Heraclitus and The Logos

”The Greeks call the appearance of a thing eidos, or idea....Something is present to us. It stands steadily by itself and thus manifests itself. It is. For the Greeks “being” basically meant this standing presence” (An Introduction to Metaphysics, by M. Heidegger, Doubleday/Anchor ,1961, p. 50).

Heidegger is interested in the Ancient Greek philosopher, Heraclitus, and other pre-Socratic philosophers as representing living in the presence of Being for they thought of being as “presence.” After the dominance of Plato and Aristotle in Greek thought, Western philosophy defined all thinking as hyper-conceptualization and focused on the essent (entity, or object) exclusively while forgetting the question of Being. This historical trend continued in the Western Enlightenment when Descartes’ radical rationalism put the “objective subject” (a contradiction in terms?) as the judge of all truth. In more recent history, logical positivism represents a fuller development of an object representational epistemology itself based on a subjective idea of objectivity. Also, there is another reason Heidegger is interested in Heraclitus: the deep theological roots of Western Christianity originate from the mystic Weeping Philosopher:

"Heraclitus of Ephesus: (Ancient Greek: Ἡράκλειτος ὁ Ἐφέσιος — Hērákleitos ho Ephésios) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. ... he was called "The Obscure" and the "Weeping Philosopher."

The Greek word for “The Obscure” is ὁ ςκοτεινος,  but it also means “dark.” It is in both history and legend that Heraclitus had a melancholy personality, or was possibly bipolar. Heraclitus’ contribution to the history of philosophy is “the conception of unity in diversity and difference in unity.” The philosophical question at the time was “What is the world made of?” Thales proposed that everything could be reduced to the substance water. But then if the world is only one thing Anaximenes asked, “How can One become Many and if there are Many, how does it become One?” Heraclitus saw a solution to the question of what the world is made of and how its many manifestations are really a single substance that makes up the world:

”Heraclitus seems to have held the problem to be insoluble as long as the “one” is taken to be a material thing. But what if the oneness of the world consists in the orderliness with which things change? Then the world would have an unity-not the unity of a material underlying the diversity,but rather the unity of pattern” [my emphasis] (A History of Western Philosophy: The Classical Mind, by W.T. Jones, Harcourt, Brace & World, 1952, p.15). 

This was the genius of Heraclitus: he saw the limit of materialism and directed his attention instead to the immaterial. The Ionic philosophers sought a material foundation to the world, but they did not deny the existence of the immaterial. Logic was viewed differently from the physical laws of mechanical motion. The logical relationship between the premises of an argument and its conclusion isn’t from cause and effect, or the mechanical motion of atoms. Mathematics existed in another realm.

Heraclitus sought regular relations, or patterns among events rather than an underlying thing or substance—he was attempting to abstract from changing events a concept of “process” or “formula.”  Heraclitus was, “Unable to think abstractly about process, he slipped into using an image that represented process...he ended by identifying it with fire”(The Classical Mind, by W.T. Jones, p.15). Heraclitus selected fire as the single underlying substance, “Fire, is want and surfeit—it is, in other words, all things that are, but it is these things in a constant state of tension, of strife, of consuming, of kindling and of going out.”

Heraclitus said famously, ποταμοῖσι τοῖσιν αὐτοῖσιν ἐμϐαίνουσιν, ἕτερα καὶ ἕτερα ὕδατα ἐπιρρεῖ.

"Ever-newer waters flow on those who step into the same rivers."

The world is in a constant state of flux, but we see the world as relatively stable. W.T. Jones used the analogy of water flowing in and then out a swimming pool at a constant rate causing the pool water level to appear constant to any observer—such is the κόσμος (kosmos), meaning "order," but also means rather poetically, “ornament.” Heraclitus was one of the first Western philosophers to be skeptical of sense perception: perception is not reality. Heraclitus believed in the unity of opposites. The 18th Century German philosophers Georg Friedrich Hegel, Johann Fichte, and Arthur Schopenhauer are known for this dialectical principal in their philosophical systems.

When Saint John The Apostle embraces the Greek Logos paradigm, he is also embracing the doctrine of the unity of opposites. Pairs of opposites can be logically indistinguishable like, “Beginning and end are ‘common’ on the circle.” Or pairs of opposites can be “unvarying in ‘mutual succession’ as night follows day.” This doctrine is very important:

“When Heraclitus says “the road up the down is one and the same,” he does not mean that “up” and “down” are relative terms, but that their unity in opposition results from their predictability of the same object”(The Encyclopedia of Philosophy Vol. 3, Heraclitus of Ephesus, p.478).

For Heraclitus, pairs of opposites are logically indistinguishable and are divine.

Heraclitus wrote, “All things come to be in accordance with this "Logos" ("word", "reason", or "account). “Logos is both discourse and contents, both the truth about things and the principle on which they function”(Ibid.,p. 477). Logos is understood here as “formula.”

Interestingly, Heraclitus wrote during the collapse of the Ionian civilization and during a revival of mystery religions. The Pythagorean Society c. 570–c. 495 BC was one of those quasi-religious movements that combined a strong commitment to scientific understanding. Heraclitus urged men to “listen to” and become “attuned” and be overtaken by the Logos. The Logos is accessible by humans. It is a rule of “proportion” (another meaning of logos) in which change is counter balanced with reverse changes in the same proportion. This invisible and hidden principle has a material form of fire and is “steering all things.” The logos is One, Single, and monistic. Heraclitus said, “...man’s chief good is to ‘listen to,’ to become attuned to, even to become absorbed into, this logos”(Ibid.,p. 477). Heraclitus’ all encompassing and directing Logos is both a religious and scientific paradigm:

"Men do not know how what is at variance agrees with itself. It is an attunement of opposite tensions, like that of the bow and the lyre."

“Men" says Heraclitus, "are as unable to understand it when they hear it for the first time, as before they have heard it at all.” So the Logos has a sound, the sound of words—it is audible.  Heraclitus said of religion, “They pray to images, as if one were to talk with a man’s house.” Heraclitus was an atheistic pantheist and believed that the Logos is resistant to objectification—to be named, “Zeus.”

“Only where the being of the essent is heard does a mere casual listening become a hearing....Only those who can do so master the word; these are the poets and thinkers. The others stagger about in their obstinacy and ignorance. They recognize only what runs across their path, what pleases them and is familiar to them. They are like dogs: kynes gar kai bauzousin hon an me gignoskosi, ‘ for the dogs bark at everyone they do not know.’ (Heraclitus Fragment 97)....Always and everywhere they deal with essents [things]. But being remains hidden from them. Being is not tangible....”(An Introduction to Metaphysics, by M. Heidegger, Doubleday/Anchor,1961,p.112).