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p Heraclitus of Ephesus, the son of Blosson, was born c. 544 B.C. and died c. 483 B.C. The obscurity of his style caused him to be designated in antiquity as Heraclitus the Obscure, whereas his reputation for melancholy earned him the title of the Weeping Philosopher: he was said to weep each time he went out of his home and saw around him so many people living in misery and dying in anguish (DK 68 A 21). He is believed to have written a book called the Muses or On Various Ways^ of Life. Its traditional title was On Nature. It is very likely, however, that the book had no title at all. According to Diogenes Laertius (IX, 5), Heraclitus’s work "is divided into discourses, one on the universe, another on politics, and the third on theology." According to Diels-Kranz, we possess 145 fragments of Heraclitus (those after fragment 126 are disputable), but it is commonly held now that more than 35 of them should be excluded completely or partially either as later counterfeits or as unsatisfactory paraphrases of Heraclitus’s genuine statements.

p The fragments that came down to us leave one with a very peculiar impression: whereas some of them are indeed obscure and hard to grasp owing to their aphoristic and often oracular form, others are distinguished by brilliant clarity. The difficulties involved in the interpretation of the few extant passages are also aggravated by the corrupting effect of the doxographic tradition, particularly the stoic influences which not infrequently distorted the 53 fragments themselves or the context in which they are used. Not the least in importance is the dialectical style of Heraclitus who regards every phenomenon as a unity of contradictions and treats it in terms of self-negation.

p The reconstruction of Heraclitus’s teaching calls for a detailed analysis of his remains, their classification into several groups on the subject principle and a subsequent synthesis into a single doctrine. These main groups are Heraclitus’s statements on fire as primary element, on logos or law, on opposites (dialectics), on the soul, on the gods (“theology”), on ethics and on politics.

p Heraclitus’s cosmological views are presented in a nutshell in fragment DK 22 B 30: "This ordered universe (cosmos), which is the same for all, was not created by any one of the gods or of mankind, but it was ever and is and shall be ever-living Fire, kindled in measure and quenched in measure." This is a clearly stated central idea of mature Ionian philosophy: the universe represents manifestations of the single primary substance altering its forms in a regular manner. Heraclitus’s principle is "ever-living Fire", something not unlike the universal equivalent in commodity exchange: "all things for Fire and Fire for all things, like goods for gold and gold for goods" (B 90). This sociomorphic statement, seemingly an echo of mythological concepts, is in fact free in this case from any mythological background representing only an analogy to the natural and social processes.

p Like in other lonians, the alterations of the primary substance in Heraclitus are not disorderly. Describing his views, Diogenes Laertius wrote: "Change he called a pathway up and down, and this determines the birth of the world. For fire by contracting turns into moisture, and by condensing turns into water; water again when congealed turns into earth. -This process he calls the downward path. Then again earth is liquefied, and thus gives rise to water, and from water the rest of the series is derived. He reduces nearly everything to exhalation from the sea. This process is the upward path" (IX, 8-9). Fire as conceived by Heraclitus is characterised by its own Logos. This idea shared by Heraclitus with the Milesians is expressed in fragment 66: "Fire, having come upon them, will judge and seize upon (condemn) all things." Heraclitus also identified fire with reason and said that it was the cause of 54 the world order: "-The thunderbolt (i.e. Fire) steers the universe" (fragment 64). Fragment 65 says that Heraclitus called fire "need and satiety," i.e. the renewal and the conflagration of the world.

p Here we clearly have the principle of cosmic circulation. The eternal world process is divided into. cycles or periods by universal conflagrations, during which the world is destroyed and’ then brought into being again. The length of each period is 10,800 years (A 13). -The universe "kindled in measure and quenched in measure" is eternal, i.e. infinite in time but evidently limited in space (see A 5).

p The law underlying the world process is referred to by Heraclitus as Logos. Although this Logos exists forever, "men are always incapable of understanding it, both before they hear it and when they have heard it for the first time. For though all things come into being in accordance with this Law, men seem as if they had never met with it, when they meet with words (theories) and actions (processes) such as I expound, separating each thing according to its nature and explaining how it is made. As for the rest of mankind, they are unaware of what they are doing after they wake, just as they forget what they did while asleep" (B I). Believing himself to have come into possession of an absolute truth, Heraclitus feels contempt for mosK people who are incapable of grasping the central idea of his teaching, namely, that the world is ordered by the Logos which is universal and all-pervading. -The Logos speaks, as it were, to man revealing Jtself in words and deeds, in phenomena perceived by senses and comprehended by mind. However, "though men associate with it (the Logos) most closely, yet they are separated from it, and those things which they encounter daily seem to them strange" (B 72).

