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Heraclitus

Essay by   •  January 1, 2011  •  Essay  •  568 Words (3 Pages)  •  1,121 Views

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Heraclitus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and is probably the most significant philosopher of ancient Greek until Socrates and Plato; this is probably because he postulated a model of nature and the universe which created the foundation for all other speculation concerning physics and metaphysics. Heraclitus, according to early biographers, was melancholic and cryptic that earned him the nicknames such as "The Weeping Philosopher" and the "The Riddler". Every time we walk into a science, economics, or political science course, to some extent everything we do to that class has something to do with the speculations of Heraclitus- that the universe is constantly changing and that there is a reason on these changes which he called as the Logos. Because of these facts, he became one of my primary interests among the philosophers. ___________________________

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He was known of having introduced new perspectives in Greek thought, but the passages in the book he had written are said to be tremendously hard to read; not literally but the context of what he had quoted out are written obscurely. Here is a taste of it: "They do not understand that what differs agrees with itself; it is back-stretched connection such as the bow or the lyre". This passage is very cryptic but is very important. This is because it explains his theory about the unity of opposites and the Logos. Heraclitus explained here that anything which differs, that is paired opposites, such as hot and cold, summer and winter etc. these opposites, however can also be seen as agreeing with each other and can be viewed as one- unified whole. I think he implies here that the opposites cannot exist without each other. This is where his most famous passage enters which is "you cannot step on the same river twiceÐ'..." this implies that the world is constantly changing (the water) and the world is one unified whole (the river). I think, mainly, his point here is that nothing is the same now as it was before, and thus nothing what is now will be the same tomorrow; which is very true. In this world there are always opposites of everything, for example there is no evil without goodness for evil only exist because goodness exist. What would happen to our world if there are no good people only bad ones? Hence, this

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