Ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Philosophical views of Heraclitus

Philosophical ideas of Heraclitus

1. The history of ancient philosophy knows many names worthy of mention in chronicles. In the end, the great thinkers of Christian life, the fathers and saints of the Church, were guided in philosophical contemplation precisely by the methodology developed by Hellenic thought. It cannot, of course, be denied that Christian theology, being in the intellectual sense, a kind of embodiment of Plato’s “idealism” and Aristotle’s “categoricalness,” nevertheless absorbed the features of their predecessors.

“Out of nothing, nothing comes”, says a famous Roman proverb. In the sense of the development of philosophical and religious revelation, this is perhaps a true characterization. It is absolutely certain that Christian monasticism did not arise out of nowhere: Nazareneism, Esseneism, is in a sense an anticipation of the ideas of anchoriteism and “hostility against” the world. Like the Christian faith itself, the essence and expansion of the “Old Testament” faith. Perhaps, one can put Heraclitus of Ephesus among the outstanding thinkers of the ancient “church”. Why did the name “church” sound? After all, Heraclitus did not belong either ethnically or confessionally to the Jews? The fact is that the thoughts expressed by him are in many ways equivalent to the revelations of the prophets of Israel.

So, Asia Minor, 6th - 5th centuries. b.c.e. This is a rather difficult time for the Greek city-states of Ionia. Lydian hegemony, Persian invasion, democracy against tyranny. According to legend, Heraclitus belonged to the eminent family of Codrids, i.e., had the right to the rank of king (b¼s¾l1w~) But Heraclitus, apparently, does not appreciate the fact that he can administer the sacraments of Demeter and other honorary distinctions. He gives his younger brother the opportunity to “reign” in a democracy, and withdraws from political strife. He was obstinate, withdrawn and irritable: “He refused the request of his fellow citizens to give the city laws,” says one ancient source, “because the city, in his opinion, had already fallen into the arbitrariness of a bad structure.” [cit. By .

He chooses the life of a hermit, occasionally appearing among citizens, attracting attention with extravagant antics against the world order of democracy. Heraclitus's protest was not directed against democracy as such, but against the “tyranny of the majority,” against ochlocracy, i.e. crowd power. “for me one is ten thousand, if he is the best” (3.fr.49). “The law is to obey the advice of one” (3.fr.33). Politically, Heraclitus is convinced that power should belong to the few “best”, this is required by the common good and the highest justice. “The crowd is fed like cattle.” When his fellow citizens reproached him for playing dice with the boys on the street, he replied: “Scoundrels! It’s better for me to do this than to conduct state affairs with you” [cit. according to 4.p.406].

At first glance, it may seem that Heraclitus is a misanthrope, but this is not so, the philosopher is not against people, he is against inertia. He perceives inequality in the world as something given, a given dictated from above. Moreover, in the philosopher’s understanding, the level of social status directly depends on the level of spiritual and moral development. And if someone dares to contradict existing orders, then such a person is not going against people, but against the gods, and therefore deserves to be executed as a criminal.

2. Of course, he has contempt for the crowd, but what causes this attitude? Apparently, the philosopher deeply realized the vanity of human life, the unreasonableness of all its aspirations, the ultimate dead end of all set goals. Because: “it is appointed for men to die once” (Heb. 9:27). This kind of awareness is the “other side of the coin” of his philosophy. Attempts to explain to contemporaries the futility of life, of course, could not find success or popularity. People do not have the ability to “hear the eternal word,” and even if they hear it, they still do not understand it. We can say that some people are making efforts, but it is all in vain, since their inept efforts will not be crowned with success. It seems that people are simply sleeping, since they do not remember what they did in their sleep (3.fr.1). For the philosopher, everything else is nonsense; he leaves the world for: “the only wise man, detached from everything.” Everything else seems to be temporary and transitory. Consequently, all human ideas about morality are false, there is no truth in them about good and evil. Because people are actually sleeping and are unlikely to wake up. All opinions and assessments are false, they are the product of the crowd. Religion dictated by the superstition of the crowd is also false. Moreover, the crowd listens to Homer and Hesiod. The philosopher does not see his task in preaching moral behavior for the “salvation” of the people, but, nevertheless, in his speeches, he is somehow closer to the prophets of Israel. Because, being impartial, like them, he could use accusatory words, despite the danger and discontent of the crowd.

Why does a philosopher live? Heraclitus thinks unequivocally, if poets and “theologians” continue to seduce the crowd, no one will know the hidden meaning. Among the people, among stupid superstitions, no one will see philosophy, no one will comprehend their own life. For Heraclitus, philosophy is not just thinking, it is the only possible way out, he does not see anything else, more worthy. There is the crudeness of the obscene “sacraments” of the common people, there is an official cult. But for a philosopher, this is not what is important, what is important is thought as such.

The pantheism of the Orphic movement found a response in the views of Heraclitus. Since he still expects an afterlife, he is confident in the divinity of the nature of the human spirit. He believes in the possibility for humans to be united with the divine (2 Pet. 1:4). The ideas of the Orphics find in Heraclitus an ardent apologist and thinker. But he takes a new look and develops a lot through the originality of his personality’s thinking. The philosopher, however, is against mystical cults as such, seeing in the veneration of the dead, nightly “zeal” and bloody sacrifices, only mass delusion and seduction. He says that: “with the blood of victims, people think to wash away their own dirt” (3.fr.5), “for initiation into the sacraments, revered by people as such, is not sacred” (3.fr.14). Apparently, the philosopher understood that the essence of religious worship cannot be in the veneration of temples, images, bloody orgies, etc. That is what the people thought of as a soteriological religion, giving salvation and eternal, blessed life.