p Now the word Logos currently used in the time of Heraclitus was polysemantic, i.e. covered a broad range of notions which were closely linked in the Greek’s mind, and therefore needs different words to be translated into modern English depending on the context in which it is used. For instance, Logos can mean "word," "speech," "story," " narration," "argument," "teaching," "count," "calculation," "relationship," "proportion," etc. The philosophical meaning of Logos as used by Heraclitus and other ancients can best be expressed by the word “law” understood as an inner essential connection of things and phenomena. It is not fortuitous 55 that Logos as the law of being is related to the social sphere: "If we speak with intelligence, we must base our strength on that which is common to all [i.e. Logos], as the city on the Law .(nomos), and even more strongly. For all human laws are nourished by one, which is divine. For it governs as far as it will, and is sufficient for all, and more than enough... -Therefore one must follow the universal Law, namely that which is common to all. But although the Law is universal, the majority live as if they had understanding peculiar to themselves" (B 114, B 2). Heraclitus’s “fire—gold” and "logos—city law" similes clearly show that he understood fire and Logos as two different aspects of reality: fire represents its qualitative and variable nature, Logos, its structural stability, the former stands for exchange, the latter, for its proportion (though not yet expressed quantitatively).

p As we see, the Logos in Heraclitus is the rational necessity of being (fire) which is, in fact, identical with it. At the same time it is Fate, but in an entirely new guise. In contrast with the blind irrational force or chance personified by goddess Tyche (Fortuna in Rome), the Logos in Heraclitus is intelligence, nature’s “word” addressed to man, though he may be too stupid to understand it. But what does nature say? "When you have listened, not to me but to the Law (Logos), it is wise to agree, that all things are one" (B 50). The unity of nature with all its diverse manifestations does not lie on the surface ["Nature likes to hide" (B 123)], but it is there.

p Heraclitus makes an important advance on the Milesians in differentiating two aspects of reality: the outward appearance of things and their true nature. -The relationship of these aspects is expressed in the conception of harmony, even two harmonies—the hidden and the visible ones. Moreover, "the hidden harmony is stronger than the visible" (B 54). Harmony, however, is always the unity of opposites—it is the sphere of dialectics.

p The very fact that the largest group of Heraclitus’s pronouncements deals with opposites testifies to the pivotal character of this problem in his teaching. Being is conceived by Heraclitus as dynamic harmony, as unity and struggle of opposites. -This unity of opposites Heraclitus, as is evidenced from his fragments, was never weary of tracing out. Nature produces organic life not of the 56 combination of likes, but of the male and female elements, art imitating nature creates harmonious effects by the contrast of colours, musical harmony is the mixture of different voices. Heraclitus says: "Joints: whole and not whole, connected—separate, consonant—dissonant" (B 10). Apparent harmony, according to Heraclitus, is a precarious balance of contrary forces: "harmony consists of opposing tension, like that of the bow and the lyre" (B 51). The same idea is expressed in fragment 8 which is commonly believed now to be a paraphrase of fragment 51, but with an important addition: "everything comes into being by way of strife.”

p Heraclitus’s assertion of the identity of opposites was regarded by his ancient interpreters as an enigmatic one and, for that matter, continues to appear as such to many modern commentators. This profound dialectical idea was indeed difficult to grasp despite the numerous illustrations given by Heraclitus to make it more digestible. The identity of good and bad is illustrated by Heraclitus in these words: "For instance, physicians, who cut and burn, demand payment of a fee, though undeserving, since they produce the same (pains as the disease)" (B 58). In other fragments of this type he says: "The way up and down is one and the same" (B 60); "And what is in us is the same thing: living and dead, awake and sleeping, as well as young and old; for the latter (of each pair of opposites) having changed becomes the former, and this again having changed becomes the latter" (B 88). All these utterances reveal the remarkable flexibility of Heraclitus’s thought, the “fluid” character and richness of his spontaneous dialectical notions. Characteristic of Heraclitus’s mode of thinking was the untiring search for opposites as constituting the essence of every phenomenon. The obvious consequence of this conception of reality was his doctrine of struggle or war as the source, motive power and “ instigator” (aitia) of any world process: "War is both king of all and father of all, and it has revealed some as gods, others as men; some it has made slaves, others free" (B 53).

