57 Facts About Heraclitus

Heraclitus exerts a wide influence on ancient and modern Western philosophy, through the works of such authors as Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, and Heidegger.

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 ideas of Heraclitus's philosophy are the unity of opposites and the concept of change.

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

Heraclitus expressed this in sayings like "Everything flows" and "No man ever steps in the same river twice".

Heraclitus believed fire was the arche, the fundamental stuff of the world.

The main source for the life of Heraclitus is the doxographer Diogenes Laertius.

Heraclitus appears to have had little sympathy for democracy or the masses.

Since antiquity, Heraclitus has been labeled a solitary figure and an arrogant misanthrope.

Heraclitus criticized fools for being "put in a flutter by every word".

Heraclitus endorsed the sage Bias of Priene, who is quoted as saying "Most men are bad".

Heraclitus praised a man named Hermodorus as the best among the Ephesians, who he says should all kill themselves for exiling him.

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.

Heraclitus's style has been compared to a Sibyl, who "with raving lips uttering things mirthless, unbedizened, and unperfumed, reaches over a thousand years with her voice, thanks to the god in her".

Kahn characterized the main features of Heraclitus's writing as "linguistic density", meaning that single words and phrases have multiple meanings, and "resonance", meaning that expressions evoke one another.

Timon said Heraclitus wrote his book "rather unclearly" ; according to Timon, this was intended to allow only the "capable" to attempt it.

Heraclitus did state "nature loves to hide" and "a hidden connection is stronger than an obvious one".

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

On this view, Heraclitus is a flux theorist because he is a materialist who believes matter always changes.

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

Heraclitus said "strife is justice" and "all things take place by strife".

Aristotle said Heraclitus disagreed with 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".

Heraclitus suggests that the world and its various parts are kept together through the tension produced by the unity of opposites, like the string of a bow or a lyre.

The word logos has a wide variety of other uses, such that Heraclitus might have a different meaning of the word for each usage in his book.

Kahn has argued that Heraclitus used the word in multiple senses, whereas Guthrie has argued 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.

Pre-Socratic scholar Eduard Zeller has argued that Heraclitus believed that heat in general and dry exhalation in particular, rather than visible fire, was the arche.

Heraclitus seems to say fire is the one thing eternal in the universe.

However, it is argued by many that Heraclitus never identified fire as the arche; rather, he only used fire to explain his notion of flux, as the basic stuff which changes or moves the most.

On yet another interpretation, Heraclitus is not a material monist explicating flux nor stability, but a revolutionary process philosopher who chooses fire in an attempt to say there is no arche.

Heraclitus further wrote the Sun is in charge of the seasons.

On one account, Heraclitus believed the Sun and Moon were bowls containing fire, with lunar phases explained by the turning of the bowl.

Heraclitus said "thunderbolt steers all things", a rare comment on meteorology and likely a reference to Zeus as the supreme being.

Heraclitus considered mastery of one's worldly desires to be a noble pursuit that purified the soul's fire, while drunkenness damages the soul by causing it to be moist.

Heraclitus compares the soul to a spider and the body to the web.

Heraclitus believed the soul is what unifies the body and what grants linguistic understanding, departing from Homer's conception of it as merely the breath of life.

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.

Philosopher Gustav Teichmuller sought to prove Heraclitus was influenced by the Egyptians, either directly, by reading the Book of the Dead, or indirectly through the Greek mystery cults.

Edmund Pfleiderer argued that Heraclitus was influenced by the mystery cults.

Heraclitus interprets Heraclitus's apparent condemning of the mystery cults as the condemning of abuses rather than the idea itself.

Heraclitus's writings have exerted a wide influence on Western philosophy, including the works of Plato and Aristotle, who interpreted him in terms of their own doctrines.

Heraclitus's influence extends into art, literature, and even medicine, as writings in the Hippocratic corpus show signs of Heraclitean themes.

Heraclitus is considered a potential source for understanding the Ancient Greek religion since the discovery of the Derveni papyrus, an Orphic poem which contains two fragments of Heraclitus.

Heraclitus took the view that nothing can be said about the ever-changing world and "ended by thinking that one need not say anything, and only moved his finger".

The Pythagorean and comic writer Epicharmus of Kos has fragments which seem to reproduce the thought of Heraclitus, and wrote a play titled Heraclitus.

Heraclitus is generally agreed to either have influenced or been influenced by Heraclitus.

The atomists and Heraclitus both believed that everything was in motion.

Plato held that for Heraclitus knowledge is made impossible by the flux of sensible objects, and thus the need for the imperceptible Forms as objects of knowledge.

Aristotle accused Heraclitus of denying the law of noncontradiction, and charges that he thereby failed in his reasoning.

However, Aristotle's material monist and world conflagration interpretation of Heraclitus influenced the Stoics.

When Heraclitus speaks of "God" he does not mean a single deity as an omnipotent and omniscient or God as Creator, the universe being eternal; he meant the divine as opposed to human, the immortal as opposed to the mortal, and the cyclical as opposed to the transient.

Heraclitus appears in painter Raphael's School of Athens, in which he is represented by Michelangelo, since they shared a "sour temper and bitter scorn for all rivals".

French rationalist philosopher Rene Descartes read Montaigne and wrote in The Passions of the Soul that indignation can be joined by pity or derision, "So the laughter of Democritus and the tears of Heraclitus could have come from the same cause".

On Scottish common sense philosopher Thomas Reid's account, Heraclitus was one of the first to extol a common sense philosophy with such quotes as "And though reason is common, most people live as though they had an understanding peculiar to themselves;" and "understanding is common to all".

Heraclitus doubted the world conflagration interpretation, which had been popular since Aristotle.

In Bertrand Russell's essay Mysticism and Logic, he contends Heraclitus proves himself a metaphysician by his blending of mystical and scientific impulses.

Some philosophers such as Graham Priest and Jc Beall follow Heraclitus in advocating true contradictions or dialetheism, seeing it as the most natural response to the liar paradox.