Heraclitus: Pre-Socratic Philosophy

Today we're going to start our exploration of Heraclitus, one of the most intriguing of the pre-Socratics who's still having a huge influence on philosophy even now. He flourished about 500 BC, he lived in or near the great city of Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor and he had a reputation even in his own lifetime for being particularly tricky and difficult and eccentric and he was known as the Riddler and the Obscure. He lived outside the city most of the time because he purported to despise the human race and occasionally he would come in though to the marketplace in Ephesus and he would expound fragments of his work which baffled people and was probably designed to baffle people. He wrote mainly in paradoxes and elliptical aphorisms. Here are a couple of examples, mortals are immortals, immortals mortals, living their death, dying their life. That's it, make of that what you will. Here's another one, the eternity is a child at play, playing draughts, the kingdom is a child. Absolutely beautiful and rather reminiscent of a passage in one of the Gospels but again he just sort of tosses these things out, lets people make of them what they will. So where do we start? Well we do know the very first aphorism in his book, we do know how his book began. We don't know the order of the rest of the paradoxes but we do know this opening quote and it goes as follows and I'll explain the key word logos in a moment. It is of the logos which is thus always uncomprehending are humans both before they have heard it and when they first hear it. Now what an extraordinary way to start your work. How do we interpret this? Let's start with this word logos of the logos which is thus always uncomprehending are humans. Now logos in the Greek English lexicon goes on for pages. It can mean the divine ordering principle of the cosmos as we would say logos with a capital L though at this stage of Greek culture all writing was in capital letters so we don't get a clue. It can mean human reason. It can mean the products of human reason such as a book or an argument. It can mean all these different things. So is Heraclitus talking about the divine order of the cosmos when he says that humans don't understand it? Is he saying that people are not going to understand the book he's about to quote from? The book that he's written? Is he saying something to do with human language? Is he saying we don't understand our own language? What is he saying? And in the course of our exploration of Heraclitus I hope to persuade you that in fact he's interested in logos both as a divine ordering rational principle of the cosmos but also in its expression in human thought, human language and his own book. I'm going to try and combine this metaphysical interpretation looking at reality with this notion of human language and Heraclitus's book. So that's the first question, how do we interpret logos? The second question as Aristotle, the later philosopher Aristotle himself notes, is this word always. It's placed in Heraclitus's text between of the logos which is thus and then an uncomprehending. So of the logos which is thus always uncomprehending are humans and Aristotle says well this Heraclitus he's all very obscure we don't know whether always goes with the logos of the logos which is always thus or humans being uncomprehending. We don't know whether he's saying that humans always fail to understand the logos which is it says Aristotle and Aristotle gets quite annoyed but again as I hope to show you in the course of our investigation I think Heraclitus has deliberately placed this word always in an ambiguous position in the text because he wants it to go both with the logos and with the uncomprehending humans that the logos is always of a certain kind but humans always fail to understand it both before they have heard it and when they first hear about it. So that's the second question, what does always go with? The third question is why is Heraclitus starting his work with a sentence which at least at one level could be of my book which is thus always humans are always uncomprehending? Why does he say you're not going to understand what I'm going to tell you even when I've told you about it? Why is he trying to annoy people or baffle people in this way? Is he trying to select the audience in that way that we were discussing in our introduction to the Pre-Socratics or is he saying something else as well? Is he saying there is something about human nature, about the human capacity to understand which means that we will inevitably always fail to understand the deepest secrets of the cosmos? Is there something about the limitations of human knowledge that he's really interested in here? And again I hope to try to convince you that he's interested in all of these things. So that's just the opening sentence, he's already got me hooked. So we've got this work consisting of aphorisms and paradoxes with this baffling beginning, how do we start to get to grips with it? Well there are some themes that I think we can locate within the work and one of these themes is relativism. We know that at least at one level and I say that deliberately because we may see later on there are