HERACLITUS of Ephesus(lat. Heraclitus, Greek Iraklitos) (about 550 BC, Ephesus, Asia Minor- about 480 BC), ancient Greek philosopher, one of the largest representatives of the Ionian school of philosophy. He considered fire to be the origin of all things. The creator of the concept of continuous change, the doctrine of “logos”, which was interpreted as “god”, “destiny”, “necessity”, “eternity”. Heraclitus was credited with the famous saying “you cannot step into the same river twice.” Along with and Heraclitus determined the foundations of ancient and all European philosophy. Revealing the comprehensive mystery of the familiar world of myth, custom, and traditional wisdom, Heraclitus reveals existence itself as a mystery.

A native of Ephesus, son of Bloson, Heraclitus belonged to an ancient aristocratic family dating back to the founder of Ephesus, Androcles. Thanks to his origin, Heraclitus had a number of “royal” privileges and a hereditary priestly rank at the Temple of Artemis of Ephesus. However, during his years of life, power in Ephesus no longer belonged to the aristocrats. The philosopher did not participate in public life city, he renounced his titles, spoke sharply negatively about the city order and was contemptuous of the “crowd”. According to him, “the Ephesians deserve to be hanged en masse” because they expelled his friend Hermodorus, “saying: “Let no one among us be the best.” He considered the city's laws so hopelessly bad that he refused his fellow citizens' requests to give them new ones, noting that it was better to play with children than to participate in government affairs.

Heraclitus did not leave Ephesus and refused the invitations of the Athenians and the Persian king Darius. According to some testimonies, Heraclitus was a student of Xenophanes and Hippasus the Pythagorean, while according to others, he was not anyone’s student, but “learned everything from himself.” Numerous anecdotes about the death of Heraclitus are based on some of his sayings, misinterpreted and passed on by hearsay.

The main work of Heraclitus, the book “On Nature,” has been preserved in fragments, but is extensively cited in the works of later ancient philosophers (, etc.). This book consists of three parts: about nature, about the state and about God, and is distinguished by the originality of its content, imagery and aphoristic language. At the same time, the book is difficult to understand, for which already in ancient times Heraclitus received the nickname Skoutinos (Dark).

Heraclitus's main idea is that nothing is permanent in nature. Everything in nature is like the movement of a river, which cannot be entered twice. One constantly passes into another, changing its state. The symbolic expression of universal change for Heraclitus is fire. Fire is continuous self-destruction; it lives by its death. Heraclitus introduced a new philosophical concept - logos (word), meaning by this the principle of the rational unity of the world, which orders the world through a mixture of opposite principles. Opposites are in an eternal struggle, giving rise to new phenomena (“discord is the father of everything”). Human reason and logos have a common nature, but logos exists in eternity and governs the cosmos, of which man is a particle.

Tradition has preserved the image of Heraclitus the sage, a highly intelligent loner who despised people (and those who were famous as sages) for not understanding what they themselves said and did. Having interpreted the teachings of Heraclitus in the spirit of the common world sorrow about the transience of life and everything in the world, popular philosophy saw in him the prototype of the “crying sage,” just as in Democritus it found the type of “laughing sage.” The wisdom of Heraclitus, detached from the knowledgeable ignorance of people and living in the vicinity of the simple wisdom of being, is captured in a characteristic scene: some wanderers, who wanted to look at the famous sage, stop at the threshold of a wretched home, embarrassed by the sight of a nondescript man warming himself by the fireplace. “Come in, they hear, and the gods live here too” (Aristotle, “On the Parts of Animals”).

Heraclitus expressed himself so concisely and ambiguously. His sayings are often similar to folklore riddles or the sayings of an oracle, which, according to Heraclitus, “... neither speaks nor conceals, but gives signs.” Some believe that by writing his work (“Muses” or “On Nature”) deliberately dark and giving it for safekeeping in the temple of Artemis of Ephesus, Heraclitus allegedly wanted to protect it from the ignorant crowd. Others see here precisely the clearly expressed darkness and mystery of the very thing that is being said. Aristotle explains the darkness of Heraclitus's sayings by their syntactic uncertainty, as a result of which the statement can be read in different ways. The sayings of Heraclitus indeed reveal a thoughtful structure, a special poetics. They are full of alliteration, word play, internally connected by chiasmus, inversions, non-union syntax or parataxis, characteristic of the structure of internal speech, speech addressed not so much to others as to oneself, listening to oneself, ready for rethinking, for returning to the element of thinking silence. When the tragedian Euripides asked Socrates about the work of Heraclitus, he replied: “What I understood perfectly, what I didn’t understand, I think, too, but by the way, we need a real Delian diver.”

The question that Heraclitus answers is how everything is one, or what is the (one) being of (multiple) beings? The most famous answer to this question is the thesis “everything flows, nothing is at rest.” In the existence of many, a single being flows (flows, occurs). To be means to constantly become, to flow from form to form, to be renewed, just as the same river carries new and new waters. Another metaphor for existence as something constantly happening in Heraclitus is combustion, fire. The structure of a self-sufficient world (“cosmos”) is “an ever-living fire, gradually flaring up, gradually dying out.” A single being seems to flare up with a multitude of beings, but also extinguishes in it, just as beings, flaring up with being, extinguishes in its unity. Another metaphor for the same thing is a game: each time a new game of the same game. Becoming and permanence, the multiplicity of existing and the unity of being are combined when the flow is thought of as falling into itself, combustion and extinction, beginning and end coincide. The single being of the multitude, conceived as a stream flowing into itself, or a combustion that goes out as it flares up, is more accurately (and more mysteriously) conveyed by understanding the whole as an internal interconnection of the opposite: the being (flow) of night and day is mutual flow and internal co-presence, life lives in confrontation death, but death also “lives” by this; the immortality of immortals and the mortality of mortals are mutual; by this same confrontation, the opposing is firmly linked into a single harmony of existence, which is similar to the “harmony of the bow and the lyre.” Heraclitus conveys the world as a confrontation of the opposite with the image of a world-battle, a world-battle (“polemos”). “You need to know that the battle is universal, and litigation is true, and everything becomes litigation and mutual responsibility.” “War is the father of all, the king of all: it declares some gods, others men, creates some slaves, others free.”

