THE BEGINNING OF KNOWLEDGE Hans Georg Gadamer

the beginning of knowledge Hans George

gadamer translated by Rod Colman

contents one on the tradition of

heraclitus 21 two heraclitus studies

33 three ancient atomic theory 82 four

Plato and presocratic cosmology

102 five Greek philosophy and modern

thought

109 six Natural Science and the concept

of nature

127 publication history

141 index author's preface thanks to the

work of Professor Victorio dezar and Dr

Hakim Schult my 1988 Naples lectures

delivered in Italian and published in

1993 under the title elenio Delta

philosophia ocidental have since

appeared in German as dur and fonger

philosophic ream

19971 we all know or think we know that

the history of philosophy begins with

thales of mtis and we justifiably cite

Aristotle metaphysics a as our Authority

and thanks to schayer Macker and Hegel

ever since the German Romantic Period we

have called these beginnings of

philosophy presocratic we know however

that what has been handed down to us as

the earliest philosophy are really only

quotations or fragments of texts in my

Naples lectures I wanted to show that

but we can only speak of this fragmented

presocratic tradition if we keep in mind

the first philosophical texts that were

actually received these texts are mainly

a question of the platonic dialogues on

the one hand and the enormous mass of

Aristotle's writings the Corpus arist

Lum on the other nevertheless there is

one exception among these fragments of

the tradition namely the largely

coherent text of the beginning of parmen

dactic poem we owe this text to a

reliable transcription by a great

scholar from the last generation of

ancient Greek Scholars an important

member of the academy in Athens by the

name of

simplicius he lived shortly before the

dissolution of the Plato's Academy and

left behind a series of commentaries the

most eminent of which were on

Aristotle's physics centuries later

Athens is supposed to have fallen victim

to the advance of Islam at the hands of

which even the Eastern Roman Empire of

Byzantium found its end

nevertheless this glorious locus of

Greek thinking signified a very

important point of release for the

establishment of Italian humanism and

the Advent of the

Renaissance in truth humanism and above

all our tradition of Greek culture had

their earliest Beginnings in Antiquity

with the Rise of Rome after the

Victorious repulsion of the Punic threat

the circle of cpio inaugurated a new

direction for Roman society and a new

education for its youth patterned on the

Greek model we need only recall the

works of Cicero in the time of the

Caesars Greek culture even experienced

such a diffusion and consolidation of

all things Greek that generally speaking

one spoke Greek exclusively in the

courts of the Roman Caesars we owe this

fact to that most brilliant thinker of

this helenistic epic plot enus whose

students then successfully perpetuated

this Heritage for hundreds of years

within an enduring Roman Empire above

all

however we owe the fact that Greek

culture was transmitted to modernity to

the later expansion of the Christian

church and the culture that developed

from it through the disciplined work of

the monks it is still fateful and

decisive that only the first part the

introductory part of parmen dactic poem

came to us along these paths in reality

however in his transcription of the text

which was found in Athens simplicius

follows right along with the underlying

fact that that in his physics Aristotle

generally paid attention only to this

introductory piece of the dactic poem

which is all that has survived the

entire text was composed in hexamers the

classic poetic language of Homer the

introductory verses of this earliest

surviving peace show parids The Thinker

to be a great writer who through the

mouth of a goddess at once announces and

grounds the great truth of being the

complete nothingness of the nothing the

far more extensive part of the dactic

poem which we do not have gave evidence

of contemporary cosmology and astronomy

but like the individual fragments it

probably also dealt with the experience

of the world that is disclosed to human

beings apparently to follow the

instruction of the Goddess would be to

reject the nothingness of the nothing

she probably depicted the changing

phenomena of nature with its wonderful

rhythmic riddle of day and night

manifestation and obscurity we can

assume that the subsequent image of the

world developed by parids was surpassed

in the meantime by the progress achieved

by science and this is why from the

perspectives of Plato and Aristotle it

was to be neglected given that lectures

tend to break off when time runs out it

is thus a happy coincidence that my

little book on the beginning of

philosophy a book based on a series of

Italian lectures breaks off precisely at

this point with

parids now there was

however another contemporary of parids

from whom we admittedly possess no

coherent text but for whom we

nevertheless possess an enormous wealth

of profound quotations that were

distributed widely in helenistic times

in the form of a book I am referring to

heraclitus the dark one as he is often

called in the tradition the question of

how the two great contemporaries

parmenas and heraclitus behaved toward

each other has been debated in the

scholarship for centuries in the middle

of the 19th century philologists thought

they had answered this question

according to them parity's dactic poem

presented a response to the doctrine of

flux in herac liten thinking a Doctrine

which parids critically rejected until

relatively recently this view has

remained decisive for their ordering in

the additions of the presocratic

Carl reinhardt's 1916 book changed the

situation ever since then we no long

longer dare to assert any relationship

at all between parids and

heraclitus as the tradition makes

unequivocally clear heraclitus came from

an aristocratic family in Ephesus a city

on the coast of Asia Minor that

precisely at this period was exposed to

the pressure of the Persian expansion

which it would not withstand in the long

run heraclitus is explicitly laed for

warning of the impending Persian

Invasion we are really standing at a

turning point in the culture Al history

of the entire West we find ourselves in

the so-called Colonial period a period

in which for example the Greeks settled

the southern Italian Peninsula but more

importantly a period that also impressed

a Greek character upon Sicily and the

coastal lands of the

Mediterranean to this period also

belonged the reestablishment of Elia

where parids lived and thanks to the

doctrine he received from xenophanes

developed the school that we call the

elatic

it is evident that the colonial

expansion of Greece to the entire

Mediterranean area and its particular

concentration in Sicily and southern

Italy was to be ascribed above all to

the ever more strongly developing

Persian pressure on the Ean a new

upsurge of intellectual culture

particularly in Athens began only after

the Victorious defense of the Greek

mother country in the so-called Persian

Wars we would certainly like to know how

the intellectual development of the

whole of Greek culture between the new

Colonial world and the mother country

really took shape but we learn nothing

at all about it from

heraclitus the self-evident way in which

Scholars later posed the question of the

relationship of the two thinkers is

indeed strange we only have to recall

that parmen dactic poem was written in

hexameters whereas the so-called book of

heraclitus the exact beginning of which

we happen to know because it is quoted

in Aristotle contains a wealth of

profound and Artful AFF RMS and in any

case offers a completely different Pros

style they are not so much fragments as

citations of famous and widely known

epigrammatic sayings such sayings hardly

constituted a coherent work of Pros one

might rather suspect that the masterful

execution of this style which even we

have to admire is of a completely

different origin from the epic art form

of Homer and Hesed whether it is at all

meaningful to isolate thematic groups

from out of the transmitted citations

and to regard the whole as one prosaic

text that we can understand albeit in a

fragmentary way is extremely

questionable the most important

objection to this is the fact that

collections of aphorisms were part of

the literature of the time and they too

exhibited thematic groupings yo Hall's

share in his essay heraclitus between

tradition and Enlightenment to observed

no doubt correctly that heraclitus

actually deposit his own manuscript in

the temple of Ephesus and that he never

as was otherwise usual with authors read

his own text publicly it is certainly

also correct that heraclitus never

wished to be the founder of a school we

also detect in his writing style a new

sort of rhetoric one that was already

intended for reading and not for

recitation a style that lent itself all

the more to being quoted I dare say that

the book known in stoic times much less

the purported chapter divisions from the

late helenistic period can hardly date

back to heraclitus himself Hall's share

like KH 3 is nevertheless on the right

path in so far as they both suspect in

the tradition of heraclitus less a

competition between textbooks than a new

form of

literature both of their conclusions

strengthen my conviction that heraclitus

is far younger than xenophanes and

parids the so-called

elatic in essence of course heraclitus

himself was was a figure of the

Enlightenment a thinker with no

sophistic

theatricality both authors see correctly

what I have advocated for a long time

that heraclitus work did not belong in

the lists of the cosmogony and did not

follow Hesed was cosmology really of

much interest to him at all or was it

rather the whole of human SLP political

Life One wonders heraclitus has a new

conception of psyche and/ AOS and even

The Poets know nothing like it he is

after all very much in search of himself

moreover it is quite significant that

heraclitus is named and quoted with

particular reverence in the platonic

dialogues whereas Aristotle certainly

appears familiar with heraclitus but

derives nothing of particular interest

from him one can understand how

heraclitus pointed way of writing might

not be suited to Aristotle the logician

in any case the paradoxical mode of

contradictory thinking that

characterizes heraclitus aphorisms could

be no great help for Aristotle's physics

we can clarify this with a specific

example I would like to use the concept

of the Soul psyche to illustrate the

fact that the cosmological tradition of

the malan school found itself greatly

removed from heraclitus thinking for the

milans the soul was the exhalation of

the breath for heraclitus on the other

hand the soul is the great mystery of

the unfathomable limitlessness within

which the thinking Soul moves not just

in the case heraclitus but also in

comperable cases the form of The Gnome

the aphorism is stamped with a peculiar

basic attitude Anyone Who quotes

heraclitus does not have cosmology in

mind once the later Victorious

empedoclean doctrine of the four

elements underlies the style of

Aristotle one has a very hard time with

fire with his ingenious hypothesis about

the Stars anaximander had already

explained the consuming and

uncontainable destructive force of Fire

by means of holes in the firmament but

just as the soul in heraclitus indicates

a new dimension of interiority wherever

there is heat according to heraclitus

there is fire thus there is not just

fire in the heavens but everywhere

wherever the heat of life is also we

should not be so ready as philology has

been until recently to push aside

later report the one in which heraclitus

book had nothing at all to do with

nature but rather with the polls and

