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'''Heraclitus of Ephesus''' ({{Greek|Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος}} ''Herákleitos ho Ephésios'', {{Latin|Heraclitus Ephesius}}; * c. 520 BC; † c. 460 BC) was a [[pre-Socratic]] [[philosopher]] from [[w:Ionia|Ionian]] [[Ephesus]].
'''Heraclitus of Ephesus''' ({{Greek|Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος}} ''Herákleitos ho Ephésios'', {{Latin|Heraclitus Ephesius}}; * c. 520 BC; † c. 460 BC) was a [[pre-Socratic]] [[philosopher]] from [[w:Ionia|Ionian]] [[Ephesus]].
== Life and legends ==
Heraclitus was born around 520 BC<ref>On the dating of Heraclitus' birth and death, see Mouraviev (2000) pp. 577f. (with discussion of the older literature on chronology).</ref> in the Greek colony of Ephesus in Ionia, which was under Persian rule until the 5th century. As the son of a certain Blyson or Herakon, about which there was already disagreement in antiquity,<ref>Diogenes Laertios 9,1 (= FGrHist 244 F 340a).</ref> Heraclitus came from an aristocratic lineage. This would have given him a hereditary claim to the office of royal sacrificial priest; however, he renounced it in favour of his brother. Heraclitus also took a clearly hostile attitude to his fellow citizens politically, as is shown by a quotation referring to the banishment of a prominent local politician: "Right would the Ephesians do if they all hanged themselves man for man and left their city to the underage, they who drove Hermodoros, their most valiant man, out of the city with the words: 'Of us none shall be the most valiant, or, if so, then elsewhere and with others. '"<ref>Diogenes Laertios 9,2.</ref> Despite his dislike of his fellow citizens, he seems never to have left his home town.
Only a few of the details of his life that have come down to us can be regarded as certain, including the information that he originally deposited his work in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.<ref>Gadamer (1999), p. 12.</ref> The sparse biographical information - for example in Diogenes Laertios - is otherwise inextricably linked with anecdotes, the truth of which is disputed and in some cases highly doubtful.<ref>Diogenes Laertios 9,1-17.</ref> A large part of the alleged incidents was apparently derived in later times from his variously interpretable aphorisms and aimed at posthumously exposing him to ridicule.<ref>Geoffrey Kirk, John E. Raven, Malcolm Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, Stuttgart 2001, p. 199.</ref> In this sense, some anecdotes reflect distorted aspects of his utterances: the fragment B 52, which equates life with a boy's game, corresponds to an episode according to which Heraclitus refused to participate in the legislature in Ephesus because he preferred playing with children in the temple of Artemis.<ref>Christof Rapp, Vorsokratiker, Munich 1997, p. 62.</ref> Similarly, Heraclitus' death around 460 BC is surrounded by the legend that he fell ill with dropsy due to his purely vegetable diet during his secluded life in the mountains around Ephesus. With his usual enigmatic way of expressing himself, he was unable to make himself understood by the doctors. He then tried to cure himself by lying under a heap of dung in order to dry out his water-addicted body.<ref>Diogenes Laertios 9,3.</ref> This description of the alleged circumstances of his demise probably has its origins in fragments of Heraclitus' doctrine, according to which it is death for the soul to become water.<ref>DK 22 B 36; Rapp (1997), p. 62.</ref>
Despite the local and temporal proximity to Miletus and its natural philosophers, no direct reference to the Milesians by Heraclitus has survived either for Thales or for Anaximander or Anaximenes. He was not a student of any of them,<ref>Pleines (2002), p. 67, note 180.</ref> nor did he himself establish a continuous tradition or his own school of teaching. His relationship to Parmenides is disputed; the assumption that he knew the work of Parmenides is speculative.<ref>Mouraviev (2000) p. 584f. (with literature review on the question). Mouraviev points out that only speculative philosophical-historical considerations can speak for a Parmenides reception in Heraclitus, whereas not only philosophical-historical but also philological arguments have been put forward for a Heraclitus reception in Parmenides. The question remains open.</ref> His philosophising, which he characterised as self-searching,<ref>DK 22 B 101: "I have investigated myself" (ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν); Diogenes Laertios 9,5.</ref> thus stands outside all divisions into schools and directions. In the history of philosophy, Heraclitus has therefore been controversially called a material monist or a process philosopher, a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysical or mainly religious thinker, an empiricist, a rationalist or a mystic, his thought has been attributed revolutionary or minor significance, and his work has been judged to be the basis of logic or a contradiction in terms.<ref>Daniel W. Graham, Heraclitus, in: ''[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/#LifWor Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy]''.</ref>


== Philosophy ==
== Philosophy ==
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{{GA}}
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== References ==
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[[Category:Philosopher (6th century BC)]]
[[Category:Philosopher (6th century BC)]]

Revision as of 06:50, 7 February 2022

Heraclitus, depicted in an engraving from 1825

Heraclitus of Ephesus (Greek: Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος Herákleitos ho Ephésios, Latin: Heraclitus Ephesius; * c. 520 BC; † c. 460 BC) was a pre-Socratic philosopher from Ionian Ephesus.