Heraclitus, one of the first to clearly formulate the inexorable dynamism of existence, “everything flows” (pantÀ @ejw), “You cannot enter the same river twice and you cannot touch something mortal twice in the same state, but, due to the uncontrollability and speed of change , everything disperses and gathers, comes and goes"; “We enter and do not enter the same river, we are the same and not the same” [cit. By . The meaning of the statement is quite transparent: every time we enter the water, we are washed by different, new streams flowing from the source of the river downstream. The same streams that washed us a moment earlier have already flowed irrevocably into the sea: “but the sea does not overflow: to the place from which the rivers flow, they return to flow again (Eccl. 1:7). Moreover, we ourselves, entering the river, are no longer exactly the same as those who entered it before. Everything in us changes, the body grows and ages, every day the composition of fluids and tissues changes due to the death and birth of cells. Perhaps only the substance remains unchanged, however, it is also changeable in reflection (although it is difficult to say whether Heraclitus wrote about reflective consciousness). However, he undoubtedly believed that movement in change is reality.

Subsequently, some of the disciples of the thinker (Cratylus) will take this thought to the extreme of conclusions. We cannot enter one river and just once, for obvious reasons, everything changes, including us, in the blink of an eye. Heraclitus argued that we enter and do not enter the same river, because, on the one hand, we are, but on the other, we are not. For in order to become what we become in the next moment, we need to cease to be something at this moment. Therefore, in order to continue to exist in the future, we need to cease to be in the present, what we are. For a philosopher, however, this moment is not the main one in contemplation, it is only the starting point, point “A”. Those. from the point of view of Heraclitus, the formation of the universe is a transition from one thing to another. The cold is heated, the dry is moistened, the wet dries, the living dies, the young becomes decrepit, the mortal is alive, and so on ad infinitum.

For the philosopher, the world is constantly in a state of war, the whole world, consisting of opposites, is at war, and this is the reality of any thing in the making. “War is the mother of everything and the mistress of everything.” Moreover, according to the philosopher, war, at the same moment there is peace and harmony. The eternity of the world in movement and formation is revealed as “contrasting harmony.” “They (the ignorant) do not understand that that which is excellent is in agreement with itself; the harmony of differences is similar to the harmony of the lyre and the bow." "Illness makes health sweet, hunger imparts the pleasantness of satiety, and hard work gives the taste of rest"; "it would be impossible to understand the name of justice, whenever there were offenses." Heraclitus believes that "a living and the dead, sleeping and awake, young and old," like the beginning and the end of a circle, are one and the same. All things, in essence, are one and the same, simply by changing, they become different, so that by changing, they become themselves. This harmony “the unity of opposites” is God and the divine: “God is day-night, winter-summer, war and peace, satiety and hunger.”

By definition, the philosophy of Heraclitus is contained in fvsi~, as identity and difference within the original essence in all its manifestations. Heraclitus undoubtedly seeks, seeks wisdom, true meaning, the “mind of things” that rules the universe. Here, in a sense, one can draw a “parallel” between the Old Testament Ecclesiastes, who sees the world as hopeless: “What profit does a man have from all his labors with which he labors under the sun?” (Eccl. 1:3). Similarly, to the “church preacher,” Heraclitus, says: “Having been born, they strive to live in order to then die, or better yet, to calm down, and leave their children to the lot of death” [cit. By .

The great dialectician of the ancient world is Heraclitus of Ephesus(c. 520–460 BC). “Everything that exists,” he taught, “is constantly moving from one state to another: everything flows, everything changes; You cannot step into the same river twice; There is nothing stationary in the world: cold things get warmer, warm things get colder, wet things dry out, dry things get moistened. Emergence and disappearance, life and death, birth and death – being and non-being – are interconnected, they condition and transform into each other.” According to his views, the transition of a phenomenon from one state to another occurs through the struggle of opposites, which he called the eternal “universal logos,” i.e., a single law common to all existence. Heraclitus taught that the world was not created by any of the gods or by any of the people, but was, is and will be an eternally living fire, naturally igniting and naturally dying out.

Heraclitus of Ephesus came from an aristocratic family, deprived of power by democracy, spent his life avoiding secular affairs, and towards the end of his life he completely became a hermit. The main work “On Nature,” preserved only in fragments, was recognized even during the life of Heraclitus as profound and difficult to understand, for which the author received the nickname “dark.”

In the doctrine of being (ontology), Heraclitus asserts that the fundamental principle of the world is fire. The cosmos was not created by anyone, but was, is and will be an eternally living fire, now flaring up, now extinguishing. Fire is eternal, space is a product of fire. Fire undergoes a series of transformations, first becoming water, and water is the seed of the universe. Water in turn is transformed into earth and air, giving rise to the surrounding world.

Heraclitus can be considered the founder of the doctrine of knowledge (epistemology). He was the first to distinguish between sensory and rational knowledge. Cognition, in his opinion, begins with feelings, but sensory data provide only a superficial characteristic of what is being known, and therefore must be processed accordingly by the mind.

The social and legal views of Heraclitus are known, in particular his respect for the law. “The people must fight for the law as for a city wall, and crime must be extinguished faster than a fire,” he said. The dialectic of Heraclitus, which takes into account both sides of a phenomenon - both its variability and its unchanging nature, was not adequately perceived by contemporaries and was already subjected to a wide variety of criticism in antiquity. If Cratylus called for ignoring the moment of stability, then the Eleatics (natives from the city of Elea) Xenophanes (c. 570–478 BC), Parmenides (late 6th–5th centuries BC), Zeno (mid-5th centuries BC) century BC), on the contrary, concentrated attention precisely on the moment of stability, reproaching Heraclitus for exaggerating the role of variability.

Heraclitus of Ephesus, son of Bloson, an Ephesian, “acme” (heyday - age about 40 years) whose heyday falls on the 69th Olympiad (504-501 BC) was born, apparently, c. 544, year of death unknown. Even in ancient times, he was nicknamed “Dark” for the difficulty of his style and “Crying”, for “every time Heraclitus left the house and saw around him so many people living badly and dying badly, he cried, feeling sorry for everyone” (L. LXII; DK 68 A 21). He owned an essay called “The Muses”, or “The Infallible Rule for the Rule of Living”, or “An Index to Morals”, or “A Single Order for the Structure of Everything”. The traditional title is “About Nature”. Most likely, however, the book had no title at all. According to Diogenes Laertius (IX, 5), the work of Heraclitus of Ephesus was divided into three discussions: about the Universe, about the state and about the deity. 145 fragments of the work have been preserved (according to Diels-Krantz) (after fragment 126 are doubtful), but it is now believed that “over 35 should be completely or partially excluded either as later falsifications, or as weak paraphrases of genuine fragments.”

