Heraclitus (about 54 BC-48 BC) was an ancient Greek philosopher and the founder of the Eiffel School. Born in Eiffel, a noble family. His article is obscure and full of metaphors.
Heraclitus' theory is based on Pythagoras' theory. He borrowed Pythagoras' concept of "harmony" and thought that there was a certain degree of harmony behind opposition and conflict, but coordination itself was not noticeable. He believes that conflict makes the world full of life. Heraclitus also believes that fire is the origin of all things, "everything is replaced by fire, and fire is also replaced by everything."
Heraclitus also thinks that everything is flowing and everything is constantly changing. His famous saying is: "People can't step into the same river twice, because neither this river nor this person is the same." Socrates therefore called Heraclitus a "wanderer".
Heraclitus' theory of opposition points out that everything in the world is relative, and it is impossible to understand good without understanding evil.
Heraclitus thinks that God is something that covers the whole world. But he often uses logos (that is, reason) instead of God. He believes that there is "universal reason" in the world to guide everything that happens in nature.
He should have succeeded to the throne, but he gave it to his brother and went to live in seclusion near the temple of the goddess Aldis. It is said that Darius, king of Persia, once wrote to invite him to the Persian court to teach Greek culture. Heraclitus haughtily refused. He said, "Because I have a fear of fame, I can't go to Persia. I'm content with what I have in my mind." There is another anecdote that he plays dice with children all day. He said to the onlookers, "You scoundrels, what's the fuss?"! Isn't this better than the political activities you participate in? " Someone asked him why he kept silent, and he replied, "Why? So that you can nag! " Although these anecdotes are not completely credible, they show that Greek philosophers have begun to break away from public affairs. In fact, Heraclitus was not completely divorced from politics. When the city-state of Ephesus banished his friend Helmudoro, he said angrily, "Every adult in Ephesus had better hang himself and leave the city-state to the naive teenager." He called on the people to defend the law and eradicate tyranny. It is said that when he lived in seclusion, he lived on grass roots and plants and got edema disease. He went to the city to find a doctor and asked the doctor in a charade if he could make the rainy day dry. The doctor didn't understand what he meant. He ran to the cowshed and tried to suck the water out of his body with the heat of cow dung, but it didn't help. He died at the age of about 6.
Heraclitus wrote a book called "On Nature", which consists of three parts: on everything, on politics and on gods. Unfortunately, this book has not been preserved. What we see now is only more than 13 fragments, which are extracted from works in different periods. The language of the fragments is figurative, and the content is profound dialectics, which is very difficult to read, so Heraclitus was named "obscure philosopher".
eternal living fire
"This orderly universe (Cosmos) is the same for all things. It was neither created by God nor man. It was, is and will always be an eternal living fire, burning according to a certain scale and extinguishing according to a certain scale."
Heraclitus argues that fire and everything can be transformed into each other, but he does not explain how the transformation is carried out. This reflects his philosophical obscurity and mysticism. He believes that there is a certain scale and logos thought in the burning of fire.
reason: fire is the most exquisite of all elements, and it is the closest thing to something without form; More importantly, fire not only moves, but also makes other things move.
Heraclitus believes that the origin of all things is fire, and that the universe is an eternal living fire. His basic starting point is that this orderly universe is neither created by God nor by man. The universe itself is its own creator, and the order of the universe is stipulated by its own logos. This is the essence of Heraclitus' theory, which is the inheritance and in-depth development of the simple materialism of Miletus School.
Everything flows
"Man cannot walk into the same river twice" is a famous saying of Heraclitus, an ancient Greek materialist philosopher, and Lenin called him "one of the founders of dialectics". This famous saying means that the water in the river is constantly flowing. When you step into the river this time, the water flows away. When you step into the river next time, new water flows. River. The water keeps flowing, so you can't step into the same river. Obviously, this famous saying has its specific meaning, not the difference between this river and that one. Heraclitus advocated that "everything moves" and "everything flows", which made him an outstanding representative of the "mobile school" with simple dialectical thought at that time.
Heraclitus's famous saying shows that objective things move forever. Such a truth that is changing and developing. Engels once commented: "This primitive, simple but essentially correct world view is the world view of ancient Greek philosophy, and it was clearly expressed by Heraclitus for the first time: everything exists, but it does not exist, because everything is flowing, constantly changing, constantly producing and disappearing." Heraclitus also believes that everything is transformed into each other. Cold becomes hot, hot becomes cold, wet becomes dry, and dry becomes wet. He also clearly asserted: "We went down without going down the same river. We exist and don't exist. "
logos
Heraclitus believes that everything is always changing, and this change is carried out according to certain scales and laws. This is his logos theory and the second aspect of his dialectical thought.
the movement of everything, whether it is the burning and extinguishing of fire or the generation and mutual transformation of everything, is carried out according to certain logos; This kind of logos is mainly a scale, size and measure, that is, a proportional relationship in quantity. Of course, this scale is also a law, but it is a little different from the usual general law, that is, the scale is only a certain proportion and relationship mainly in quantity, while the general law can be expressed not only in quantity but also in other aspects. In an abstract sense, the general law is higher than the scale. The development of people's understanding is from concrete to general. First, we find the more general things from concrete things, and then we go deep into the more general things. Therefore, discovering the scale is the first step to discover the general law, and we can know the general law by further understanding the scale. The logos put forward by Heraclitus is at this stage of the development of human cognition-cognitive scale and proportion.