p The idea of universal conflict had already been expressed by the Milesians and constituted, for instance, an important element in Anaximander’s doctrine. However, in contrast with Anaximander who regarded the struggle of opposites in terms of wrongdoing and retribution ("things 57 give justice and make just recompence to one another for their injustice"), Heraclitus taught: "One should know that war is general (universal) and jurisdiction is strife, and everything comes about by way of strife and-necessity" (B 80J. The last words of this pronouncement sound almost like a quotation from Anaximander’s book.  [57•1 

p The doctrine of the universal character of strife leads to a conclusion that there is no permanence in the universe, everything moves on and is in a flux. The conception of the universality of change was accepted in antiquity as Heraclitus’s credo and the image of the “fluid” thinker has always been associated in the history of philosophy with the catch phrase "Panta rhei" (everything is in a flux) though it was never found in his genuine fragments. His own words were: "It is not possible to step twice into the same river" (B 91). However, Heraclitus’s teaching does not boil down to the conception of continuous motion and change, however important it may be. He is a dialectician and does not regard the process of change in an unregulated and disorderly way. In the changing and the fluid he sees the stable, in “exchange”—a proportion, in the relative—the absolute. The language resources in the time of Heraclitus were pathetically inadequate for expressing flexible notions in an abstract way and he was compelled to use polysemantic words, metaphoric expressions and symbols with various associations and implications. In many cases their meaning was irretrievably lost.

p Heraclitus did not know the term “opposites” which was introduced later by Aristotle. Instead, he used such words as diapheromenon, diapheronton (B 51, B 8) which mean "diverging," and to antizoyn meaning "hostile," i.e. words of general descriptive character. Descriptive and imagebearing are also the words expressing such notions as movement (stream, flux), change (exchange, turn). Even the word “Logos” which is the central notion of his philosophy means not only law, but also fire, mind, unit... It is for this reason that Heraclitus’s teaching is not an abstract theory, but a "revelation," a single doctrine of the world apprehended largely by intuition where concrete sensuous 58 “living" opposites merge into one another. -Though reminiscent of the mythological thought manipulating similar opposites, this doctrine represents a tremendous step forward in view of its rationalised, well considered and often clearly defined character.

p No philosophy can avoid the problem of human consciousness and knowledge. Like the Milesians, Heraclitus links it with the activity of "soul," which, in turn, is connected with some natural element. Heraclitus taught that "souls... are vaporised from what is wet" (B 12). He said: "-To souls, it is death to become water; to water, it is death to become earth. From earth comes water, and -from water, soul" (B 36). Relevant to this is also fragment B 76 (1): "Fire lives the death of earth, and air lives the death of fire; water lives the death of air, earth—that of water." From these pronouncements we can gather that Heraclitus conceived soul as air or thin and movable vapour. The qualities of the soul depend on the extent to which it succumbs to the influence of moisture: "A dry (desiccated) soul is the wisest and best" (B 118), whereas "a man, when he gets drunk, is led stumbling along by an immature boy, not knowing where he is going, having his soul wet" (B 117).

p On the evidence that we have, Heraclitus conceived the “airy” souls of men and animals as closely related to cosmic air which was in this connection called "divine reason." He taught that we inhale the Logos by breathing. When man is asleep, his reason departs, and when he wakes up it returns so that his soul is like coals or embers which glow brighter when brought near the fire and fade when removed from it. This affinity of the soul not only to evaporation, but also to. the Logos and fire identified with life and knowledge is very characteristic. The soul is conceived as a modification of single living "nature." Drawing in, as it were, its Logos, the soul communicates with this “nature” and cognises it to the extent to which it. assimilates to its Logos.

p Knowledge is obtained through the agency of the senses and reason which are closely connected. Heraclitus is quoted as saying that he honoured most "those things of which there is sight, hearing, knowledge" (B 55), i.e. those that can be perceived by the senses and comprehended by the mind. It is presumably for this reason that he did not counterpose, contrary to the almost unanimous opinion of his 59 commentators, “learning” and “intelligence”: though "much learning does not teach one to have intelligence" (B 40), "men who love wisdom must be inquirers into very many things indeed" (B 35). Learning and intelligence (wisdom, insight, sense) are two opposites making a harmonious whole. Heraclitus does not call in question the close relationship of the soul and body comparing them to a spider and cobweb: just like a spider feels where his thread is damaged and runs to the spot where a fly got entangled, so a man’s soul rushes to where the body suffered an injury as if unable to bear it. At the same time the soul is not confined within the body: "You could not in your going find the end of the soul, though you travelled the whole way: so deep is its Law (Logos)" (B 45). As has already been indicated, the soul in Heraclitus is a part of the universe which is everlasting fire and Logos.