Life and legends

Heraclitus was born around 520 BC[1] in the Greek colony of Ephesus in Ionia, which was under Persian rule until the 5th century. As the son of a certain Blyson or Herakon, about which there was already disagreement in antiquity,[2] Heraclitus came from an aristocratic lineage. This would have given him a hereditary claim to the office of royal sacrificial priest; however, he renounced it in favour of his brother. Heraclitus also took a clearly hostile attitude to his fellow citizens politically, as is shown by a quotation referring to the banishment of a prominent local politician: "Right would the Ephesians do if they all hanged themselves man for man and left their city to the underage, they who drove Hermodoros, their most valiant man, out of the city with the words: 'Of us none shall be the most valiant, or, if so, then elsewhere and with others. '"[3] Despite his dislike of his fellow citizens, he seems never to have left his home town.

Only a few of the details of his life that have come down to us can be regarded as certain, including the information that he originally deposited his work in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus.[4] The sparse biographical information - for example in Diogenes Laertios - is otherwise inextricably linked with anecdotes, the truth of which is disputed and in some cases highly doubtful.[5] A large part of the alleged incidents was apparently derived in later times from his variously interpretable aphorisms and aimed at posthumously exposing him to ridicule.[6] In this sense, some anecdotes reflect distorted aspects of his utterances: the fragment B 52, which equates life with a boy's game, corresponds to an episode according to which Heraclitus refused to participate in the legislature in Ephesus because he preferred playing with children in the temple of Artemis.[7] Similarly, Heraclitus' death around 460 BC is surrounded by the legend that he fell ill with dropsy due to his purely vegetable diet during his secluded life in the mountains around Ephesus. With his usual enigmatic way of expressing himself, he was unable to make himself understood by the doctors. He then tried to cure himself by lying under a heap of dung in order to dry out his water-addicted body.[8] This description of the alleged circumstances of his demise probably has its origins in fragments of Heraclitus' doctrine, according to which it is death for the soul to become water.[9]

Despite the local and temporal proximity to Miletus and its natural philosophers, no direct reference to the Milesians by Heraclitus has survived either for Thales or for Anaximander or Anaximenes. He was not a student of any of them,[10] nor did he himself establish a continuous tradition or his own school of teaching. His relationship to Parmenides is disputed; the assumption that he knew the work of Parmenides is speculative.[11] His philosophising, which he characterised as self-searching,[12] thus stands outside all divisions into schools and directions. In the history of philosophy, Heraclitus has therefore been controversially called a material monist or a process philosopher, a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysical or mainly religious thinker, an empiricist, a rationalist or a mystic, his thought has been attributed revolutionary or minor significance, and his work has been judged to be the basis of logic or a contradiction in terms.[13]

Philosophy

A recurring theme of Heraclitus philosophy, apart from the concept of logos, which can be interpreted in many different ways and denotes the intelligible order of the world and its knowledge and explanation, is the natural process of constant becoming and change. In later times, this change was expressed in the popular short formula panta rhei ("everything flows").

„Whoever steps down into the same floods, other water always flows to him. Souls also flow forth from the moist.“

– Heraclitus

Furthermore, Heraclitus dealt with the relationship between opposites, such as day and night, waking and sleeping, concord and discord.

„That which strives apart unites, and from the different [tones] arises the most beautiful harmony, and everything arises through strife.“

– Heraclitus

Rudolf Steiner on Heraclitus

„Heraclitus' worldview will have to be perceived by an unbiased observer quite immediately as an expression of his choleric inner life. A glance at his life will throw much light on this thinker in particular. He belonged to one of the most distinguished families of Ephesus. He became a fierce opponent of the democratic party. He became so because certain views arose for him, the truth of which presented itself to him in his immediate inner experience. The views of his environment, measured against his own, seemed to him quite naturally to prove directly the folly of that environment. As a result, he came into such great conflict that he left his home town and led a solitary life at the temple of Artemis. Take a few sentences that have come down to us from him: "It would be good if all the Ephesians who are adults would rise up and give their city to the minors . . .", or the other where he says of men, "Fools in their ignorance, though they hear the true, are like unto the deaf; of them, when they are present, they are absent." - An inner experience that expresses itself in such cholericness finds itself akin to the consuming work of fire; it does not live in comfortable quiet being; it feels itself one with the "eternal becoming". Such a soul experiences stagnation as absurdity; "everything flows" is therefore the famous sentence of Heraclitus. It is only apparent when a persistent being appears somewhere; one will reproduce a Heraclitean feeling when one says the following: The stone seems to represent a closed, persistent being; but this is only apparent: it is wildly moving inside, all its parts act on each other. Heraclitus' way of thinking is usually characterised by the sentence: one cannot step twice into the same stream, for the second time the water is different. And a disciple of Heraclitus, Cratylus, amplified the saying by saying that one cannot enter the same stream even once. So it is with all things; while we look at what seems to be the same, it has already become another in the general stream of existence.

