refer to alcohol, as in 73, but dryness can refer to fire and energy, so 74 can be read as “a soul full of energy grows wise and good”. I’m also curious about where Heraclitus would stand on harmony and balance, as discussed in 43, when discussing temperance, since he seems firmly against hedonism vis-a-vis alcohol.

Applicants for wisdom do what I have done: inquire within Heraclitus 80

Inquire within sounds like a joke about the travel industry. I think this translation takes too many liberties, I noted it because the original greek consists of two words. Harris’ translation is “I have searched myself”; more literal, and with none of the commanding tone or added context regarding wisdom or advice. Harris’s commentary leads to the fragment being an early precursor to the Socratic school of thought and even Freudian psychology.

Just as the river where I step is not the same, and is, so I am as I am not. Heraclitus 81

I took the last part of this about being as you are not through a Hegelian perspective – you are defined by what you are not just as much as by what you are. This overlooks the river part of the fragment though, which makes it seem like this is more about flux and continuity and how things are always changing than about understanding form. There have been recent studies showing that the person you are is completely different at 70 than at 40. That and the last sentence here can also be thought to discredit the idea of a consistent “self”.

The rule that makes its subject weary is a sentence of hard labor. Heraclitus 82

Capitalism babyyyy

The living, although they yearn for consummation of their fate, need rest, and in their turn leave children to fulfill their doom. Heraclitus 86

As mentioned in my comment on fragment 5, Kierkegaard alludes to people inevitably solving the same problems as previous generations. It seems more interesting to look at the tasks as unsolvable instead of unfulfilled. Imagine a child of Sisyphus rolling a boulder in an attempt to bring resolution to the ancestral task. Where does the distinction between ritual and duty lie? What fate can there be when meaning is lost?

Fools seek counsel from the ones they doubt. Heraclitus 93

It’s insane that anybody who doesn’t trust one media company or publication would trust another. News media companies almost all work the same way.

The waking have one world in common. Sleepers meanwhile turn aside, each into a darkness of their own. Heraclitus 95

Individualism and focusing on yourself doesn’t accomplish anything meaningful. Outrage at a news event is not an interaction you have with the real world, which has real people in it who sometimes interact to accomplish things. Scrolling through twitter, watching facebook clips, reading one news article online; these are dream actions. The world as seen through media is a backdrop for your ego and not a real world that you can interact with.

The habit of knowledge is not human but divine. Heraclitus 96

Knowledge as opposed to information, as discussed for fragments 5 and 14. There’s possibly something to be said for the word choice in saying “the habit of” instead of just “knowledge”, possibly tying into fragment 86 and the succumbing of a person to relaxation and unfulfilled duty.

Yearning hurts, and what release may come of it feels much like death. Heraclitus 105

A fun summary of The Sorrows of Young Werther, Crime and Punishment, In Search of Lost Time, etc.

What use are these people’s wits, who let themselves be led by speechmakers, in crowds, without considering how many fools and thieves they are among, and how few choose the good? The best choose progress toward one thing, a name forever honored by the gods, while others eat their way toward sleep like nameless oxen. Heraclitus 111

In contrast to 55, where cattle need the prod to do what they already want to, here they are prodded towards sleep and inactivity. A 500 BC commentary on problems with mass culture. Meaningful political action that an individual can take is involving oneself in getting some discrete task accomplished rather than by being a non-acting participant in aimless movements.

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 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 114

Heraclitus was born on Ephesus and chose not to rule there, making his remark about the Ephesian masses personal. I like to think of this fragment as saying, go where your excellence is accepted. Don’t let the people around you keep you down. However, this requires a clear understanding of your own worth, which I don’t think Heraclitus believed anyone had. There’s also something to be said for rejecting criticism of yourself as not being understood.

After death comes nothing hoped for nor imagined. Heraclitus 122

Focusing on what happens after death ignores the reality of death. The living world is ignored in the name of personalized fantasy.

Dionysus is their name for death. And if they did not claim the statue of the drunk they worshipped for a god, or call their incoherent song about his cock their hymn, everyone would know what filth their shamelessness has made of them and of the name of god. Heraclitus 127

Authority can be perverted and reinterpreted to justify indecency, similarly to intelligence in fragment 61. A more contemporary example would be something like the using national security (instead of Dionysus) as a shameless premise to curb immigration or individual freedom. There’s no way to do this unconsciously, you know that you’re wilfully misinterpreting ideas that hold power.

And that’s it for the fragments.