politics we can tell from this example

how in the development of the

presocratic tradition Aristotle's

physics has insinuated itself again and

again into the conduct of the

scholarship we will have to ask

ourselves how not just heraclitus but

parid as well both perform their

functions in facilitating the beginnings

of Greek

philosophizing to that and let us

investigate the work of these two the

platonic dialogue parids gives us a

clear reference it is Zeno who opens the

conversation with the young Socrates at

this point and thereby clears a path to

the mathematical groundwork of the

pythagoreans one anticipates how the

theory of atams will announce itself in

the end indeed they keep strictly to the

nothingness of the nothing and the

unchangeability of being for all

appearances and effects move the unch

aable atoms the true being of parids

about which the goddess teaches him is

thus confirmed in the end in the

multiplicity of its

appearances in this kind of corpuscular

Theory neither originating nor passing

away is burdened with the non-thought of

nothingness the massive counter thesis

that one sees as the genuine truth in

heraclitus seems more difficult the

thesis that everything changes

constantly and that the one world has

its true being in the Stream in which

everything flows we can nevertheless

imagine that the true being of parids

and his goddess is confirmed by the

mystery of death and birth which eludes

all attempts to think it admittedly in

reading the herac litan sayings we

certainly cannot follow him into the

darkness every time but we always detect

the Deep mystery of the one the mystery

of the one/ being for it is not without

reason that I preface a work on the

tradition of heraclitus with a

consideration of heraclitus style in a

striking way it seems to me to confirm

that opposites Belong Together

irresolvable 300 years after Christ

prior to the predominance of the idea of

the sameness of what is different

hippitus dares a bold anachronism on the

basis of his Christian Heritage that is

supposed to serve the understanding of

the mystery of the Trinity I believe I

have shown that for application to the

Trinity hippitus proceeded from such a

simple truth as heraclitus idea that the

father who begets a son makes himself

into the father at the same time when

plugged into dialectical epigrammatic

sayings these become intellectual

Temptations they offer themselves again

and again as formulas for particular

possibilities we might not therefore be

so surprised to find the inclusion of

atomic theory what is new and essential

is that it is the language itself that

indicates the unity of opposites we

detect how a new Sovereign domain is

opened up here for the SL agos one that

does not allow itself to be portrayed in

hexameters Zeno is presented in the

parids as someone who cannot separate

himself from the one that parid insists

upon Socrates insistence on the idos the

idea is seen no differently as if by the

exclusion of the many the one of being

would retain its meaning without the

many the famous xenian paradoxes are the

classic example of this self-fulfilling

prophecy it is like a new imperative to

recognize and hold fast to the unity in

that which changes itself this turns all

of the herac liten propositions into one

truth of unfathomable depth we can

understand that the power of the logos

has always already comprehended what is

contradictory as a Unity which means

that precisely in the differentiation of

occurrences not change but abiding being

justifies its application to heraclitus

and a distinction as heraclion just as

the truth of the idea is articulated in

Plato's Theus and taught in the sophist

a lecture held before the Academia Del

Lin in Rome forms the conclusion of this

volume it is our task to point out again

and again that our scientific culture

owes its proficiency to the Vigilant

accompaniment of the Enlightenment and

in a great Ark from the beginning of

philosophy on to be reminded again and

again of the limits that are placed on

the knowledge and ability of humanity it

is the arc from the atomic theory of

democratus past Galileo up to the Limit

experiences of our knowledge and its

application Hans George gadamer

heidleberg

1998 19 1 on the tradition of

heraclitus aigal the man who was

convinced that there was not a single

idea in heraclitus propositions that he

had not absorbed into his own logic was

not alone in being profoundly drawn to

heraclitus indeed the Oracle like

paradoxes handed down from heraclitus

hold a special

Fascination variations on one and the

same idea variations on the ideas of the

one and the same which in their

difference their tension their

oppositionality their consequences and

their change are the sole true thing the

logos of heraclitus these appear as the

oracular utterances of what Hegel at the

end of the western metaphysical

tradition called the

speculative ever since then The Nearness

of heraclitus is felt wherever

philosophical questions are set into

motion anyone who has ever been a guest

in hager's Hut in tat naber recalls the

saying scratched into a piece of bark

and placed above the lindle T panta oaki

car Unos lightning steers all fragment

64 these words are like an oracular

pronouncement and a paradox at the same

time for surely this saying does not

refer to that attribute of the lord of

the heavens with which he Thunders his

decisions Down to Earth but rather the

abrupt lightning filed elucidation that

makes everything visible in one stroke

yet in such a way that the darkness

immediately engulfs it again in any

event this may be how haidegger tied his

own questions back into heraclitus

profundity four to haidegger the dark

task of his thinking was not as it was

for Hegel the omnipresence of the self-

knowing spirit that unites within its

sameness in change and the speculative

Unity of opposites but precisely ly that

insoluble unity and duality of revealing

and concealing light and darkness into

which human thinking finds itself

interpolated it lights up in this flash

which most certainly did not as hippitus

thought it did represent the Eternal

fire those of us who owe the movement of

our own attempts at thinking to the

stimulus of hager's thought are overcome

by the same Fascination emanating from

heraclitus and in the same sense the

words of heraclitus which as Socrates

put it require a Delian diver to lift

them from the dark depths to the light

diogenes L

222 stand in a curious tension with the

employment of his words by later figures

at best one can still Trace in Plato

something of the well-honed sharpness of

heraclitus thinking and the compactness

of his propositions as in the sophist

242a where Plato explicitly refers to

the ionic Muses of heraclitus as being

more tension filled than the siil ones

of idals and thus recognizes in

heraclitus words the enactment of the

one and the many of separation and Union

which poses the task for his own

dialectic nevertheless the doxographical

tradition that begins with Aristotle has

read heraclitus Doctrine back into the

context of the older physiologists and

many testimonies are cited to the effect

that heraclitus also endorsed the great

Cosmic order of beings that Aristotle's

interpretation of Fus understood as the

start of Greek thinking now there are

many other sayings handed down under the

name of heraclitus that adapt themselves

more readily to a moralistic tradition

the cosmology of fire which can be

reconstructed from Aristotle is badly

suited to this this is why Antiquity had

already doubted whether heraclitus

writings dealt with nature at all and

not rather with the

poia one but it seems to be his special

distinction that he could be called to

testify for the most diverse interests

however the peculiar difficulty that

heraclitus interpretation holds for us

also has its roots in this from the

technical hermeneutical standpoint this

is a true textbook example of how few

unambiguous points of access such texts

offer for understanding and that nothing

is so untrustworthy as a quotation

ripped out of its

context as is well known heraclitus

doctrine of fire has precipitated along

effective history stretching all the way

from stoic num myology to the Christian

eschatological ideas of global

configration and

hellfires meanwhile this Doctrine has

been further elucidated and by Carl

Reinhardt in particular according to the

model of such philologists as Carl

Reinhardt it is apparently necessary to

First Take the literal sounding

heraclitus citations that we encounter

back into the context of the quoting

author and then based on his interests

determine the meaning he intended only

then can a Second Step succeed which

traces The Faults breaks splits and in

congruities that sometimes open up

within the heraclitus citation and

against the sense intended by the

quoting author these undertakings would

be hopeless if we did not have numerous

sayings from heraclitus that have

apparently been preserved word for word

precisely because of the distinctive

peculiarity of their diction his style

was renowned he seems to have had hardly

any literary models at best we encounter

a comparable tension and clear

definition of expression in the coral

ODS of tragedy which are fond of the

dialectical contraposto two as a poetic

parallel to the dance steps of the

chorus but here in heraclitus we find a

notoriously sententious Pros the

greatest mystery of which was its dir of

words perhaps we can glimpse a certain

initial stage of his style of thought

and speech in the few anaximander

fragments that we possess and which even

attracted the attention of theophrastus

as being particularly ceremonious deals

A9 in any case we have to proceed from a

negative Criterion wherever heraus

speaks plainly and clearly and it has

been occasionally alleged that he can do

this what is most peculiar to him will

barely come to language or at least is

no longer

recognizable for it can hardly be

doubted that some of the sayings

attributed to him oow their provocative

triviality merely to the fact that we do

not know the context from which they

presumably received their their gist

would heraclitus 30 mi from milus really

have proposed the doctrine that the sun

is of the size of a foot fragment 3

whether another received saying I.E

fragment 45 can be Associated so

trivially with a punch line as for

instance Herman Frankle tried to do it

is hard to say but there is more to it

many a received saying has within it a

hidden Harmony that is more striking

than the obvious one we can legitimately

take such sayings as the standard all

these considerations should only serve

to justify why it is a methodologically

allowable undertaking to read heraclitus

citations against the meaning that the

quoting author lends them and reduce

them to a tenseness of form that

eliminates the editing of the quoting

author this has already happened

successfully in some cases but experts

in the tradition like Carl Reinhardt

have pointed out repeatedly that given

the inaccurate most of reference and

quotation that was common in later

Antiquity many a heraclitus saying may

still drift unrecognized in the misty

Waters of the Christian

apologists it is all the more

astonishing however that even to this

day sayings handed down under the name

of heraclitus have not always attracted

the proper attention and effort needed

to distill from them the thoughts and

wording of heraclitus himself so I would

like to dedicate this small contribution

to an attempt at salvaging a new

fragment from hip polius one that the

collections have missed until now not

that it would have remained unknown for

the long list of heraclitus citations

that hippitus places together in his

ninth book and subjects to his

apologetical intent explicitly

distinguishes all the quoted sayings as

