On Heraclitus

Review of Metaphysics

Volumn 53, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 613-632

  Benardete, Seth ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 0040357452     PISSN: 00346632     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (88)

1. Heraclitus: 1.635-704; Empedocles: 1.705-829; Anaxagoras: 1.830-920; All fragments from the pre-Socratics are cited from Diels-Kramy, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951).
2. Heraclitus: 1.635-704; Empedocles: 1.705-829; Anaxagoras: 1.830-920; All fragments from the pre-Socratics are cited from Diels-Kramy, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951).
3. Heraclitus: 1.635-704; Empedocles: 1.705-829; Anaxagoras: 1.830-920; All fragments from the pre-Socratics are cited from Diels-Kramy, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951).
4. Heraclitus: 1.635-704; Empedocles: 1.705-829; Anaxagoras: 1.830-920; All fragments from the pre-Socratics are cited from Diels-Kramy, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed. (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951).
5. Heraclitus: 1.921-2.
6. Heraclitus: 35.
7. Heraclitus: 2, 89.
8. Heraclitus: 2, 113, 114. Heraclitus frag. 113: xunon esti pasi phronein: "To be thoughtful is common to all." Heraclitus seems to break up the two parts he detects in xunon and give its etymology: xunon is xun nōi. The position of pasin first indicates it, for it would normally precede xunon or immediately follow it. In using, however, phronein rather than noein, Heraclitus points to the essential hiddenness and privacy of thinking despite its not being like dreaming.
9. Heraclitus: 50. Fragment 34: "Not understanding [axunetoi], though they heard, they are like the deaf; the proverb bears witness to them: 'Absent though present' [pareontas apeinai]." The proverb refers to the distracted (Aristophanes Knights 1119-20: ho nous de sou parōn apodēmei); Heraclitus radicalizes it and says one cannot be present without mind. To be present in this sense is signified by the hode of the logos.
10. For this kind of apo koinou, see É. des Places, "Constructions grecques des mots à founction double (APO KOINOU)", Revue des études grecques 75, 1962, 1-12; reprinted in Études platoniciennes (Leiden 1981), 60-71. It shows up again in Heraclitus in fr. 51, where heautōi has to be taken twice. Heraclitus's aei recalls Timaeus 27d6-28a1, where Timaeus distinguishes between ti to on aei and ti to gignomenon men aei, and the second aei is disputed and does not rest on the unanimous testimony of the tradition.
11. For this kind of apo koinou, see É. des Places, "Constructions grecques des mots à founction double (APO KOINOU)", Revue des études grecques 75, 1962, 1-12; reprinted in Études platoniciennes (Leiden 1981), 60-71. It shows up again in Heraclitus in fr. 51, where heautōi has to be taken twice. Heraclitus's aei recalls Timaeus 27d6-28a1, where Timaeus distinguishes between ti to on aei and ti to gignomenon men aei, and the second aei is disputed and does not rest on the unanimous testimony of the tradition.
12. Rhetoric 1407b11-18.
13. Herodotus has twice the expression ton eonta logon for the true logos (1.95.1; 116.5). It concerns on both occasions the story of Cyrus, for the Persians practice speaking the truth (alēthizesthai 1.136.2). In the first it characterizes the logos of those who do not wish to enhance the stature (semnoun) of Cyrus; in the second it refers to the logos spoken after torture was applied. Truth is latent in the logos that is.
14. In fragment 5 human doing and human saying are split between cleansing and praying, that is, between an attempted dividing and a pointing out; in fragment 15 between making a procession and singing, that is, the procession denies it is to Hades; in fragment 47, human saying consists in naming life and human doing in killing; cf. frag. 73, 112. Perhaps frag. 45 is to be understood this way: you would not find the limits (peirata) of soul if you should go to the limits of soul because they are what the soul experiences (peiratai) and stand opposed to the deep logos (bathun logon) of soul, which is of the unlimited (apeira) experiences of soul.
15. Cratylus 388b13-c1. Plato's Timaeus begins his account by distinguishing between the manner in which his auditors would most easily understand (mathoite) and the manner in which he would best point out (endeixamēn) how he understands (dianooumai) the proposal (Timaeus 27d2-4). Note how close Socrates' characterization of man is to the first fragment: dei gar anthrōpan suneinai [to] kat eidos legomenon, ek pollōn ionta aisthēseōn eis hen logismōi sunairoumenon (Phaedrus 249b6-c1).
