CLASSICS REVISITED
Exponent of eternal change
BY RAVI VYAS
Many of Heraclitus’ maxims may seem like platitudes, simply because they are so well known…
Why do we always go back to Greek and Roman philosophers (and our own) for the foundations of knowledge, thought and analysis? Because to them the proper object of study was not physical reality, where everything changes and ultimately dies but that which is unchangeable — the immutable. This means ideas. But not just any ideas; it means the eternal verities, most to do with morality — what justice is, virtue, courage, equality. And these concepts were not concerned with the meaning of these words as they are used in everyday speech; they wanted to know what such things as justice and equality really are — what they are in themselves. And then on to even bigger questions like change, conflict, harmony, how does the cosmos work, why is there something rather than nothing, and so on and on. This meant endless, insistent questioning; Socrates had famously said, “I know that I know nothing” in order to force the interlocutor to engage in dialogue and discover the truth by himself or revise his false opinions.
Ancient Greek philosophy goes back to pre-Socrates times, especially Heraclitus (c. 540-480 B.C.) who wrote one book, Fragments which has had a profound influence on modern thinkers because he is considered the exponent of eternal change and impermanence. He is also called “obscure” because his style is murky, ambiguous and full of riddles.
Recognise them?
The fragments of his work cited by later writers tend to be aphorisms, some of them very popular and widely recognised, like the maxim “Everything flows” (or “Everything is in flux”) or “You cannot step into the same river twice” because it is constantly flowing. From the obvious fact that everything changes (though at different rates), it does not follow that the things we see at a given moment of time are illusions; for, although, as he said “eyes and ears are bad witnesses” (though eyes are better than ears) and although only God knows everything, some of us can still have access to wisdom which he calls “Logos”. In Heraclitus’ sense, this means “measure” or “order” — an arrangements of things in the world which, despite its mutability, remains an ordered entity.
But constant change — the continuous shifting of qualities into other qualities — does not mean chaos; there is proportion and equilibrium in the changing. In everything there is a play of opposites, without which the world would collapse. For instance, the beginning and end of a circle, both of which can be at any point on the circle. Others consist of a gradual change into something else, like changing hot to cold; or we can see the interplay of opposites like the same things operating differently in different creatures: sea water is good for fish but bad for human beings. Another of Heraclitus’ famous aphorisms, “The road uphill and down is one and the same”, is also about how opposites mutate into one another.
Many of Heraclitus’ maxims may seem like platitudes, simply because they are so well known and instantly recognisable in their succinctness, others because they are so utterly obvious. But Heraclitus’ strength does not lie in his rhetoric; it is in his belief that there is a partly hidden order, an invisible harmony to whose force everything is subject. “The invisible harmony is better than the visible”; or, “nature loves to hide”. But if the universe is ordered, there exists a constant motion and conflict of opposites. This order was not created by the hand of God or by human beings; it always was and will always be. Hence, multiplicity and conflict are real; tension and motion are real, and our knowledge of them is real too.
When opposites merge
Heraclitus also said, “Into the same rivers we step and do not step; we are and we are not.” That is, we could both be and not be. Which does not mean we can make logically contradictory statements but in the process of change different qualities may be gradually transformed into their opposites, and in that transformation you could both contain some elements of the past and also your new self, at the same time.
Layered meanings
What makes Heraclitus’ perceptions interesting is their hidden second meaning. One cannot step ....; it is not only the flux of the river that makes the statement true because you also change with the passage of time. And this brings us to the basic question: what has been the impact of Heraclitus on literature as we normally understand it?
If you accept that all literature is nothing more than a philosophy expressed in images and that without a philosophical sub-text it is nothing than a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing then the impact has been considerable. But reading him is complicated by the fact that fragments that seem to be easy to understand on a cursory reading must be taken to mean more than they literally say; that is, we cannot assume a naïve or literal meaning because that would be banal or just incomprehensible. Heraclitus uses language as a poet does; highly compressed with puns, riddles, ambiguities and metaphors like all great classical writers down the ages.
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