Ephesus, c. 535–475 BCE
Heraclitus
Pre-Socratic philosopher of flux and the logos. Held that change is the only constant; strife is the father of all things.
Heraclitus in 24 lines
Every Heraclitus passage in thinkr's library, with the theme each one speaks to.
“No man ever steps in the same river twice.”
“The only constant in life is change.”
“Character is destiny.”
“Big results require big ambitions.”
“Ten thousand do not turn the scale against a single man of worth.”
“The many are mean; only the few are noble.”
“Into the same rivers we step and do not step, we are and are not.”
“Although the Law of Reason is common, the majority of people live as though they had an understanding of their own.”
“Men are at variance with the one thing with which they are in the most unbroken communion, the reason that administers the whole universe.”
“All human laws are nourished by one divine law.”
“It pertains to all men to know themselves and to learn self-control.”
“Change is the only constant. There is nothing permanent except change.”
“The part I understand is excellent, and so too is, I dare say, the part I do not understand; but it needs a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it.”
“Herakleitos looks down not only on the mass of men, but on all previous inquirers into nature.”
“The identity ...as consisting in difference is simply that of the primary substance in all its manifestations.”
“This theory is usually summed up... All things are flowing... though... it cannot be proved that this is a quotation from Herakleitos.”
“Aristotle says the same... All things are in motion, nothing steadfastly is.”
“The Milesians held a similar view. The flux of Herakleitos was at most more unceasing and universal.”
“Αll things are exchanged for fire and fire for all things (fr. 22), and this implies that for everything it takes, fire will give as much. The sun will not exceed his measures (fr. 29).”
“The soul that has died from excess of moisture sinks down to earth; but from the earth comes water, and from water is once more exhaled a soul (fr. 68).”
“Everything is... the death of something else (fr. 64).”
“The living and the dead are always changing places (fr. 78)... not only to the souls that have become water, but to those that have become fire and are now guardian spirits.”
“Plato’s contrast between Herakleitos and Empedokles ...is ...that, while Herakleitos said the One was always many, and the Many always one, Empedokles said the All was many and one by turns.”
“It is much easier to find fragments which are on the face of them inconsistent with a general conflagration.”
Where Heraclitus lands on a hard choice
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what a position does when it meets a situation where every option costs something.
A close friend is competing for the same thing you want.
You are trusting the friendship to survive being told the truth. The risk is a wound that outlasts whatever you were competing for.
A past version of your life keeps looking better than this one.
You are accepting that the moment and the self both moved. The danger is a resignation that stops you rebuilding anything.
Your days are steady, productive, and increasingly identical.
You are looking harder rather than moving faster. The danger is a subtlety used to justify never changing anything.
Reading Heraclitus today
Heraclitus wrote in c. 535–475 BCE, from Ephesus — a world with different assumptions about authority, death and what a life is for. That distance is useful rather than a problem: it is what lets the ideas cut against assumptions you did not know you were making.
In thinkr, Heraclitus is one of 44 thinkers you can put a real question to, and the answers come back in that thinker's own voice and commitments rather than as a neutral summary. The 24 passages above are what the app draws on.
Working at roughly the same time
- Confucius — China, 551–479 BCE
- Plato — Athens, c. 428–348 BCE
- Protagoras — Greece, c. 490–420 BCE
- Pythagoras — Samos & Croton, c. 570–495 BCE
- Socrates — Athens, c. 470–399 BCE
Argues the same cases
Friedrich Nietzsche, Confucius, Aristotle, Michel Foucault, William James, David Hume take positions on the same dilemmas as Heraclitus, which is usually where the disagreements become concrete.