Héraclite d\' Éphèse

Biography

Héraclite was born with Éphèse in second half of sixth century BC, towards 544 - 541 av. J. - C. (it was forty years old in the 69e Olympiade, 504 - 501 av. J. - C., according to Diogène Laërce, IX, 1). According to Aristote, he would have died at the 60 years age, therefore towards 480 av. J. - C. (according to D.L., VIII, 52, in condition, however, of not admitting the substitution of “Héraclite” by “Héraclide”). Letters apocryphal books designate it as a contemporary of Darius I {{er}}; this last would have invited Héraclite at its court, but the philosopher refused the invitation. Other sources locate its flowering in the 80e or the 81e Olympiade; indeed, according to Strabon, Hermodore, Éphésien which had helped the Roman décemvirs for the clothes industry of the XII Tables, was a friend of Héraclite. Héraclite would thus have been born after 510 av. J. - C., and died around 450 av. J. - C. But this last dating is not generally retained, because the difference in age would be enough to solve this contradiction.

There is on the other hand unanimity of old on its birthplace, Éphèse. It was wire of Bloson (or Blyson) or, according to other traditions, of Hérakôn (D.L, IX, 1). This last name was perhaps does that of his/her grandfather of it.

Héraclite resulted from a famous and sacerdotal family. It renonça in favor of his/her brother to the privileges which the statute of descendant of Codros gave him, king of Athens, whose son, Androclès, founded Éphèse. Among these distinctions, one counted the honorary function of King or the presidency of the ceremonies of Déméter. He fought against the democratic of his city, and was hardly appreciated of its fellow-citizens. His/her friend Hermodore was banished city:

“Éphésiens deserve that all those which have age of man die, that the children lose their fatherland, them which drove out Hermodore, the best of them, while saying: “That among us there is no the best; if there is one of them, that it will live elsewhere”. ”
(Fragment 121, Diogène Laërce, IX, 2)

Itself seems to be persecuted for Athéisme (but this assertion is late and one finds it in authors Christian S, Justin of Nablus and Athénagore).

Well before the hour, it would have applied to the letter the " Know, you-même" , because, he said, “it is necessary to study oneself and all to learn by oneself”. We do not know anything of its Masters besides; the old ones did not know where to locate it in the series of the Philosophe S. It thus seems to have been an autodidact. Nevertheless, some make of it a disciple of Xénophane or Hippase, and Hippolyte, arranges it among the Pythagoricien S.

The anecdotes on its death are contradictory. Hermit, it left food in the Montagne S, living of Plante S; but, being falls ill he died of Hydropisie, others say that he died later of another disease.

Current allegations

It is one of rare the Présocratiques of which we knew a little the character, of mood melancholic person, without being able truly to distinguish the Légende from the Vérité. Indeed, this author tries to express a truth which hustles the rational thought, because for him the logic of the thought cannot reach the epicentre philosophy. For some of its commentators, that involves a frustration which cannot be acknowledged. Not being able to deny the relevance of work, to discredit it and relegate it to the Obscurantism, its author is described as:

Scorning and irritable:

“Héraclite called plays of child the thoughts of the men”. When this sentence is taken with the first degree, it expresses only the Mépris and Héraclite would be a poor good Pédagogue which would not have at all marked the history. By this sentence Héraclite briefly recalls the powerful seduction which the speech society man can exert, shining, which by doing this, always remains with the variation of the essential truth that philosophy proposes.

Misanthropist:

According to many authors, he cried of very when Démocrite laughed at all. Lucien de Samosate in made to a portrait in the Sects with the auction (14):

“ the merchant : And you, my expensive, why do you cry, because I prefer to cause with you?
Héraclite : I look at all the human things, foreign O, like sad and lamentable, and anything which is not subjected there to the destiny: for this reason I take them in pity, why I cry. The present seems to me well little of thing, the afflicting future: I see the flashover and the ruin of the universe: I groaned on the instability of the things; all floats there as in a beverage in mixture; amalgamates pleasure and of sorrow, science and ignorance, size and smallness: the top and bottom merge and alternate there in the play of the century.

If one takes the trouble to decipher the speech of the philosopher, far from being scorning, described on the contrary the drift of humanity through his blind violence that it is soldier, political, financial. He denounces the perpetuation of the suffering, in a confusion where côtoie indistinctly best and the worst, medical discoveries and atrocities of the war, and any other form of injustice which is repeated through the centuries.

