Heraclitus Flashcards
When abouts did Heraclitus live?
525 - 475 B.C.
Where did Heraclitus live?
Ephesus.
What did Heraclitus think?
The fundamental element was fire, as it was the most dynamic of the four.
What was Heraclitus most concerned about (more so than his belief that all was fire)?
Describing the pervasiveness of change.
Whilst he is attributed to have said that ‘You cannot step into the same river twice’, what did he really say?
‘On those stepping into rivers staying the same, other and other waters flow’
What is the meaning of his phrase, ‘On those stepping into rivers staying the same, other and other waters flow’?
The river stays the same, but the waters constantly change.
Or, the elements are constantly changing, but this change makes it possible for sameness to occur at other levels of reality.
Was all this change meaningless to Heraclitus?
No, as Heraclitus claimed that there was a source which provided patterns and regularity to this change.
Why must there be a regularity to change in Heraclitus’s worldview?
Rational thought requires stability. E.g., objects stay the same, etc.
So what was the principle governing change to Heraclitus?
The ‘Logos’. This kept change in rational bounds.
To say that there is a ‘logos’, is to say that there is a source for stability. But is this really an adequate explanation?
Not really. It is more just a label for the unknown. Therefore, like the Milesians, we see another assertion of Greek rationalism.
How can we fully see Greek rationalism playing a part in Heraclitus’s ‘logos’?
He invokes the ‘logos’ to attempt to save any rationality at all. But in doing so, he invokes reason by an act of faith.
How does Heraclitus fail?
He concedes that reason cannot deal with reality unless it is somehow constant - but at the elemental levels, reality is anything but constant. But to develop a rational analysis of this change, he has to somehow introduce a consistency to a world that is somehow changing. He switches from rationalism to irrationalism with no real, definite solution.
