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Heraclitus: Philosophies
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Heraclitus was a rich man from Ephesus and lived c.500, during the Persian occupation of his home town. Part of Heraclitus' activities may have been directed against the Persian Magians, whom he calls "wanderers of the night". His philosophical work consists of a series of cryptical pronouncements that force a reader to think: "war is the father of all things", "all things are in a state of flux and nothing is permanent", "the road up and down is one and the same".
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Heraclitus use of the phrase "the god" (ho theos) appears to have three different meanings, which ... occur elsewhere in ancient Greek philosophical writings. Translators sometimes render "ho theos" as "God," thereby introducing misleading associations with the traditional unique God of monotheistic religion. Note that Heraclitus does occasionally refer to the gods (hoi theoi) in the plural.
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Heraclitus of Ephesus focused on fire as the primary substance because he saw change and motion in everything he encountered. Parmenides of Elea, disagreed. He argued that change is impossible, and that all that can occur is the appearance of change. The debate over whether matter is eternal -- unchangeable -- or characterized by constant changes was resolved by a group of philosphers known as the pluralists. This school rejected the philosophies of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes, which assumed that there was a single primary substance, and introduced a model based on the existence of more than one primary substance.
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Heraclitus goes beyond the natural philosophy of the other Ionian philosophers to make profound criticisms and develop far-reaching implications of those criticisms. He suggests the first metaphysical foundation for philosophical speculation, anticipating process philosophy. And he makes human values a central concern of philosophy for the first time. His aphoristic manner of expression and his manner of propounding general truths through concrete examples remained unique.
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Heraclitus' philosophy can be captured in just two words: "panta rei", literally everything flows, meaning that everything is constantly changing, from the smallest grain of sand to the stars in the sky. Thus, every object ultimately is a figment of one's imagination. Only change itself is real, constant and eternal flux, like the continuous flow of the river which always renews itself.
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Heraclitus made every effort to break out of the mold of contemporary thought. Although he was influenced in a number of ways by the thought and language of his predecessors, including the epic poets Homer and Hesiod, the poet and philosopher Xenophanes, the historian and antiquarian Hecataeus, the religious guru Pythagoras, the sage Bias of Priene, the poet Archilochus, and the Milesian philosophers, he criticized most of them either explicitly or implicitly, and struck out on his own path. He rejected polumathiê or information-gathering on the grounds that it “does not teach understanding” (B40). He treated the epic poets as fools and called Pythagoras a fraud.
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