The fragments of Heraclitus produce an ambivalent impression. If some of them, justifying the glory of their “dark” author, are really difficult to understand due to their aphoristic form, often similar to the statements of an oracle, then others are crystal clear and understandable. Difficulties in interpreting the fragments, associated with their poor preservation, also arise from the influence of the doxographic tradition, especially the Stoic interpretation, sometimes “inscribed” in the fragments themselves or in their immediate context. Considerable difficulties are generated by the dialectical way of thinking of Heraclitus of Ephesus, who sees in every phenomenon its self-negation, its opposite. Hence, first of all, formal and logical difficulties.

Teachings of Heraclitus

Reconstruction of the teachings of Heraclitus of Ephesus requires the analytical division of the corpus of its fragments into thematically defined groups with their subsequent synthesis into a holistic view. These main groups are statements about fire as the first principle, about logos, or law, about opposites (dialectics), about the soul, about gods (“theology”), about morals and about the state.

As a starting point for Heraclitus’ teaching about the cosmos, a fragment of DK 22 V 30 can be rightfully accepted: “This cosmos, the same for everything [that exists], was not created by any of the gods and none of the people, but it has always been, is and will be an ever-living fire, ignited in proportions and extinguished in proportions.” This is a clearly expressed basic position of Ionian philosophy: the cosmos represents modifications of a single origin, which naturally passes, changing, into various forms. The origin of Heraclitus of Ephesus is “ever-living fire,” the changes of which are similar to commodity exchange: “everything is exchanged for fire and fire for everything, as goods are exchanged for gold and goods are exchanged for gold” (B 90). This sociomorphic turn, although reminiscent of the mythological sources of philosophy, in this case is practically devoid of mythological correspondences, representing only an analogy of natural and social processes.

In the teachings of Heraclitus, the idea of the world circuit is quite clearly outlined. The process, endless in time, is divided into periods (cycles) by world fires, as a result of which the world dies in fire and is then reborn from it. The length of the period is 10,800 years (A 13). If in time the cosmos “lights up in measures and goes out in measures” is infinite, then in space it is apparently limited (see A 5).

Logos of Heraclitus

The internal regularity of the world process is expressed by Heraclitus of Ephesus with another, more special concept - “logos”. “Although this logos exists eternally, it is inaccessible to people’s understanding either before they hear it or when they hear it for the first time. After all, everything is done according to this logos, and they become like the ignorant when they approach such words and such deeds as I present, dividing each by nature and explaining in essence. What they do while awake is hidden from other people, just as they forget what happens to them in their sleep” (B 1). Confident that he has learned the truth, Heraclitus expresses dissatisfaction with people who are unable to accept his teaching. The meaning of the teaching is that everything in the world takes place according to a certain law - logos, and this logos itself “speaks” to a person, revealing itself in words and deeds, in sensually perceived and revealed by the mind phenomena. As for people, with this law, “with which they have the most constant communication, they are at enmity, and what they encounter every day seems alien to them” (B 72. It is possible that the connection with logos established by Mark quoting Heraclitus of Ephesus Aurelius, who understood it stoicistically, as a controlling principle, had some other meaning among the Ephesians).

Heraclitus. Painting by H. Terbruggen, 1628

Heraclitus’ ambiguity of the word “logos” - and it means a word, and speech, and a story, and a narration, and an argument, and a doctrine, and counting, and calculus, and a ratio, proportion, etc. - does not allow it to be conveyed unambiguously some one word of the Russian language. The closest thing here would probably be the meaning of “law” - the universal semantic connection of existence. It is no coincidence that logos, as the law of being, is placed in relation to the social sphere: “Those who wish to speak intelligently should strengthen themselves with this general (logos. - A.B.), just as a city is [strengthened] by law, and much stronger. For all human laws are nourished by one divine one, which extends its power as far as it wishes, prevails over everything and prevails over everything... Therefore, it is necessary to follow the general. But although the logos is universal, most people live as if they had their own understanding” (B 114, B 2). The parallel of Heraclitus is indicative: “fire is gold (money)” and “logos is the law of the city.” She clearly speaks of the kinship of fire and logos as different aspects of the same being. Fire expresses the qualitative and changeable side of the existing, logos – structural and stable; fire is exchange, or exchange, logos is the proportion of this exchange, although not expressed quantitatively.

So, the Heraclitian logos is the rational necessity of existence, merged with the very concept of existence = fire. And at the same time, this is fate, but significantly transformed. For mythological consciousness, fate acted as a blind irrational force. It could be fate (fatum), but it could also be chance, personified in the image of the goddess Tyche (Roman Fortune). The Logos of Heraclitus of Ephesus is reasonable, it is the “reasonable word” of nature speaking to man, although not accessible to everyone. What does she “say”? “Not for me, but for listening to the logos, it is wise to recognize that everything is one” (B 50). The unity of diverse nature is not immediately revealed, for “nature loves to hide” (B 123). And yet this unity is evident. True, two fragments seem to contradict this idea.

The first of them reads: “Aion is a child at play, arranging checkers: the kingdom of the child” (B 52). But what does the ambiguous word aion mean here? This is hardly the “eternity” of most Russian translations; the text of Heraclitus of Ephesus is too archaic for this. Perhaps this is “time”, as Burnet translates? It is doubtful, then “chronos” would be suggested here, and then the fragment would sound like a polemic against Anaximander’s thesis about the temporal orderliness of origin and destruction. Lebenszeit (life, time of life, century), as Diels translates? Closer to the point, but then the fragment becomes mysterious, even meaningless. Apparently, we are still talking not about the life of the cosmos, but about the life and fate of an individual person: “[man’s] destiny is a playing child, [his life] is the kingdom of a child,” this is how one could freely convey this fragment, expressing a fairly well-known thought about how “fate plays with man” and “what is our life? - a game!". As if admitting the absence of a world pattern - logos?