The image of a general battle, which embraces all things as a whole and in which each thing is captured in what it actually is, also turns out to be an image of understanding everything and everyone. This is the universal mind, in contrast to particular misunderstandings, the one and only wisdom, corresponding to the structure of existence itself, to the way the multitude of existence is folded into the unity of being. This warehouse, “syllable” is similar to how a single word of a poem is composed of many words, a cosmos of speech that carries within itself “the image of the world revealed in the word” (). Hence the theme of "logos", which, judging by some fragments, has a special meaning for Heraclitus. The work (“logos”) of Heraclitus opened with the words: “Concerning this logos of existence, people are always incomprehensible...”. Aristotle explains with this example the “darkness” of Heraclitus: if “always” is referred to as “being,” it seems that we are talking about the “logos” of existence itself, but if it is “unintelligible,” then we simply mean the work of Heraclitus. But it is precisely this ambiguity that is important for Heraclitus. The Greek word “logos” means “word”, “speech”, “writing”, “report”, but also itself accountable, “state of affairs”, “balance of forces”. “Logos” - the word about the whole is intended to convey how everything is folded into the integrity of “logos” - being. “Not to me, but to the “logos”, it is wise to agree: everything is one.” “Logos” is a form, something general that allows one to convey the structure of things with the corresponding type of speech. Hence the “darkness” of Heraclitus’s sayings: being, which occurs in the confrontation of things, is grasped by thought, living in the contradiction of speeches.

The great dialectician of the ancient world is Heraclitus of Ephesus(c. 520–460 BC). “Everything that exists,” he taught, “is constantly moving from one state to another: everything flows, everything changes; You cannot step into the same river twice; There is nothing stationary in the world: cold things get warmer, warm things get colder, wet things dry out, dry things get moistened. Emergence and disappearance, life and death, birth and death – being and non-being – are interconnected, they condition and transform into each other.” According to his views, the transition of a phenomenon from one state to another occurs through the struggle of opposites, which he called the eternal “universal logos,” i.e., a single law common to all existence. Heraclitus taught that the world was not created by any of the gods or by any of the people, but was, is and will be an eternally living fire, naturally igniting and naturally dying out.

Heraclitus of Ephesus came from an aristocratic family, deprived of power by democracy, spent his life avoiding secular affairs, and towards the end of his life he completely became a hermit. The main work “On Nature,” preserved only in fragments, was recognized even during the life of Heraclitus as profound and difficult to understand, for which the author received the nickname “dark.”

In the doctrine of being (ontology), Heraclitus asserts that the fundamental principle of the world is fire. The cosmos was not created by anyone, but was, is and will be an eternally living fire, now flaring up, now extinguishing. Fire is eternal, space is a product of fire. Fire undergoes a series of transformations, first becoming water, and water is the seed of the universe. Water in turn is transformed into earth and air, giving rise to the surrounding world.

Heraclitus can be considered the founder of the doctrine of knowledge (epistemology). He was the first to distinguish between sensory and rational knowledge. Cognition, in his opinion, begins with feelings, but sensory data provide only a superficial characteristic of what is being known, and therefore must be processed accordingly by the mind.

The social and legal views of Heraclitus are known, in particular his respect for the law. “The people must fight for the law as for a city wall, and crime must be extinguished faster than a fire,” he said. The dialectics of Heraclitus, which takes into account both sides of a phenomenon - both its variability and its unchangeable nature, was not adequately perceived by contemporaries and was already subjected to a wide variety of criticism in antiquity. If Cratylus called for ignoring the moment of stability, then the Eleatics (natives from the city of Elea) Xenophanes (c. 570–478 BC), Parmenides (late 6th–5th centuries BC), Zeno (mid-5th centuries BC) BC), on the contrary, focused attention precisely on the moment of stability, reproaching Heraclitus for exaggerating the role of variability.

Old Greek Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος

ancient Greek philosopher, founder of the first historical or original form of dialectic

544 - 483 BC e.

short biography

Ancient Greek philosopher, who is credited with creating the first historical dialectic; he is considered the author of the famous phrase “Everything flows, everything changes.” There is very little reliable information in the biography of Heraclitus. It is known that his homeland is the city of Ephesus (Asia Minor). During the 69th Olympiad (504-501 BC), the philosopher was a mature man, in the prime of his life, on the basis of which researchers assumed that he was born around 540 BC. e.

Heraclitus was a descendant of an ancient aristocratic family; his ancestor Androcles founded Ephesus. By inheritance, Heraclitus received the rank of priest in the temple of Artemis of Ephesus. But he refused the honors due to his origin, moreover, he completely withdrew from lawmaking and participation in the public life of the city. Heraclitus held an extremely negative opinion about urban order, and treated his fellow citizens and people in general with contempt, believing that they themselves were not aware of what they were doing and what they were saying. He was especially angry with his fellow countrymen when the townspeople drove his friend Hermodorus out of Ephesus. However, when he was invited by the inhabitants of Athens and the king of Persia Darius, the philosopher did not want to leave hometown. Towards the end of his life, he turned into a real hermit and went to live in the mountains, where he ate pasture.

Contemporaries gave Heraclitus the nickname “Scutinos”, i.e. "Dark", "Gloomy". It corresponded to his misanthropic moods and at the same time reflected the depth and mystery of his thoughts, often expressed in difficult-to-perceive images, as well as the “mood” of his entire philosophical system, which gave reason to contrast him with the “laughing sage” - Democritus.

Heraclitus was a prominent representative of the Ionian philosophical school, which, as the main idea, put forward the origin of all things from the beginning, its unity. For Heraclitus, such a first principle was fire, the material expression of which is the cosmos, which is constantly changing. It was this philosopher who first used the word “cosmos” to call the universe; previously this term hid the order that reigned in the life of a state or an individual.

Today we know only about the only work of Heraclitus - “On Nature”, which is represented by several dozen passages included in the works of other, later authors, in particular Plato, Plutarch, Diogenes, etc. This philosophical teaching consisted of three parts: theological , political and natural philosophy. The basis of Heraclitean teaching is the idea of ​​​​the variability of all things, the absence of anything permanent. In nature, there is a constant process of transition from one thing to another, a change of state, which is why “you cannot enter the same river twice.”

He introduces into terminology a multi-valued new concept - “logos”, which means, in particular, the principle of unity, which, by uniting opposite principles, brings the universe to order. According to Heraclitus, “discord is the father of everything,” the eternal struggle of opposites leads to the emergence of new phenomena. For him, good and evil, life and death, day and night were two sides of the same coin. This system of views made it possible to rank Heraclitus among the founders of dialectics, the first materialist philosophers who derived the dialectical principles of knowledge and being, although their ideas were somewhat naive.