punitively herac Lon in the introduction

to this collection of citations which we

read as fragment 50 in deals a series of

oppositional pairs is recounted

presumably to which the subsequent

quotations should then correspond Bond

even fatherson occurs among these

oppositional peers at this point in

deals the list is already regarded as a

Christian addition but a purported

heraclitus saying declaring the unity of

Father and Son actually occurs as the

last quotation in the series it thus

corresponds to a kind of initial stage

of the Incarnation Dogma note

Mano H deos p

proro and genes in hio

Jus

heuu so long as the father did not come

into being can he rightly be named

father however when he condescended to

take becoming upon himself he became the

son of himself and not of someone else

so supposedly what the heric nois

teaches is already in the Heathen

heraclitus it is clear that the sense of

this sentence is Christian but it is

also clear even for from the wording

that a phrase like when he condescended

to take becoming upon himself could

never be

heraclitus even the understanding of the

word becoming in this text is that of a

Christian

platonism it is therefore understandable

that the collections of heraclitus

citations have not taken this quotation

into account what is heraclion about it

and yet our quoting author seems very

sure of his subject matter when he says

yet everyone knows that a according to

heraclitus Father and Son are the same

from where does everyone know this

evidently only from the purported

heraclitus citation that follows at that

point is this pure fiction or as in the

previous series of quotations is there a

real heraclitus saying at the bottom of

it one that expresses this Unity though

surely in a completely different sense I

think we have to consider this seriously

should it not be possible even in this

sentence to strip away the Christian

veneer and recover the words of

heraclitus as always with hermeneutical

problems of this sort one must follow

the First Essential pieces of evidence

that present themselves in this way I

have even had something like a modest

inspiration concerning this quotation at

two points the problematic issue of the

relationship of Father and Son and the

extreme brachy of the son of himself

quite apart from the question of whether

there is anything Christian here or not

if we were to consider what the sameness

of Father and Son could mean at all the

first thing that occurred to us for

heraclitus would probably not be the

unity of family and blood for the

genealogical unity of Father and Son as

it underlies the aristocratic model of

ethics and education or even the

political Unity of a ruling Dynasty

whose autocracy does not restrict itself

to the succession of the Sun as notis

apparently understood it is surely not

what is meant by that great loner acus

the man who claims to place himself

along with his Doctrine over against all

other human beings whatever is to be

rightly attributed to his name must

already be something

unexpected indeed in this case the

relationship of Father and Son lends

itself to a curious alternative

determination the father really only

becomes a father when he becomes the

father of his son could there be

something like this behind the quotation

by hippitus

the use of the word becoming in the

received passage certainly carries

unmistakably platonic

overtones but perhaps this platonic use

of the word was developed from a text

that occurs in a completely different

context one in which Jean thigh and

genus thigh becoming and having been

born are still one and the same indeed

we also say that one becomes a father

and this is also what it means in

hippitus in a different context

629 h a typ haor but the fact that one

becomes a father is at the same time the

consequence of One's Own action what

becomes here is evidently not just that

the generating father generates the son

ho genas peder in the language of Homer

rather he only generates himself as

father in thus generating the son

surprisingly this does occur in the text

when we reduce it to its elements deos

peder proro Genesis which means means a

father can justifiably be called

generated or even a father can

justifiably be addressed as a father

when he has become it if this is

supposed to be the gist of the sentence

then we can also understand quite well

the idea of the final Clause the idea

that in this instance one would be

generated by oneself and not as is added

explanatorily by someone else the father

who makes himself a father is so to

speak his own son and this occurs again

in the text with

heno heu which means the son of himself

this statement implies not only the

inseparability of being father and being

son as is natural to all relational

Concepts but also the sameness of

becoming father and becoming son this

corresponds very well to otherwise

familiar herac lighten oppositions

behind which the unity of the occurrence

has to be thought it also shows its

seems to me the full tness of the

heraclitean tone I would therefore

suspect this to be the heraclitean

wording dios Peter proro Jus heu one is

only rightly then called father when one

has become one and this does not just

mean that he is the generator the son of

himself and not that of another both

sets of parenthesis are merely

explications which I only added in order

to accentuate how paradoxical it is to

read genus expressed by him instead of

ho Genesis perer the other additions

serving the same purpose in the

traditional text of

hippitus we can put forward for this

reconstruction the idea that one could

understand how a Christian platonist

like notis or hippitus who were of

course very well acquainted not only

with the platonic concept of Genesis but

also with the dialectic of the

relational Concepts exploited this

well-honed formulation of heraclitus as

an anticipation of the Christian un of

Father and Son if my reconstruction is

correct hippitus apparently connects

notis monarchism to wh's autos heu and

thereby to the clever Paradox of the

unity of becoming father and becoming

son with which heraclitus carried on his

dialectical game incidentally this line

of argumentation is also handed down

with hippitus outside of all

relationship to heraclitus and belongs

to the ambivalent Trinity speculation of

the early church fathers in the long

Simon citation

68 it is called f APO heu D Ro all day p

e PR and an P certainly no one would

suspect heraclitus here but in our

passage there is no question of guessing

the text is handed down as the words of

heraclitus and the only methodical way

of rehabilitating it is to look for its

herac lien gist after all the Simon

parallel shows us how the alternate

edition of the hypothetical heraclitus

passage predicated on notis monarchism

was as it were in the air apparently

even the introduction to the poos

fragment page 53 alludes to this

Paradox at this point in hippitus the

father of all that has come into being

is called genos aenos disi hour goes the

second phrase is directed toward the

creation the first is directed toward

the Trinity or half of it but the first

phrase cannot be inferred at all from

the subsequent heraclitus citation as

such that the one proves himself to be

the father and the other to be the son

should come about through War so we can

see that having the sameness of Father

and Son constantly in mind suspends

hippitus from his dogmatic bias against

no etus and thus we are again LED

indirectly to the herac lighten

background of the passage we analyzed

above indeed a very different original

color has been exposed from behind the

Christian veneer the unity of generating

and becoming

generated this is entirely in keeping

with the style of hippitus lecture on

the doctrines of

heraclitus hippitus wants to show by

using heraclitus that notis has wrongly

claimed the sameness of Father and Son

to be Christian the quotation is

therefore polemically

motivated but this is precisely why it

is hardly a pure fabrication

on the other hand we need not be

surprised at the total capriciousness of

hippitus through whom in my

reconstruction heraclitus becomes

stylized into a pseudo-christian and

monarchism a similarly palpable

Christian veneer fragment 63 relates a

passage to the resurrection a passage

which again is unequivocally attributed

to

heraclitus the deal crant translation

reads at admittedly remaining quite

uncertain in view of the circumstances

of the transmission before him who is

there however they would arise and

become Watchers of the living and the

dead in the same context as a prior

reference to the world's trial by fire

follows the beautiful proposition

lightning steers all even in this

fragment 63 it does not seem to me all

that difficult to clear away the

Christian veneer Carl Reinhardt created

a good presupposition for this in that

he recognized the doctrine of osis as

stoic Christian and therefore discarded

such statements as fragment 66 for fire

will have approached everything judging

and seizing he capitulated however

before the above cited heraclitus

passage in fragment 63.1 would like to

attempt an interpretation by placing

myself in the conceptual world of

heraclitus there we find sufficient

evidence as in fragments 24 and 25 for

instance but compare 29 also that the

death of the hero in battle and the

exaltation of the fallen in the glory

and memory of the people has a bearing

on this we will not assume that

heraclitus attempted to subordinate

himself to the goals of a political

admonition rather the one lone wise

thing must also stand behind whatever it

was in heroic death and hero worship

that set him thinking I believe it is

what is sudden and unpredictable in the

changing of things that occupies him as

death in batt leads to the exaltation

and glorification of the fallen and

allows death to appear as a higher form

of life of course it is likewise said of

war that it proves one man to be a God

and another a human being it seems to me

that such exaltation in the most literal

sense occurs in our text in the Greek

phrase epot High raises itself in such a

context the idea that one turns into the

Watcher who watches takes on the meaning

that the Fallen one like a caretaker of

the just places all virtue and Glory

before the eyes of the others perhaps

even the Christian sounding phrase over

the living and the dead has a genuine

original sense here these icons of

Bravery stand erected for the survivors

just as they do for all of the Dead upon

whom no Fame attends the Christian echo

of Christ's journey to hell and his

Reign Over the living and the dead could

thus be quite supplementary just as

supplementary and surely as unwarranted

as the identific in the subsequent lines

of lightning with eternal fire it used

to be that if one wanted once again to

scrutinize the procedures of the mystery

Cults in great detail as deals does at

fragment 63 as well as at fragment 26

the fact that heraclitus positioning

himself as The Outsider clearly

criticized all such strange cult

practices fragment 51 would in principle

speak against such an

examination that his language May remind

us of the mystery Cults need not be

disputed but it goes without saying that

the man who ordained himself as the sole

initiate into the hopon could not equate

himself with the initiates of a cult

community in fact unambiguous evidence

teaches us that he posits himself as The

Outsider with respect to the religions

no less sharply than he does with

respect to the so-called sages it has

already been mentioned that heraclitus

doctrine of fire much like the unity of

Father and Son and the supposed

Resurrection found a Christian resonance

that was in this case stoically

mediated here too a stripping away of

the Christian veneer seems possible to

me and one should be wary of completely

rejecting any saying attributed to

