Heraclitus

Heraclitus was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus. He is remembered for his cosmology, in which fire forms the basic material principle of an orderly universe. Little is known about his life, and the one book he apparently wrote is lost. Heraclitus criticizes his predecessors and contemporaries for their failure to see the unity in experience. He claims to announce an everlasting Word (Logos) according to which all things are one, in some sense. Heraclitus was born in Ephesus, a port city on the western coast of Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey), around 535 BC. He was from an aristocratic family and renounced his hereditary title of "king" to his younger brother. He was considered arrogant and depressed, a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia. He became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to Democritus, who was known as "the laughing philosopher". Heraclitus wrote a single work, which he deposited in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus. Only fragments of his book have survived, mostly quoted by later philosophers and historians. His style was obscure and riddling, full of wordplay and paradoxes. He often used metaphors and analogies to illustrate his ideas. He was fond of using fire as a symbol of change and transformation. The central ideas of Heraclitus' philosophy are the unity of opposites and the concept of change. He also saw harmony and justice in strife. He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being". He expressed this in sayings like panta rhei ("Everything flows") and "No man ever steps in the same river twice". This changing aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of Parmenides, who believed in "being" and in the static nature of reality. Like the Milesians before him – Thales with water, Anaximander with apeiron, and Anaximenes with air – Heraclitus chose fire as the arche, the fundamental element that gave rise to the other elements. He also saw the logos as giving structure to the world. The logos is a rational principle that governs the cosmos and guides human reason. It is also a common law that all things share. Heraclitus believed that human beings have only a limited understanding of the logos, and that most people live in ignorance and folly. Heraclitus died around 475 BC in Ephesus. According to one legend, he died of dropsy after covering himself with cow dung in an attempt to cure his illness. His philosophy influenced many later thinkers, such as Plato, Aristotle, Stoics, Hegel, Nietzsche, and Jung.