Scientific Enlightenment, Div. One Book 2: Human Enlightenment of the First Axial 2.B.1. A genealogy of the philosophic enlightenment in classical Greece Chapter 6: Heraclitus ACADEMY | previous section | Table of Content | next section | GALLERY

copyright © 2003 by Lawrence C. Chin.

In addition to Xenophanes and Parmenides, Heraclitus and Empodocles are also influenced by Orphic-Pythagoreanism and they too formulate their philosophy as salvation of the second mode.

Central to Heraclitus' thinking is Logos. Logos means the underlying order of reality of which ordinary people are unconsciously aware (but not consciously aware of this awareness); its Sinic equivalent on the other side of the world at this time is the Dao, i.e. the Way, as in "the way things are". For all things happen according to Logos (ginomenwn gar pantwn kata ton logon toude) and with Logos Heraclitus can distinguish each things according to its constitution or nature (kata fusin diairewn ekaston) and declare how it is (frazwn okwV ecei; Kirk and Raven, ibid., p. 187). The "Way things are" is always universal (xunos, the common: since, as Dao, it is the structure or principle of the cosmos), and so the Logos is universal across cultures, though manifested differently in each via the parochialism of people's expression of, and behavior according to, it -- only if peoples can recognize this. "dio dei epesqai twi xunwi. tou logou d'eontoV xunou zwousin oi polloi wV idian econteV fronhsin" "Therefore it is necessary to obey (follow, persuaded by) the common. But the Logos being common, the many live as if they had each a private understanding [of the Logos]." (Ibid., p. 188. Translation altered.) Kirk and Raven define the Logos as "the unifying formula or proportionate method of arrangement of things, what might almost be termed the structural plan of things both individual and in sum." (Ibid.)

"ouk emou alla tou logou akousantaV omologein sofon estin en panta einai" "Listening not to me but to the Logos it is wise to agree that all [things] are one." (Ibid.) The memory of Conservation, of the substratum, is announced here; thus the Logos is a compact symbolism in a two-fold way: (1) It designates both the substratum itself and the universal, mechanical, "just" Way in which this substratum manifests itself in and as individual things; (2) it contains within itself "form" and "matter" as yet undifferentiated. ("... the arrangement would not be fully distinguished from the things arranged, but would be left to possess the same concreteness and reality as the thing itself." Ibid.) Heraclitus is then not a transcendentalist but remains within the bound of the physis of Thales, Anaximander, and Anaximenes.

Heraclitus proceeds from this memory of conservation: that all opposites are just aspects of the One (many "proofs" of this has he offered, ibid., p. 189 - 193), the One is divine (pantheism); that the soul is the divine degenerating into the individuated and mortal forms of the human; that salvation, the return to the divine, consists in contemplation of or participation in the divine wisdom, the One behind the All (the second mode).

This time the substratum is identified with fire, so that the cosmos is an everliving fire, parts of which are extinguished to form earth and sea (water), the latter of which then evaporates or otherwise and forms back into fire. The world is thus in a flux of change: Fire changes to rain which changes to sea which changes to earth; sea changes to fire; earth changes to sea. "Changes between the three world-masses are going on simultaneously in such a way that the total of each always remains the same..." (Ibid., p. 201) Such is the Logos, the proportional directionality of the fire-changing, an amendment of the Anaximander's dictum, and so motivated all the same by the experience of underlying justice: always, the restoration of the equilibrium (hence equality) among things, the experience of which is conditioned by the as yet undifferentiated intuition of the thermodynamic structure of the Universe. In such a way Heraclitus sees everything to be just and necessary, insofar as all occur to maintain balance or equilibrium among all, so that there are strictly speaking no good things and bad things -- only ordinary, foolish people who do not know (consciously and explicitly recognize; recall Parmenides' criticism of the mortals) the Logos think that there are good and bad things because of their limited perspective, their focus on the individual things or events and un-recognition of the whole flux of the cosmos of which these are temporary, transitional parts, appearing unjust by themselves but means or transitions to a total justice within the whole. "eidenai crh ton polemon eonta xunon, kai dikhn erin, kai ginomena panta kat'erin kai crewn." "It is necessary to know that war is common, and justice strife, and that all happen by strife and necessity." (Ibid., p. 195) "twi men qewi kala panta kai agaqa kai dikaia, anqrwpoi de a men adika upeilhfasin a de dikaia." "To god all things are beautiful and good and just, but men have supposed some to be unjust, and others just." (Ibid., p. 193) This is "Liebesakosmismus", Heraclitus' version of the enlightened state of mind, and it is very similar to Zhuangzi's version.¹ In kirk and Raven's words: "The total balance in the cosmos can only be maintained if change in one direction eventually leads to change in the other, that is, if there is unending 'strife' between opposites." (Ibid., p. 195) All is in flux, and moreover, balanced flux, flux with equilibrium always maintained, and so Plato's famous quote in Cratylus: "legei pou HrakleitoV oti panta cwrei kai ouden menei, kai potamou rohi apeikazwn ta onta legei wV diV eV ton auton potamon ouk an embaihV." "Heraclitus somewhere says that all things are in process [chorei: to draw back, to advance, to proceed] and nothing stays still, and likening the world [ta onta: being, the totality of existing things] to the stream of river he says that you would not step twice into the same river." (Ibid., p. 197)

This aither fire, "the archetypal form of matter" (ibid., p. 200), is the divine and archetypal universal soul. It enters human form as degeneration, turns into moisture of the body, gets confused (the most extreme form of the confusion of the soul by moist is drunkenness), and may perish by complete absorption into moisture. By understanding the Logos of the cosmic fire, the way the world works -- God -- the soul may be saved, purified, rejoin the cosmic fire after the death of the body instead of dissolution by moisture. The second mode of salvation, the Pythagorean type. We must recall here our earlier statement that the experience of the second law of thermodynamics might have contributed to the ancient mystic's experience of the soul as constantly degenerating and dissoluting and so in need of purifying restoration.

Although influenced by the Pythagoreans, Heraclitus' philosophy remains in the immanentist pantheist tradition of the Ionian. Conservation is intuited as behind the second law, not by itself.

When divinity is understood more and more comprehensively through the pantheistic trend, traditional polytheistic religious practices and representations of the ordinary people of Hellas appear more and more foolish, like the partial descriptions of the elephant by blind men feeling its parts only and never the whole. Pantheism, as the unity of god, the divine as impersonal, non-capricious, mechanistic but fair (principledness or Logos) -- this has shown the near-sightedness and aspectualness of traditional religious practices and representations. Heraclitus thus continues Xenophanes' criticism.

"[Heraclitus' relation of the soul to the world] pointed a direction which was not, on the whole, followed until the atomists and, later, Aristotle; in the intervals a new tendency, towards the rejection of Nature, flourished with the Eleatics, Socrates and Plato." (Ibid., p. 215)

Footnote:

1. Certain fascist commentators would like to see Heraclitus’ saying “war is common, and justice strife” as praising war as an appropriate means to maintain virtue among people. That would be completely missing the content of the mystic mind.