Scorning the scholarship:

πολυμαθίη νόον (ἔχειν) οὐ διδάσκει• Ἡσίοδον γὰρ ἂν ἐδίδαξε καὶ Πυθαγόρην αὖτις τε Ξενοφάνεά (τε) καὶ Ἑκαταῖον.
“The polymathy does not teach the intelligence; she had taught Pythagore, like Xénophane and Hécatée. ”
(Fragment 40, Diogène Laërce, IX, 1)

Could Héraclite have confused the conceptual intelligence of the well-read man, of the scholar, with the intelligence of the philosopher vis-a-vis the mysteries of the life? That seems not very probable.

Curiously sudden Héraclite of the centuries during the reputation of obscure, whereas it was perhaps translated according to a context too judéo-chétien, without the knowledge it describes its to become in this maxim: It is not what think the majority of those that one meets; they learn, but do not know, though they appear it separately them. .

For the defense of Héraclite, the reference to Nietzsche is recommended. See work quoted in the bibliography.

Of nature

It is generally admitted that Héraclite wrote one and single book of which there remain to us only some fragments (more than one hundred), although according to the Souda , “it wrote many works, in a poetic style. Perhaps” But this last indication returns to the various books of the same work of Héraclite.

This book was written into Ionian, and had as a title Περὶ φύσεως / Perì phýseôs . One also knows it under the title of Mousai , the Muses (title which seems to come from Plato). We also have letters apocryphal books of Héraclite.

Characters of this work

Héraclite would have deposited its work on the furnace bridge of Artémis. Is it necessary to see a gesture of a desperate generosity there? Because located at the border between the civilized world and the wild world, Artémis could thus have made good use, it which governs the initiation of small men and animals and accompanies them until the threshold by the adult life. This book completely misunderstood and forgotten by the history, was worth indeed the nickname of “Héraclite to him the Obscure one”, because one judged the comprehension of his difficult Pensée because of a poetic writing , abundance of the paradoxical formulas, to what the absence of any punctuation was added, a chopped and detached style. Strange fate reserved for this book of which the density would raise it with the row of world works the such CAT-Te-King or the Yoga Sutras, and who remains victim of the lapse of memory and comments as not very eulogistic as not very verifiable. Aristote complains as follows:

“It is a whole work to punctuate Héraclite, because it is difficult to see whether the word is attached to what precedes or what follows. For example at the beginning of its work, he says: the Logos / what is / always / the men are unable to include/understand it . It is impossible to see to what always is attached, when one punctuates. ”
( Rhetoric , III, V, 1407 B 11)

Another interpretation can be deciphered as follows:

the Logos : the divine order,

what is always : what existed always and will exist always,

the men are unable to include/understand it : the man monopolized by his material concerns is hardly concerned with it.

This style seemed to better be appropriate for the depth of its thought; and, indeed, it compares its speeches with the remarks serious and inspired of the Sybille and with oracles of the god of Delphes. This oracular tone was very often badly perceived, because when the reader tries hard of it, it finds the darkness not there, but contrary to multiple possible interpretations bringing the reader to the major direction of philosophy.

Composition of the Of nature

According to Diogène Laërce (IX, 5), the work of Héraclite was composed of three parts: On the whole ( Perished tou pantos ), On the Political and On the Theology . The fragments seem to come essentially from the first part, and it seems impossible to order them according to an unspecified plan.

This book had much success and was worth disciples to him whom one names Héraclitiens.

Doctrines

The thought of Héraclite is the extreme opposite of the eleatism. Indeed, for Parménide, the unit of the to be makes impossible the deduction of becoming and the multiplicity; for Héraclite, on the contrary, the being is eternally in becoming. Héraclite denies the being parménidien thus.

The things do not have consistency, and all is driven unceasingly: null thing does not remain what it is, and any master key in its opposite.