p The interpretation of Heraclitus’s teaching has always been under a strong influence of theological tradition that tended to use his utterances in support of the doctrine of immortality and even corporeal resurrection. However, unbiased approach to Heraclitus’s extant fragments shows that his doctrine of god did not fall within the traditional religious-mythological scheme, but represented an early philosophical conception. The soul, according to Heraclitus, was not immortal. Life and death were conceived by him as natural opposites and he wrote that people "when they are born, they are willing to live and accept their fate (death); and they leave behind children to become victims of fate" (B 20). Though this clear statement seems to be overshadowed by mystifying fragment 27 ("there await men after they are dead things which they do not expect or imagine"), the most likely meaning of this obscure pronouncement is that the soul after death dissolves in the all-embracing living nature only to be reborn again.

p Comparing “mortal” people with “immortal” gods, Heraclitus says: "Immortals are mortal, mortals are immortal: [each] lives the death of the other, and dies their life" (B 62). It is not easy to interpret such aphorisms, but this one is clearly indicative of a tendency to bridge the mythological gap between people and gods. Heraclitus rejects traditional polytheistic beliefs and takes a firm stand against sacrifice, religious processions and Bacchic rites. The only deity which" he knows and recognises is the cosmos itself, 60 the everlasting living Logos-fire. It is ubiquitous and no one can hide from it. It steers everything and sways the destinies. "That which alone is wise is one; it is willing and unwilling to be called by the name of Zeus" (B 32). It is willing because the Logos-fire is no less omnipotent than Zeus, the source of life; it is not willing, because it reveals itself to man not in the anthropomorphic guise of the Thunderer, but in the struggle and war, in Truth and. Strife, in the cosmic harmony of opposites.

p Of course, it cannot be said that Heraclitus’s teaching was free from mythological views as such. Besides Zeus, Heraclitus speaks of Hades the god of death and Dionysus the god of life—"Hades is the same as Dionysus, in whose honour they rave and perform the Bacchic revels" (B 15), the Erinyes—"The sun will not transgress his measures; otherwise the Furies (Erinyes), ministers of Justice, will find him out" (B 94), the Sibyl "with raving mouth, uttering her unlaughing, unadorned, unincensed words" (B 92) and "the lord whose oracle is that at Delphi" (B 93). All these quotations sound today very dark as the associations Heraclitus wanted to bring to his listeners’ minds have been largely lost. , The interpretations given by antique commentators of various periods are far-fetched allegories or symbols. It is very likely that the meaning of these phrases was indeed presented by Heraclitus in the form of allegories and metaphors which were used in a definite context and intended to elucidate his dicta; now, however, being the remnants of an extinct culture they can do nothing but obscure his thought. Tradition presents Heraclitus as a solitary thinker, a nobleman by birth and manners who kept himself aloof from his fellow-citizens and held most of mankind in great contempt. According to Diogenes Laertius (IX, 3), "he was loftyminded beyond all other men, and other meaning... Finally, he became a hater of his kind and wandered on the mountains, and there he continued to live, making his diet of grass and herbs." To support such opinions, the commentators usually adduced Heraclitus’s own pronouncements purportedly showing the hatred and scorn of this gloomy bilious aristocrat for his countrymen. The fragments we possess indeed contain utterances which may give cause for accusations of this sort but, like many of Heraclitus’s other statements, they are not single-valued and attest to the dialectical character of his thought: in the cosmos governed by the wise Logos, 61 dead life and ignoble death await those who do not follow its prescriptions and boast of their ignorance. They are wilful and arrogant—and "one should quench arrogance rather than a conflagration" (B 43). On the other hand, "the thinking faculty is common to all" (B 113) and "all men have the capacity of knowing themselves and acting with moderation" (B 116). The Logos is “common” and everybody can grasp it and attain wisdom—however, according to fragment 2, "most men live as if they had a private understanding of their own.”

