24 Facts About Heraclitus

Heraclitus wrote a single work, only fragments of which have survived.

Heraclitus was considered arrogant and depressed, a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia.

The central idea of Heraclitus' philosophy is the unity of opposites and the concept of change.

Heraclitus saw the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being".

Heraclitus is said to have produced a single work on papyrus, which has not survived; however, over 100 fragments of this work survive in quotations by other authors.

Kahn states: "Down to the time of Plutarch and Clement, if not later, the little book of Heraclitus was available in its original form to any reader who chose to seek it out".

The hallmarks of Heraclitus' philosophy are change, or flux, and the unity of opposites.

Diogenes Laertius summarizes Heraclitus's philosophy, stating; "All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things flows like a stream".

Heraclitus is seemingly suggesting that not only the river is constantly changing, but we do as well, even hinting at existential questions about humankind.

In McCabe's reading of the fragments, Heraclitus can be read as a philosopher capable of sustained argument, rather than just aphorism.

Heraclitus' suggests the world and its various parts is kept together through the tension produced by the unity of opposites.

Aristotle said Heraclitus disliked Homer because Homer wished that strife would leave the world, which according to Heraclitus would destroy the world; "there would be no harmony without high and low notes, and no animals without male and female, which are opposites".

In one fragment, Heraclitus writes: This world-order [Kosmos], the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: everliving fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.

Heraclitus regarded the soul as a mixture of fire and water, and that fire is the noble part of the soul and water is the ignoble part, and he considered mastery of one's worldly desires to be a noble pursuit that purified the soul's fire.

Zoroastrian parallels to Heraclitus are often difficult to identify specifically due to a lack of surviving Zoroastrian literature from the period and mutual influence with Greek philosophy; the 9th century CE Dadestan i Denig preserves information on Zoroastrian cosmology, but shows direct borrowings from Aristotle.

Kahn stresses that Heraclitus used the word in multiple senses and Guthrie observes that there is no evidence Heraclitus used it in a way that was significantly different from that in which it was used by contemporaneous speakers of Greek.

The phrase Ethos anthropoi daimon attributed to Heraclitus has led to numerous interpretations, and might mean one's luck is related to one's character.

Heraclitus is considered a potential source for understanding the Ancient Greek religion since the discovery of the Derveni papyrus.

Martin Heidegger was influenced by Heraclitus, as seen in his Introduction to Metaphysics.

Parmenides, an Eleatic philosopher who was a near-contemporary of Heraclitus, proposed a doctrine of changelessness, which has been contrasted with the doctrine of flux put forth by Heraclitus.

The Cynics were influenced by Heraclitus, attributing several of the later Cynic epistles to his authorship.

The Stoics believed major tenets of their philosophy derived from the thought of Heraclitus, including a commentary by Cleanthes which has not survived.

Heraclitus' thought on logos influenced the Stoics, who referred to him to support their belief that rational law governs the universe.

Explicit connections of the earliest Stoics to Heraclitus showing how they arrived at their interpretation are missing, but they can be inferred from the Stoic fragments, which Long concludes are "modifications of Heraclitus".