16. Cratylus 388b13-c1. Plato's Timaeus begins his account by distinguishing between the manner in which his auditors would most easily understand (mathoite) and the manner in which he would best point out (endeixamēn) how he understands (dianooumai) the proposal (Timaeus 27d2-4). Note how close Socrates' characterization of man is to the first fragment: dei gar anthrōpan suneinai [to] kat eidos legomenon, ek pollōn ionta aisthēseōn eis hen logismōi sunairoumenon (Phaedrus 249b6-c1).
17. Cratylus 388b13-c1. Plato's Timaeus begins his account by distinguishing between the manner in which his auditors would most easily understand (mathoite) and the manner in which he would best point out (endeixamēn) how he understands (dianooumai) the proposal (Timaeus 27d2-4). Note how close Socrates' characterization of man is to the first fragment: dei gar anthrōpan suneinai [to] kat eidos legomenon, ek pollōn ionta aisthēseōn eis hen logismōi sunairoumenon (Phaedrus 249b6-c1).
18. Heraclitus: 53.
19. Heraclitus: 12, 49a.
20. Heraclitus: 101a.
21. Heraclitus: 52.
22. Heraclitus: 96.
23. Heraclitus: 114.
24. Heraclitus: 32. The last line of Sophocles' Trachiniae-ouden toutōn ho ti mē Zeus: "Whatever (is) not Zeus (is) not any one of these things" - is to be contrasted with this.
25. Heraclitus: 5.
26. Heraclitus: 13. In discussing the art of cleansing (kathartikē), Plato's Eleatic Stranger says that "the way of speeches" is "for the sake of the acquisition of mind (noun) and, in trying to understand (katanoein) what is akin and what is not akin in all arts, it honors all of them equally for this purpose, and in no way believes that one more than the other thatera tōn heterōn is more laughable in terms of their likeness, but it holds steadily to the view that whoever makes plain the art of hunting through the art of the general is not somewhat more august than whoever makes it plain through the art of lice-killing but is for the most part more vain" (Sophist 227a7-b6). Note that phtheiristikē contains simultaneously the louse (phtheir) and the killing (phtheirein), which stratē;gikē does not bring out. Perhaps the point of Heraclitus frag. 56 is that if men and not children had told him the riddle, Homer would immediately have known that what they saw and left behind were the corpses and what they did not see and took away were the souls. He did not put the high and the low together.
27. Heraclitus: 13. In discussing the art of cleansing (kathartikē), Plato's Eleatic Stranger says that "the way of speeches" is "for the sake of the acquisition of mind (noun) and, in trying to understand (katanoein) what is akin and what is not akin in all arts, it honors all of them equally for this purpose, and in no way believes that one more than the other thatera tōn heterōn is more laughable in terms of their likeness, but it holds steadily to the view that whoever makes plain the art of hunting through the art of the general is not somewhat more august than whoever makes it plain through the art of lice-killing but is for the most part more vain" (Sophist 227a7-b6). Note that phtheiristikē contains simultaneously the louse (phtheir) and the killing (phtheirein), which stratē;gikē does not bring out. Perhaps the point of Heraclitus frag. 56 is that if men and not children had told him the riddle, Homer would immediately have known that what they saw and left behind were the corpses and what they did not see and took away were the souls. He did not put the high and the low together.
28. This shift recalls something similar in Plato's Sophist. The Stranger uses angling as an example of how they are to proceed in understanding the sophist; they are to ask in the case of any art, how does it handle, what does it handle, and with what does it handle; but this is not the path taken; instead, the sophist proves to be of the same kind as the angler, and hence the problem of image arises from the insertion of an example into a class.
29. For the nononeness of law, compare Plato Laws 734e3-6. The Athenian Stranger means that if nomos were "tune" and not "law," there could be one law to his one prelude.
30. Heraclitus: 108.
31. Reading either eirgast' an with Schleiermacher, or eirgasto if Heraclitus anticipates the truth of what the contrafactual apparently denies.