According to researchers, Heraclitus cannot be attributed to anyone’s followers; most likely, he did not have his own students, but the influence of his system on the formation of the worldview of later thinkers is difficult to overestimate; he, like Pythagoras and Parmenides, took a direct part in laying the foundations for ancient and subsequently European philosophical thought.

The death of the great philosopher is shrouded in a trail of contradictory information: supposedly Heraclitus awaited his death, being smeared with manure at his own request, and was torn to pieces by dogs. In these legends, some researchers see nothing more than the statements of the philosopher himself distorted beyond recognition, others - signs of his burial in accordance with Zoroastrian traditions, the influence of which can be traced in individual passages belonging to him. When exactly Heraclitus died is unknown; it supposedly happened in 480 BC. e.

Biography from Wikipedia

Heraclitus of Ephesus(Ancient Greek: Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος, 544 - 483 BC) - ancient Greek philosopher.

Founder of the first historical or original form of dialectics. Heraclitus was known as the Gloomy or Dark (in Aristotle - ancient Greek ὁ σκοτεινός λεγόμενος Ἡράκλειτος), and his philosophical system contrasted with the ideas of Democritus, which was noticed by subsequent generations.

His only work, from which only a few dozen fragments of quotes have survived, is the book “On Nature,” which consisted of three parts (“On Nature,” “On the State,” “On God”).

Little reliable information has been preserved about the life of Heraclitus. He was born and lived in the Asia Minor city of Ephesus, his acme falls on the 69th Olympiad (504-501 BC), from this we can approximately deduce the date of his birth (about 540). According to some sources, he belonged to the family of basileus (priest-kings with purely nominal power in the time of Heraclitus), descendants of Androcles, however, voluntarily renounced the privileges associated with descent in favor of his brother.

Diogenes Laertius reports that Heraclitus, “hating people, withdrew and began to live in the mountains, feeding on pasture and herbs.” He writes that Melissus, a student of Parmenides, came to the philosopher in his voluntary exile and “introduced Heraclitus to the Ephesians, who did not want to know him.”

Biographers emphasize that Heraclitus “was not anyone’s listener.” He, apparently, was familiar with the views of the philosophers of the Milesian school, Pythagoras, and Xenophanes. He also most likely did not have direct students, but his intellectual influence on subsequent generations of ancient thinkers was significant. Socrates, Plato and Aristotle were familiar with the work of Heraclitus; his follower Cratylus becomes the hero of the Platonic dialogue of the same name.

Some researchers interpret the gloomy and contradictory legends about the circumstances of the death of Heraclitus (“he ordered to cover himself with manure and, lying there, died”, “became the prey of dogs”) as evidence that the philosopher was buried according to Zoroastrian customs. Traces of Zoroastrian influence are also found in some fragments of Heraclitus.

Emperor Marcus Aurelius writes in his memoirs that Heraclitus died of dropsy and smeared himself with manure as a remedy for the disease.

Heraclitus is one of the founders of dialectics.

Teachings of Heraclitus

Since antiquity, primarily through the testimony of Aristotle, Heraclitus is known for five doctrines that are most important for the general interpretation of his teachings:

• Fire is the beginning (ancient Greek ἀρχή) or the original material cause of the world.
• There are periodic episodes of world fire (Ancient Greek: ἐκπύρωσις), during which the cosmos is destroyed in order to be reborn again.
• Everything is a flow (so-called. Doctrine or Flow theory).
• Identity of opposites.
• Violation of the law of contradiction. This doctrine is rather a consequence of (3) and (4) than an independent position of the teachings of Heraclitus.

Modern interpretations are often based on the recognition that all of these provisions of Heraclitus are partially or completely untenable, and are characterized by a refutation of each of these doctrines. In particular, F. Schleiermacher rejected (1) and (2), Hegel - (2), J. Burnet - (2), (4), (5), K. Reinhardt, J. Kirk and M. Marcovich reject consistency all five.

In general, the teachings of Heraclitus can be reduced to the following key positions, which most researchers agree with:

• People try to comprehend the underlying connection of things: this is expressed in Logos as a formula or element of ordering, establishing general for all things (fr. 1, 2, 50 DK).

Heraclitus speaks of himself as one who has access to the most important truth about the structure of the world, of which man is a part, and knows how to establish this truth. The main ability of a person is to recognize the truth, which is “general”. Logos is the criterion of truth, the final point of the method of ordering things. The technical meaning of the word is “speech”, “attitude”, “calculation”, “proportion”. Logos was probably posited by Heraclitus as an actual component of things, and in many respects correlated with the primary cosmic component, fire.

• Various types of evidence of the essential unity of opposites (fr. 61, 111, 88; 57; 103, 48, 126, 99);

Heraclitus establishes 4 different types of connections between apparent opposites:

a) the same things produce the opposite effect

“The sea is the purest and dirtiest water: drinkable and life-saving for fish, undrinkable and destructive for people” (61 DK)

“Pigs enjoy mud more than clean water” (13 DK)

“The most beautiful of monkeys is ugly in comparison with another genus” (79 DK)

b) different aspects of the same things can find opposite descriptions (writing is linear and round).

c) good and desirable things, such as health or rest, seem possible only if we recognize their opposite:

“Illness makes health pleasant and good, hunger makes you full, tiredness makes you rest” (111 DK)

d) some opposites are essentially related (literally “to be the same”), since they follow each other, are pursued by each other and by nothing but themselves. So hot-cold- this is a hot-cold continuum, these opposites have one essence, one thing in common for the whole pair - temperature. Also a couple day Night- the temporal meaning of “day” will be common to the opposites included in it.

All these types of opposites can be reduced to two large groups: (i - a-c) opposites that are inherent or simultaneously produced by one subject; (ii - d) opposites that are connected through existence in different states into one stable process.

• Each pair of opposites thus forms both unity and multiplicity. Various pairs of opposites form an internal relationship

  “Conjugations (ancient Greek συνάψιες): whole and non-whole, converging divergent, consonant dissonant, from everything - one, from one - everything" (10 DK)

Συνάψιες is letters“things taken together”, relationships. Such “things taken together” must first of all be opposites: what is given together with night is day (Heraclitus here expresses what we might call “simple qualities” and which he was then able to classify as opposites; that is, this all those changes that can be correlated as occurring between opposites). Thus, “things taken together” are indeed described in one sense as “whole”, that is, forming one continuum, in another sense - as “not a whole”, as individual components. Applying these alternative analyzes to the conglomeration of “things taken together,” one can see that “out of all things a unity is formed,” and also that from this unity (ἐξ ἑνὸς) an external, discrete, multiple aspect of things (“all”, πάντα) can emerge. .

