LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Heraclitus: World
built 803 days ago
Heraclitus ... stated the importance of people living together in social harmony, holding that each individual should submit himself to the laws of the universal harmony of the Logos. He considered, however, that most men failed to understand the Logos and so lived like dreamers with a false view of the world. He also attacked the beliefs and observances of the popular religion of his day. Heraclitus eventually withdrew from the world and went to live a solitary existence in the mountains. He died around 475BC.
Source:
As interpreted by the later Greek philosophical tradition, Heraclitus stands primarily for the radical thesis that 'Everything is in flux', like the constant flow of a river. Although it is likely that he took this thesis to be true, universal flux is too simple a phrase to identify his philosophy. His focus shifts continually between two perspectives – the objective and everlasting processes of nature on the one hand and ordinary human beliefs and values on the other. He challenges people to come to terms, theoretically and practically, with the fact that they are living in a world 'that no god or human has made', a world he describes as 'an ever-living fire kindling in measures and going out in measures'. His great truth is that 'All things are one', but this unity, far from excluding difference, opposition and change, actually depends on them, since the universe is in a continuous state of dynamic equilibrium. Day and night, up and down, living and dying, heating and cooling – such pairings of apparent opposites all conform to the everlastingly rational formula (logos) that unity consists of opposites; remove day, and night goes too, just as a river will lose its identity if it ceases to flow.
Source:
Plato held that for Heraclitus knowledge is made impossible by the flux of sensible objects. Yet Heraclitus does not repudiate knowledge or the wisdom that comes from a proper understanding of the world. To be sure, he believes most people are not capable of wisdom; understanding is a rare and precious commodity, which even most reputed sages do not attain to (B28[a]). Yet wisdom is possible, and it is embodied in Heraclitus' message, for those who can discern it.
Source:
The Stoics based their cosmology on Aristotle's materialistic interpretation of Heraclitus, and interpreted the Logos as transcendent Reason, immanent in the world. Kahn sees the Stoics as "the true Heracliteans of antiquity."[8]
Source:
Heraclitus ... said, 'Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre.' And further, 'There is a unity in the world, but it is a unity resulting from diversity.'
Source:
MORE ABOUT
World