One does not consider a worldview in its full meaning if one only accepts its thought-content; its essence lies in the mood which it communicates to the soul; in the life-force which grows out of it. One must feel how Heraclitus feels himself in the stream of becoming with his own soul, how the world-soul pulsates with him in the human soul and communicates its own life to it when the human soul knows itself to be alive in it. Heraclitus' thought arises from such co-experience with the world soul: "What lives has death in it through the continuous stream of becoming; but death has life in it again. Life and death are in our living and dying. Everything has everything else in it; only in this way can the eternal becoming flow through everything. "The sea is the purest and most impure water, drinkable and wholesome to fish, undrinkable and corruptible to men." "The same is life and death, waking, sleeping, young, old, this changing is that, that again this." "Good and evil are one." "The straight path and the crooked . . . are one only."“ (Lit.:GA 18, p. 54ff)

„In ancient times there were the so-called mysteries as places of cultivation of the higher spiritual life. There the students could be led to spiritual vision through the development of their abilities. One such mystery was in Ephesus, for example, where the secrets of Diana of Ephesus were explored. There the disciples looked into the spiritual worlds. As much as could be publicly communicated of what was received there was actually communicated. Then the others received it as something seen in the Mysteries, as something communicated to them, as a gift. There were people who were aware that they had received the higher secrets from the Mysteries. Such a man was, for example, the great sage Heraclitus. He was particularly aware of the secrets of the Mystery of Ephesus, of the facts which the clairvoyant people there were able to fathom. What he had received there as a message and what he owed to his partial initiation, he proclaimed in such a way that it could be generally understood. Therefore, he who reads the teachings of Heraclitus, the so-called "dark one", sees that there is something deeper at the bottom of them, so that one can still see the direct experience, the experience of the higher worlds shining through in these original teachings.“ (Lit.:GA 115, p. 20f)

„Our existence on earth began in its first metamorphosis as a planet of warmth, and from this you can already see how correct it is, for example, when the old Heraclitus says: Everything sprang from fire. - Yes, of course! Because the earth is only the transformed Old Saturn, everything on earth has also come out of this fire. This was a truth that Heraclitus had from the ancient Mysteries. This is also indicated by the fact that he consecrated the book in which he had written down this truth to the goddess at Ephesus, and laid it on the altar there. This means that he was conscious that he owed this wisdom to the Mysteries, the Ephesian Mysteries, where, in their purity, this doctrine of the primeval fire Saturn was still proclaimed.“ (Lit.:GA 110, p. 51f)

Literature
References to the work of Rudolf Steiner follow Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works (CW or GA), Rudolf Steiner Verlag, Dornach/Switzerland, unless otherwise stated.
Email: verlag@steinerverlag.com URL: www.steinerverlag.com.
Index to the Complete Works of Rudolf Steiner - Aelzina Books
A complete list by Volume Number and a full list of known English translations you may also find at Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works
Rudolf Steiner Archive - The largest online collection of Rudolf Steiner's books, lectures and articles in English.
Rudolf Steiner Audio - Recorded and Read by Dale Brunsvold
steinerbooks.org - Anthroposophic Press Inc. (USA)
Rudolf Steiner Handbook - Christian Karl's proven standard work for orientation in Rudolf Steiner's Collected Works for free download as PDF.

References

  1. ↑ On the dating of Heraclitus' birth and death, see Mouraviev (2000) pp. 577f. (with discussion of the older literature on chronology).
  2. ↑ Diogenes Laertios 9,1 (= FGrHist 244 F 340a).
  3. ↑ Diogenes Laertios 9,2.
  4. ↑ Gadamer (1999), p. 12.
  5. ↑ Diogenes Laertios 9,1-17.
  6. ↑ Geoffrey Kirk, John E. Raven, Malcolm Schofield, The Presocratic Philosophers, Stuttgart 2001, p. 199.
  7. ↑ Christof Rapp, Vorsokratiker, Munich 1997, p. 62.
  8. ↑ Diogenes Laertios 9,3.
  9. ↑ DK 22 B 36; Rapp (1997), p. 62.
  10. ↑ Pleines (2002), p. 67, note 180.
  11. ↑ Mouraviev (2000) p. 584f. (with literature review on the question). Mouraviev points out that only speculative philosophical-historical considerations can speak for a Parmenides reception in Heraclitus, whereas not only philosophical-historical but also philological arguments have been put forward for a Heraclitus reception in Parmenides. The question remains open.
  12. ↑ DK 22 B 101: "I have investigated myself" (ἐδιζησάμην ἐμεωυτόν); Diogenes Laertios 9,5.
  13. ↑ Daniel W. Graham, Heraclitus, in: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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