There is some relationship between God and the number of pairs of opposites

“God: day-night, winter-summer, war-peace, excess-need (that is, all opposites - this is the meaning); it changes as if mixed with incense, and is named according to the smell of each [of them]” (67 DK)

Unlike the teachings of Xenophanes, Heraclitus sees God as immanent in things or as the sum of pairs of opposites. Heraclitus did not associate God with the need for cult or service. God is not essentially different from logos, and logos, among other things, collects things and makes them opposites, relationship between them are proportional and balanced. God is the common connecting element for all opposite ends of any oppositions. The total multiplicity of things thus forms a single, connected, definite complex - unity.

• The unity of things is obvious, it lies right on the surface and depends on balanced interactions between opposites (fr. 54, 123, 51 DK).

Moreover, the implicit type of connection between opposites is stronger than the obvious type of connection

“Hidden harmony is better than obvious” (ἁρμονίη ἀφανὴς φανερῆς κρείττων) (54 DK)

• The general balance in the cosmos can only be maintained if changes in one direction ultimately lead to changes in the other, that is, if there is an endless “enmity” between opposites (fr. 80, 53).
• The image of the river (“Flow Theory”) illustrates the type of unity that depends on maintaining measure and balance in changes (fr. 12).
• The world is an ever-living fire, parts of which always fade to the forms of the other two main world components, water and earth. The changes between fire, sea and earth establish a balance among themselves; pure or ethereal fire plays a decisive role.
• Astronomy. The heavenly bodies are bowls of fire, fed by vapors from the sea; astronomical events also have their own measure.
• Wisdom consists of truly understanding how the world works. Only God can be wise; man is endowed with reason (φρόνησις) and intuition (νοῦς), but not with wisdom.

“Wisdom is to know everything as one” (50 DK)

• Souls are made of fire; they arise from it and return to it; moisture, completely absorbed by the soul, leads it to death. We correlate the fire of the soul with the fire of the world.
• Those who are awake, asleep and dead are correlated according to the degree of fieryness in the soul. In a dream, souls are partially separated from the world fire, etc. their activity is reduced.
• Virtuous souls do not become water after the death of the body, on the contrary, they live, connecting with cosmic fire.
• The worship of traditional religion is stupidity, although it may accidentally point to the truth (fr. 5, 14, 15, 93 DK).
• Ethical and Policy Recommendations, suggesting that self-awareness and moderation should be recognized as the main ideals.

Heraclitus' criticism of Milesian philosophy and the doctrine of fire

Heraclitus's doctrine of fire can be understood as a response to the early Ionian (Milesian) philosophers. The philosophers Miletus (a city near Ephesus), Thales, Anaximander, Anaximenes believed that there is some initial substance or primary element that becomes any other things. The world as we know it is an ordered compound various elements or substances produced by the primary element, primary matter. For the Milesians, to explain the world and its phenomena meant simply to show how everything comes into being, arises, or is transformed from an original substance, as is the case with the water of Thales or the air of Anaximenes.

Heraclitus seems to follow this pattern of explaining the world when he views the world as an “ever-living fire” (B 30 DK) and states that “Lightning governs all things,” alluding to the governing power of fire (B 64 DK). But the choice of fire as the initial primary substance is extremely strange: the primary substance must be stable and stable, preserving its essential qualities, while fire is fickle and extremely changeable, being a symbol of change and process. Heraclitus notes:

“All things are secured by fire, and fire is [secured] by all things, just as property is [secured by] gold, and property is [secured] by gold” (B 90 DK)

We can measure all things in relation to fire as a standard; there is an equivalence between gold and all things, but things are not identical with gold. In the same way, fire provides a standard of value for other elements, but is not identical with them. Fire plays an essential role in the teachings of Heraclitus, but it is not the exclusive and unique source for other things, since all things or elements are equivalent. Fire is important more as a symbol than as a primary element. Fire is constantly changing, just like other elements. One substance is transformed into another in some cycle of change. What carries constancy is not any primary element, but the universal process of change itself. There is a certain constant law of transformations that can be correlated with Logos. Heraclitus might say that the Milesians correctly believed that one element turns into another through a series of transformations, but they incorrectly deduced from this the existence of some primary element as the sole source of everything that exists.

If A is the source of B, and B the source of C, and C turns into B and then into A, then B is the source of A and C, and C is the source of A and B. There is no special reason for the promotion of one element or substance as compensation for the consumption of another substance. It is important to note that any substance can be converted into any other. The only constant in this process is the law of change, through which the order and sequence of changes is established. If this is indeed what Heraclitus had in mind when developing his philosophical system, then he goes far beyond the ordinary physical theory of his predecessors, and rather builds a system with a more subtle understanding of metaphysics.

The Doctrine of Fire and Logos

Hendrik Terbruggen. , 1628

According to his teaching, everything came from fire and is in a state of constant change. Fire is the most dynamic, changeable of all the elements. Therefore, for Heraclitus, fire became the beginning of the world, while water is only one of its states. Fire condenses into air, air turns into water, water into earth (“the downward path”, which gives way to the “upward path”). The Earth itself, on which we live, was once a red-hot part of the universal fire, but then cooled down.

Philosophers are table companions of the gods. Logos - both mind and Word - has the function of controlling (things, processes, space). Through Socrates and the Stoics, this thought of Heraclitus apparently passed into the Targums, and from there into the Christian teaching about the Logos - the second person of the Holy Trinity.

Sextus. adv. math. VII 132; Hippolyt. Refiitatio IX 9.1 του δε λόγου .. οκωςεχει“But although this logos exists forever, people turn out to not understand it, both before they listen to it and after listening to it once. For although all [people] come face to face with this logos, they appear unfamiliar with it even when they try to understand such words and deeds as I explain, dividing them according to their nature and clearly expressing what they are. As for other people, they are not aware of what they are doing in reality, just as they are in oblivion about what they are doing in their dreams.”