“With those which go down in the same rivers always occur of others and other water. ”
(Fragment 12, Arius Didyme in Eusèbe de Césarée, evangelic Preparation , XV, 20,2)

All becomes all, all is all. What saw dies, which is Mort becomes alive: the current of the generation and dead never stops. What is visible becomes invisible, which is invisible becomes visible; the Day and the Nuit are only one and even thing; there is no difference between what is useful and what is harmful; the top does not differ from bottom, the beginning does not differ from the end:

“Unite what is complete and what is not it, which agrees and what discord, which is in harmony and dissension; of all things one and one, all things. ”
(Fragment 10, Pseudo Aristote, Treated World , 5. 396b7)

Nothing is thus rather this that, but all becomes it. The things are never completed, but are continuously created by the force S which run out in the Phénomène S. the things are assemblies of contrary forces, and the world is a mixture which must unceasingly be stirred up so that they appear there:

Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι
“The war (confrontation) is father of all (...)”
(Fragment 53, Hippolyte, Refutation of all the heresies , IX, 9,4)

Logos

εἶναι γὰρ ἓν τὸ σοφόν, ἐπίστασθαι γνώμην, ὁτέη ἐκυϐέρνησε πάντα διὰ πάντων.
“II has only one wise thing there, it is to know the thought which can all control everywhere. ”
(Fragment 41, Diogène Laërce, IX, 1)

This knowledge is wisdom, and it consists in following one:

νόμος καὶ βουλῇ πείθεσθαι ἑνός.
“The law and the sentence are to obey the one. ”
(Fragment 33, Clement of Alexandria, Stromates , V, 116)

ἓν τὸ σοφὸν μοῦνον λέγεσθαι οὐκ ἐθέλει καὶ ἐθέλει Ζηνὸς ὄνομα.
“One, which only is wise, wants and does not want to be called name of Zeus. ”
(Fragment 32, Clement of Alexandria, Stromates , V, 116)

But, although the logos is common to all the men, the latter are unaware of it as if they had each one a clean intelligence (Fragment 2):

(τοῦ δὲ) λόγου τοῦδ' ἐόντος (ἀεὶ) ἀξύνετοι γίγνονται ἄνθρωποι καὶ πρόσθεν ἢ ἀκοῦσαι καὶ ἀκούσαντες τὸ πρῶτον· γινομένων γὰρ (πάντων) κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε ἀπείροισιν ἐοίκασι, πειρώμενοι καὶ ἐπέων καὶ ἔργων τοιούτων, ὁκοίων ἐγὼ διηγεῦμαι διαιρέων ἕκαστον κατὰ φύσιν καὶ φράζων ὅκως ἔχει. τοὺς δὲ ἄλλους ἀνθρώπους λανθάνει ὁκόσα ἐγερθέντες ποιοῦσιν, ὅκωσπερ ὁκόσα εὕδοντες ἐπιλανθάνοντα.
“This verb, which is true, is always misunderstood men, either before they hear it, or whereas they hear it for the first time. Though all things are done according to this verb, they do not seem to have any experience of words and of facts such as I expose them, distinguishing their nature and saying as they are. But the other men do not realize more the EC what they do being waked up, which they do not remember what they made while sleeping. ”
(Fragment 1, Sextus Empiricus, Against the mathematicians , VII, 133)

Cosmology

The Feu is the principle of all things. It is the reality of the movement, and the state first and last of cosmos through its cycles:

κόσμον (τόνδε), τὸν αὐτὸν ἁπάντων, οὔτε τις θεῶν, οὔτε ἀνθρώπων ἐποίησεν, ἀλλ' ἦν ἀεὶ καὶ ἔστιν καὶ ἔσται πῦρ ἀείζωον, ἁπτόμενον μέτρα καὶ ἀποσϐεννύμενον μέτρα.
“This world always was and it is and it will be an always alive fire, feeding with measurement and dying out with measurement. ”
(Fragment 30, Clement of Alexandria, Stromates , V, 105)

This fire is a law from which one cannot escape: “Which will hide fire which does not lie down? ”

This fire changes while rarefying or while becoming denser, following periodic fluctuations which follow the destiny. Thus the world is he eternal, but creates and destroys according to an eternal recurrence. This part of its Cosmogonie will be found at the Stoïciens. This fire is also the logos universal, the Raison common to all whose harmony is the result of the tensions and of the oppositions which constitute reality. To become itself is explained thus for him by the transformation of the things into their opposite and by the fight of the opposite elements. This knowledge of the logos is for him all wisdom.

These theses will be fought by almost all the dogmatic Philosophe S, because they deny the principle of identity and abolish the reasoning purely Logique. Plato takes again for example the thesis héraclitéenne of a perpetual flow, but its Théorie adds to it Ideas.

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