p The account of Heraclitus’s ethical views presents a special problem, as the obscurity of his style combines in this field with the meagreness of unquestionably genuine passages. Fragment 119, which has been the object of much dispute, says: character (ethos) for man is destiny (daimon). The difficulty in the interpretation of this passage stems largely from the ambiguity of the key words ethos and daimon which had more than one use each. It is most likely that Heraclitus’s statement is directed against the mythological belief in a daimon supposed to look after an individual man in the manner of a guardian and emphasises man’s own responsibility for his destiny. Commenting on this saying, Ephicarmus was later to paraphrase it as follows: "Character for man is good destiny—but for some men, bad also" (DK 23 B 17). Heraclitus left us in the dark as to whether ethos is innate or subject to change (for the worse or for the better), but we do know his categorical statement: "One man to me is [worth] ten thousand, if he is best" (DK 22 B 49). Given Heraclitus’s pessimism about the ability of most people to grasp the Logos, one can only wonder why he should take pains to advance his principles, make speeches, preach against ignorance and wrongdoing and “weep” over wretched human life.

p Heraclitus’s fragments 85 ("It is hard to fight against impulse; whatever it wishes, it buys at the expense of the soul") and 110 ("It is not better for men to obtain all that they wish") seem to fall in line with the general ethical principles of his time and express advice to restrain one’s desires and put the “soul” first.

p Early Greek morality is directly linked with and merges into politics. Coming from a royal clan at Ephesus, Heraclitus was openly hostile. to trade and industrial oligarchy that had come to power in his native city and established 62 a tyranny. Sources give us the name of the tyrant, Heraclitus’s contemporary Melanchrus. Censuring the wilfulness of the rich, Heraclitus contrasts it with human dignity which he associates with noble descent, wisdom and moral integrity. His denunciation of wealth ["may wealth not fail you men of Ephesus, so that you may be convicted of your wickedness!" (B 125a) ] was combined with undisguised contempt for democratic tendencies and egalitarian ideas after the fashion of aristocratic poets Alcaeus and Theognis who furiously condemned wealth and all kinds of "novelties." At the same time Heraclitus exalts law which should be defended by rightminded people as "their city’s walls" (B 44) so far as it is in accord with the one divine law governing the world, the Logos.

p Heraclitus’s universal “strife” was undoubtedly a reflection of the class struggle which unremittingly flares up and subsides in an antagonistic society. The truth, according to Heraclitus, is that peace and rest which seem-to people a desirable order of things are not based on a harmony of agreement, but on an equilibrium of tension, on an incessant struggle of opposing forces. This dialectical idea of universal strife as the real harmony of the world, the conviction that war is the father of all things and of the true peace is the essence and the tragic fervour of Heraclitus’s philosophy.

p Heraclitus had no orthodox! followers. Though ancient sources often speak of the "Herioliteans," they usually mean those who seized upon the Ephesian’s doctrine of flux and brought it into a one-sided prominence. Such philosophers ironically referred to by Plato as "eternally flowing" held that ever changing and contradictory reality does not lend itself to any determination so that no statement regarding it can be true. This conclusion carried the Heraclitean doctrine of the flux of everything to an extreme and finally degraded it to sophistry. According to Aristotle, "it was this belief that blossomed into the most extreme of the views above mentioned, that of the professed Heracliteans, such as was held by Cratylus, who finally did not think it right to say anything but only moved his finger, and criticised Heraclitus for saying that it is impossible to step twice into the same river; for he thought one could not do it even once" (Arist. Met. IV, 5, lOlOa).

The profound influence of Heraclitus’s teaching runs through centuries and clearly shows up in the philosophical 63 works of different periods, e.g. in Parmenides’s poem, Plato’s dialogues, in the works of Aristotle, the stoics and the sceptics, in Christian theologians and the "fathers of the Church." According to Diogenes Laertius, "the commentators on his work are very numerous, including as they do Antisthenes and Heraclides of Pontus, Cleanthes and Sphaerus the Stoic and again Pausanias who was called the imitator of Heraclitus, Nicomedes, Dionysius, and, among the
grammarians, Diodotus... Hieronymus tells us that Scythinus, the satirical poet, undertook to put the discourse of Heraclitus into verse" (IX, 15). The answers given by Heraclitus to the fundamental problems of philosophy two and a half millennia ago have not lost their significance in modern times and he is as popular nowadays as in antiquity. It would not be an exaggeration to say that of all early philosophers Heraclitus is the most deserving of the title of the founder of objective dialectics. Its essence, the doctrine of the struggle and unity of opposites will be forever linked with his name.