The idea of ​​universal variability and movement

Heraclitus believed that everything is constantly changing. The position of universal variability was associated by Heraclitus with the idea of ​​the internal bifurcation of things and processes into opposite sides, with their interaction. Heraclitus believed that everything in life arises from opposites and is known through them: “Illness makes health pleasant and good, hunger makes you full, fatigue makes you rest.” Logos as a whole is the unity of opposites, a system-forming connection. “Hearing not to me, but to the logos, it is wise to recognize that everything is one.”

Sayings

• What can be seen, heard, learned, I prefer. (55 DK)
• Nature loves to hide. (123 DK)
• Secret harmony is better than obvious harmony. (54 DK)
• I was looking for myself. (101 DK)
• Eyes and ears are bad witnesses for people if their souls are barbaric. (107 DK)
• One must know that war is generally accepted, that enmity is the law (δίκη), and that everything arises through enmity and mutually. (80 DK)
• War is the father of all, the king of all: it declares some to be gods, others to be people, some to be slaves, others to be free. (53 DK)
• When entering the same rivers, some waters flow at one time, and at another time different waters (12 DK)
• A century is a child playing, throwing dice, a child on the throne. (52 DK)
• Personality (ἦθος) is the deity of man. (119 DK)
• The people must fight for the trampled law, as for a wall (of a city). (44 DK)
• Born to live, they are doomed to death, (or rather, to repose), and even leave children so that [new] death will be born (20 DK)
• Much knowledge does not teach intelligence. (40 DK, often erroneously attributed to Lomonosov)

(Cited according to the edition: Fragments of early Greek philosophers, M., Nauka, 1989)

• This cosmos, the same for everyone, was not created by any of the gods or people, but it always was, is and will be an eternally living fire, flaring up in proportions and extinguishing in proportions.
• For those who are awake, there is one common world (Ancient Greek: κοινὸς κόσμος), and among those sleeping, each one turns away into his own (Ancient Greek: ἴδιος κόσμος).

Composition

Later authors (from Aristotle and Plutarch to Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome) found numerous (about 100 in total) quotations and paraphrases from his work. Experiments in collecting and systematizing these fragments have been undertaken since the beginning of the 19th century; the works of F. Schleiermacher became a significant milestone in the study of the legacy of Heraclitus. But the pinnacle of these studies was the classic work of Hermann Diels (Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, first edition in 1903). During the 20th century. the collection of Heraclitean fragments was repeatedly supplemented, and attempts were also made to reconstruct their original order, to recreate the structure and content of the original text (Markovich, Muravyov).

Diogenes Laertius cites several titles of Heraclitus’s work: “The Muses”, “On Nature”, “The Infallible Rule for the Rule of Living” and a number of other options; most likely, all of them do not belong to the author. He writes that the “poem” of Heraclitus “is divided into three discussions: about everything, about the state and about divinity.” According to him, Heraclitus placed his book “in the sanctuary of Artemis, taking care (as they say) to write it as darkly as possible, so that only the able had access to it.” Diogenes Laertius preserved an epigram characterizing the work of Heraclitus:

The same Diogenes Laertius reports that Socrates allegedly read the work of Heraclitus, and after reading it declared: “What I understood is excellent; which I probably didn’t understand either. But, really, for such a book you need to be a Delian diver.”

› Heraclitus of Ephesus

Heraclitus of Ephesus, son of Bloson, an Ephesian, “acme” (heyday - age about 40 years) whose heyday falls on the 69th Olympiad (504-501 BC) was born, apparently, c. 544, year of death unknown. Even in ancient times, he was nicknamed “Dark” for the difficulty of his style and “Crying”, for “every time Heraclitus left the house and saw around him so many people living badly and dying badly, he cried, feeling sorry for everyone” (L. LXII; DK 68 A 21). He owned an essay called “The Muses”, or “The Infallible Rule for the Rule of Living”, or “An Index to Morals”, or “A Single Order for the Structure of Everything”. The traditional title is “About Nature”. Most likely, however, the book had no title at all. According to Diogenes Laertius (IX, 5), the work of Heraclitus of Ephesus was divided into three discussions: about the Universe, about the state and about the deity. 145 fragments of the work have been preserved (according to Diels-Krantz) (after fragment 126 are doubtful), but it is now believed that “over 35 should be completely or partially excluded either as later falsifications, or as weak paraphrases of genuine fragments.”

The fragments of Heraclitus produce an ambivalent impression. If some of them, justifying the glory of their “dark” author, are really difficult to understand due to their aphoristic form, often similar to the statements of an oracle, then others are crystal clear and understandable. Difficulties in interpreting the fragments, associated with their poor preservation, also arise from the influence of the doxographic tradition, especially the Stoic interpretation, sometimes “inscribed” in the fragments themselves or in their immediate context. Considerable difficulties are generated by the dialectical way of thinking of Heraclitus of Ephesus, who sees in every phenomenon its self-negation, its opposite. Hence, first of all, formal and logical difficulties.

Teachings of Heraclitus

Reconstruction of the teachings of Heraclitus of Ephesus requires the analytical division of the corpus of its fragments into thematically defined groups with their subsequent synthesis into a holistic view. These main groups are statements about fire as the first principle, about logos, or law, about opposites (dialectics), about the soul, about gods (“theology”), about morals and about the state.

As a starting point for Heraclitus’ teaching about the cosmos, a fragment of DK 22 V 30 can be rightfully accepted: “This cosmos, the same for everything [that exists], was not created by any of the gods and none of the people, but it has always been, is and will be an ever-living fire, ignited in proportions and extinguished in proportions.” This is a clearly expressed basic position of Ionian philosophy: the cosmos represents modifications of a single origin, which naturally passes, changing, into various forms. The origin of Heraclitus of Ephesus is “ever-living fire,” the changes of which are similar to commodity exchange: “everything is exchanged for fire and fire for everything, as goods are exchanged for gold and goods are exchanged for gold” (B 90). This sociomorphic turn, although reminiscent of the mythological sources of philosophy, in this case is practically devoid of mythological correspondences, representing only an analogy of natural and social processes.

In the teachings of Heraclitus, the idea of ​​the world circuit is quite clearly outlined. The process, endless in time, is divided into periods (cycles) by world fires, as a result of which the world dies in fire and is then reborn from it. The length of the period is 10,800 years (A 13). If in time the cosmos “lights up in measures and goes out in measures” is infinite, then in space it is apparently limited (see A 5).

