The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy

by A. A. Long

  5.4. If the soul in its best state is intelligent and rational, why do most people fail even to try to understand things? Are their souls not in the best possible state, or do they fail to use their capacities? An element of choice, at least, comes into the way the soul behaves in this life.

  The best choose one thing instead of all else: the ever-flowing renown of mortals; but the many are glutted like cattle (B29).

  It is character [êthos] that is a person’s daimôn (B119).

  The word ethos has etymologically the suggestion of “habit,” and descriptively picks out what is characteristic. It must not be equated with physis (nature or essence). The thought that a person’s habits and character form one another reciprocally is found in archaic Greece (Theognis 31–36). This makes superfluous the popular fatalistic belief, that the quality of one’s life was determined by one’s allotted individual daimôn. Rather, the divine aspect of each person is manifested in and as character.24

  Since individual choices, in an Aristotelian way, both proceed from and determine the character and state of the soul, an explanation can be given for the general failure of human intelligence.

  Human character [êthos] does not have understanding, but divine character does (B78).

  A man is called “infant” [nêpios: literally, “wordless”] by a daimôn, just as a child is by a man (B79).

  Here again we need not read in an unbridgeable gulf between human and divine natures. It is a matter of character not of nature; and the child-man analogy implies that a man can “grow up” to become a daimôn. That human nature is perfectly capable of achieving real understanding is shown, not only by Heraclitus’ claims on behalf of his own thinking, but also by explicit statement:

  All share the capacity to understand (B113).

  All human beings share in the capacity to know themselves and to be of sound mind (B116).

  Why, then, are human beings so prone to form bad habits in thinking and living, and to make bad choices? There are no direct indications of Heraclitus’ answer, but the struggle between good and bad in any individual must presumably be connected with, and isomorphic to, its cosmic counterpart.25

  5.5. The intelligent soul will want to understand everything: including itself. Heraclitus tells us: “I looked for myself” (B101). This suggests introspection, in which the mind has privileged and direct access to itself. Whatever Heraclitus’ preferred method of looking for himself, he is aware of the paradoxical and elusive nature of the quest.

  The bounds of soul you would not find by going about, though you

  travelled over every road; so deep a logos does it have (B45).

  To the soul belongs a logos that increases itself (B115).

  The “bounds” are spatial only within the metaphor of “travelling.” They are logical limits, that “mark off” the nature of the soul from that of other things. Correspondingly, the logos of the soul is the true, rational account of the soul, but it can also be understood as the account given by the soul. This points up the paradox that the soul is here talking about itself. The regresses of reflexivity now intrude. The soul must talk about itself and therefore about its own talk about itself, and so on. The story of the soul is an unlimitedly self-increasing one.

  6. ULTIMATE QUESTIONS

  6.1. Unity-in-opposites gives Heraclitus a theory of the cosmos and one of the soul. But did he aim at overall theoretical unity and closure?26 (1) Is the individual soul not merely analogous to, but essentially the same as, the latent unity, the god or ever-living fire of the cosmos? (2) Is unity-in-opposites meant to extend to all opposites of any importance? (3) Is there any other principle as fundamental as unity-in-opposites, or anything else more basic than the cosmic unity?

  On question (1), there are signs (though ambiguous and not supported by direct statement) that individual souls are, indeed, fragments of the cosmic unity.27 This would be a theoretically satisfying equation. The nature, purpose, and destiny of a human being can then be understood in cosmic terms.

  On the other questions too, certainty is hardly possible. Heraclitus’ manifesto statement that “all things are one” (B50) justifies an assumption that he aimed at maximal theoretical unity, but, as to just how he tried to achieve it, the evidence is incomplete. This section offers a review of such further evidence as there is on such ultimate questions and some consequent suggestions about the overall shape of Heraclitus’ system.