Fragment 124 reads: “It would be an absurdity if the whole heaven and each of its parts were ordered and consistent with reason in appearance, and in strength, and in circular movements, and in the principles there were nothing like that, but, as Heraclitus says, “The most beautiful cosmos [would] be like a heap of rubbish scattered at random.” The words in quotation marks belong to Heraclitus and are inscribed in the text of Theophrastus. It is difficult to find an unambiguous and universally acceptable interpretation of this text, especially since the fragment of Heraclitus itself does not fit into the context of Theophrastus. However, it seems that we are confronted by Heraclitus of Ephesus with a contrast between the universal logos, the world law inherent in the “hide-loving” nature, and the visible world order, which is similar, in comparison, to a heap of garbage. However, it follows from this that Heraclitus, more clearly than the Milesians, realized and identified two planes of existence: the immediate, present existence of things and its internal nature - logos. Their relationship is expressed through the concept of harmony, even two harmonies: “hidden” and “explicit”. Moreover, “hidden harmony is stronger than obvious” (B 54). But harmony is always the harmony of opposites.

Dialectic of Heraclitus

And here we move into the realm dialectics.

Just by the fact that the most extensive group of fragments of Heraclitus of Ephesus is devoted to opposites, the basis of dialectics, one can judge the central position of this problem in the teaching of the Ephesian. Unity and “struggle” of opposites - this is how one can abstractly express the dialectical structure and dynamics of existence. For Heraclitus, unity is always a dialectical unity of the different and the opposite. This is stated in the pseudo-Aristotelian treatise “On the World”: forming consonance not from like, but from opposites, nature combines masculine and feminine, forming a primary social connection through the combination of opposites; art, imitating nature, creates images by mixing colors, and creates musical harmony from the mixing of voices. “The same is expressed by Heraclitus the Dark: “Connections: the whole and the non-whole, the converging and diverging, the consonant and the discordant, and from everything one, and from one everything”” (B 10). The same idea is expressed in B 51, where harmony is illustrated the polysemantic image of a bow and a lyre, and in B 8, which is now recognized as a paraphrase of B 51, but contains an important addition - “... everything happens through struggle.”

The ancients, and many modern interpreters of the philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus, often find his dialectical statement about identity opposites. However, many of his examples are quite clear. “Good and evil [are the same thing]. In fact, doctors, says Heraclitus, who cut and burn in every possible way, demand payment on top of this, although they do not deserve it, for they do the same thing: good and ill” (B 58). Or: “The way up and the way down are the same” (B 60); “Donkeys would prefer straw to gold” (B 9). No less clear is the example of the shameless phallic hymns to Dionysus, which are sacred to the worshipers of this god, or the fact that “the most beautiful ape is disgusting in comparison with the human race” (B 82). All these sayings express the extraordinary dialectical flexibility of the thinking of Heraclitus of Ephesus, the fluidity, versatility and ambiguity of his concepts, or rather, verbally formulated ideas and images. In every phenomenon he looks for its opposite, as if dissecting every whole into its constituent opposites. And after dissection and analysis there follows (according to the main rule of dialectics) synthesis - struggle, “war” as the source and meaning of any process: “War is the father of everything and the mother of everything; She determined that some should be gods, others people; She made some slaves, others free” (B 53).

Apparently, this idea had already been expressed by the Milesians. One might think that this was Anaximander’s idea, but for him the struggle of opposites seemed to be an injustice, for which the perpetrators “are punished and receive retribution.” Heraclitus writes: “You should know that war is universal, and truth is struggle, and that everything happens through struggle and out of necessity” (B 80), almost quoting, in the last words, the book of Anaximander. The meaning of this extremely important proposition about the universality of the dialectical struggle of opposites is threefold: that the struggle constitutes the driving force, the cause and the “culprit” (aitia means both) of any change.

This is evidenced, in particular, by fragment B 88: “In us there is one and the same living and dead, awake and sleeping, young and old. For this, having changed, is this, and conversely, that, having changed, is this.” This is how Heraclitus of Ephesus approaches the idea of the universality of change. This thought was accepted by antiquity as the credo of Heraclitus, and with it the image of a “fluid,” dialectical thinker entered history. "Panta rhei" - "everything flows" - although this phrase is not among the original fragments of the Ephesian, it has long been attributed to him. “You cannot step into the same river twice” (B 91) - these are his own words. But it does not at all follow from this that Heraclitus is an apologist for variability as such. He dialectician: in variability and fluidity he sees the stable, in exchange - proportion, in the relative - absolute. Of course, these phrases are a translation of the teachings of Heraclitus into modern philosophical language. The own language of Heraclitus of Ephesus did not yet allow any clear abstract expression of these thoughts, for he operated with polysemantic words, flexible ideas, rich, but complex and vague symbolic images, the meaning of which is often lost.

First of all, Heraclitus of Ephesus does not yet know the term “opposites” - it was introduced by Aristotle. Heraclitus uses words such as diapherpmenon, diapheronton - “divergent” (B 51, B 8) or to antizoyn - “warring, striving in different directions.” These are descriptive, not conceptual, expressions. Equally descriptive and figurative are the expressions of such concepts as movement (flow, current), change (exchange, exchange, rotation). Even “logos” - the most formalized of the concepts of Heraclitus philosophy - is not only law, but also fire, reason, and the one... Therefore, the dialectical teaching of Heraclitus of Ephesus appears before us not as an abstract theory, but as an intuitively perceived picture of the world, where concrete-sensual, “living” opposites coincide. This is a clear reminiscence of mythological thinking, which constantly operates with opposites. But at the same time, the picture is rationalized, thoughtful, and often clearly and clearly outlined. In it, as we will see below, those socio- and anthropomorphic images of divine beings that constitute a necessary part of the myth have already been removed. At the same time, the dialectics of Heraclitus of Ephesus, as a doctrine of opposites “in the very essence of objects,” prepared classical Greek philosophy with its not spontaneous, but conscious dialectics.