heraclitus in this list of hippitus

citations Reinhardt has made it

plausible that heraclitus himself may

have called fire for nimon meaning

reasonable the idea that fire goes

together with brightness dryness finess

facility and thus in the end with

Insight also resonates with other parts

of

heraclitus thus we must look for a

connection between fire and the profound

things that heraclitus says about the

psyche in any case we always have to

consider to what extent an original

herac liten meaning can be guessed at

behind the Christian veneer the

statement panagard to perel hania kai

calps fire will judge and apprehend all

things is of this sort this could

actually be seen as a rational

expression by heraclitus if we were to

translate cryan not with to judge but

rather with to separate and we meant by

this only that fire is capable of

seizing all that is combustible to burn

and of making everything thing else glow

three indeed this would not simply be a

bad illusion to the cosmological problem

that fire is supposed to be an

elementary component of the world order

to think of the devouring flame that

consumes everything and which nothing

resists as a part of the existing order

of the universe is evidently a

particular problem for ancient

cosmology even timus the Pythagorean

finds himself LED toward the subtle

application of a double parallel in

order to hold Fire and Water apart in

the distribution of the elements so that

the world fillian timus

32b for heraclitus the peculiarity of

fire apparently lies in the irresistible

force with which it is able to seize

everything and yet it is Ling according

to measure and going out according to

measure a world order is not possible

without there being limits placed even

on fire as by the Ark of the sun's

course what is it however that allows

the consuming fire to rise to such a

level of expressive value that it can

oppose the Milan cosmological idea of

balance with provocative decisiveness

fragment 31 the milans taught the

transition of air water and Earth into

one another hence the change of

aggregates States but they certainly did

not include fire in this balancing

process as fragment 30 does on the

contrary we see what cosmological

trouble and axim Mander has connecting

the fire of heaven with the World Order

In Spite the consuming spread that is

peculiar to fire he invents that

dividing veence with apertures through

which the glow of fire shines in the

gentle Arc of warming or Illuminating

Heavenly Bodies deals

a12 heraclitus on the other hand dares

to single out fire that which lives

forever straightforwardly as the one

behind all appearances and

transitions this is certainly less

cosmology than it is critique underlying

this is an interest in viewing psyche

and thinking together with fire this can

be Illustrated in two ways first in the

herac lighten Unity of flowing and

standing still that the consuming light

the oil lamp and its standing flame lock

up so well within themselves like the

sameness of the Soul which steams up

from out of the moisture fragment 12

then up to the highest condition the

human being strikes a light in the night

entirely from out of himself fragment

26 according to this the doctrine of

flux and the doctrine of the Soul seem

to belong together in the most intimate

way I do not want to treat the Obscure

fragment 264 here in its entirety rather

I would only like to point out that the

stylistic reconstruction of the sentence

seems to me still very much lacking as

verbose as this proposition sounds

heraclitus certainly was in this

fragment to be later explanatory

additions and I wonder whether

heraclitus did not also expect that when

he said life we would understand death

at the same time six but it is yet

another side of this connection that

makes Fire's cosmological distinction

comprehensible heraclitus certainly saw

fire and heat as one and the same in

principle as did Plato it is fire that

is in us and everything that has heat

the open outbreak of fire is something

quite different only with regard to

appearances and only in the eyes of

layman this is how heraclitus must have

thought of it if this is correct then a

way to make the two-sidedness of heat

fire and Flame fire on the one hand and

of life and Consciousness on the other a

little more understandable seems to

suggest itself to me and once again so

that a reference to heraclitus imposes

itself as an unexpected place it is a

passage in Plato's chids 168 F the

question of the self-relatedness of

knowledge is discernable there hearing

and seeing as well as the movement that

moves itself and all such things may

admittedly have much that is implausible

yet Perhaps not for some even if it

requires a great man to distinguish that

this movement has its dynames within

itself the context of the sentence aims

at the Paradox of a knowledge that knows

nothing but itself as a rule relatedness

is always directed towards something

else for example the bigger toward the

smaller

168c but seeing and hearing also clearly

have something like a relation back to

themselves just as when Aristotle says

with regard to seeing and hearing that

there is a perception of the perception

Dana 3:2 as an initial stage of the

knowledge of knowledge therefore these

two examples are quite ENT it is much

the same with self-movement which is

indeed the secret of life the psyche in

fact this is how Plato in the fadis and

in book 10 of the laws taught this

self-relatedness of the psyche that is

the movement that moves itself this is

also a good connecting link between

Vision hearing and knowledge but in this

list in among the senses and

self-movement and ultimately the

knowledge of knowledge there now

conspicuously stands what I omitted from

the text kotkin the heat that Kindles

heat here seems to have invoked a kind

of self-movement or spontaneous

combustion the phenomenon being

described here is clearly the sudden

flaring up of flames from the heated log

this stands here between the

self-movement of what is living and the

self-relatedness of knowledge now it

also seems to me that this position is

not entirely

insignificant what is astounding about

this phenomenon is it lack of transition

in the light having been ignited

everything has all of a sudden become

completely different fragment 26 hapes

thy as in the appearance of lightning as

in the brightness of self-igniting

thought it was surely not a natural

scientific interest that heraclitus took

in the idea of kindling probably no more

than it was an interest in the

transformations of fire fragment 31 it

was the incomprehensibility of the

mediation transition that sets him think

thinking about this as well as about the

one the transitionless of this

transition from sleep to wakefulness or

from life to death ultimately points

toward the enigmatic experience of

thinking which suddenly awakens and then

sinks again completely Into Darkness

hercus remains a constant challenge for

every kind of thinking men like Hegel n

and haidegger meet this challenge in

fundamentally different ways countless

pages of phological commentary on

heraclitus have been proded Ed but what

was valid for Antiquity still seems

valid today he is still the dark one

there is no single reliable fundamental

perspective that allows us to grasp this

figure shimmering between moralism and

metaphysics nevertheless it seems to me

that two points have not been

sufficiently considered the way that

Plato is related to heraclitus and the

style in which heraclitus constructs his

propositions at the outset I will

delineate the philosophical significance

ass iated with every heraclitus

interpretation and then I will enter

into the hermeneutical problem often in

a phological way what we possess of

heraclitus are isolated citations from

later authors beginning with Plato and

running through the whole of later

Antiquity in addition to these later

citations with heraclitus there is also

the question of the aphoristic

propositions that were already famous in

Antiquity because of their darkness and

their

profundity Socrates is supposed to have

said that what he understood of them was

Splendid he trusted therefore that the

many propositions that he had not

understood were equally Splendid

admittedly it would take a Delan diver a

master diver to bring this treasure from

out of the depths toward the light one

but there is yet another enormous

difficulty that constantly diverts Us in

all our philosophical understandings of

Greek thinking and it is operative in

the case of heraclitus as well it is the

goinging effect of the institution of

modern science the pioneering Act of

which was Galilean physics and which

dominates all of our habitual modes of

thought ever since Galileo the concept

of method has been deemed to be

constitutive of what can be called

science this is connected with the fact

that the philosophy of modernity has

erected its philosophical self-

grounding upon the concept of

self-consciousness as a rule we look to

decart famous meditation on doubt for

the turning point that is esta lished

with the development of the modern

Natural

Sciences there the kajo Ergo Su was

singled out as the individal reality of

whatever thinks and doubts and as the

shest and most unshakable fundament of

all certainty to be sure this was not

yet a philosophy of reflection in the

full sense of the word a philosophy

grounded in the concept of the subject

and from out of which a new sense of

objectivity redefines itself but ever

since K took up the cartisan distinction

of the residential citans in the

critical demonstration of his

transcendental philosophy and grounded

the justification of the concepts of the

understanding upon the synthesis of

Apperception upon the fact that the I

think must be able to accompany all of

my ideas the concept of subjectivity has

been elevated to a central position

developing this as a program the

followers of K especially fited derive

all justification for truth all

grounding for validity in general from

the principle of

self-consciousness thus the Primacy of

self-consciousness as opposed to the

consciousness of something became the

stigma of modern thinking even who sur's

ambitious attempt to develop Philosophy

for the first time into a strict science

remained firmly rooted in the soil the

soil from which the Bold thought

experiments of haidegger and Vicken

Stein sought to free themselves by that

time in fact German idealism had already

formulated something that car

characterized in philosophically

appropriate terms the new place of

humanity in the world the aggressive

attitude of modern science toward the

nature that surrounds Us

subjectivity in the form of

transcendental philosophy has

accompanied the triumphal March of

science meanwhile doubts about the

certainty of self-consciousness have

taken hold of modern science and kept it

in suspense it began with n the

psychologist in N issued the following

challenge regarding decart meditation on

doubt it must be doubted even more

fundamentally this fulfilled itself in

the radical unnerving of naive

self-certainty and led to such doubts

about the assertion of

self-consciousness as we are confronted

with from the most Divergent of

perspectives from historicism from the

critique of ideology or from

psychoanalysis ever since nche

constantly rethinking the problematic

Central role that self-consciousness

plays in philosophy has become an

avoidable task we can be led into this

question by the phenomenological

evidence that France brentano first

reproduced and that Aristotle had not

been altogether unaware of in his

anthropology Dana F or even in his

grounding of first philosophy upon the

self-thinking news over against the

intentionality of a Consciousness that

is always consciousness of something the

reflexivity of self-consciousness holds