  6.2. Unity-in-opposites is a unified conception that overcomes the apparently unbridgeable oppositions of monism and pluralism. It is therefore an example of itself. Heraclitus seems to be aware of this curious state of affairs:

  Comprehendings: wholes and not wholes; in unison, not in unison; and from all things one and from one all things (B10).28

  This remark uses the usual unity-in-opposites pattern in talking about “comprehendings” (syllapsies), with the usual process-product ambiguity: the products or the processes both of “taking together” and “understanding.” These must be cases of unity-in-opposites, which considered abstractly exemplify the very same pattern.

  This reading suggests why unity-in-opposites is fundamental and central. First, it is a phenomenon so all-embracing that it even embraces itself. Next, it is necessarily the pattern that structures thought and language, because it is the pattern of understanding. Any sentence has many different words with syntactic functions “moving different ways,” but a single meaning making it a unity. The logos, whatever it is, is something that is expressible only in language and intelligible only because it is so expressible. The structure of language and thought is necessarily also the structure of reality: this is the conclusion to which Heraclitus seems to be pointing.

  6.3. Unity-in-opposites, as displayed in cosmos and soul, exemplifies another higher-level opposition: that between conflict and law.

  If opposites such as hot and cold are forces, genuinely opposed, there must be real conflict between them:

  Heraclitus rebukes the poet [Homer] who said: “Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!”; for there would be no fitted structure (harmonia) if there were no high-pitched and low-pitched, nor would there be animals without the opposites male and female (Aristotle, Eudemian ethics VII.1 1235a 25-29).

  War is father of all, king of all: some it shows as gods, some as human; some it makes slaves and some free (B53).

  But if the processes are to be intelligible, they must also be lawlike (cf. section 2.4 on the analogy of the logos with law in a city). Heraclitus not only emphasises both opposed aspects, but he also proclaims that they constitute a unity.

  Sun will not overstep measures: otherwise, the Furies [Erinyes], helpers of justice, will find him out (B94).

  But one must know that war is the same for all [xynon], and that justice is strife, and that all things happen according to strife and necessity (B80).

  How, then, can the cosmic process constitute both strife and justice at one and the same time? The Heraclitean solution is perhaps preserved in an unusually enigmatic remark:29

  Everlasting [Aiôn] is a child at play, playing draughts:30 to a child belongs the kingdom (B52).

  The child is a boy playing a board game for two players; no opponent is mentioned, so the assumption must be that the boy is playing both sides. This can still be a free and genuine conflict, in which skill is exercised and sharpened. It is lawlike in procedure: the rules (which are freely accepted by the players, not imposed from outside) define the game and are impartial as between the sides. It is lawlike in outcome since, if each side plays equally well, it will win equally often in the long run – though the outcome of any one game will not be predictable. In the short-term there are (as gamblers know) alternating runs of luck on one side and the other. True to his habits of thought, Heraclitus seeks to show, by a model drawn from everyday experience, that strife and justice can coexist, interdependently, without becoming denatured.31

  Here, if anywhere, we seem to glimpse where Heraclitus located the meaning
of life for the individual: in participation in the inner and the cosmic struggle.

  6.4. To the analogy of the board game, it can be objected that the boy who plays both sides has two plans in his head, not a single unified plan. For the underlying unity just to manifest itself alternately in opposites is not enough. There must also be an underlying unity of purpose, as implied by the talk of “steering” and of a plan. In connection with these, Heraclitus speaks cryptically of “the wise”:

  One thing only is wise, being skilled in the plan, how all things are steered through all (B41).

  Of all whose words I have heard, none has got so far as to recognise what is wise, distinct from everything (B108).

  The one only wise is unwilling and willing to be called by the name Zên (B32).

  The wise (to sophon), a neuter adjective used as a substantive, might be taken abstractly as “wisdom,” or concretely as “the (only) wise thing.” The word sophos was not, at this time, exclusively intellectual in application, being used for anyone with any specialized skill. In B41, the skill (knowing how) aspect is prominent, in the art of cosmic steersmanship and in the verb epistasthai (understand, be skilled in). The intellectual or strategic aspect (knowing that/why) appears in the mention of a “plan” or “piece of knowledge” (gnômên). The function of the wise is to understand the cosmic plan and to get it put into action.