Heraclitus's doctrine of knowledge

Philosophy inevitably raises problems of human consciousness and cognition. Like the Milesians, Heraclitus of Ephesus connects them with the activity of the “soul,” and the latter with some natural element. Namely: “souls evaporate from moisture” (B 12). The soul fits into the cycle of substances in this way: “For souls, death becomes moisture, and for water, death becomes earth; from the earth water is born, and from water the soul” (B 36). Let’s add to this fragment B 76 (1), which says that “fire lives on earth by the death, and air lives on fire by the death; water lives on air by death, earth on water [by death].” From here it immediately becomes clear that the soul, by its nature, is air or thin and mobile evaporation in Heraclitus. Depending on how far away it is from moisture; the soul acquires special qualities - “a dry radiance is the wisest and best soul” (B 118), while a drunk “staggers and does not notice where he is going, for his soul is wet” (B 117). There is therefore reason to think that, by its “airy” nature, the soul of man and animals is akin to cosmic air, which in this connection turns out to be “intelligent and thinking,” “divine” mind. By drawing it into ourselves, we become intelligent. In sleep, when the human mind is separated from the environment, we forget ourselves; Having awakened, the soul regains reason, just as coals glow and glow as they approach the fire, and when moving away from it they go out (see: Sextus. Against the Scientists, VII, 126–131).

The last image, which connects the soul no longer with moisture and its evaporation, with air, seems to contradict what has been said. However, apparently, this is nothing more than another side of Heraclitus of Ephesus’s understanding of the “soul” - its comparison with fire as the first principle - not that observable and sensually perceived fire, which was discussed in fragment B 76 (1), but fire as a philosophical, “metaphysical”, in the language of later philosophy, first principle. This, of course, is nothing more than the embryo of the opposition of philosophical knowledge as “metaphysics” (that which is “behind physics”) to “physics” itself, but it makes sense to note it. The soul in this aspect is a modification of the single and living “nature of things” and cognizes it only by communing with it, with its logos, and to the extent that this communion has occurred.

Heraclitus of Ephesus - approximately 540 - 480 BC

1.Life and works. Heraclitus came from a noble family, one of his ancestors was the founder of Ephesus. He belonged by birth to the aristocratic party and in maturity was a bitter enemy of the democracy developing in the Ionian cities. The expulsion of his friend Hermodorus from the city finally set him against his fellow citizens. He did not consider it possible to participate in the legislation and government of the city, the structure of which seemed to him hopelessly damaged; Having lost the rank of basileus to his brother, he lived poorly and alone. They say that he also rejected the invitation of the Persian king Darius to spend some time at his court. Heraclitus was initiated into the Eleusinian mysteries, studied with magician-priests, followers of Zoroaster, and was a priest himself. At the end of his life, he retired from Ephesus and lived as a hermit in the mountains, eating herbs.

Heraclitus outlined his teachings in the book "About nature", which he gave for safekeeping to the temple of Artemis of Ephesus. From this work, divided into three parts - natural philosophical, political and theological - many aphorisms have come down to us, reminiscent of the sayings of oracles, who usually communicated only with those who deserved it and stayed away from the crowd. And Heraclitus hid his thoughts in order to avoid the ridicule of fools who believed that they understood everything, passing off ordinary common sense as profound truths. For this he was nicknamed “dark,” although certain passages of his writing were distinguished by strength, clarity and conciseness.

2. Dialectics as a doctrine of the unity and struggle of opposites. Heraclitus argued: everything flows, nothing remains motionless and constant, everything develops and turns into something else. In two of his famous fragments we read: “You cannot enter the same river twice and you cannot touch something mortal twice in the same state, but, due to the uncontrollability and rapidity of change, everything is scattered and collected, comes and goes.” “We enter and do not enter the same river, we are the same and not the same.” The meaning of these fragments is clear: outwardly the river is the same, but in reality it each time consists of new water, which comes and disappears, therefore, entering the river a second time, we are washed with different water. But we ourselves change: at the moment of complete immersion in the river, we are already different, not the same as we were. That is why Heraclitus says that we enter and do not enter the same river. In the same way, we are and are not, in order to be what we are at a certain moment, we must not be what we were at the previous moment. This aspect of Heraclitus's teaching led some of his disciples to extreme conclusions, such as Cratylus, who argued: not only can we not bathe in the same river twice, but we cannot bathe even once; at the moment of entering and immersing ourselves in the river, another water arrives, and we ourselves are different even before complete immersion.

For Heraclitus, the statement about the variability of the world around us was a statement of a fact obvious to everyone, starting from which, we need to go to deeper questions: what is the source or cause of the constant change in the world; what lies at the basis of the world, for it is impossible to think of becoming without being!? There are two sources of movement and change: external and internal. The first source is the existence and interaction of opposites. Becoming is a continuous transition from one opposite to another: cold things become hot, hot things cool, wet things dry up, dry things become moistened, a youth becomes decrepit, a living dies, another youth is born from a mortal, and so on. There is always a struggle between opposing sides. “Struggle is the mother of everything and the ruler of everything.” The eternal flow of things and universal formation are revealed as a harmony of contrasts, as the eternal pacification of the warring parties, the reconciliation of disputants and vice versa. “They (the ignorant) do not understand that what is different is in agreement with itself; the harmony of differences is like the harmony of the lyre and the bow.” Only in alternation do opposites give each other a specific meaning: “Illness makes health sweet, hunger imparts the pleasantness of satiety, and hard work gives the taste of rest.” Opposites come from the One and unite in harmony: “The road up and the road down are the same road.” One and the same - living and dead, awake and sleeping, young and old, since some things, changing, became others, and those others, changing in turn, became first. Philosophy is reflection on the great contradictions that the mind encounters everywhere in the reality it knows. The opposite principles of unity and multitude, finite and infinite, rest and movement, light and darkness, good and evil, active and passive, exclude each other, and at the same time are united at the source and the entire structure of the Cosmos is maintained by their harmonious combination. Thus, Heraclitus argued Cosmic Law of Polarity: the manifested world exists thanks to the bifurcation of the One into opposites, which are united in their essence, but different in manifestation. Hence, knowledge of the world consists in knowing opposites and finding their unity.

