Heraclitus

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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.

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.
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