Ancient Philosophy · Part 5 · The first philosophers · B2–C1
Heraclitus: Fire, the River and the Logos
Part 5 of Ancient Philosophy: Heraclitus wrote one book, so difficult that people called him “the obscure”. About a hundred and thirty sentences survive, each one a riddle. The road up and the road down, he said, are one and the same. Contrast and paradox (although, even though, while, whereas, yet, nevertheless), with Philo, Sophia, Marcos and Demetria.
Tonight, the most difficult and the most quoted of the early philosophers: Heraclitus.
I have read him. I believe he learned his best ideas from Moses.
You will write that one day, Philo. We will come back to it.
Things like: the sea is the purest and the dirtiest water. Think about it while we read.
Heraclitus lived in Ephesus, a great Ionian city near Miletus, around 500 BCE. He came from a royal family, but he is said to have given up his inherited title to his brother. He wrote a single book, which, according to one story, he placed in the temple of Artemis.
His book is lost. About a hundred and thirty fragments survive, quoted by many later writers: Plato and Aristotle, Stoics who admired him, Christian writers who used him for their own arguments, and commentators who simply found him puzzling. Even in ancient times he was called “the obscure” and “the riddler”.
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