ERACLITO di EFESO. — Greek philosopher who lived approximately between 540 and 475 B.C. Of noble lineage, throughout his life, devoted to philosophy, he displayed an austere superiority toward the multitude and vulgar religion. He loved to express himself in aphoristic form, by hints rather than fully (ἡμετελές, says Theophrastus), whence his proverbial obscurity (ὁ σκοτεινός).
His principal work, of which only fragments remain, probably bore the title nepi φόρτος and was connected with the philosophy of the ancient Ionians, insofar as it posited fire as the principle of all things: but this
what is most characteristic of his thought is the denial of being and its resolution into becoming. “Everything flows” (πάντα ῥεῖ) is the traditional formulation of the statement. Plato (Crat., 402 A) says approximately the same thing: πάντα χυρεῖ καὶ οὐδὲν μένει. Effective is the image of the river in which one cannot bathe twice in the same water. Becoming is not an easy process, without resistance, but a struggle between contrary forces, one of which, coming from above, tends to transform celestial fire into solid matter, while the other, rising toward heaven, tends to transform terrestrial matter into fire. War is the father and king of all things (πάλευσας πάντων πατὴρ ἐστίαν ἰ βακίλασις: Hippolytus, Refut. haer., IX, 9). Everything arises from the struggle of contraries. Just as fire lives the death of air, air the death of fire, water the death of air, earth the death of water, so the animal lives the death of the plant, man the death of the animal, the gods the death of man, good the death of evil, and evil the death of good.
E., insisting on the absolute instability of things and the vanity of every individual existence, is for the ancients the type of the pessimist. But fire, being for E. a rational principle (φρόνιμον), according to the testimony of Hippolytus and Clement of Alexandria (Strom., V, 14), is identified with the supreme divinity, incomprehensible in its essence, and is called θεός, εἰμασμένη, δίκη, γνώμη, and more often λόγος; for God everything is beautiful, good, and just; only human beings suppose that some things are just and others not. From this cosmic law civil laws also derive, and therefore the people must fight as though for the walls of their city. The soul of man is better the drier it is, as can be seen in the extreme opposite, the drunkard. It is a kind of exhalation (ἀναθυμίασις) of the cosmic fire. True knowledge is impossible without thought; the senses, when not guided by λόγος, are bad witnesses. The source of truth is thought common to all (ἐνδὼν ἐστι πᾶσι τὸ φρονεῖν).
The school of E., and chiefly Cratylus (the best known of his disciples, who, insisting on the concept of becoming, maintained that not even once can we immerse ourselves in the same river), professed skepticism.