Logos of Heraclitus

The internal regularity of the world process is expressed by Heraclitus of Ephesus with another, more special concept - “logos”. “Although this logos exists eternally, it is inaccessible to people’s understanding either before they hear it or when they hear it for the first time. After all, everything is done according to this logos, and they become like the ignorant when they approach such words and such deeds as I present, dividing each by nature and explaining in essence. What they do while awake is hidden from other people, just as they forget what happens to them in their sleep” (B 1). Confident that he has learned the truth, Heraclitus expresses dissatisfaction with people who are unable to accept his teaching. The meaning of the teaching is that everything in the world takes place according to a certain law - logos, and this logos itself “speaks” to a person, revealing itself in words and deeds, in sensually perceived and revealed by the mind phenomena. As for people, with this law, “with which they have the most constant communication, they are at enmity, and what they encounter every day seems alien to them” (B 72. It is possible that the connection with logos established by Mark quoting Heraclitus of Ephesus Aurelius, who understood it stoicistically, as a controlling principle, had some other meaning among the Ephesians).

Heraclitus. Painting by H. Terbruggen, 1628

Heraclitus’ ambiguity of the word “logos” - and it means a word, and speech, and a story, and a narration, and an argument, and a doctrine, and counting, and calculus, and a ratio, proportion, etc. - does not allow it to be conveyed unambiguously some one word of the Russian language. The closest thing here would probably be the meaning of “law” - the universal semantic connection of existence. It is no coincidence that logos, as the law of being, is placed in relation to the social sphere: “Those who wish to speak intelligently should strengthen themselves with this general (logos. - A.B.), just as a city is [strengthened] by law, and much stronger. For all human laws are nourished by one divine one, which extends its power as far as it wishes, prevails over everything and prevails over everything... Therefore, it is necessary to follow the general. But although the logos is universal, most people live as if they had their own understanding” (B 114, B 2). The parallel of Heraclitus is indicative: “fire is gold (money)” and “logos is the law of the city.” She clearly speaks of the kinship of fire and logos as different aspects of the same being. Fire expresses the qualitative and changeable side of the existing, logos – structural and stable; fire is exchange, or exchange, logos is the proportion of this exchange, although not expressed quantitatively.

So, the Heraclitian logos is the rational necessity of existence, merged with the very concept of existence = fire. And at the same time, this is fate, but significantly transformed. For mythological consciousness, fate acted as a blind irrational force. It could be fate (fatum), but it could also be chance, personified in the image of the goddess Tyche (Roman Fortune). The Logos of Heraclitus of Ephesus is reasonable, it is the “reasonable word” of nature speaking to man, although not accessible to everyone. What does she “say”? “Not for me, but for listening to the logos, it is wise to recognize that everything is one” (B 50). The unity of diverse nature is not immediately revealed, for “nature loves to hide” (B 123). And yet this unity is evident. True, two fragments seem to contradict this idea.

The first of them reads: “Aion is a playing child, arranging checkers: the kingdom of the child” (B 52). But what does the ambiguous word aion mean here? This is hardly the “eternity” of most Russian translations; the text of Heraclitus of Ephesus is too archaic for this. Perhaps this is “time”, as Burnet translates? It is doubtful, then “chronos” would be suggested here, and then the fragment would sound like a polemic against Anaximander’s thesis about the temporal orderliness of origin and destruction. Lebenszeit (life, time of life, century), as Diels translates? Closer to the point, but then the fragment becomes mysterious, even meaningless. Apparently, we are still talking not about the life of the cosmos, but about the life and fate of an individual person: “[man’s] destiny is a playing child, [his life] is the kingdom of a child,” this is how one could freely convey this fragment, expressing a fairly well-known thought about how “fate plays with man” and “what is our life? - a game!". As if admitting the absence of a world pattern - logos?

Fragment 124 reads: “It would be an absurdity if the whole heaven and each of its parts were ordered and consistent with reason in appearance, and in strength, and in circular movements, and in the principles there were nothing like that, but, as Heraclitus says, “The most beautiful cosmos [would] be like a heap of rubbish scattered at random.” The words in quotation marks belong to Heraclitus and are inscribed in the text of Theophrastus. It is difficult to find an unambiguous and universally acceptable interpretation of this text, especially since the fragment of Heraclitus itself does not fit into the context of Theophrastus. However, it seems that we are confronted by Heraclitus of Ephesus with a contrast between the universal logos, the world law inherent in the “hide-loving” nature, and the visible world order, which is similar, in comparison, to a heap of garbage. However, it follows from this that Heraclitus, more clearly than the Milesians, realized and identified two planes of existence: the immediate, present existence of things and its internal nature - logos. Their relationship is expressed through the concept of harmony, even two harmonies: “hidden” and “explicit”. Moreover, “hidden harmony is stronger than obvious” (B 54). But harmony is always the harmony of opposites.

Dialectic of Heraclitus

And here we move into the realm dialectics.

Just by the fact that the most extensive group of fragments of Heraclitus of Ephesus is devoted to opposites, the basis of dialectics, one can judge the central position of this problem in the teaching of the Ephesian. Unity and “struggle” of opposites - this is how one can abstractly express the dialectical structure and dynamics of existence. For Heraclitus, unity is always a dialectical unity of the different and the opposite. This is stated in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise “On the World”: forming consonance not from like, but from opposites, nature combines masculine and feminine, forming a primary social connection through the combination of opposites; art, imitating nature, creates images by mixing colors, and creates musical harmony from the mixing of voices. “The same is expressed by Heraclitus the Dark: “Connections: the whole and the non-whole, the converging and diverging, the consonant and the discordant, and from everything one, and from one everything”” (B 10). The same idea is expressed in B 51, where harmony is illustrated the polysemantic image of a bow and a lyre, and in B 8, which is now recognized as a paraphrase of B 51, but contains an important addition - “... everything happens through struggle.”

The ancients, and many modern interpreters of the philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus, often find his dialectical statement about identity opposites. However, many of his examples are quite clear. “Good and evil [are the same thing]. In fact, doctors, says Heraclitus, who cut and burn in every possible way, demand payment on top of this, although they do not deserve it, for they do the same thing: good and ill” (B 58). Or: “The way up and the way down are the same” (B 60); “Donkeys would prefer straw to gold” (B 9). No less clear is the example of the shameless phallic hymns to Dionysus, which are sacred to the worshipers of this god, or the fact that “the most beautiful ape is disgusting in comparison with the human race” (B 82). All these sayings express the extraordinary dialectical flexibility of the thinking of Heraclitus of Ephesus, the fluidity, versatility and ambiguity of his concepts, or rather, verbally formulated ideas and images. In every phenomenon he looks for its opposite, as if dissecting every whole into its constituent opposites. And after dissection and analysis there follows (according to the main rule of dialectics) synthesis - struggle, “war” as the source and meaning of any process: “War is the father of everything and the mother of everything; She determined that some should be gods, others people; She made some slaves, others free” (B 53).

