Your Philosophy Teacher Got Heraclitus All Wrong

Heraclitus (ca. 500bc), the Pre-Socratic philosopher, is remembered as being a proponent of the idea that everything is in flux or that everything is constantly changing. This interpretation comes from Plato but is largely mistaken if not totally wrong.

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Heraclitus may have emphasized that everything changes as a corrective to Parmenides’ notion that change is impossible, but that is highly debatable, and is certainly not the gist of his philosphy.

It is true that Heraclitus said, “You cannot step twice into the same river; for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you,” but he also said, “We step and do not step into the same rivers; we are and are not.” The point he’s making is about the paradox—it is and is not the same river. The fact that the river is ever changing or in flux is not the point. The point is that there is a sort of paradox entailed in the act of stepping in a river. He makes the same point by saying, “The road up and the road down are one and the same.” The road here is clearly not in flux like a river but the same sort of paradox is seen.

He also says, “The sea is the purest and the impurest water. Fish can drink it, and it is good for them; to men it is undrinkable and destructive.” This aphorism, like his others, is emphasizing the paradoxical nature of things. Salt water is simultaneously life-sustaining (for fish) but poisonous (to humans). The gist of Heraclitus’ message seems to be that there are paradoxes entailed in different perspectives on (and in different aspects or characteristics of) a single thing. In fact, all things contain paradoxes. And his philosophy, as far as we can tell, seems to be best summed up in his aphorism “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.”

The interpretation of Heraclitus as a sort of anti-Parmenides (as a philosopher who counters Parmenides’ claim that nothing changes with the retort that everything changes) is the typical interpretation, which comes to us from Plato. And that’s how my high school philosophy teacher taught us. Nevertheless, it doesn’t seem to actually be accurate...because Heraclitus’ main point seems to be about the dialectical tension of apparent contradictions that make up reality.

Diogenes Laërtius summarizes Heraclitus’ philosophy thus: “All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things (τὰ ὅλα, ‘the whole’) flows like a stream.” It seems that Heraclitus had a lot of ideas in common with Parmenides. He says, “The one is made up of all things, and all things issue from the one.” and, “It is wise to hearken, not to me, but to my Logos, and to confess that all things are one.” He seems to be espousing a monism akin to that of Parmenides. Heraclitus’ monad may have been in flux (or changing) and, therefore, different from the unchanging monad of Parmenides but it’s also entirely possible that Plato is just totally wrong in his suggestion that flux or change was central to Heraclitus’ thought.

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It seems very likely to me that Heraclitus was using paradoxical aphorisms as something akin to zen koans. All of his aphorisms suggest the unity of opposites. And the unity of being is central to his philosophy, something his philosophy has in common with that of Parmenides. His appeal to the Logos in his assertion that “all things are one” suggests that, like with Parmenides, his idea of the unity of being may stem from a mystical or religious experience rather than purely from abstract speculation. It is for these reasons that I believe that his paradoxical aphorisms are meant to function like koans that may lead the hearer to mystical insight into the true nature of reality as non-dual.

If this interpretation seems far-fetched, it should be remembered that Parmenides recounts in “On Nature” how he ascended into heaven on a chariot and received his philosophy as divine revelation from a goddess, that Socrates claimed to be guided by a divine voice that would advise him as to the appropriate course of action; that Pythagoras taught reincarnation and claimed to be the son of the god Apollo, and that Plato and Plotinus also espoused reincarnation and taught that one can attain mystical union with the divine through contemplative (meditative) practices. The Greek philosophers are far more like Eastern mystics such as Adi Shankara, Siddhartha Gautama (the Buddha), and Lao-tzu than they are like Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume, Rene Descartes, and Immanuel Kant.