Heraclitus certainly stands out from many of the other Pre-Sorcratic philosophers we have read. For one, he is far more open about attacking other schools of thought and seems to be on the receiving end of criticism for this. His stance on possessing knowledge without understanding is specifically directed at several other thinkers, such as Hesiod and Pythagoras. Several other thinkers in the excepts hold him in contempt for these aggressive stances such as Plutarch who refers to him as a dog barking at things he does not understand.
Despite being critical of the thinkers coming before him, I don't believe that Heraclitus is really that different from some of the other Pre-Socratic thinkers. He is still claiming that there is an arche he calls Logos. Logos is supposed to be the divine law, a force that controls and steers the cosmos. But, according to the text, Logos is made intentionally vague to open it to all kinds of possibilities. And despite directly attacking Pythagoras, he has clearly borrowed his idea of being able to interpret the universe by specific pratcices. He simply replaces math with human understanding as the method.
I agree that Heraclitus is very much in conversation with these earlier thinkers.
ReplyDeleteIf you're right about H's arche being the Logos, you make an interesting suggestion about his indebtedness to Pythagoras. Maybe something like a rational organizing principle or process (H's arche) is just what Pythag. had in mind with his notion of mathematical harmony!
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