Apparently, this idea had already been expressed by the Milesians. One might think that this was Anaximander’s idea, but for him the struggle of opposites seemed to be an injustice, for which the perpetrators “are punished and receive retribution.” Heraclitus writes: “You should know that war is universal, and truth is struggle, and that everything happens through struggle and out of necessity” (B 80), almost quoting, in the last words, the book of Anaximander. The meaning of this extremely important proposition about the universality of the dialectical struggle of opposites is threefold: that the struggle constitutes the driving force, the cause and the “culprit” (aitia means both) of any change.

This is evidenced, in particular, by fragment B 88: “In us there is one and the same living and dead, awake and sleeping, young and old. For this, having changed, is this, and conversely, that, having changed, is this.” This is how Heraclitus of Ephesus approaches the idea of ​​the universality of change. This thought was accepted by antiquity as the credo of Heraclitus, and with it the image of a “fluid,” dialectical thinker entered history. "Panta rhei" - "everything flows" - although this phrase is not among the original fragments of the Ephesian, it has long been attributed to him. “You cannot step into the same river twice” (B 91) - this is how it sounds own words. But it does not at all follow from this that Heraclitus is an apologist for variability as such. He dialectician: in variability and fluidity he sees the stable, in exchange - proportion, in the relative - absolute. Of course, these phrases are a translation of the teachings of Heraclitus into modern philosophical language. The own language of Heraclitus of Ephesus did not yet allow any clear abstract expression of these thoughts, for he operated with polysemantic words, flexible ideas, rich, but complex and vague symbolic images, the meaning of which is often lost.

First of all, Heraclitus of Ephesus does not yet know the term “opposites” - it was introduced by Aristotle. Heraclitus uses such words as diapherpmenon, diapheronton - “divergent” (B 51, B 8) or to antizoyn - “warring, striving towards different sides" These are descriptive, not conceptual, expressions. Equally descriptive and figurative are the expressions of such concepts as movement (flow, flow), change (exchange, exchange, rotation). Even “logos” - the most formalized of the concepts of Heraclitus philosophy - is not only law, but also fire, reason, and the one... Therefore, the dialectical teaching of Heraclitus of Ephesus appears before us not as an abstract theory, but as an intuitively perceived picture of the world, where concrete-sensual, “living” opposites coincide. This is a clear reminiscence of mythological thinking, which constantly operates with opposites. But at the same time, the picture is rationalized, thoughtful, and often clearly and clearly outlined. In it, as we will see below, those socio- and anthropomorphic images of divine beings that constitute a necessary part of the myth have already been removed. At the same time, the dialectics of Heraclitus of Ephesus, as a doctrine of opposites “in the very essence of objects,” prepared classical Greek philosophy with its not spontaneous, but conscious dialectics.

Heraclitus's doctrine of knowledge

Philosophy inevitably raises problems of human consciousness and cognition. Like the Milesians, Heraclitus of Ephesus connects them with the activity of the “soul,” and the latter with some natural element. Namely: “souls evaporate from moisture” (B 12). The soul fits into the cycle of substances in this way: “For souls, death becomes moisture, and for water, death becomes earth; from the earth water is born, and from water the soul” (B 36). Let’s add to this fragment B 76 (1), which says that “fire lives on earth by the death, and air lives on fire by the death; water lives on air by death, earth on water [by death].” From here it immediately becomes clear that the soul, by its nature, is air or thin and mobile evaporation in Heraclitus. Depending on how far away it is from moisture; the soul acquires special qualities - “a dry radiance is the wisest and best soul” (B 118), while a drunk “staggers and does not notice where he is going, for his soul is wet” (B 117). There is therefore reason to think that, by its “airy” nature, the soul of man and animals is akin to cosmic air, which in this connection turns out to be “intelligent and thinking,” “divine” mind. By drawing it into ourselves, we become intelligent. In sleep, when the human mind is separated from the environment, we forget ourselves; Having awakened, the soul regains reason, just as coals glow and glow as they approach the fire, and when moving away from it they go out (see: Sextus. Against the Scientists, VII, 126–131).

The last image, which connects the soul no longer with moisture and its evaporation, with air, seems to contradict what has been said. However, apparently, this is nothing more than another side of Heraclitus of Ephesus’s understanding of the “soul” - its comparison with fire as the first principle - not that observable and sensually perceived fire, which was discussed in fragment B 76 (1), but fire as a philosophical, “metaphysical”, in the language of later philosophy, first principle. This, of course, is nothing more than the embryo of the opposition of philosophical knowledge as “metaphysics” (that which is “behind physics”) to “physics” itself, but it makes sense to note it. The soul in this aspect is a modification of the single and living “nature of things” and cognizes it only by communing with it, with its logos, and to the extent that this communion has occurred.

History of philosophy. Ancient and medieval philosophy Tatarkevich Vladislav

Heraclitus

Heraclitus

Several generations later, new theories appeared in Ionian cosmology. There were quite a lot of theories, and they often gave opposite interpretations and solutions to the problems posed by the first natural philosophers. One of these theories was variability(theory of universal variability), proposed by Heraclitus.

Life and works of Heraclitus. Heraclitus was born in Ephesus and was a descendant of a noble family. He spent his entire life in the colonies of Asia Minor, like the first natural philosophers. The years of his maturity occurred between the 6th and 5th centuries. Having given a high hereditary position to his brother, he left political life and was full of pessimism and distrust of people.

The work of Heraclitus gave us three treatises: cosmological, political and theological, that is, he expanded, in comparison with natural philosophers, the scope of research. For the way of expressing his thoughts, the figurative and allegorical nature of his statements, he received the nickname “Dark”. From his works, thanks to the efforts of the Stoic skeptics, about 130 fragments of his works have come down to us. They contained not only observations of the surrounding world, like the first Ionians, but also introspection (introspection). All this became the basis of his theory. He had a fairly critical and polemical mind and was the first philosopher who not only expressed his thoughts, but also defended them, fighting other opinions.