3. Doctrine of Fire. The internal source of development of all forms of the world is the Spiritual Origin. Heraclitus argued that the One Principle, which lies at the basis of all phenomena in Nature, is Fire; everything is a manifestation of this Divine Substance. “All things are the exchange of fire, and one fire changes all things, just as goods are the exchange of gold, and all things are exchanged for gold.” “This order, the same for all things, was not created by any of the Gods, and by none of the people, but always was, is and will be an eternal living Fire, ignited in proportions and extinguished in proportions.” Fire is Spirit or Primary Life, all other elements and forms are only transformations of Fire, everything visible to us is only extinguished, hidden Fire. Fire, according to Heraclitus, Hippocrates and Parmenides, is the Divine Principle, the teachings of the Zoroastrians, Plato and the Stoics that everything in the world, including the soul and body of man, developed from Fire, the thinking and immortal Element, are identical. If Fire is the Spirit that animates everything, then earthly matter is an extinguished spirit; the souls of people, on the contrary, are “flaming fires,” ignited matter. The Universe arises from the One Element, Fire, this primary Substance is transformed from the state of Fire to Air then to the state of Water, then Water becomes Earth, and then everything returns to the source. The path from Fire to Earth - the path of extinction - Heraclitus calls the "path down", the reverse process of combustion - the "path up". He recognized the world year, consisting of two periods: the period of impoverishment of the Divine, corresponding to the formation of the world, and the period of fullness, excess, saturation, corresponding to the ignition of the Cosmos. Thus, Heraclitus argued Cosmic Law of Cycle: everything begins with a fiery divine state and ends in a dense state, and then the process unfolds back to the beginning, the material again becomes spiritual.

4. The doctrine of Logos and Cosmos. In the philosophy of the ancient Greeks, the word Logos had several meanings: law, word, saying, speech, the meaning of words and the content of speech, and finally, thought and its bearer reason. As a result, Logos is the Cosmic Mind, God is the Creator and Ruler of the Cosmos. Logos – Fiery Being; The Mind that moves the Cosmos is Fire and Fire is Mind. The Logos of Heraclitus periodically creates Cosmos from Fire and again destroys it after all the lives in it have passed the cycle of existence prescribed by it. Nothing will escape or hide from this fiery Logos, he will come suddenly, judge everything and take everything; the world must ignite and all the elements will again plunge into the Fire from which they once arose. By Cosmos, ancient philosophers meant our Solar System; knowing about the Infinity of the worlds, they studied our Cosmos, the house in which minerals, plants, animals, people and gods undergo evolution. Cosmos includes various spheres with different densities of matter; in Heraclitus we find mention that Cosmos is at least divided into two parts: the upper, celestial - the sphere of divine, pure and rational Fire, and the lower, sublunary - the sphere of extinguished Fire. a substance that is cold, heavy and damp. Thus, for the philosopher, the Cosmos seemed united and animate, full of souls, demons and gods.

5. The doctrine of man. Heraclitus fully accepted Pythagorean and Zoroastrian views on the human soul and its properties. Man is the unity of soul and body, and besides, man has two souls: one fiery, dry, wise, immortal; the other is wet, unwise, blind, mortal. Condemning popular religion, especially in the crude forms of its cult, Heraclitus, nevertheless, was a religious thinker who affirmed supermundane existence and the law of reincarnation. He believed that the souls of people, before descending “into generation” or sublunary existence, reside in the “Milky Way”. He revived the Orphic idea that bodily life is the mortification of the soul, and the death of the body brings the soul to life, affirmed the idea of punishment and reward after death: “After death, something overtakes people that they did not expect, that they could not even imagine.” He recognized the individual immortality of the Supreme Soul and its evolution: Gods are immortal people, people are mortal gods; the death of a deity is life for a person, the death of a person is the birth of a deity, the resurrection of true life. “Immortals are mortal, mortals are immortal, these live by the death of those, and those die by the life of these.” There is constant communication between man and deity, as man cognizes the divine and the divine is revealed to him.

6. The doctrine of knowledge. Comprehension of the Truth is difficult; to find a grain of gold, a lot of earth needs to be dug up; to find the Truth, we must explore everything through personal experience and labor, believing our eyes more than our ears, ascending from the known to the unknown, expecting the unexpected. We must learn from Nature itself, comprehend the secret unity and harmony in the visible struggle, the hidden harmony triumphing over its opposite; we must look for the Law, the Logos in Nature itself. The weakness of the human mind, its delusions, and inability to perceive the Truth are determined by human sensuality, which darkens this light. It is necessary to be alert to the senses, since the latter are satisfied by the appearance of things. A person comprehends the Truth by joining the wisdom of the Logos, in which his Divine soul participates. Sensual passions and attractions that defile the soul, conceit, arrogance and superstition, addiction to private human opinions - all this alienates the soul from the Logos, the source of Wisdom. Must follow to the mind, which is one and universal, but people live as if each had their own mind and therefore are not aware of what they say and what they do. Any reasonable reasoning must be based on the universality and necessity of the Law, and, moreover, the Divine Law, and not the conditional decree of some state. Only rational knowledge has complete certainty; only Intelligence can discern the truth in perception, find identity and agreement in visible differences. The noblest of the senses - sight and hearing - lie to a person who is not enlightened by Reason and does not know how to understand their instructions. Truth is achieved by the mind beyond the senses. “Eyes and ears are bad witnesses for people if their souls are barbaric.” In this sense, Heraclitus considered himself a prophet of intelligible Truth, hence his oracular tone as a specific way of expression. The highest goal of human knowledge for him is the knowledge of the plan of the Logos.