different levels to his thinking but at least at one level Heraclitus believes that our take on the cosmos is influenced by all sorts of relative perspectives. So for instance your geographical location is very important. He writes the road up and down is one and the same. If you're at the bottom of the road it's going to be the road up, if you're starting at the top it's going to be the road down but it is of course always the same road. Time is also hugely important, your position in time. One of Heraclitus's most famous quotes is of course, you cannot step into the same river twice. We don't know if he actually said it in those words, that's what we get from a later quote in Plato. We do know that Heraclitus says you step and you do not step into the same rivers. The idea being that because the waters are always flowing in the river, because the banks of the river are always being eroded, the stones are being smoothed away and moved around, there's going to be slight changes in the course of the river over time. So is it the same river? What allows us to keep calling the Thames the Thames if it's always slightly different from day to day? We're going to be coming back to that question but so time enormously important. Also your psychological state is very critical to how you appreciate the world. He says that sickness makes health seem sweet and good. Hunger, satiety, weariness, rest. You will appreciate your health and a good meal and a good sleep all the more if you were ill or hungry or tired beforehand. So these things, your position in space, your time, your psychological state, what species you belong to, all these things are going to be very critical at least at one level for how you appreciate the cosmos. Relativism is one key theme in Heraclitus. Another key theme is that of flux. The notion that at least at one level, at least at a surface level, everything is always flowing, changing, moving on. Another famous Heraclitus quote is, everything flows, pantache in the Greek. Now as the river paradox has already indicated, if you think that everything is flowing then a relativist perspective on the world is going to stem naturally from that because if everything's always moving on, everything's changing, your perspective on the cosmos will always be slightly different. So we can see how the themes of relativism and the themes of flux connect up very closely. But flux poses a lot of problems. Firstly, what kind of flux does Heraclitus have in mind? Does he mean that everything is changing all the time and if so, at what rate? Does he mean that everything is simply changing intermittently with periods of sort of stability in between? Or does he simply mean that everything is subject to change? Again, we're not told. We have to interpret that for ourselves. So that's one big question about flux and our answer to that question will affect how we answer the next question which is, what's the relation between this theory of flux and what we would call the issue of personal identity and how identities are created and destroyed? It's a really interesting question because at one level, Heraclitus thinks that flux, that movement, creates identity. So if the river wasn't moving, wasn't flowing, it wouldn't be a river. It would be a sort of immensely long lake with access to the sea at one end, I suppose. He has another paradox about a barley drink and this is a drink that usually has barley in it, of course, but also usually eggs and to stop it from curdling, the cook had to keep stirring it on the stove, on the fire. And again, this notion that the drink is only created through constant movement. If you stop the movement, it will separate into its different parts. So in a sense, flux, change, movement create identity. But also we can say, well, yes, but beyond a certain level, change is also going to destroy identity. There's going to be so much change that we're going to worry about whether you can still call it the same river. If, say, there was an enormous earthquake and the course of the river was really massively altered or it was split up into separate tributaries or bits of it were dammed up, would it still be the same river? Could you still call it by the same name? It's a real question and we know that Heraclitus is interested in this question because he says, we step and we do not step into the same rivers. And actually, that quote goes on to say, we are and we are not. And I think he is showing us that he realises that flux both creates but also destroys identity. And this is a question that has real ethical implications for our own lives because people change over time. And you may make a promise to somebody, say at your wedding, to a particular person who you know and who knows you. Does that promise still have a hold over you years later if the person you made the promise to has been hugely altered, say, by some tragic degenerative illness such as Alzheimer's or through an accident? Or are you still obliged to keep your promise of loving and cherishing until death somebody who no longer recognises you and maybe has been in a coma for 10 years? So there are real ethical implications to this question of what is the relationship between identity and change. All