32. This identification is all the more remarkable because, as far as known, Dionysus himself, unlike his attendants, is never represented ithyphallically; see M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1967), 1, 590, 593. If one compares Aristophanes Acharnians 247-63 with Herodotus 2.48.2, one sees that Heraclitus refers over against the Greek Dionysia to its Egyptian original: Dicaeopolis begins by addressing Dionysus and ends with his singing to phallikon as he follows behind the phallus, which he addresses as Phalēs, the comrade of Dionysus; but in Egypt, where the Dionysia, apart from choruses, are the same as in Greece, statues with a phallus, not less in size than the entire body, are carried in processions, where the women celebrate Dionysus in song.
33. This identification is all the more remarkable because, as far as known, Dionysus himself, unlike his attendants, is never represented ithyphallically; see M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1967), 1, 590, 593. If one compares Aristophanes Acharnians 247-63 with Herodotus 2.48.2, one sees that Heraclitus refers over against the Greek Dionysia to its Egyptian original: Dicaeopolis begins by addressing Dionysus and ends with his singing to phallikon as he follows behind the phallus, which he addresses as Phalēs, the comrade of Dionysus; but in Egypt, where the Dionysia, apart from choruses, are the same as in Greece, statues with a phallus, not less in size than the entire body, are carried in processions, where the women celebrate Dionysus in song.
34. This identification is all the more remarkable because, as far as known, Dionysus himself, unlike his attendants, is never represented ithyphallically; see M. P. Nilsson, Geschichte der griechischen Religion (Munich: C.H. Beck, 1967), 1, 590, 593. If one compares Aristophanes Acharnians 247-63 with Herodotus 2.48.2, one sees that Heraclitus refers over against the Greek Dionysia to its Egyptian original: Dicaeopolis begins by addressing Dionysus and ends with his singing to phallikon as he follows behind the phallus, which he addresses as Phalēs, the comrade of Dionysus; but in Egypt, where the Dionysia, apart from choruses, are the same as in Greece, statues with a phallus, not less in size than the entire body, are carried in processions, where the women celebrate Dionysus in song.
35. Pausanias: 6.25.2.
36. Heraclitus: 5.
37. Plato Cratylus 403a5-7. The pun is as old as Homer (Iliad 5.845).
38. Plato Cratylus 403a5-7. The pun is as old as Homer (Iliad 5.845).
39. Heraclitus: 54.
40. Tragica adespota: 487 Nauck.
41. Cf. Plato Cratylus 413b3-c1: "Someone asserts that this is the just, the sun, for it alone in going through and burning is the guardian of the beings; so whenever I gladly tell it to someone else, on the grounds that I have heard something beautiful, he, once he hears me, laughs at me and asks whether I believe nothing is just among men whenever the sun sets."
42. Heraclitus: 57, 106.
43. Heraclitus: 99.
44. Heraclitus: 123.
45. Heraclitus: 93.
46. Heraclitus: 7: "If all the beings should become smoke, the nostrils would discern differences." Everyone would then believe that all the beings were one (namely, fire), and no one would take the differences smell detects as proving real differences. The senses therefore cannot be taken as a guide to either difference or sameness.
47. Heraclitus: 32. Heraclitus: 35: "It is meet for philosophic (philosophous) men to be knowers of very many things." If to be philosophic is to be a lover of the wise that is one, he must be a knower of many.
48. Heraclitus: 32. Heraclitus: 35: "It is meet for philosophic (philosophous) men to be knowers of very many things." If to be philosophic is to be a lover of the wise that is one, he must be a knower of many.
49. Heraclitus: 23.
50. Heraclitus: 102.
51. Compare Heraclitus: 12.
52. For this pun see Plato Republic 494d1-2; Parmenides: 8.35.
53. For this pun see Plato Republic 494d1-2; Parmenides: 8.35.
54. One may compare for this the inversion Herodotus ascribes to Egypt, in its nature and the ways of its people, on the one hand, and, on the other, the topsy-turviness Cambyses threatened Egypt with (2.35.2; 3.3.3). The first belongs as a part to the single logos of Herodotus.
55. Sunesis, Socrates says, is the same as sullogismos, for sunienai means (legei) that the soul sumporeuetai tois pragmasi (Cratylus 412a4-b1).
56. In fragment 12, the stepping into the river establishes its sameness; this is on the way to the logos; but the going of the waters of the river is "other and other" (hetera kai hetera). The logos looks like two speeches, each with a finite verb at the end, and with no connective, and again it looks like one logos with embainousin the participle. Heraclitus seems to imply that we do not put the two together though we acknowledge each separately.