  One cannot straightforwardly identify the wise with the cosmic god. It is not simply the same as Zên (a form of Zeus, implying an etymology from zên, “live”). It is “distinct from everything,” and unique. At the same time, it consists in understanding, which includes both knowing how and knowing that, and apparently might be acquired even by human minds.

  We must then take the wise as something that stands above and apart from both cosmic opposites and cosmic unity, yet manifests itself both in the cosmic god and in individual souls. “It is characteristic of a god to have understanding” – but not part of its nature. Craftsmanship has to be learned and refreshed by practice, and the craft is logically prior to the craftsman.

  7. CONCLUSION: THE PAST AND FUTURE OF HERACLITUS

  7.1. The response to Heraclitus has always been mixed. As a philosophical pioneer, whose insights outrun his technical equipment, he has suffered the predictable fate of being misunderstood. The loss of his book at the end of the ancient world caused his long eclipse, which was aggravated by the long domination of the history of ancient philosophy by Platonic and Aristotelian texts and assumptions. (Both Plato and Aristotle were more indebted to Heraclitus than they admitted; both treated him with condescension). Against these obstacles, the canonisation of Heraclitus by Stoics and some early Christian writers hardly helped.32 It ensured the survival of precious information but dipped it in an alien dye, adding an extra layer of misunderstanding.

  The revival of a truer appreciation needed a combination of improved historical and philosophical understanding. It began in Germany at the end of the 18th century: Schleiermacher was the father (and Hegel the godfather) of renewed Heraclitean scholarship.33 Since Schleiermacher’s work, there has been real, if intermittent, progress on the scholarly front. What is more, Heraclitus has become widelyknown and appreciated, even if, as always, his influence is elusive.

  7.2. What are the prospects for Heraclitus in the third millennium? Much basic scholarly work remains to be done. For example, study of the reception of Heraclitus in later antiquity has made only limited progress, so far.34 Above all, there is still a need for the systematic application of textual, linguistic, literary, and doxographical expertise to the entirety of the fragments and testimony.35

  Even as scholarship in the narrow sense progresses, there remain perennial questions of interpretation. Heraclitus is, recognisably, a philosophically active mind. He will always be misunderstood by those who are deaf to the call of philosophy, while philosophers will always want to annex him to their own particular concerns.

  The present chapter has aimed (1) to take him seriously as a pioneering philosopher; and (2) to treat every part of his thought as part of a whole and not in isolation. (The interpreter has to construct Heraclitus as a Heraclitean unity-in-opposites, with the systematic and the aporetic as his opposed aspects.) A third task, to locate him in the intellectual context of his own time, is too specialized to be attempted here, though required for any full account of Heraclitus.36

  7.3. Heraclitus’ claim to the continued interest of philosophers is that he is a pioneer of philosophical and scientific thoughts and of logical devices. And behind what he actually expresses, there seem to lie certain ideas that determine his thinking. Among these are: that reality must be something that can be lived and understood from the inside; and that the structure of language is the structure of thought, and therefore of the reality that thought describes. Whether Heraclitus himself could or would have formulated these ideas in such terms, is quite uncertain. What the tone and the mastery of his fragmentary work does put beyond doubt, is that he was already, in Ryle’s phrase, a self-moving philosopher.37

  NOTES

  1 See Most in this volume p. 357.

  2 Polemic explicit and implicit against: Homer (DK 22 B42; Aristotle Eudemian ethics VII.1 123 5a25–28 = A22; B94); Hesiod (B40, 57, 67); Archilochus (B17, 42); “singers of the people” (B104). Against popular and traditional opinions: B2, 17, 20(?), 27, 28, 29, 47, 56, 70, 74, 86, 104, 110, 121, 127(?), 128(?).

  3 See in this volume Long, p. 9, and Most, p. 338.

  4 Aristotle, Metaph. I.3 984a5-8; but both Aristotle (Metaph. IV.7 1012a24-26) and Plato (Soph. 242c4-e3) are aware of other aspects (logical, ontological) of Heraclitus.