of us change all the time, every day. Little bits of us are rubbed off. We acquire new beliefs, we forget some old beliefs. In what sense, if any, are we the same person? What kind of obligation do our friends and relatives still have to us? So it's not just a fascinating metaphysical question, it's a really important ethical question as well. Both these themes of relativism and flux are fantastically embodied in another of Heraclitus's central ideas, which is the idea of fire, the importance of fire. So there are all sorts of quotes in which fire plays a central role. The cosmos always was and is and shall be an ever-living fire, kindling in measures and going out in measures, he writes. And also, all things are in exchange for fire, and fire for all things, as gold is for goods and goods for gold, and the thunderbolt steers all things. Now, what does he mean by fire here? Is he referring to it as a kind of material entity? Does he think that fire is literally the basic stuff of the cosmos? As, for instance, Thales, the first pre-Socratic, thought that the cosmos was basically comprised of water, and Anaximenes wrote that air is the basic constituent of the cosmos. Is that what Heraclitus is doing? Or is fire supposed to be a kind of metaphor for all sorts of other ideas in his thought? Or both, it could be both. Because just think how perfectly fire embodies so many of his central themes. Fire is always flickering, it's always fluctuating and moving, so it's perfect for flux. It also appears differently from different perspectives. It both creates and warms and illuminates on the positive side. Of course, it can also destroy, and it always transforms. It is a profoundly transformative entity. So absolutely perfect as an emblem of so many of Heraclitus's motifs. And just think, imagine you're an ancient Greek and you're living in a Greek village in the countryside, out in the mountains. Imagine how important fire is going to be in your life. Not only is it the only way of creating illumination after dark, apart from the moon and the stars, fire is all you've got. But fire, again, is an absolutely central image in the blacksmith's forge, in the baker's oven, where people would take their dough to bake in the communal oven. It plays a crucial role in religious rituals. And again, fire is created at this time through friction, through rubbing sticks together. And as we're going to see in a later discussion of Heraclitus, war, strife, friction are absolutely fundamental elements of his thought. So fire is the completely perfect emblem to sum up Heraclitus's thinking. In a way, he's trying to create a philosophy of fire, if you like. Heraclitus's theories of relativism, flux and fire all have really interesting implications for his theories about language and the importance of human language, which takes us back to where we started, because language is one of the ways, as we saw, of translating Logos, the opening theme of his book. So if we live in a world of flux and change and shifting perspectives, where does that leave human language? Does it mean that we can't ever accurately map out the world and divide it up into discrete identities? How would you do that? Because identities are always shifting and maybe can't even form in the first place. Or does it mean that we have to really hang on to human language as our only means of creating any, even spurious, sense of order to help us negotiate our way through this confusing, shifting, disorientating flux? So flux, perspectivalism and language, as I said, you could come at it two ways. You might think Heraclitus's theories make language less important because they limit the possibilities of what humans can do with language or how much we can know and express through language. Or you might say, no, it's the opposite. Humans desperately need language to give them any kind of stability whatsoever. Otherwise, we're really on a shifting sea and we're completely lost. Now, we're going to be exploring these key relationships between flux and perspectivalism on the one hand and language and the Logos on the other in our next discussion of Heraclitus. And we're going to find out, I think, that not only is language, Logos, absolutely key to Heraclitus's thinking, but his choice of the paradox form to express his philosophy is completely vital. That if he chose any other way of expressing his thoughts, he would be committing what we call pragmatic self-refutation, i.e. he would be refuting the essence of his philosophy through his means of expressing that philosophy. And so paradox is not just going to be an attractive, interesting add-on for Heraclitus. I think we're going to find that paradox is the heart of what he's going to be telling us. So today we're going to continue our exploration of Heraclitus and it's time to consider in more depth why he chooses to write in the paradox form. Paradoxes go against para in the Greek, common opinion or belief, that's doxa in the Greek. For example, Heraclitus writes, immortals are mortal, mortals immortal, living their death, dying their life. Why does he choose to write in such an obscure and riddling way? Is it to capture attention, select an audience, be memorable? Now I think all these are