57. Germania 26.4.
58. Herodotus: 2.173.3-4.
59. Compare Timaeus 59c5-d3.
60. Republic 619b7-c6.
61. Sophocles Ajax 430-1.
62. Herodotus: 1.34-45.
63. In Sophocles Philoctetes 931-3, Philoctetes sounds Heraclitus' pun on the bow: "You have deprived me of my life (bow) in taking my bow. Give it back. I beseech you. Give it back, I beg in the name of the gods of your father, don't take my life (bow) away from me."
64. P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris 1968), s.v. "daimōn." In Aeschylus, Ares alone of the Olympian gods is called daimōn. (Seven against Thebes 106).
65. P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque (Paris 1968), s.v. "daimōn." In Aeschylus, Ares alone of the Olympian gods is called daimōn. (Seven against Thebes 106).
66. M. P. Nilsson, 1, 217.
67. This is the principle Critias uses in assigning Athena to Athens and Posidon to Atlantis (Timaeus 24c4-d3; Critias 109c4-d1; 110b5-c2).
68. This is the principle Critias uses in assigning Athena to Athens and Posidon to Atlantis (Timaeus 24c4-d3; Critias 109c4-d1; 110b5-c2).
69. Xenophanes: 14-16; cf. Vergil Aeneid 9.184-5: Nisus ait: dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?
70. Xenophanes: 14-16; cf. Vergil Aeneid 9.184-5: Nisus ait: dine hunc ardorem mentibus addunt, Euryale, an sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?
71. Compare Heraclitus: 103.
72. Compare Heraclitus: 67.
73. Plato's Timaeus distinguishes the parts of time from the species of time (Timaeus 37e1-5). The parts of time imitate eternity insofar as it abides in one, for each of these parts puts together into one contrary appearances-day and night make one day, the phases of the moon make one month, the four seasons make one year, and the coincidence of all the instruments of time make one perfect and complete year (39c1-d7), while the species of time - past, present, and future - in resisting any collapse into one cannot be measured exactly, for if they are so measured the present disappears entirely and time becomes the ultimate expression of the nonbeing of becoming (37e5-38b5). Timaeus is forced to distinguish against the grain of precise speech pareinai from einai (38b4): no sooner has he denied that strictly speaking esti belongs between en and estai than he speaks of the ouranos as gegonōs te kai ōn kai esomenos (38c3).
74. Eryximachus takes exception to this, for if the states are superimposed there is no possibility of our fiddling with them in order to obtain pleasure; only if the states alternate can we interfere with them separately (Plato Symposium 187a4-c2; 187e1-5).
75. Heraclitus: 48.
76. Odyssey 21.404-12.
77. Plato's Timaeus has the demiurge show the nature of the whole to souls and declare the laws of fate to them: showing (seeing) is to speaking (hearing) as nature is to law (Timaeus 41e2-3). Unlike the address to the gods, in which the demiurge explains why they and not he must complete the cosmos, the laws are formulated in indirect statement. They are laid down for the sake of justice, but the cosmos cannot be completed unless men become unjust (42b3-d2; 90e6-91a1).
78. Heraclitus: 123.
79. Iliad 18.490-540.
80. See Plato's Laws 918b2-4: "How is not [the retailer] a benefactor, who makes the being of whatever things there are (ousian khrēmatōn hōntinōnoun), which is not commensurate and nonuniform, uniform and commensurate?"
81. Heraclitus: 26.
82. Nicomachean Ethics 1094b14-19.
83. Heraclitus: 124.
84. Iliad 18.209.
85. Theogony 226-9.
86. The necessary connection between speech and conflict shows up in the fact that in Herodotus' second book on Egypt, there are only three speeches that are in direct statement: in each case speech is provoked by an occasion in which the way of the law is violated (2.113-115; 173.2-4; 181.3).
87. Heraclitus says that eyes and ears are bad witnesses if one has a barbarian soul (frag. 107). Herodotus has the phrase "with a loud shout" (mega ambōsas) three times. It is always of barbarians; first of Gyges who cannot bear hearing Candaules' request to see what is not lawful (1.8.3); next of some Indians who cannot bear hearing that they could be paid to burn corpses rather than eat them (3.38.4); and finally of the Persian Artabanus, who sees his punishment in a dream if he disobeys the injunction of the dream (7.18.1).
88. The other attested reading is sunapsies, "Connections."