  5 Thales was mentioned (B38); Anaximander implicitly corrected (B80).

  6 On the empiricism of Xenophanes and Hecataeus, see Fränkel [97] 325–49; Hussey [246] 17–28; Lesher [189] 149–86; on Heraclitus’ epistemology, Hussey [245] 33–42; Lesher [250] and in this volume, p. 232.

  7 On Heraclitus’ linguistic devices and their intention, see (e.g.) Hölscher [153] 136–41 = Mourelatos [155] 229–34; Kahn [232] 87–95; Hussey [245] 52–57·

  8 Physis in early usage is tied closely to the verb einai and means “what something really is”: see D. Holwerda, Commentatio de Voeis quae est Vi atque Usu praesertim in Graecitate Aristotele anteriore (Groningen, 1955).

  9 On early uses of the word logos, see Guthrie [15] 420–24 (a convenient survey, but it neglects the evidence of derivative words); Verdenius [264].

  10 On logos in Heraclitus: Kirk [233] 32–71; Verdenius [264]; Kahn [232] 92–95; Dilcher [239] 27–52; a minimalist view in West [136] 124–29.

  11 Mere opinions are also described as “what [merely] seems” (B28), as products of conjecture (B47), as stories told to children (B74), as toys for people’s amusement (B70), as (?) the barking of dogs at strangers (B97).

  12 On unity-in-opposites in Heraclitus, a variety of opinions can be sampled in: Kirk [233] 166–201; Emlyn-Jones [240]; Kahn [232] 185–204; Mackenzie [254].

  13 So too Aristotle (Topics VIII.5 159b30-33), giving “good and bad are the same thing” as a thesis of Heraclitus, interprets it as meaning that the same thing is simultaneously both good and bad.

  14 On B102, relevant here if genuine, see n.29.

  15 The verb harmozein (fit together) implies a purposive mutual adjustment of components to produce a unity. The noun harmoniê, derived from the verb, denotes the result of such a process. It had also a specialized musical sense, which is probably also in play in B51. It should not be translated as “harmony” (the associations are misleading and the musical sense different).

  16 The ancient variant reading palintonos (back-stretching) implies static tension, not dynamic process, at the core of Heraclitus’ vision of the world, but it is less well-attested, as well as less in tune with the evidence in total.

  17 Plato at Soph. 242c-e is concerned with ontological foundations only; it is therefore understandable that he says nothing about processes.

  18 Whil
e Plato in the Cratylus seems to conflate the views of Cratylus and Heraclitus, his full examination of the extreme flux doctrines (Tht., esp. 151d-160e, 179c-183c) associates them with Heraclitus only in vague terms.

  19 Cf. Plato Crat. 412d2-8. In a different sense, the underlying unity can also be said to be “in flux”: Aristotle De an. I.2 405a25-27, cf. Plato Tht. 153a7-10.

  20 On Heraclitus’ cosmology: Reinhardt [258] 41–71; Kirk [233] 306–61; Kahn [232] 132–59; Wiggins [266] 1–32; Dilcher [239] 53–66.

  21 On Heraclitus on the soul: Kirk [248]; Nussbaum [256]; Kahn [232] 241–60; Robb [259]; Hussey [247]; Schofield [261]; Laks (Chapter 12 in this volume).

  22 Alternative versions (B36, 76) of this remark integrate the soul into a sequence of physical changes, but this looks like a later, Stoicising reconstruction.

  23 B24 (cf. B136?) and B25; also later doxographical reports in A15 and A17.

  24 I am indebted for this point (and in section 5.3 on Heraclitus and Greek religion) to the remarks and unpublished work of Mantas Adomenas.

  25 There are hints of a treatment in physical terms of the passions and pathology of the soul: on arrogance as “wildfire,” B43; on self-delusion, B46; on the power of desire (thymos), B85; on sensual self-indulgence, which makes souls moist, B77, cf. B117.

  26 On the questions discussed in this section: Kahn [232] 204–11, 276–87; Hussey [245] 42–52.

  27 The strongest explicit testimony is Aristotle De an. I.2 405a25-26.