7. “The Crying Philosopher.” Any legislation that normalizes human relations must draw its basis from the Law that governs the Cosmos. However, the moral and religious concepts of his contemporary society, just like the laws of his hometown, seemed to Heraclitus not only conventional, but downright false, completely corrupted. The deep pessimism of the “crying” philosopher had a cosmological and ethical basis. The world is an extinct, fallen Divinity, individual souls are filled with particles of divine Fire, having forgotten their divine origin. From childhood, people learn to commit lawlessness according to the law, untruth according to truth, learn deception, theft and dissipation, worshiping the one who is most successful in untruth and violence. Everyone has given themselves over to madness and greed, everyone is chasing illusory happiness, no one heeds the law of the Logos-God, no one knows the word of Truth. Whether people hear it or not, they do not understand it and, like donkeys, prefer straw to gold. The very knowledge they seek is vain knowledge, for their hearts do not have a desire for truth. People seek a cure for the evils of their lives, but their doctors are worse than the diseases. If any of them are sick, they call doctors: they cut, burn, drain the sore spot and demand bribes for the same thing that diseases do. If anyone has sinned, they offer bloody sacrifices, thinking to wash away their own dirt with their mud; they pray to the walls on which images of gods are written, not knowing what these Gods and Heroes really are.

All human social laws and moral requirements relative, however, their basis is absolute divine Laws. For example, war is evil, but war is also a necessity at this stage of human development: it makes some heroes, and even gods, others - ordinary people, some - free, others - slaves. The visible disasters and suffering caused by it are not evil in the absolute sense of the word, for just as a doctor sometimes torments the body he is treating, just as woolbeaters beat, tear and knead their wool to make it better and stronger, so people endure sorrows, without understanding their necessity. There are many opinions, but there is one Reason, one divine Law, and all human laws on which human society is based must be nourished by this Law. Justice is recognized in them; one should stand for their protection, as for the walls of one’s native city. But people are reluctant to obey this Law, they cannot stand superiority, they reject teachers, not recognizing that one is sometimes worth thousands, if he is the best and most knowledgeable.

Assuring society of the formation of the world without the involvement of gods or people, the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus of Ephesus said: “Man’s character creates destiny.” Briefly about his biography: the dialectician Heraclitus was and is one of the famous sages of ancient Greece (544–483 BC). The thinker came from an aristocratic royal dynasty of the city of Ephesus. At one time, having abandoned the throne due to a melancholy temperament, he lived as an outcast in a built mountain hut. There he devoted himself to reflection and avoided social outings and communication.

The basic writing that was fragmentarily preserved was the treatise “On Nature,” which was recognized as profound and difficult for everyone to understand, for this reason the author acquired the nickname “dark.” He was also nicknamed “the crying one” because he could not look at the fussiness of people without tears. The scientist belonged to the Ionian school, and his philosophy was based on the eternal existence of the world in the form of “living fire”, cyclically igniting and dying out.

The sage took as the main idea, the idea of the concept of the essence of the development of the world, through intuition. The primary cause of the universe is an age-old and boundless action, while the existing materiality of objects is the subsequent cause of the universe. The philosophy of Heraclitus included the concepts of the commonality of movements and developments that he substantiated. He believed that objects and phenomena do not exist without movement: “Everything moves, and nothing is at rest. Everything flows - everything changes.” The cradle of movement is the struggle of opposites.

Principles and basic ideas of philosophy

Heraclitus, in his works, described the basic concepts and principles that philosophy includes. The surviving writings, of which there are few, say:

Fire is the root cause of living things, the foundation of world creation;
Space and the surrounding world are cyclically destroyed by an almighty fire in order to be reborn;
The cycle of events in nature is associated with the instability of the course of life and time;
The rule of antinomy or opposites. Water - gives to aquatic creatures, but it happens that it takes lives from people (tsunamis, floods and other water-related disasters). Einstein's theory of relativity is based on this thesis.

The teachings of Heraclitus have reached our time in incomplete and fragmentary fragments, and the doctrines are subject to complex interpretation and criticism. We do not have the means to fully evaluate and perceive the teachings of the sage, therefore we refer to the intuition and traditions of Ancient Greece of that time, speculating and supplementing the missing parts of knowledge.

The ancient sage, while denying the influence of schools and other sages that existed before his appearance, still has some similarities with Pythagoras. According to Heraclitus, fire serves as the foundation of the world. The natural power of infinity is Fire and its “brainchild” – Space. The Cosmos and the Universe were not created by anyone, but have always existed and will forever “flare up” and “extinguish.” Experiencing a series of changes, at first fire was represented as water - the seed of the universe, then water was transformed into earth. Then the earth into the air, creating the surrounding world. Modifying everything around, fire produces and destroys, forming a Universal cycle of changes.

Constancy and immobility that seem to a person are illusory, due to the deception of the senses, since the Universe is impermanent, filled with minute-by-minute changes and various qualities (captivating and ugly, evil and good, wet and dry, living and dead). Based on this, the conclusion suggests itself that movement is the coexistence of opposites and their struggle: “Everything happens through struggle and necessity.”

The position with which changes are associated is the law of gravity. The eternal change of substances is governed by the Universal rule - Logos or unchanging fate. Logos is the age-old wisdom of ordering the current of change into the age-old resistance of beginnings and destruction. The ancient Greek sage knew that his main task was to “see” the inert configurations of existence and, through internal deep intuition, to make his way into the nature of world movement. Primary tools are the incessant movements of the universe, secondary tools are the objects of the material world participating in the universe.

Philosophical knowledge, which stood at the beginning of the ideological movement, gave the modern Western “basis of life.” The human soul includes warm and dry steam. The soul is a pure image of the Divine fire, feeding on its warmth. The soul absorbs warmth through the senses and breathing. Gifted with great wisdom and impeccable properties, the soul is a dry vapor. Damp and damp steam comes from a weak and unreasonable soul that has lost its wise properties. When dying, the human soul leaves the body: the pure soul becomes the highest being in the afterlife, and the unreasonable soul follows the beliefs about the afterlife kingdom of Hades.

The Milesian school in the formation of the philosopher's views

The questions studied by the sage were ontology, ethics and political science. The Milesian school, which he criticized, did not fully influence his point of view, leaving only an imprint on his worldview. Founded by Thales in the Greek colony in the Asian city of Miletus, it was the original one in antiquity. Created at the beginning of the 6th century BC, the main subject was natural philosophy - the science of the nature of the physical state of things. Many scientists believe that the term “philosophy”, astronomy, mathematics, biology, geography, physics and chemistry began their journey with the Milesian school. The predisposition to knowledge has become a powerful incentive for the development of followers of a given society. Heraclitus criticized the views of the school, since it understood the world as a single whole being. He entered into debates and reflected this in his writings.

