Pre-socratic philosophy: Heraclitus

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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As for my return to the beginning of philosophy in an attempt to save philosophy from
its dead end has hit a snag. That snag is simple, this is taking far, far longer than I thought it would.
I thought I would be done by now and here we are, 4 months in and still no end in sight. I still haven’t even
finished the books I own, little less other books, I intend to either buy or get from the library and I still
haven’t gotten to Aristotle yet. I shall review certain Philosophers to better understand them.
Today is Heraclitus.

Heraclitus is the most misunderstood of the ancient philosophers. The problem has been
he doesn’t seem to be logically consistent. He clearly speaks of the one and yet talks about
never being able to, for example, step into a same river twice. How to reconcile his talk about changes
and his talk about the one. I think the best example would be the Chinese idea of yin and yang.
Change is inherent in all objects, part of all objects. the river flows past us and is different and yet
the river is still water and the water can change into ice and steam and back again. Water changes
and yet remains the same basic element. It has an underlying oneness to it. it changes and yet it doesn’t.
Heraclitus thinks that those who collect facts and have knowledge are not wise. He names 4 ancient
thinkers who have a high reputation and declares them as not being wise. To paraphrase, they knew
the price of everything and the value of nothing. They had facts, not wisdom. to know wisdom, a person
must search himself. We are many in looks and sizes and shapes and colors and we have a oneness
in us and that oneness in humans is the divine. In our diversity, we have oneness, the river all over again.
So we search in ourselves the divine that exist in all our diversity, the oneness. Looking at Heraclitus, we
see much of the future of both philosophy and theology. From Plato to Nietzsche, we see Heraclitus thought,
in one aspect or another. Ignore Heraclitus thought at your own peril.

Kropotkin

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Peter, think of each philosopher as a pan of food on a buffet line. You would not just eat one pan at a time would you? You are trying to feed your mind a single pan of food at a time. Pick and mix, blend your mind’s plate. Make it an enjoyable adventure of testing and mixing. Learning should not be a chore, you don’t learn crap that way. Try it for a while, feel the difference and make your own unique plate.

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Water changes and it does not remain the same basic element. It is us who see it / falsify it as static.

Oneness is not inherent, it is temporary, created and maintained by temporary conditions.

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Oneness ( = unity = order) which you speak of is an interaction which moves towards equality (i.e. which reduces the difference between interacting multiplicity.) It is created and maintained by such an interaction, it is not inherent. The moment such an interaction is disrupted, so that it no longer moves towards equality but towards inequality, the order is gone and all that is left is chaos.

There is an excess of linear/convergent/top-down thinking which makes it difficult for people to understand that nothing is static in reality but only in appearance. They are used to mapping reality in closed, completely convergent, absolutely certain models of reality (“will to system” as Nietzsche called it) to such an extent that anything less than that is simply unacceptable to them. Lacking in willpower, they only see the extremes, the completely divergent models (“everything is possible” models) and the completely convergent models (absolutely certain “only this is possible” models.) Anything in between, anything which allows a degree of uncertainity, is simply lost on them.

The belief that the universe is ordered is what nihilism is. Of course, noone really believes that the universe is ordered in its entirety, but what every one of them believes, what they hope, is that chaos is an exception (a malfunction, an error) and that order is a rule, and so if there is no order in the present then there will be sometime in the future.

The liberals want to put an end to disorder by abruptly returning to order (utopia.) This abrupt return, though it manifests itself as order in the short term, is disorder that will manifest itself in the long term.

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“Magnus Anderson”]Oneness ( = unity = order) which you speak of is an interaction which moves towards equality (i.e. which reduces the difference between interacting multiplicity.) It is created and maintained by such an interaction, it is not inherent. The moment such an interaction is disrupted, so that it no longer moves towards equality but towards inequality, the order is gone and all that is left is chaos.

K: Do you just make shit up? The universe can literaly be shown to have a oneness and that oneness
has only one of two ways to go, order or disorder. Everything in the universe, EVERYTHING, is moving
toward either order or disorder, unity or chaos. It is inherently moving toward one side or the other,
and the word that it is moving toward or away from is entropy. entropy is the word we use to describe
this movement to either order or disorder.

