Heraclitus: A Philosopher for Today

One of the more well-known philosophers of Greek antiquity was Heracleitus. What is not so well known is his profound influence on Western thought through the many centuries that followed.

Born in the sixth century BCE in Ephesus, now part of modern Turkey, Heracleitus wrote only one work, which has come down to us in 130 fragments.

He is said to have been arrogant, depressed, misanthropic, and obscure. His primary thoughts included the unity of opposites and the concept of persistent change. Heracleitus has often been associated with the metaphor of the flowing river:

“You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are ever flowing on to you; we are, and we are not.”

Not unlike the Chinese philosopher Lao Tze, he went off by himself to contemplate and conceptualize the one idea that could explain all things. His answer was Fire, and lest you think he was being overly simplistic, he wrote:

“This world … was made neither by a god nor by man, but it ever was, and is, and shall be, ever-living fire, in measures being kindled and in measures going out.”

To him, everything is a form of Eternal Fire as it passes on its “downward path” through various condensations from air to solid or on its “upward path” from solid to air. Because of this constant movement, nothing is static, and no condition persists unaltered even for the merest moment.

He also put forward the harmony of strife:

“Good and bad are the same; goodness and badness are one.”

“Life and death are the same; so are waking and sleeping, youth and age.”

All are stages in the ever-changing fire, with each opposite necessary to the existence of the other. Thus, there is the unity and harmony of opposites.

To Heracleitus, it is the tension of opposites that produces harmony.

“From things that differ comes the fairest attunement.”

His influence was widespread. The idea of divine fire passed first to stoicism and then to Christianity in the form of the final conflagration of the Last Judgment. His concept of the logos, or reason in nature, became the divine word of the Holy Spirit and then the underlying concept behind the natural laws of what later became science.

To me, his most important thought was that strife, tension, and opposites, rather than being reasons for concern, are necessary, like the opposing pegs that hold the tension of a guitar string. Once the string is plucked, it creates a sound, that when plucked with others, create a harmony. When they are played one after the other, they become a song and when the songs are all combined, they create the symphony that is life—an impossibility without the tension and competition of opposites to begin with.

Source: Durant, W. (1939) Part II, The Life of Greece. In The Story of Civilization. New York, NY: Simon and Schuster