Heraclitus: The Philosopher of Fire

            I have a question, who are the philosophers that you know? Okay, so since you know who and what philosophers are, Does anyone know Heraclitus? It is normal that no one knows him; yet, because if you search the name “Heraclitus” and read the articles, websites, links whatsoever; he is not well-known, those philosophers you mentioned earlier are well-known philosophers. So I’m Greg and today I’ll be introducing you to one of the Western Philosophers of the past centuries, Heraclitus.

            Heraclitus was a Greek philosopher of the late 6th century B.C.E.; he lived in Ephesus, which was not far from Miletus, the birthplace of philosophy. We know nothing about Heraclitus; the web says that Heraclitus’ biological information is based only on his statements, his sayings, ancient biographies; also some philosophers like Plato thought he was after Parmenides, which was more likely before Parmenides, for he mentioned a lot of names of philosophers that were far beyond Parmenides’ timeline. On the other hand, Parmenides mentioned Heraclitus’ words in some of his poems and works. Therefore, that is the reason why a lot of people don’t know him much, and so do I. Now to know more about him, let us proceed to his philosophies.

            Heraclitus has a lot of philosophies and theories, so I chose to pick the ones that fit to each other: The Doctrine of Flux and The Unity of Opposites. First is the Doctrine of Flux, which has three views: (1) everything is constantly changing (2) opposite things are identical, and (3) everything is and is not at the same time. In his saying “On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow”, there is this antithesis between same and other. The sentence says that different waters flow in rivers staying the same. In other words, though the waters are always changing, the rivers stay the same. Indeed, it must be precisely because the waters are always changing that there are rivers at all, rather than lakes or ponds. The message is that rivers can stay the same over time even though, or indeed because, the waters change. The point, then, is not that everything is changing, but that the fact that some things change makes possible the continued existence of other things. The next one is the Unity of Opposites, which he does believe in some kind of unity of opposites. For instance, "God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger . . .” in the statement, this is almost the same with the first philosophy, but it differs in the point that these opposites are united. Thus, Heraclitus does not hold Universal Flux, but recognizes a law-like flux of elements; and he does not hold the Identity of Opposites, but the Transformational Equivalence of Opposites.

            Heraclitus is not that famous in our generation like the other philosophers; he only differs in beliefs and theories, just like any philosopher. He had these three (3) views about his philosophies, first, he proposes that everything is constantly changing; Second, opposite things are identical, which supports the third view, that  everything is and is not at the same time. Also, his philosophies are all focused to one thing, Change. The first one, The Doctrine of Flux, focuses on change and motion and everything is like fire always changing and evolving to a new phase. The second one, Unity of Opposites, is about how things are the same and not the same at the same time.

            So before I end this I would like to clarify things, change is not how we differ from what we look before, what we are right now. I hope everyone understood my point. Thank you.