M: There is an excess of linear/convergent/top-down thinking which makes it difficult for people to understand that nothing is static in reality but only in appearance. They are used to mapping reality in closed, completely convergent, absolutely certain models of reality (“will to system” as Nietzsche called it) to such an extent that anything less than that is simply unacceptable to them. Lacking in willpower, they only see the extremes, the completely divergent models (“everything is possible” models) and the completely convergent models (absolutely certain “only this is possible” models.) Anything in between, anything which allows a degree of uncertainity, is simply lost on them.

K: uncertainty is the name of the game because we don’t know at any given time, if we or our possessions,
or our ism’s, (capitalism, nationalism, communism, anything ending in ism) is heading toward order or disorder.
Or said another way, we don’t know how much entropy has entered our lives.

M: The belief that the universe is ordered is what nihilism is. Of course, noone really believes that the universe is ordered in its entirety, but what every one of them believes, what they hope, is that chaos is an exception (a malfunction, an error) and that order is a rule, and so if there is no order in the present then there will be sometime in the future.

K: and we are back to making shit up. Seriously dude, are you just making shit up? Nihilism is an ism which
means, it is another word for entropy. Order in the universe is the opposite of nihilism. Nihilism is the
word for disorder and the spread of entropy. Chaos is simply just another word for the amount of entropy
in the universe. When we organize in such manner as democracy or dictatorships or monarchy, we are
moving along the lines toward order and are trying to limit entropy. As human beings, we are trying to limit,
control, the amount of entropy in our lives. This movement toward order and disorder is all we are trying to do,
move toward order.

M: The liberals want to put an end to disorder by abruptly returning to order (utopia.) This abrupt return, though it manifests itself as order in the short term, is disorder that will manifest itself in the long term.

K: I am not even sure what you are trying to say, because of the words abruptly and abrupt.
Liberals are actually in favor of disorder over order. We like the world a bit messier than conservatives.
The world is not black and white but shades of gray and the gray is a various degrees of disorder, increase
in entropy. We prefer a little disorder in our lives, a little chaos, a bit of increasing entropy.
certainity is the clarion call of the conservative. everything in its place and everyone in their place.
absolute order is the watchword of the conservative. The hierarchy of life is set and unmovable, order
maintained. Personally, I like a more disorder world. I like it when things are slightly out of control,
not totally out of control, but slightly. I like a bit of chaos in my life. I have noticed as I have gotten
older, I like things more ordered which is old age creeping into my thought. “those dam kids on my lawn”
moments are getting more frequent and that is my struggle. As one gets older, the nature of our struggle
changes. I’m no longer fighting the world for my place in it, that has already been decided, now the struggle
is how my last years will play out. I am fighting for order over the inevitable victory of entropy over my life.

As the poem goes, “The center cannot hold”
and that is the victory of disorder over order, of chaos over certainty.

Kropotkin

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I’d rather eat one quality meal than mix up all kinds of shit with the good stuff.

Aside from that, PK isn’t advocating eating only one pan at a time, he’s claiming it’s ignorant and foolish to disregard the philosophy of Heraclitus, and considering his major influence on philosophy overall I’d say he’s right.

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I was addressing the first part of his post. Eating too much of one good thing at one time turns the mind against it.

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A weak mind focused only on pleasure perhaps. Quality foods are harder to digest and usually of a poorer taste at first, just like quality philosophies. It takes some getting used to, but the result will be a healthy body/mind, as opposed to the fat, stupid and diseased.

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Kriswest: Peter, think of each philosopher as a pan of food on a buffet line. You would not just eat one pan at a time would you? You are trying to feed your mind a single pan of food at a time. Pick and mix, blend your mind’s plate. Make it an enjoyable adventure of testing and mixing. Learning should not be a chore, you don’t learn crap that way. Try it for a while, feel the difference and make your own unique plate."

K: I am in the midst of a specific project and that is the redemption of philosophy.
Philosophy has driven itself into a cul de sac by divorcing itself from what really matters
to people. Philosophy that is about this A is B is C crap is killing philosophy. Philosophy needs
to return to what matters to people and that is why I am doing this. I am going from point A to point Z
and the road from point A to point Z means I am going from the beginning to the end of philosophy.
I thought the project would take a year and right now I would be in medieval philosophy perhaps
around Aberlard or Aquinas. Now it looks like a two year project as I am still on the pre socratic philosophers
after 4 months and I still haven’t reached Aristotle. the goal dictates the road to be taken.