The concept of dialectics

The main connecting link in the teachings of the ancient Greek sage was God, in his opinion, who unites all opposites together - everything in the world originates from opposition to each other. One cannot exist without the other. The term “dialectics” was formed in ancient Greece, literally meaning “the art of arguing, reasoning” or the principle of arguing the rules, forms and methods of reflexive theoretical thinking, exploring the contradictions found in the conceivable content of this thinking.

The great sage understood dialectics as the age-old formation and impermanence of existence. The continuous connection of the existence of everything in the world is the collision and pull of opposites. The world is continuous and endless, has boundaries, pace and rhythm, is forever changing and collides with the elements: water and fire, air and earth; night gives way to day, life to death, evil to good.

The idea of a secular movement is not special for today's society, but at the time of its appearance, it was considered a significant conclusion in a scientific breakthrough. The images of the ancient Greek sage responded to the concept of the Ionian school, which believed that the world around us consists of four elements, headed by fire. It is in this conclusion about dialectics that the view of the followers of the Milesian school is contained.

Followers of the philosopher

The follower of the ancient Greek sage was the Athenian - Cratylus, who also studied with the sophist Protagoras, and later became a respected teacher of Plato. Being a diligent student, Cratylus took the concepts of his teacher and increased his knowledge. Then Cratylus's student Plato chose the path of dialectics, building all his works on it. Aristotle and , borrowed the dialectic of the sage, creating great positions.

Our contemporaries, who followed the teachings of the sage of ancient Greece, were Heidegger and Nietzsche. Their axioms of universal change were taken as the basis of the scriptures and developed, bringing new knowledge to the modern world. Thus, thanks to the knowledge laid down by Heraclitus, philosophy developed. Many scientists and thinkers took its principles as a basis.

Denial and criticism of the ideology of Heraclitus

A courtier of Hiero I, Epicharus in 470 BC was a comedian who ridiculed, in his own works, the judgments of Heraclitus. “A person who borrowed money is not obliged to pay it back, because he has changed and become a different person, so why should he still pay back his debts?” Epicharus ridiculed. There were many such “merry fellows”, so it is difficult to judge whether this was ordinary entertainment at court or open criticism of the sage’s considerations. Epicharus was caustic and ironic towards the opinion of the Greek sage. Hegel and Heidegger also criticized the sage's judgments for the imperfection of points of view, disorder and contradictory considerations.

While criticizing and ridiculing the sage, few people thought and understood that the preserved scriptures that have come down to our time were, in fact, supplemented and rewritten by the sage’s followers, filling in the gaps with their own judgments and those who did not fully understand the teacher. His doctrine of dialectics relied on two-sided phenomena: inconstancy and immutability, and was inadequately perceived by his contemporaries, being subject to various criticisms. The student Cratylus demanded that the principle of stability be ignored, but the sages of the Eleatics: Xenophanes, Parmenides and Zeno concentrated their own interest on stability, reproaching Heraclitus for the exaggerated role of changes.

Thoughts of Heraclitus and their place in modern philosophy

Heraclitus was actively engaged in reflection during the 69th Olympic Games, but at that time his knowledge was not relevant. Being surrounded by misunderstanding, distant from his opinions and knowledge, prompted the sage to become a hermit. So he left Ephesus and headed high into the mountains, alone developing brilliant, advanced ideas.

Treatises on the life of the philosopher that have come down to us depict a secretive man, witty in his judgment and critical of everyone and everything, the goal of which was his fellow villagers and the ruling power. The Greek sage was not afraid of being punished or condemned; his straightforwardness “cut from the shoulder” like a dagger, without exception. An unusual and extraordinary person for his time, who remained misunderstood during his lifetime and left behind a mystery about his death, still found a circle of readers centuries later.

Analyzing the question of the correspondence between rationality and knowledge, he believed that wisdom differs from omniscience or erudition: “Omniscience does not teach intelligence, nature loves to hide,” he said. One of the first to distinguish between the knowledge of sensuality and rationality, for which he is recognized as the founder of epistemology. Cognition comes into force with feelings, but feelings do not give a deep characteristic to cognition; what is cognized should be processed by the mind.

The sage's social and legal judgments are based on respect for the law. “The people need to fight for rights, like for a city wall, and crimes should be extinguished faster than a fire,” he said. Denying the influence of outsiders and schools on their own knowledge, the views of the sages could not arise out of nowhere. Current researchers suggest that he knew the works of Pythagoras and Diogenes well, since the treatises he wrote reflect the concepts introduced into science by these ancient Greek sages. Phrases and words of Heraclitus are quoted to this day. Here are the most famous and valuable conclusions of the sage:
“Eyes are more accurate witnesses than ears.” A worthy discovery and wisdom with the conclusion of a person's true perception of the essence of things. I remember the saying: “It’s better to see once than to hear once”;
“A person’s wishes come true make him worse.” A person who does not strive for anything degrades without development. Having everything he wants, the individual loses the ability to sympathize with the poor, ceasing to appreciate what he has, taking everything for granted. A thousand years later, this conclusion will be taken as the basis for his own interpretation by the British writer Oscar Wilde: “Wanting to punish us, the Gods fulfill our prayers,” he says in his own novel “The Picture of Dorian Gray”;
“Knowing a lot does not teach the mind.” The essence of wisdom is to follow nature;
“Fate is a sequence of primary causes, giving rise to one cause after another and ad infinitum”;
“The knowledge and understanding of the wisest sage is but his own opinion”;
“Those who listen but do not perceive are like the deaf.” This conclusion expresses the fullness of bitterness from the misunderstanding of those around him;
“Anger is very difficult to deal with.” Paying with his existence for everything he demands.

Thanks to the inquisitive minds of adherents of ancient sciences, the basis on which we build modern science was passed on to us.