a secondary status the Primacy of

self-consciousness can only be

maintained if we Grant an absolute

priority to the ideal of certainty or

better yet to the ideal of

methodologically confirming the validity

of mathematical construction with

respect to reality as it has constituted

the essence of the modern Natural

Sciences ever since gallileo even though

as the prime of movens and as constant

self-presence it is the highest of

beings the god of artian onto theology

in no way functions as grounding or

securing human knowledge the structure

of selfhood points toward contexts other

than that fundamentum Inc concuss by

which self-consciousness holds firm

against all septic ISM if anything can

truly come to the aid of our modern

reflection on the riddle of

self-consciousness it is probably the

fact that the Greeks possessed neither

an expression for the subject or

subjectivity nor an expression for

Consciousness and the concept of the eye

even though they ultimately took that

which shows itself into consideration

along with the Wonder of thinking itself

the Greeks

including Aristotle did not assert a

central position for

self-consciousness in order to be freed

from this modernistic perspective we

find ourselves directed back into the

historical Dimension that leads from

decart to Augustine from Augustine to

Plato now I would like to show that from

Plato it must be traced back even

further to

heraclitus the question poses itself as

to whether we may view heraclitus from

this problem context of

self-consciousness at all or whether his

thinking does not direct us along a

different path instead that is toward

the place of human beings in the world

heraclitus enjoys a special Fame he owes

this Fame not just to his AB mentioned

proverbial darkness and not just to the

use to which Plato had already put his

name and ultimately not to his presence

in Hegel who at the end of the entire

thought path of Western metaphysics said

that there was not a single proposition

in in heraclitus that he could not take

up into his own logic moreover

heraclitus thinking exerted A peculiar

attraction for nich's radical extremism

as well as for hager's insight into the

end and the beginning of

metaphysics at one time anyone who had

been in hager's Hut in tatn high in the

Black Forest would have seen carved into

a piece of bark above the front door the

heraclitean statement lightning steers

all to a strange and deeply moving

statement and an apparent

Paradox in place of the Steady Hand That

steers the ship through the waves we

find the lightning that flashes suddenly

and then goes out we can puzzle over the

meaning of this statement but the

interpretation that prevails to this day

that of seeing the lighting as the

attribute of an all steering godhead

fails to hear the Paradox that should

definitely be attended to in

heraclitus of course the particular

Fascination that emanates from

heraclitus does not ultimately depend

upon the paradoxes and dialectical

structure of such

statements the speculative tension of

his thinking leads him again and again

to the most extreme and finely honed

formulations all of these formulations

are like the proposition concerning the

ever-flowing river that is never the

same when we step into it and up out of

which the soul steams fragment 12 now of

course as modern Scholars bred to

historical critique we cannot

immediately get ourselves involved in a

naive ident identification with the

Mythic power of such statements we must

concentrate on the respective conditions

of the tradition the conditions that

offer us access to the texts which we

are reading as

fragments meanwhile we know all too well

what quotations are what we can do with

quotations how we can misuse quotations

their meanings being hidden to the point

of inde decipher ability heraclitus

scholarship is thus a special kind of

hermeneutical task

we must constantly ask ourselves how

does one uncover how does one excavate

what is suggested to us by the quoting

authors in their prior understandings

and with which methods can we reach a

historically appropriate and

nevertheless philosophically meaningful

understanding of heraclitus and his

statements from the outset I think a

certain priority can now be claimed for

our oldest witness and that is Plato his

writings are the very first

philosophical texts that we possess in

their

entirety everything earlier is fragments

that is citations or collections of

citations from later writers who no

doubt still knew heraclitus book but who

enlisted it precisely for their own

purposes Plato of course also did this

in that he orchestrated his own thinking

with his references to

heraclitus but he remains our oldest

witness the platonic dialogues yield a

particularly ambivalent picture of

heraclitus

on the one hand heraclitus is employed

as the originator and symbol of a

worldview which knows nothing of the

abiding sameness of the essence of

things of the idos but instead sees

everything in change everything in flux

in one famous construct in the Theus

152e Plato characterizes all previous

thinkers from Homer to protagoras with

the single exception of parids as herac

liton for anyone familiar with the pl IC

mode this means that heraclitus is

stylized here as a type A type that does

not necessarily concur with what Plato

himself had seen in heraclitus or even

what heraclitus actually said and

intended it is amazing how Plato clumps

everyone together here as

heraclion here heraclitus simply

presents a kind of

countertype whatever is placed under his

name should Point emphatically toward

the exception which in Plato's eyes

presents the Great itic as the precursor

of Plato's own thinking of the idos if

we keep in mind the other references to

heraclitus in the platonic Corpus

however all of a sudden the situation

appears entirely different in a famous

passage from the sophist 242 cff to

which we must look for the roots of all

our scholarly knowledge of presocratic

doctrines it is said of the earlier ones

that while one taught that the many was

what truly existed another taught just

the contrary that it was the one but the

ionian and Sicilian Muses thought it

clever to weave the one and the many

together by ionian Muses he undoubtedly

means

heraclitus at this point it is said of

these ionian Muses who speak through

heraclitus that they thought more

sharply than the Sicilians in that they

did not just teach about the alternation

of Multiplicity and unity of global

periods of dispersion and of coming back

together into a Unity as idals dactic

poem did The Sharper thesis is the

simultaneity of the one and the many the

simultaneity of self-dispersing and

self-

unifying what is ascribed to heraclitus

here is the idea that the one and the

many are the whole truth of being not

alternatively but in one in reference to

this Plato has the stranger from ellia

quote a statement from

heraclitus this statement is encountered

one more time in platoo where it is

cited by The Physician Eric simus

symposium

187a as with most Greek citations the

precise formulation of this statement is

uncertain it is of course a feature of

the Elegance of this kind of writing

that wherever possible one does not use

literal quotations but rather one builds

them into one's own thought processes

one of the main difficulties that the

Greeks present for us is to Divine where

a quotation begins and to what extent

there is an accommodation to their own

way of thinking three the statement

legitimate by Plato reads diap hero on

AI s Tha sopus

242e corresponding to this is to henar

diap Hero man on autoo is syus thy

hosper haronian toxo te kyus Symposium

187a C fragments 51 and 8 in English

this means the one that places itself

apart from itself joins itself together

with itself a most highly paradoxical

formulation heraclitus to give examples

of such

paradoxes thus in the Symposium he

continues like the harmony of the bow

and the liar and somewhat similarly The

Barley drink that is not stirred

separates itself for heraclitus

illustrates his real wisdom his safon in

many such examples in the Symposium the

same phrase that is incountered in the

sophist is placed in the mouth of the

physician Eric simus and this is

significant his inability

to understand the speculative Unity of

opposites is caricatured in the way the

doctor exercises a high-handed critique

of

heraclitus the sophist passage shows

unequivocally that Plato understood very

well that heraclitus did not like Eric

simus intend a Unity to emerge as the

final result idah hyon homology s

Symposium 187 B1 on the contrary the

main thing is precisely the simultaneity

C fragment 18 to antan

soron thus we have here a secure Point

of Departure that is confirmed moreover

by innumerable variations of the same

thing the question is how to bring

together the herac lionism of existing

things that are constantly in flux and

the tense dialectical Unity that is as

it were squeezed together into such

statements let us proceed from the

phenomena that heraclitus has in mind

there is the river into which everything

flows in constant change but it is the

same river five in the end the river 2

is an example of the unity of opposites

of which heraclitus speaks in countless

phrases War and Peace hunger and satiety

Mortals and Immortals Gods and Men and

so on a raft of extreme

oppositions he maintains that they are

all one the example of the river works

best here in terms of the unity of the

course of the river and the restlessness

of its flow

the mysterious problem that shows itself

behind all of these oppositions is

apparently the fact that what is the

same shows itself as another another

with no transition at issue in all of

these examples is what the Greeks called

metaboly V abrupt change it is

distinguished by its precipitous

suddenness the fundamental experience of

thinking here seems to be the essential

unreliability of everything that shows

itself sometimes in this way and

sometimes in another in the very next

moment it can be be different again and

no longer present itself in this way the

insight into the unreliability of all

things that already clearly underlies

elatic thinking no doubt also inspired

Plato's thinking of the idos as I see it

the ironic artificiality with which the

herac Lans in the Theus are introduced

speaks to the fact that Plato first

erected the counter construct to the

universal flux in order to outline his

thinking of the

idos perhaps he was also already

encountering the doctrine

itself in culus and other genuine herac

litens this seems to me to follow

indirectly from the way in which the

elatic theme is deferred in the

Theus in a way that awakens a certain

tension this part of the text prefigures

more than just elatic thinking and in

particular the

sophist I think the reason why Socrates

leaves the doctrine of parad aside

speaks even more clearly here because

otherwise that for the sake of which we

are Eng engaged in our discussion the

essence of knowledge would remain

unexamined six as if knowledge would be

at all understandable without elatic

thinking evidently this is indeed the

precise doctrine that the eadus has to

draw from his conversation with Socrates

and it is for this reason that the lead

role in the conversation on the next day

is transferred into the hands of the

stranger from Elia in this discussion of

the sophists the eadus first learns what

knowledge is not immediate evidence but

but logos but as to whether heraclitus

himself would also have had to learn

this first the process theory that

Socrates develops in the Theus from the

doctrine of flux has its strongest

support in heraclitus statement about

the always new Waters that flow through

the Same Rivers this however seems to

point in a completely different

direction souls to steam up from the