Kropotkin

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I understand Peter. The road must be taken but, how you take the road can make it more enjoyable, quicker, easier and most important, what you truly gain. Just how much have you truly retained and gained by your method?
You have sectioned your philosophers, why not section that and compare or other.

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[quote=“Kriswest”]
I understand Peter. The road must be taken but, how you take the road can make it more enjoyable, quicker, easier and most important, what you truly gain. Just how much have you truly retained and gained by your method?
You have sectioned your philosophers, why not section that and compare or other.

K: I am taking this as a research project. You can’t take shortcuts to make it more enjoyable or quicker or easier!
That is not the point. the point is to understand philosophy and how it is no longer about people and their concerns. One answer is already apparent and that is philosophy’s specialization. this fact alone, has
taken philosophy away from the average concerns. Few if any philosophers nowdays, can comfortably
talk about the full gamet of philosophy, from pre-Socratic to Sartre.

Kropotkin

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Peter I am not saying take short cuts. Not at all. I know its research. I know the importance.

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This is an example of excessive linearization/convergence. Unable to endure erupting possibilities in your mind, you seek to deny them with a premature order (a system which is completely convergent.) Instead of responding to what I am saying (which requires of you to endure the chaos/uncertainty that I create) you are simply dismissing everything I am saying with “you are making shit up”, which is to say, you are trying to abruptly return to order. And this is precisely the point of self-control, to make sure you do not end up denying chaos.

The oneness you speak of is created/invented by the brain so that we can talk about the phenomenon, it is not inherent to the universe. You are confusing your own abstractions with reality.

And you are back to being hysterical.

Nihilism is disordering which manifests itself as the belief that the universe is already ordered. It is a consequence of weak will.

Strong will, or a healthy will-body relation (by body I mean both the internal, the body, and the external, the world as sensed by the body), is will ordering the disordering body. Weak will, on the other hand, is will disordering the body which is believed to be already doing the ordering. Hedonism is the belief that the body (desires/needs/instincts) is already ordered (or doing the ordering), whereas masochism is the belief that the external world is doing the ordering. The former manifests as self-indulgence, the latter as self-hatred.

Not all attempts to order lead to ordering. Liberals preach equality and utopia, but all of their efforts move in the opposite direction, in the direction of inequality and disorder. The problem is that they conceive order and equality statically, as states, and not dynamically, as movements that never complete. They do not want to equalize, they want to be equalized. Sure, they do equalize, but only in order to achieve a state of equality during which they will no longer have to equalize. In other words, they do not want to equalize continually, only periodically. This bumpy, non-continual movement is what nihilism is,

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Hee hee … Perhaps your approach is not effective.
My “Philosophy” Folder in the C-Drive has 7,400 files in 470 folders and that would be quite an impossible task to deal with them on a ‘philosopher’ basis.

From experience, the most effective way to grasp philosophical knowledge is to approach them in common principles of mainstream dissenting camps.

The first is to master the principles of Metaphysics, Logic, epistemology, ethics and other elements that are fundamental to philosophy.

Then one can break the whole of all philosophical points of views based on the principles of the following views;

  1. The substance versus the non-substance camps,
  2. The philosophical realists versus the philosophical anti-realists
  3. The continentals versus the analytics
  4. The rationalists versus the empiricists
  5. The metaphysics versus the non-metaphysical
  6. Dualism vs monism
  7. Other relevant dichotomies or contrasting camps

In the above one will be exposed to the views of various philosophers in general but one is not focusing on certain specific philosophers.

Once one understand the above reasonably one can fit any philosopher specifically into any one of side of the dichotomy or those having mixed stances.
Even when one read up Eastern philosophies or any other philosophies, they also comprised the above dichotomy [except 3 which is confined to mostly Europe vs UK/USA]

After doing the above, one can zoom into some specific philosophers.

Heraclitus’ view is that of fire [perhaps influenced by Zoroastrianism] as the substance and oneness within diversity.
This is a common characteristic of pantheism and similar views, note unchanging Tao within Yin-Yang.
Heraclitus different river (impermanence) is grounded on a same river bed, i.e. pantheism.

For me, I would concentrate on the principles of the main dissenting camps within the philosophical community, then extent outward to cover all popular philosophers way back to the Greeks, Eastern philosophies and others.
After that one can zoom into some specific philosophers for specialization.