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Thinker · TH-0204

Heraclitus

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a Greek thinker of the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE whose single book survives only as fragments quoted…

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Ἡράκλειτος

Also known as Heraclitus of Ephesus, Herakleitos

c. 540 – 480 BCE · Ephesus

Traditions: Greek & Roman

Schools: Pre-Socratics

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a Greek thinker of the late sixth and early fifth centuries BCE whose single book survives only as fragments quoted by later writers, and who was already called obscure in antiquity. He treated change as constitutive of things, bound together by a logos and by the unity of opposites, with fire as a central image. Fragment B12 speaks of different waters flowing over those who step into the same rivers; the famous saying that you cannot step into the same river twice is Plato's report of him.

Key ideas

  • Things are constituted by change: the same river is made of ever-different waters.
  • Opposites are unified: the road up and the road down are one and the same.
  • A common logos, an underlying account or order, governs all things, though most people fail to grasp it.
  • The world is an ever-living fire, kindling and going out in measures.

Major works

  • Fragments, preserved as quotations in later authors (numbered as DK 22 B1–B126 in Diels–Kranz)
  • Plato, Cratylus (402a), which reports the river saying in its 'not twice' form
  • Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, Book IX, which contains an ancient biography

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