moisture fragment 12 and it is precisely

their logos that seems unfathomable

fragment

45 this seems to be a profound suspicion

of heraclitus and this is precisely what

the interests of modernity are

particularly drawn to the structure of

self-consciousness appears to be

implicit here and the logos is in fact

thought as the principle of the world

Hegel

anti-dm but how does this fit in with

the rest of the tradition of course as

everyone knows this tradition Bears the

deci of stamp of

Aristotle he is the main source for our

knowledge of the presocratic in general

but in Aristotle matters involving

heraclitus look quite bad Aristotle

tells us that some people claim

evidently because of his paradoxical

formulations that heraclitus did not

consider the basic principle of all

knowledge the principle of contradiction

to be valid metaphysics

f315

B24 even if he clearly did not take this

polemical assertion entirely seriously

in Aristotle's eyes this could not be a

recommendation of Greater import is the

fact that his real main concern physics

can be connected to heraclitus only with

extraordinary difficulty this leaves

much to be considered Aristotle's

guiding perspective which he sees

confirmed in his scrutiny of the

presocratic and which he puts forward

against Plato's pythagoreanism is not so

much the articulation of a universe

ordered in terms of numbers and

proportions as it is the ontological

constitution of nature physis moving

itself from out of itself this intuition

of the nature of the universe teaches us

that it contains itself it moves and

orders itself it is balanced within

itself thus in his eyes Greek cosmology

develops itself as the truth that lies

at the heart of the cosmogonies of the

most ancient thinkers cosmogony that

were supported originally by religion

and then more and more by scientific

observation the world needs no Atlas to

carry it it contains itself and holds

itself in order this is also the case in

the FED c99 BC what we know of

heraclitus does not fit this very well

the idea that what is is fundamentally

fire is not very well suited to making

the stable order of the universe or the

story of its origination understandable

OB obviously the all-c consuming fire

cannot be prevented by any limitations

from devouring everything it does not

allow itself to be properly compatible

with the other elements with the help of

arithmetic and the doctrine of

proportions plos timus depicts for us

how in The Ordering of the universe it

is not just Earth and fire but by means

of air water and fire two that are

artfully held separate from one another

timus 31 BFF if anaximander one of the

great ionian inquirers prior to

heraclitus is supposed to have explained

the role of the heavenly bodies and

their forms he seems to have gotten

himself into a serious

predicament the Sun the moon provided

that one does not know that it only has

borrowed light and the stars are

certainly fire but how can fire have

such a clear form and outline and always

illuminate in the same way at this point

anaximander comes upon the idea of the

holes the apertures in the great Vault

of the heavens through which the fire

blazing behind it shines for us as an

unperturbed

illumination or so at least the

doxography tells us vs12

a11 now there is certainly another way

to think the mysterious essence of fire

as a cosmic principle and that is its

presence in everything that is warm the

fact that the origin of life depends

upon warmth has something Illuminating

about it and we need

only think of the doxography on

anaximander 12830 in order to illustrate

this a material interpretation of fire

as an element of things however is not

provided here and the testimonies for

such an interpretation are not exactly

promising to be sure in the citus 413 D3

Plato mentions an interpretation of fire

as the warm itself Auto to Thurman which

is within fire but he does so in a

context that is not only extremely

playful but is also completely unsuited

to a cosmogonical perspective the crus

413 B4 C1 alludes much more to

heraclitus idea of the Sun that

constantly rekindles itself NEOS

fhra fragment 6 or of the Sun that never

sets to me dunan Po fragment 16 even the

reference to heraclitus son in the poia

Republic 6 for 998a testifies to the

fact that this doctrine of heraclitus

was quite well known though it was

certainly not famous for its

cosmological

progressiveness in any case nothing is

reminiscent of heraclitus in other

passages in Plato where fire and heat

appear as almost the same thing s

Aristotle barely mentions heraclitus in

his introductions to the physics and the

metaphysics simplicius in physics 21 1

FF puts forward a pure construct

stemming ostensibly from theophrastus

and has quite a good look into its

difficulties himself 8 even if we assume

fire to be in everything that is warm

and therefore in everything that is

alive as we perhaps might on the basis

of Plato n the cosmological problem of

fire remains difficult it will not allow

itself to be understood properly as an

element as a

constituent Aristotle does not know

where to begin with this indeed

it is not easy to see how one would

build a cosmology on the basis of the

Primal phenomenon of fire did heraclitus

construct a cosmology at all we have

reasons to doubt this in the first place

there is an ancient tradition that in my

view we have not taken seriously enough

apparently the impression made by

Aristotle and theophrastus is so strong

that we view all of the presocratic the

same way as

cosmologists in ciceronian times

diodotus

a stoic who still knew the heraclitus

text passed down to us the idea that the

text of heraclitus did not deal with

nature at all but rather with the poia

the state whatever was said in it about

nature would only have been said for

purposes of

illustration ten yet we must ask

ourselves whether this was really just a

moralistic stoic

reinterpretation as the reputed title

undoubtedly suggests a precise compan

for the direction of Life 11 or whether

there is something true in it in any

case when we scrutinize the mass of

heraclitus citations we find a very

large number of evidently political and

moralistic statements that exert a

powerful appeal again and again for

example there is a bitter critique of

the political blindness and imprudence

of his fellow countrymen we also have

other passages all of which belong to

the moral-political

dimension saman evidence points in this

same direction in Greek usage the word

fesus is for the most part practical

reasonableness and thus does not connote

so much the theoretical use of Reason 12

thus there is an entire list of

indications advising us to take the

cited utterances of the stoic seriously

13 we must ask ourselves whether

heraclitus was a rival of the ionian

cosmologists at all and not more likely

one of their critics just as parids no

doubt also functioned is such a Critic

how are we supposed to decide such a

question when the tradition does not

just leave us in the Lurch but leads us

into error with even greater Zeal it is

not just the interests of the

metaphysician Aristotle that steer Us in

this direction the moralistic over

interpretation of this supposed

cosmology by the later stoics and church

fathers Imports something foreign into

it as well the world

congration for the church fathers this

was conceptually speaking the fire of

hell they could presuppose that

heraclitus already knew something of

this this is how they understood his

doctrine of fire they were also familiar

with the fact that the stoics had taught

the doctrine of the world congration the

osis in Christian theology the

conflagration of the world becomes the

Judgment of the world but does the herac

lighten statement that all of this seems

to go back to really say that everything

goes up in flames

it is fragment 66 panagar FY to perel

hania Kai

calps what is the proper

translation as a rule we understand the

pair of Greek verbs as to condemn and as

to grasp or perhaps take into custody

indeed these are words that are familiar

to us as legal expressions and to that

extent fit the idea of the last judgment

hippitus then with great enthusiasm also

quotes the statement in this way but

crinian primarily means to cut to

differentiate to separate the statement

can thus very well mean that fire

separates everything 14 everything is

burned in the incandescence of fire

until it disintegrates into ashes this

is precisely why Catal amanian is far

from always meaning to take into custody

but its primary meaning is instead

simply to grasp to lay hold of this is

indeed the fire that can bring

everything into its glow so that even

the stones coals become fiery as they

glow in the Flames a beautiful intuitive

example of the fact that even the Earth

becomes fire 15 the magma of the volcano

is a good illustration of this thus the

statement invoked for osis in heraclitus

could have had a completely different

meaning than the one that as a rule has

been imposed upon it but who knows

nevertheless we must consider the fact

that the statement primarily has the

sense exhibited here and at most the

underlying moral sense should be allowed

to

resonate this of course is only a

hypothesis that cannot act as a

self-sufficient Authority nevertheless

there are still some supporting

indicators for this statement and its

interpretation and we find them above

all in the eological play of the citus

412 DF their fire is mentioned as the

warm itself that is within fire 413 C3

along with helos and an aoran news as

something that permeates all appearances

and is brought into connection with what

is just the

Dicken this is indeed herac lien in the

sense of the crus to the extent that in

its relative quickness this fastest and

smallest Tachi Stan Kai lepot on for2 D5

lets everything else appear as what is

hostest high OS Presto SE toys allots 4

12 D7 in exactly the same way that the

theory of motion in the Theus 156 cff

interprets being in any case this crus

witticism best reflects how the just the

diac ion is filled up as it were with

materiality by means of the fire that

penetrates everything 16 let us ask

ourselves how we are able to proceed any

further at all in the uncertainty that

comes over us in this situation that we

have inherited in my opinion there is

only one methodological point of entry

the morphological one we can work out

the structure of the unambiguous

statements that can only belong to

heraclitus because they are all as

similar to each other as family members

this is not to claim that we could

differentiate the imitations or the

reinterpretations from the genuine

heraclitus sayings with certainty in

each individual case even family

resemblance of course

has no original image against which

similarities can be measured viken

Stein's metaphor made this suitable for

the critique of nominalistic

prejudices thus the fact that it

furnishes no strict criteria in no way

speaks against the guiding idea of a

morphological

investigation moreover even where

imitations are present the thought

structure that is being imitated may not

be entirely unrecognizable and if this

is so the imitation presents some

guidance for example following the path

of morphologically guided reduction I

have reclaimed a fragment that was here

to for missing from the collections even

though in the most reliable place the

list of hippitus citations it is

transmitted to us as expressly herac

lion 17 however as it occurs in hippitus

it is so alienating to what is Christian

trinitarian that one takes it to be a

sheer

fabrication it can be reconstructed in a

morphological way

the outcome reads as follows the father

is the son of himself this wants to read

when the father produces a son he turns

himself into a father this seems to me

to be a genuinely herac liten statement