We can also see the relationship between Heraclitus and Pythagoras School. The Pythagorean school thinks that the origin of all things is numbers, and their existence and changes are based on the ratio of certain numbers, and the whole universe is an orderly Cosmos composed of certain numbers. Heraclitus perfectly expressed the Pythagorean school of thought with a simple concept of "logos". At this point, the thoughts of Heraclitus and Pythagoras are basically the same. We can say that during the 6th-5th century BC, Greek philosophy, represented by Pythagoras School and Heraclitus School, had made a step forward than Miletus School, that is, they were not satisfied with seeking the origin of everything, but began to seek something with regularity hidden behind the phenomenon. They began to discover the proportional relationship in quantity, namely logos. This was a major development in philosophy at that time, and it was also one of their important contributions to the development of philosophy.
unity of opposites
the original unity is constantly moving and changing, and never stops. Its creation is destruction, and destruction is creation. When one thing changes into another, for example, when fire changes into water, fire disappears into a new form of existence. Everything becomes its opposite in this way, so everything is the unity of opposites. Nothing has the same nature, and nothing has the eternal nature. In this sense, everything exists and does not exist. Only with this kind of opposition can there be a world. For example, harmony in music comes from the combination of high and low tones.
the world is dominated by struggle. Heraclitus said, "War is the father of all and the king of all". If there is no struggle and opposition, the world will die-stagnation or destruction. Only when opposites and contradictions are unified can harmony be produced. "Life and death, dreams and waking, young and old, are the same thing. When the latter changes, it becomes the former, and when the former comes back, it is called the latter. "
Summary
Heraclitus is known as one of the founders of dialectics, because he was the first person among the ancient Greek philosophers to tell the main points of dialectics in simple language. Heraclitus' dialectical thought is mainly manifested in the following three aspects:
First, he thinks that everything is constantly moving and changing, and puts forward the famous proposition that "one cannot step into the same river twice" to illustrate it.
second, he saw that the movement and change of things were carried out according to certain laws, and he was the first to put forward the idea of "logos".
Thirdly, he saw that the movement and change of things are inseparable from the contradiction and opposition of things themselves; Although he did not explicitly put forward the proposition of "unity of opposites", he noticed the phenomenon of unity of opposites and put forward the idea that "struggle is the root of all things". These views made him the founder and founder of dialectics.
Heraclitus is a philosopher in Ionia. He inherited the tradition of Miletus school and believed that the material elements are the origin of all things. He believes that the origin is an eternal living fire, emphasizing that it is an endless movement, and fire is transformed into everything, and everything is transformed into fire. In this respect, he developed Miletus' thought about the origin.
Heraclitus' development in philosophy is mainly manifested in dialectics. Although his dialectical thought was simple and intuitive, it was very profound at that time. First of all, he put forward the idea that things are constantly moving and changing, and everything flows. It began with him to discuss sports as a philosophical problem. Eleatic school, who was later than him, pointed out that only the stationary things are the real things we can know. In this way, the relationship between motion and stillness has become an important issue in philosophy.
Heraclitus also thinks that the movement and change of things are carried out according to a certain scale and measure, thus putting forward the thought of logos. He set each other off earlier than Pythagoras and his early school, from exploring the origin of everything to exploring the universal law behind the phenomenon. This provides a broad field and a far-reaching future for the development of human understanding and the development of philosophy and science in Greece and even the whole West.
The core of Heraclitus' dialectics is his thought about the unity of opposites. Although Greek philosophy was involved in the philosophy of Miletus school at the beginning, Pythagoras school has also listed the table of opposites; However, the philosophical discussion of the relationship between opposites began with Heraclitus. From the natural society and daily life, he simply saw that the opposing sides were interdependent, unified, transformed and interacted with each other, and put forward the idea that struggle was the father and king of all things. He is worthy of being the founder of dialectics.
Although later philosophers didn't really understand Heraclitus' theory of unity of opposites in theory, in practice, it has always been an important aspect of Greek philosophy to discuss various problems about opposites. Many important philosophers, such as democritus, Plato and Aristotle, put forward and discussed the relationship of unity of opposites in their own way, and reached a similar conclusion to Heracli in some aspects.
Heraclitus was also the first philosopher who put forward epistemological questions. He attached great importance to sensory experience, first put forward the question of whether the sensation is reliable, and then put forward that people have the same wisdom. It can also be said that Heraclitus was the first person in this respect. He turned philosophy from completely discussing the external world to also studying cognition and the subject of cognition-man.
In religion, Heraclitus, together with Sanofi, who was earlier than him, opposed traditional religion, but Heraclitus mainly opposed traditional religious rituals and idolatry. Heraclitus also acknowledged God, but when he said God, he meant eternal living fire, logos and the highest wisdom. Therefore, he was the first to philosophize religion and transform the god of religion into a rational god, thus making philosophy take a big step away from religion. But because he couldn't and didn't draw a clear line between philosophy and religion, the Stoic school and Christian doctrine philosophy in the later period of Greek and Roman philosophy interpreted his logos and fire as religious gods, making his philosophy serve religious doctrine, and even if religion was philosophized, it brought philosophy back to religion.