important reasons if you consider that he's speaking literally in a marketplace in Ephesus and he's competing for attention with rhapsodes reciting Homer's Iliad and Odyssey or politicians or orators. So all those are important reasons. However, I hope to suggest to you today that there are also other deeper reasons why Heraclitus chooses this form. Reasons that I think go to the heart of the relationship that we've already discussed between logos as the governing principle of the cosmos and logos as language. Now we'll be returning to these reasons for Heraclitus's choice of the paradox form throughout this discussion, but first we need to consider again the importance for Heraclitus of opposites tension and strife. He writes, one should know that war is common, that justice is strife, that all things come about by strife and necessity. And this of course partly accounts for the central role that fire plays in Heraclitus's thought because apart from its destructive potentialities, fire at this time in the Greek world was generally created through friction. But this strife is not chaotic, it appears to be regulated and balanced probably by the logos itself. And in one of his most famous sayings Heraclitus writes, they do not understand how differing it agrees with itself. It is a backward turning connection like the bow or the lyre. The idea seems to be that you need to create the perfect tension in the string of the archer's bow or the musician's lyre in order to have control over the arrow or the note. So the apparent tensions and conflicts that we mortals witness in fact help to form a deeper unity. God is day, night, winter, summer, war, peace, hunger, satiety, all the opposites. That is his meaning. You can therefore view something as both one and many and I think this might be what is meant by the following. Combinations, he writes, holes and not holes, concurring, differing, concordant, discordant, from all things one and from one all things. But this deeper unity is difficult for mortals to perceive, witness another aphorism, nature loves to hide itself. Now I'm wondering whether these points have relevance for Heraclitus' choice of the paradox form in which opposite adjectives are combined within the single unit of the sentence. For example, the road up and down is one and the same. In other words, the paradox form in some sense mirrors the structure of the logos. The paradox form may also suggest the inevitable limits of the mortal perspective. We can never obtain the complete God's eye view. So Heraclitus also writes, to men some things are just and others unjust, but to God all things are good and just. If Heraclitus wrote in plain prose he might appear to be claiming an objective knowledge that as a mortal he can never have. So he needs to find a way of writing down his ideas which do not lay him open to the charge of pragmatic self-refutation. Perhaps human language can only ever be paradoxical and metaphorical. Perhaps mortal limitations are the reason why we do not understand the logos even after first hearing it as the opening fragment may suggest. Perhaps as mortals we can never fully understand the logos. This may explain Aristotle's later complaint that Heraclitus flouts the law of non-contradiction. But it may be that Heraclitus is not actually denying that the law exists at least at one level but is saying can humans ever be confident of applying it in practice. But even so maybe we can still make some progress because maybe the reason of individual humans is our spark of the divine fire making us microcosms of the macrocosm. Now if that's so then the more we improve and hone our rational powers then the greater our chance will be of seeing more of the complete divine picture. Never all of it because we're humans but more of it. We can make progress. Maybe this explains why Heraclitus says that we should search inside ourselves because we contain part of the divine logos within us in the form of our reason. And perhaps this is another reason why Heraclitus chooses the paradox form because it forces us to puzzle things out actively for ourselves and in the process improve our powers of logos. Perhaps logos both as reason and also as its manifestation in language. So here again we can see language playing a crucial role for Heraclitus. It is one of the manifestations of the divine cosmic logos. So to return to the question with which we started perhaps we are not meant to choose between logos as cosmic principle and logos as reason and language in the opening fragment. I think that Heraclitus wants us to carry both meanings in our minds. An interesting question arises here in respect of how Heraclitus views himself. Does he see himself as mortal or divine or as I think as a mortal who nevertheless has a much fuller understanding than most and can therefore act as a guide to the rest of us. The possibility of improving our understanding also has profound ethical implications. It's vital that we continually search and remain open as Heraclitus says unless one hopes for the unhoped for one will not find it. One of the reasons I personally love Heraclitus is that he makes life infinitely more exciting as well as more complex. As he says the sun is new every day.