Views. 1. Fire as the beginning of the world. Heraclitus created a teaching that was similar to the Ionian; he looked for “arche” and found it in another type of matter - fire. The fire became sea, air, earth and returned to itself again. Changes came in two ways - lower and upper. Spreading from its upper containers, fire turned into air, falling even lower, it turned into water, and water, falling to the ground, was absorbed into it; in turn, the earth steamed, creating moisture, which turns into clouds and returns to its original peaks in the form of fire. These are two directions of movement, but “the path up and the path down are the same.” This simple thought expressed in the fragments of Heraclitus sounds so mysterious. His theory of fire does not go beyond the philosophical ideas of the Ionians. If he introduced something new into philosophy, it was only by complementing the views of the Ionians with a doctrine of a slightly different nature.

2. Changeability of a thing. Heraclitus considered not only the principles of nature, but also its characteristics. And he discovered that its fundamental quality is changeability. The image of reality is the river. Everything flows, nothing is stable, “you cannot enter the same river twice,” since other waters are already flowing in it. Death is also an image of reality. “We are afraid of one death, but we have already been exposed to many deaths.” “For the soul, death is water, and for water, death is earth.” Nature represents continuous dying and birth as a whole, it is always different: “We do not enter the same river.” We cannot say that we exist because “we exist and do not exist at the same time.” The only truth is that we change. In fact, sometimes things seem stable to us, but this stability is a delusion. There are no things that have stable characteristics, there is only becoming. This theory of universal variability, "universal variability" is the most famous view of Heraclitus, which is sometimes called Heraclitism, but this is only part of his philosophy.

3. Relativity of a thing. In the relentless change of things, the line between contradictions is blurred. There is no clearly defined border anywhere; there is always a long transition, for example, between day and night, youth and old age. Apparently, as Heraclitus suggests, day and night are basically the same, just like youth and old age, like sleep and reality, death and life, good and evil; all other characteristics, like these, are relative. Conviction in the variability and duration of phenomena led Heraclitus to relativism. Observing that nothing that exists has stable and absolute characteristics, but, on the contrary, these characteristics are always changing and there is a transition from contradiction to contradiction: from wakefulness to sleep, from youth to old age, from life to death. The nature of things is so amazing that contradictions become their basis. A theory that denied the presence of stable and independent factors in nature arose only during this period among philosophers. For the further development of philosophy, it served as a kind of ferment and encouraged thinkers to search - in contrast to it - for that in the world that is unchangeable and stable.

The initial positions of the Ionians lost their meaning in the philosophy of Heraclitus. There was no longer any talk about the beginning of the world, since the world exists and is eternally changing: “Not a single god or a single person created the Universe, but it is and will always be a living fire.” We could no longer talk about stable elements of nature, because nothing is permanent. The air of Anaximenes was understood as a constant component, and the fire of Heraclitus as a variable. It was not an element of nature, it was a moment of eternal change, as if balancing all things: fire turns into them, and they into fire, “just as goods are exchanged for gold, and gold for goods.” Eternally living fire was given an exceptional place in the philosophy of Heraclitus because, with its lightness and constantly changing nature, it unusually capaciously reproduced the type and image of changing reality.

4. The intelligence of the world. For Heraclitus, everything was changeable, which is why for him there was something stable - changeability. Changeability is a stable characteristic of nature. Even more than that: the order in which changes occur is stable. “Fire kindles according to measure and goes out according to measure.” Single Law rules all changes, rules both man and the world. Man is controlled intelligence(logos), hence the assumption that the Universe should be governed by reason. Reason is not an exclusively human ability, but a cosmic force in which man is also involved.

Heraclitus appears to have been the first philosopher to speak of intelligence at work in the universe. The mind that he meant is as eternal as the world, and is its integral element, constituting its most perfect, divine element. The thought that the world reasonable(together with the idea of ​​its changeability), was the second important idea that Heraclitus introduced into philosophy. Why did he actually do this? This happened because Heraclitus, as he himself said, “was looking for himself”; he was the first philosopher who reflected on himself, and not just on nature, and he understood nature by analogy with his own experiences.

The rationality of the world embraces its variability and the contradictions contained in it. Heraclitus was not afraid of these contradictions, differences, dissonances in the world, as the Eleatics of his time did. He saw that contradictions complement each other and without them reality is impossible. In fact, discord and dispute predominate everywhere in the world, “war is the father and king of everything,” but the mind that governs the world acts in such a way that “various contradictory factors are connected, and from them the most beautiful harmony arises.” In fact, some disharmony appears in phenomena, but “the harmony is hidden more deeply, under the veil of appearances.”

5. Epistemological and ethical reasoning. Heraclitus was the first philosopher to show humanitarian interests. He left behind epistemological and ethical reasoning. He reasoned, reflected on his own research work, realized for himself its character, means and goals. In comparison, the Ionians seem naive. Heraclitus was critical of sensory knowledge. He argued: “The eyes and ears of people who have the soul of barbarians are bad witnesses.” This is apparently the oldest critique of knowledge that has been undertaken in European philosophy.

His ethical aphorisms differed in spirit from the sayings of the seven sages. They manifest the cult of the law, but at the same time the cult of a higher personality. “One is worth as much as ten thousand, if it is the best.” He recognized, one might say, two types of morality: ordinary and higher, the morality of the crowd and the morality of the sage. The crowd prefers health to illness, warmth to cold, joy to grief and is offended when they are sick, when it is cold and boring. The sage knows that contradictions are necessary, that evil makes good acceptable, and hunger emphasizes the value of an abundance of food. This sense of contradictions reigning everywhere was a common motif in the physics and ethics of Heraclitus.

The meaning of Heraclitus. Heraclitus in philosophy immortalized himself with two theories: 1) universal change, with which the theory of universal relativity was associated, 2) the rationality of the world (logos, cosmic reason). Actually, he was the one who directed his thinking towards humanistic problems and introduced the introspective factor into philosophy.

Followers. Heraclitus' student was Cratylus, who adhered to variabilityism in its even more radical form, and Cratylus' listener was Plato. Heraclitus indirectly influenced subsequent generations. Plato applied variabilityism to the real (and only the real) world; relativism and humanistic interests were developed by the sophists, especially Protagoras; The theory of fire and cosmic intelligence was revived by the Stoics.

Chapter IV. HERACLITUS Currently, two opposing points of view regarding the Greeks are widespread. Proponents of one point of view - practically universally accepted from the Renaissance to the present day - look at the Greeks with almost superstitious reverence, as