in the tur style of a paradox which is

why the later style critics said that he

had been a melancholic and that he only

ever uttered his statements in halves

this is nevertheless a directive for us

a reasonable guiding principle wherever

something appears chur

concentrated paradoxical there we have

heraclitus it fits in with this guiding

principle that one of the artistic modes

that plays a predominating role in

heraclitus corresponds nicely to such a

paradoxical style the pun a pun is based

on the sudden shift from one already

accomplished orientation of meaning and

understanding into a completely

different one there is a famous example

of this in heraclitus the name of the

bow is life its deed is death a

this depends on the consonance of the

word bios for both life and B within the

word there is already a Unity of

opposites this is surely the reason why

heraclitus especially loves puns they

permit him to capture his own truth in

the wording and to stir up as it were

are flattened out thoughtless

familiarity with language another

example that plays with words in this

way in order to reinforce the truth that

is veiled within them is fragment 100

and 14 where the consonance between

common sunin and with reason Sun oi

constitutes the pun 19 and something is

expressed in this pun not only is reason

common to all things but everything that

is common is based on reason anything

else may be unknowable for us based on

the citations in Aristotle 20 and the

plays on AOS by P anas and Eric simus in

the Symposium and based on the

background of the hesticles works and

days 20 FF I suspect that heraclitus

plays with AOS and ays in a similar way

in view of the loving Strife to which it

seems to me Aristotle is alluding

21 the fact that other artistic modes

point in the same direction modes such

as the paradoxical sentence the parable

the parallelism and the asymmetrical

analogy has been shown by many scholars

and by Herman Frankle in particular it

it is therefore valid to unlock the

paradoxical insights of heraclitus by

proceeding from the

morphological I shall begin with a

well-known statement that gives me the

opportunity to display the awkwardness

of the preconceptions implicit in the

way these passages are cited the

statement is handed down to us in plot

enus among others and this fact is in

turn a value for our

interpretation this platonist from the

time of the Caesars is one for whom New

Dimensions of interiority had already

opened up thus it is self-evident for us

that his understanding of the herac

litan book which he still knew struck

out in directions altogether different

from those we can assume for heraclitus

himself and yet again altogether

different from those of textbooks rooted

ultimately in the Aristotelian

theophrasti and tradition and their

readers the statement I am referring to

is one of the simplest statements that

one can think of the way up and down is

one and the same or the way there and

back is one and the same 22 in Antiquity

people frequently already understood

this from the perspective of

Aristotelian influenced cosmology and

they saw in it a depiction of the cycle

of the elements as it describes the

great rotation of elements from below to

above from above to below from the

Heavenly Fire to water and to air if not

the reverse and from there to Earth 23

yet neither in plotus nor elsewhere does

the text point in any way to this

context only later reappropriations

interpret it

cosmologically in plot enus it is his

fundamental predisposition toward

Transcendence the predisposition of the

early Christian centuries that

thoroughly determines the Horizon of the

author's understanding this is why he

understands the statement to be about

the soul that descends into the body and

about its return it's Ascent toward the

one and the true for plot enus this is

the way up and the way down that

heraclitus is supposed to have intended

certainly no one today would follow this

interpretation of heraclitus

proposition we become completely sure of

this when we read in plot enus how he

Praises heraclitus in particular because

heraclitus has taught us to search for

our souls our true selves nevertheless

for us the heraclitus statements to

which plot enus assigns this orientation

still have something seductive about

them here we read for example I have

sought myself

24 for ancient biographical science this

meant that he had no teacher but found

out everything for himself instead for

us this resonates like an early

intimation of Christian interiority as

it is to be heard for the first time in

Socratic questioning especially when we

read the limits of the Soul cannot be

surveyed however broadly one strides so

deeply lies its ground

25 again this this resonates with

Socrates and Plato those anatural lit

Christiana who in the very heart of the

Salan Shrine recognized what is truly

beautiful and generally pointed the way

the Christian future 26 and yet here two

we should be mistrustful of the

overtones of our own account of the soul

in any case whatever our statement the

way up and the way down is one and the

same maybe about it is thus surely more

correct to recognize in it an utterly

straightforward

observation it is the same path that

seems so difficult in the ascent and so

easy in The Descent or the same path

that seems so long on the way there

seems so short on the return trip I

think it is a straightforward example of

how one and the same thing can look

quite different even opposed an entire

genre of statements has been handed down

under the name of heraclitus that

announce in a similar way how something

can change its aspect completely

evidently the structure of the ideas

corresponds to the formal structure of

such

statements what heraclitus wants to say

is clear that contrary to our own

experience of distinguishing one thing

from another of opposing one to the

other we should realize that whatever

might present itself so differently also

Harbors a kind of identity within the

opposition itself heraclitus sees

through the apparentness of the

different and the opposite and

everywhere discovers the one this need

not preclude the the idea that still

other morally emphatic applications are

meant to resonate in the statement about

the path applications that were

precisely what was really intended his

logos however is the one he discerns

this in such diverse phenomena as the

flow of things the abrupt change from

fire into water and from sleep to waking

and he discovers the same riddle in

everything in the flame that consumes

itself and is extinguished in the motion

that begins by itself and ceases by

itself everywhere he sees The Wonder of

Life the riddle of being conscious being

awake and the Mystery of death this will

show itself to be one of the points at

which Plato positively appropriates the

heritage of heraclitean thinking in any

case plotinus use of citations teaches

us how little obligation we have to

apply the statement

cosmologically on the contrary our right

to a simple understanding of the

statement surely can be justified by

looking to heraclitus himself and

especially the beginning of his text 27

by a fortunate accident it has been

handed down to us in good shape

Aristotle referring to the first

statement of heraclitus text remarks

that what we have before us is a

punctuation problem this logos that

always is about which human beings

always remain without understanding 28

Aristotle asks himself where the always

belongs even modern philologists are

divided about about this is it the logos

that always is or does the logos always

remain without understanding presumably

this is an actual case of what garans

call APO coinu by itself an utterly

pedantic excuse of the school Master

this category comes to life in listening

to such a statement we must recall that

Aristotle was first and foremost a

reader albeit of course one who read

aloud this text however was surely

intended to be a lecture the speaker

could thus articulate it in such a way

that the word always could shed light on

both sides and color the surrounding

words 29 yet at this point I am going

into this much discussed statement a

statement that outdo itself in paradoxes

in order to emphasize one Paradox that

seems to me not to have been properly

considered until now and which

supposedly presents a kind of guideline

for a collective interpretation

heraclitus describes his intentions here

in the following way kof is in diary and

hasten Kai phrase and hoko's asii this

sounds highly conventional like an

declaration in the style of a

comprehensive history heraclitus

promises to explain everything like it

really is but what does this explanation

really look like the reader of the book

sees it The Listener to the logos hears

it the heraclitean message is not

differentiation exactly but perceiving

the one in everything that is

differentiated what others take to be

different as Hees takes day and night is

in fact and in truth one and the same

the heraclitean doctrine is constantly

formulated in this way H to safon 50 I

consider this to be the authentic and

original principle that heraclitus

appears to be repeating many times in

his book The principle can extend in

different directions according to the

formulation and to ofon it does and does

not want to be called by the name of

Zeus fragment 32 or this is Insight gome

fragment

41 our formulation the wise is one is

also hiding somehow in fragment 50 31

what appears here as the wise is an

extremely polyphonic neuter the Greeks

possession of the neuter constitutes one

of their ingenious advantages for

abstraction in thinking Reinhardt and

and Snell have taught us to see this we

are acquainted with a similar use of the

neuter from German poetry primarily

since Gera and hold erlin who use dos

Godlike the Divine or dos R end that

which saves or redeems in their poems

when things like this are encountered in

a poem they are not to be understood as

definite entities 32 rather a presence

of being emanates from such a neuter a

presence that fills the entire space dos

unck The Uncanny like dos red end dos

Godlike or dosage the holy or whatever

it is is the fullest presence without

the idea that a determinate entity would

be named by it so two dos wise that

which is wise is not one kind of thing

among many others it is separated from

everything Panton goris Manan fragment

108 as opposed to the appearance of

changing difference

it is that which really is this is how

heraclitus evidently intended his logos

a truth that speaks from out of

everything and yet a truth that no one

wishes to acknowledge as the truth to me

in any case the hermeneutic task in

understanding this introductory

statement seems to be not to interpret

it in advance by approaching it from out

of a later Doctrine a declaration

instead is supposed to awaken the

expectation of and base itself on the

style of historic yet this declaration

constantly disrupts this expectation in

the most highly paradoxical Way 33 the

proem after all does not declare that

the author has a doctrine that is better

than the doctrines of others heraclitus

is far more ambitious it is supposed to

be better than all of the points of view

that other human beings in general have

heraclitus is as radical as parids is

when the goddess parids introduces

speaks of the opinions of Mortals

fragments 13 and 6 the fact that this is

not a reference to parmen colleagues

should finally be accepted unfortunately

it is not so rigorously observed that

these viewpoints do of The Mortals

always appear in the plural and not at

all in the platonic singular 34 I

maintain that the prom tells us nothing

of the content of the doctrine

nevertheless right at its beginning

there is a genuine herac lien simile

that presents a first hint of what

heraclitus wants to say on the whole

here too the theme is still the

