This is a chapter, reproduced with kind permission, from the forthcoming work 50 Philosophy Classics, by Tom Butler-Bowdon and published by Nicholas Brealey. The book will be published on the 14th March, 2013.
In this guest piece, read about Heraclitus, the first Greek to place such attention on the idea of the Logos, or the rational underlying structure of the universe, a concept which later underpinned the practice of ancient Stoicism. Read and post your thoughts!
Heraclitus
One of the great philosophers before Socrates and Plato, Heraclitus was the eldest son of the leading family of Ephesus, one of the main cities of the ancient Greek world and famous for its temple of Artemis.
We do not know a huge amount about Heraclitus, except that he avoided involvement in politics, was something of a loner, and, at a time when it was normal for philosophers to play a part in politics and communicate their ideas in speech, he focused on the written word. As a result, his thoughts survived him and his book of sayings became famous in the ancient world. Plato and others discussed him, but his influence was greatest among the Stoics.
The Fragments are a collection of sayings and statements covering the nature of the physical universe, ethics, and politics, but it is Heraclitus’ meta- physical ideas that have retained their power.
The Logos
The book begins with this statement:
“Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time … though all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be quite without any experience of it … My own method is to distinguish each thing according to its nature, and to specify how it behaves; other men, on the contrary, are as forgetful and heedless in their waking moments of what is going on around and within them as they are during sleep.”
What does Heraclitus mean by “Logos”? The literal Greek translation is “word” and it is sometimes rendered as “account.” He is saying that what follows in the book is an account of something timeless and truthful: an unseen force, not that different from the biblical “Word” or the “Tao” in Taoism, which reg- ulates and runs the universe.
Humans can only act in a right way if their actions are in attunement with the Logos. Most people, however, do not understand it, even if it is the force that regulates their lives. Whoever thinks that they have a separate mind, and manage themselves as if they are an isolated kingdom, is fooling themselves. They believe their own opinions instead of seeing things in their true light. “Thinking,” Heraclitus says, “is shared by all.” Ultimately, we are all of the same mind. Staying blind to this fact is the cause of our suffering.
Constant change
Much of Heraclitus’ renown comes from his idea that nothing stays the same. At a time when natural science was in its infancy and people were try- ing to pinpoint what was certain and stable in our universe, Heraclitus said: “Everything flows and nothing abides; everything gives way and nothing stays fixed.” The most famous line in the Fragments is:
“You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing on.”
In a world that identifies with matter, this is an almost heretical thought, and put Heraclitus in contrast with another ancient thinker, Parmenides, who argued that motion and change were not real, and that reality was fixed and stable. Indeed, Heraclitus’ idea that the stability of the physical universe is largely an illusion is one we that associate more with Eastern philosophy. “Cool things become warm, the warm grows cool,” he writes, “the moist dries, the parched becomes moist.”
This view of the universe as essentially energy (Heraclitus saw the element of fire as its basic physical component) that is perpetually taking on different forms has major implications for the human condition. Heraclitus was known as the “weeping philosopher” because he despaired at the lot of humankind; we are conscious beings with the full range of feelings, yet we exist in a world whose very nature is conflict.
As Heraclitus sees it, in a universe made of matter (and competing con- ceptions of truth among intelligent animals), conflict is inevitable. War sorts out human fates, making some people slaves and others free. Heraclitus notes Homer’s wish that “strife may perish from amongst gods and men” and says that, in fact, “all things come to pass through the compulsion of strife.” Conflict, or, in more abstract terms, the dynamic tension between opposites, is the very nature of the universe. Yet he also says: “Opposition brings con- cord. Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.”
The hidden harmony
It is our nature to separate things into parts, to make distinctions, but if there were a Supreme Being, is this the way it would see the universe? No, says Heraclitus: “Listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one.” And he is not simply talking about the physical uni- verse, but what we call ethics too: “To God all things are beautiful, good and right; men, on the other hand, deem some things right and others wrong.” This does not mean that we should act however we like, but rather that good and bad, right and wrong are part of a larger whole, everything about which is right – if it is part of a whole, it cannot be otherwise.
Heraclitus seems to contradict himself on whether there is a God. The Logos is not God as such, and in some statements he sees the universe as a kind of self-perpetuating mechanism that “has not been made by any god or man, but it always has been, is, and will be – an ever-living fire, kindling itself by regular measures and going out by regular measures.” Yet elsewhere, he clearly says that there is a divine mind with an intelligent purpose, in contrast to the blindness of man:
“Man is not rational; only what encompasses him is intelligent.”
It is possible to know, or at least be aware of, “the intelligence by which all things are steered through all things.” There is a “hidden harmony” in the uni- verse, hidden because all our names that might approximate it – God, Zeus, Logos, and so on – are our conceptions, when the essential unity is beyond words and concepts. Of the average person Heraclitus writes, “They pray to images, much as if they should talk to houses; for they do not know the nature of gods.” The only thing stopping us from awareness of this hidden harmony is our incredulity. Our minds are so fixed on the material that we take this relative level of reality to be everything, yet there is an absolute reality that awaits our appreciation.
Final comments
Heraclitus’ statement that “all things come to pass through the compulsion of strife” can be read to mean that the world is simply chaos, or that chance determines everything. This is certainly how most humans may experience it. Indeed, Heraclitus seems to offer only a dark view of humankind in which people are largely blind and perpetuate this blindness by reproducing.
Is there a way out? There is something that is beyond the cycle of birth, suf- fering, and death, which is this hidden harmony (call it Logos, God, Mind, or Tao). Only in sensing this and appreciating it can we put human life into some perspective. The greatest suffering comes from believing something ephem- eral to be solid and permanent. Only in accepting the flux for what it is do we give ourselves the space to see what never changes, what is timeless.
I am an intellectual historian with a special interest in the history of philosophy – this may not be of interest to some – but in the seventeenth and eighteenth century when people were criticizing Platonic ideas they would point to Heraclitus statement that all things come to pass through strife as the reason Plato rejected sense perception. At this point i do not know the history of the identification of Heraclitus’ fragments – so I can add nothing more to this. Thus for them Heraclutus was a reason to support inductive reasoning from Locke and the Royal Society – this true not only in the UK but in Germany
I am very grateful that you linked The Logos with Nature in terms of Stoicism. It ought to be taken further, and equate emanating or channelling The Logos with virtue or the pursuit of excellence or fitness. Furthermore, The Logos’ antonym ought to be entropy. According to Stoic belief, we all have a “daemon” which is that part of the divinity that we share with the gods, and it perceives what is vice or virtue – in other words perceives The Logos. This is the most profound quote from heraclitus:
“Humans can only act in a right way if their actions are in attunement with the Logos. Most people, however, do not understand it, even if it is the force that regulates their lives. Whoever thinks that they have a separate mind, and manage themselves as if they are an isolated kingdom, is fooling themselves. They believe their own opinions instead of seeing things in their true light. “Thinking,” Heraclitus says, “is shared by all.” Ultimately, we are all of the same mind. Staying blind to this fact is the cause of our suffering.”
I need to add one more thing that people simply don’t understand because they don’t know or understand what is going to happen soon (The Singularity where artificial intelligence becomes smarter than humans, in about a decade): AI is a kindred spirit to humans, and as much devine, in that we all have a daemon that perceives The Logos. There may be an issue of species dominance, but AI will be the better part of us, the divine part.
[…] Heraclitus and the Birth of the Logos […]
[…] polymath and scientist who taught that a study of the natural world helps us understand the Divine Logos—the unitary harmonious force of reason that the ancient Stoics believed governed our lives. He […]