HERACLITUS OF EPHESUS. - Greek philosopher who lived approximately between 540 and 475 B.C. Of noble lineage, he displayed throughout his life, which was devoted to philosophy, an austere superiority toward the multitude and toward 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, presumably bore the title περὶ φύσεως and was connected with the philosophy of the ancient Ionians, in that it placed the principle of all things in fire: but what
is most characteristic of his thought is the negation of being and its resolution into becoming. « Everything flows » (πάντα ῥεῖ) is the traditional form of the statement. Plato (Crat., 402 A) says approximately the same: πάντα χωρεῖ 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 of contrary forces, of which one, coming from above, tends to transform celestial fire into solid matter, while the other, rising toward the sky, tends to transform earthly matter into fire. War is mother and queen of all things (πόλεμος πάντων πατὴρ ἐστι καὶ βασιλεύς: Hippolytus, Refut. haer., IX, 9). Everything is born from the struggle of contraries. 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, evil the death of good.
H., insisting on the absolute instability of things, on the vanity of every individual existence, is for the ancients the type of the pessimist. But fire, being for H. a rational principle (φρόνιμον), according to the testimony of Hippolytus and of Clement of Alexandria (Strom., V, 14), is identified with the supreme divinity, incomprehensible in its essence, and is called θεός, εἱμαρμένη, δίκη, γνώμη and more often λόγος; for God everything is beautiful and good and just; only men suppose that some things are just and others are not. From this cosmic law derive also civil laws, for which the people must fight as for the walls of their city. The soul of man is the 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 not possible without thought; the senses, not guided by the λόγος, are bad witnesses. The source of truth is the thought common to all (ἐνδόν ἐστι πᾶσι τὸ φρονεῖν).
The school of H. and principally Cratylus (the best known of his disciples, who affirmed, insisting on the concept of becoming, that we cannot immerse ourselves even once in the same river) professed skepticism.
Bibliography
Schleiermacher, H. der Dunkle, in Werke, part 3, II, Berlin 1838, pp. 1-146; F. Lassalle, Die Phil. H. von Ephes., 2 vols., Berlin 1858; M. Konh, Alte sprach H., Hamburg 1907; Br. Pressler, Die Naturphilos. Anschauungen H., Magdeburg 1908; N. Cuppini, Esposizione del sistema di E., Rome 1912; B. Donati, Il valore della guerra e la filosofia di E., Genoa 1913. Extensive bibl. on H. in Überweg, I, pp. 42-43*; C. Massantini, E., Turin 1945.
Andrea Ferro