opposition between the one knower and

the many who do not know what human

beings do while awake remains concealed

from them just as they forget what they

do while asleep

35 evidently this means that they learn

nothing from the wealth of their

experiences 36 this is what

distinguishes our activities in sleep

when we are awake we forget them from

the dream experiences that we have

undergone we take nothing over into our

lived reality the activities in dreams

are

inconsequential awakened to the

wakefulness of the day neither are we

able to continue playing the game of the

dream nor does it interpolate itself

into our

experience this is what the introductory

statement wants to tell us therefore it

is not a question of the extent to which

in ancient life dreams would have been

understood in terms of their augury

heraclitus looks with cold and Clear

Eyes at the fact that dreaming is

precisely not being awake the idea that

human beings undergo experiences without

becoming wise means that they live like

dreamers their experiences have no

consequences and so it literally says

ayro and eoas and pyomo they are the

same as the inexperienced despite all of

their

experience in this way the beginning of

the book provides a guideline not just

for grasping the compression of the

herac lighten style but also for seeking

that which is one the wise behind the

most ordinary

experience the metaphor in this vehement

introductory statement is rather

suspenseful the incomprehension that

human beings have regarding the truth is

not to be posited simply as an immutable

Fact one can awaken someone from sleep

the emphatic impact of the first

statement depends upon this but it is

more than this it is at the same time an

assertion that turns back upon itself so

to speak what announces itself here as

the doctrine of heraclitus is a true

Paradox this Doctrine travels the path

toward insight and at the same time

teaches us about the gulf that stands

between the one truth and our inability

to learn due to our entanglement in the

manifold of human Illusions and dreams

the simile of waking and sleeping is not

just an emphatic appeal it belongs at

the same time to the content of

heraclitus Doctrine we thus encounter it

repeatedly even if perhaps not always in

heraclitean wording as when the word

Cosmos is used for world for heraclitus

the dream is a symbol for General

incomprehension a case in point is a

statement like for those who are awake

there is one and only one common World

while those who sleep each turn away

into their own

37 in this sense because of their

dreaming fragment 7 calls the one who is

asleep or GES worker builder of a world

all his own 38 his gaze is always turned

toward the people who in waking behave

like ones who are asleep fragment 73

speaks to this directly one should not

act and speak like those who are asleep

39 admittedly this formulation is so

banal that we might well have to assume

along with Kirk 40 that here Marcus

orelus is simply articulating the moral

gist of the concluding sentence of

fragment 1 we repeatedly encounter a

parallelism formed between waking and

sleeping on one hand and living and

being dead on the other the fact that

comparisons analogies and parallelisms

constituted an archaic mode of thinking

has been demonstrate primarily by Herman

Frankl 41 nevertheless the heraclitean

use of this mode of thinking has its own

character we can observe how heraclitus

does not simply construct such

parallelisms and comparisons rather he

loves to elaborate on them in a

paradoxical way so that they attain a

provocative SLP parenetic

sharpness thus we do not read in

fragment 21 as we might expect a

correspondence between sleep and the

apparitions of dreams on the one hand

and being awake in the waking world life

on the other instead surprisingly and

provocatively it reads death not life is

what we see awake what we see as slum

bearers sleep

42 the subtlety of this surprising

parallel lies in the fact that the

concluding term reads hypnose and not

ennion sleep and not dream the one who

is sleeping thereby constru the overall

condition of sleep encountered in the

apparitions of dreaming as that which he

sees in this way the Precision of this

finely rought statement clearly emerges

the two standard tropes are formed by

death and sleep the correspondence of

which speaks for itself what is

provocative about the comparison lies in

the fact that it begins

surprisingly in the first Clause life

would fit the progress of the statement

and there it reads death thus as a whole

what is seen in being awake along with

its apparent wakefulness is itself

ascribed not to being alive but rather

to being dead

43 the family resemblances among Hera

Clayton statements requires a very

careful rhythmic analysis of their

tradition in the meantime I find very

fine observations in Charles Khan's

commentary in that I am looking in the

same direction sometimes I would like to

go even further and through emendation

and condensation reproduce the original

herac lighten statement from statements

that are not quite so well forged in

precisely the most well forged of

heraclitus statements I think I

recognize a true family resem Lance thus

with regard to K's analysis of the

phonic structure of fragment

2544 I would like to pose the question

of whether at the end lony they receive

is not

Superfluous the word is perhaps due to

the ancient technique of citing and

explicating

simultaneously the statement could

simply have read maroy mezan mezon MOA

or MAA moas the clear word play speaks

for itself self and demands

consideration conversely we feel sure of

having the correct wording when a

statement displays clear standard tropes

as does fragment 21 in the

correspondence between then atos and

hypnos death and sleep fragment 245 also

exhibits such tropes with genoi and

genes taii in this last case I asked

myself whether the connection of the

standard tropes in such a long statement

would not be more effective if we were

to go still further and bring Mars T

ebine face to face with Mars Jean's tie

it is certainly clear that ethal AI

should not be separated completely from

its object zoen indeed this is

reinforced by the

teai but why should heraclitus have

followed the double turning gravitation

of words only in his introductory

statement and not have exploited their B

veence elsewhere as well here just as

always does in fragment one eosi would

double itself in hearing it genom noo e

marus te ebine kaius catalu marus jeans

taii I think I recognize this as a

stylistic element in which ebine and

jeans Tai confront each other 46 in the

same way the fragment that I have

reconstructed perer wiow heu seems

convincing to me and to a few others in

fragment 21 dream and sleep stand for

the delusion that consists in the fact

that we are not in a position to

recognize one and the same in all the

various things that we encounter in

innumerable variations heraclitus never

tires of teaching the inseparability of

opposites that signifies their Unity the

above mentioned introductory statement

also belongs among these indeed when a

multiplicity is declared in it the words

and deeds as everyone encounters them we

must simultaneously keep in mind

precisely the one that alone is the true

the statement shows all Humanity falling

into the same error of taking what is

opposed as separate entities instead of

recognizing their true Unity this is the

Paradox that he wants to lay out or

unfold this one/ being and this is the

logos to which it is proper to listen he

does not just mean what everyone knows

the one after another the necessary

dissolution of one thing by another like

day and night summer and winter Youth

and old age but rather above and beyond

this he means the unkown another that

Plato emphasizes in the passage from the

sophist with which we began evidently

the tension of these ionian Muses

consists in the fact that it is the same

thing that holds itself together in its

separation from itself fragment 51 like

the mixed drink that would separate if

one did not Stir It fragment

125 or like fragment 10 with its sunen

SL Dien consonant SL dissonant or

fragment eight with its antic sound/

simeron striving against slh helping

with

in Aristotle it becomes completely clear

how this is to be understood the high

and the low note must both be there if

there is to be Harmony 47 the stepping

apart into opposites therefore is not

the result of a process of AC crisis as

Aristotle maintains with regard to

anaximander vs12 a16 and as perhaps is

actually the case behind the profound

doctrine of opposites that parmen

goddess unveils to him nowhere in fact

does Aristotle have a speculative

understanding of heraclitus

contradictory

assertions 48 in a passage in the

physics A4 187 at 20 FF it becomes

immediately apparent through a similar

differentiation between periodically and

uniquely in fact that aside from

anaximander he mentions only edals and

an aoras as being among those who adopt

the one and the many at the same time

here AC crisis is spoken of but

apparently without heraclitus being

mentioned along with it although that

could have been expected given

Aristotle's Reliance on the sophist

passage at

242b likewise heraclitus is not named in

the metaphysics A8 989 of13 when

Aristotle substitutes the mediator

between Fire and Air which he speaks of

in the physics 187 of 14 with what

mediates between air and water at the

this point instead of classifying

heraclitus doctrine of fire as a case of

a crisis and fitting it into the

principle of his own doctrine of

elements Aristotle overlooks him in

Aristotle's eyes apparently this was not

reconcilable with the herac liten text

so in any case we must judge whether to

take the platonic idea of cashing in on

the herac Lan ionian Muses as opposed to

the Sicilian Muses of idals at face

value there is

however a series of undoubtedly herac

lighten statements that support this the

image of the river the Harmony in the

connection between bow and liar Harmony

as such The Barley drink in all of these

cases the discussion is no longer of a

Unity based on sheer temporal succession

or on the sheer suddenness of

transition in any event if what we had

in mind were the suddenness of

transition we could subsume these

examples under a rubric that excludes

the simult it of the speculative Unity

of temporal

succession how do the stronger

conceptual assertions look now fragment

1049 certainly leads in the direction of

a prior separation and yet since the

platonic syaman diap hero Menon crops up

in the list it also clearly intends

simultaneity this is precisely why we

can only understand the olaola as The

Logical inseparability of the whole and

parts and indeed this is is just how it

is with the consonant and dissonance

that are secured through the analogy of

Harmony cin and/ Dien this once again

establishes the meaning of the one from

everything in the sense in which Plato

speaks of it if we examine the

perspectus for the citation list in

hippius fragment 5150 then for some of

them presumably we can vacillate as to

whether they illustrate genuine

speculative Unity nevertheless my

aforementioned analysis of of the

fatherson Paradox has fortified the

expressive value of the citation list

and thus generally speaking wherever

hpus expressly brings forward genuine

opposites as in fragment

6751 we must take the one in its

platonic sense in the case of day and

night the Hesed pmic in fragment 57

confirms this likewise death then

and its opposition to life is assured by

fragment 76

which goes back to fragment

62 52 other assertions however seem to

express only change as such and not the

speculative Unity that lies within

change this is perhaps valid for the

concluding passage of fragment 67 53

where the various aspects of the god or