Logos
"The idea that all things come to pass in accordance with this
Logos" and "the
Logos is common," is expressed in two famous but obscure fragments:
This Logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this Logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep. (DK 22B1)
For this reason it is necessary to follow what is common. But although the Logos is common, most people live as if they had their own private understanding. (DK 22B2)
The meaning of
Logos also is subject to interpretation: "word", "account", "plan", "formula", "measure", "proportion", "reckoning." Though Heraclitus "quite deliberately plays on the various meanings of
logos", there is no compelling reason to suppose that he used it in a special technical sense, significantly different from the way it was used in ordinary Greek of his time.
The later Stoics understood it as "the account which governs everything," and Hippolytus, in the 3rd century CE, identified it as meaning the Christian
Word of God.
Ta Panta rhei, "everything flows"
(''ta panta rhei'') "everything flows" either was not spoken by Heraclitus or did not survive as a quotation of his. This famous [[aphorism]] used to characterize Heraclitus' thought comes from [[Simplicius of Cilicia|Simplicius]]. The word ''rhei'', adopted by [[rheology|rhe-o-logy]], is simply the Greek word for "to stream."
The philosophy of Heraclitus is summed up in his cryptic utterance:
Potamoisi toisin autoisin embainousin, hetera kai hetera hudata epirrei"Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers ."
The quote from Heraclitus is interpreted by Plato as:
Panta ch?rei kai ouden menei"Everything changes and nothing remains still"
Instead of "flow" Plato uses
ch?rei, to change
ch?ros.
The assertions of flow are coupled in many fragments with the enigmatic river File:
"We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."
Compare with the Latin adages
Omnia mutantur and
Tempora mutantur and the Japanese tale
H?j?ki, which contains the same image of the changing river.
Hodos ano kato, "the way up and the way down"
In the structure
an? kat? is more accurately translated as a hyphenated word: "the upward-downward path." They go on simultaneously and instantaneously and result in "hidden harmony". A way is a series of transformations: the , "turnings of fire," first into sea, then half of sea to earth and half to rarefied air.
The transformation is a replacement of one element by another: "The death of fire is the birth of air, and the death of air is the birth of water."
This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made. But it always was and will be: an ever-living fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.
This latter phraseology is further elucidated:
All things are an interchange for fire, and fire for all things, just like goods for gold and gold for goods.
Heraclitus considered fire as the most fundamental element. He believed fire gave rise to the other elements and thus to all things. He regarded the soul as being a mixture of fire and water, with fire being the noble part of the soul, and water the ignoble part. A soul should therefore aim toward becoming more full of fire and less full of water: a "dry" soul was best. According to Heraclitus, worldly pleasures made the soul "moist", and he considered mastering one's worldly desires to be a noble pursuit which purified the soul's fire. Norman Melchert interpreted Heraclitus as using "fire" metaphorically, in lieu of
Logos, as the origin of all things.
Dike eris, "strife is justice"
If objects are new from moment to moment so that one can never touch the same object twice, then each object must dissolve and be generated continually momentarily and an object is a harmony between a building up and a tearing down. Heraclitus calls the oppositional processes
eris, "strife", and hypothesizes that the apparently stable state,
dikê, or "justice," is a harmony of it:
We must know that war (polemos) is common to all and strife is justice, and that all things come into being through strife necessarily.
As Diogenes explains:
All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things (ta hola, "the whole") flows like a stream.
In the bow metaphor Heraclitus compares the resultant to a strung bow held in shape by an equilibrium of the string tension and spring action of the bow:
There is a harmony in the bending back (palintropos) as in the case of the bow and the lyre.
Hepesthai to koino, "follow the common"
People must "follow the common (
hepesthai t? ksun?)" and not live having "their own judgement (
phon?sis)". He distinguishes between human laws and divine law (
tou theiou "of God").
He removes the human sense of justice from his concept of God; i.e., humanity is not the image of God: "To God all things are fair and good and just, but people hold some things wrong and some right." God's custom has wisdom but human custom does not, and yet both humans and God are childish: "human opinions are children's toys" and "Eternity is a child moving counters in a game; the kingly power is a child's."
Wisdom is "to know the thought by which all things are steered through all things", which must not imply that people are or can be wise. Only Zeus is wise. To some degree then Heraclitus seems to be in the mystic's position of urging people to follow God's plan without much of an idea what that may be. In fact there is a note of despair: "The fairest universe (
kallistos kosmos) is but a heap of rubbish (
sarma, sweepings) piled up (
kechumenon, poured out) at random (
eikê)."