Heraclitus

For other people named Heraclitus, see Heraclitus (disambiguation).

Not to be confused with Heraclius or Heracles.

Heraclitus
A bust of Heraclitus, from the Hall of Philosophers in the Capitoline Museums
Born	c. 6th century BC Ephesus, Ionia, Persian Empire (now Selçuk, İzmir, Turkey)
Died	c. 5th century BC Ephesus, Ionia, Delian League
Era	Pre-Socratic philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Ionian
Main interests	Cosmology Process Paradox
Notable ideas	Fire is the arche Logos Flux Unity of opposites Dialetheism Idios kosmos
Influences The Milesian School, Bias of Priene, potentially Zoroastrianism or Vedic religion
Influenced Parmenides, Empedocles, Democritus, Hippocrates, Cratylus, Plato, Aristotle, Cynicism, Cleanthes, Aenesidemus, Justin Martyr, Marcus Aurelius, Hippolytus of Rome, Clement of Alexandria, Simplicius, Hegel, Heidegger

Heraclitus (/ˌhɛrəˈklaɪtəs/; Greek: Ἡράκλειτος Herákleitos; fl. c. 500 BC) was an ancient Greek pre-Socratic philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire.

Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote a single work, only fragments of which have survived. Most of the ancient stories about him are thought to be later fabrications based on interpretations of the preserved fragments. His paradoxical philosophy and appreciation for wordplay and cryptic, oracular epigrams has earned him the epithet "the obscure" since antiquity. He was considered arrogant and depressed, a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia. Consequently, he became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to the ancient philosopher Democritus, who was known as "the laughing philosopher".

The central idea of Heraclitus' philosophy is the unity of opposites and the concept of change. He saw the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being". He expressed this in sayings like panta rhei ("Everything flows") and "No man ever steps in the same river twice." This changing aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in "being" and in the static nature of reality.

Like the Milesians before him, Thales with water, Anaximander with apeiron, and Anaximenes with air, Heraclitus chose fire as the arche, the fundamental element that gave rise to the other elements. He also saw the logos as giving structure to the world.

Life

Ephesus on the coast of Asia Minor, birthplace of Heraclitus

The main source for the life of Heraclitus is the doxographer Diogenes Laërtius; Although most of the information provided by Laertius is unreliable, the anecdote that Heraclitus relinquished the hereditary title of "king" to his younger brother may at least imply that Heraclitus was from an aristocratic family in Ephesus. As the son of aristocrats, Heraclitus appears to have had little sympathy for democracy, but it is unclear whether he was "an unconditional partisan of the rich," or "withdrawn from competing factions" - similar to Solon of Athens.

In the 6th century BC, Ephesus, like other cities in Ionia, lived under the effects of both the rise of Lydia under Croesus, and his overthrow by Cyrus the Great c. 547 BC. Ephesus appears to have subsequently cultivated a close relationship with the Achaemenid Empire; during the suppression of the Ionian revolt in 494 BC, Ephesus was spared and emerged as the dominant Greek city in Ionia.

Heraclitus is traditionally considered to have flourished in the 69th Olympiad (504–501 BC), but this date may simply be based on a prior account synchronizing his life with the reign of Darius the Great. Two extant letters between Heraclitus and Darius I, which are quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, are also later forgeries. However, this date can be considered "roughly accurate" based on a fragment that references (and ridicules) Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus as older contemporaries, which would place him near the end of the sixth century BC.

Writings

A modern reconstruction of the Temple of Artemis, located in Istanbul. According to Diogenes Laertius, Heraclitus deposited his book in the original Temple of Artemis in Ephesus.

Heraclitus is said to have produced a single work on papyrus, which has not survived; however, over 100 fragments of this work survive in quotations by other authors. The title is unknown, but many later philosophers in this period refer to this work as On Nature. According to Diogenes Laërtius, Heraclitus deposited the book in the Artemisium as a dedication.

Kahn states: "Down to the time of Plutarch and Clement, if not later, the little book of Heraclitus was available in its original form to any reader who chose to seek it out". By the time of Simplicius of Cilicia, a 6th century neoplatonic philosopher, who mentions Heraclitus 32 times but never quotes from him, Heraclitus' work was so rare that it was unavailable even to Simplicius and the other scholars at the Platonic Academy in Athens.

Diogenes Laertius states that the book was divided into three parts, but Burnet notes that "it is not to be supposed that this division is due to [Heraclitus] himself; all we can infer is that the work fell naturally into these parts when the Stoic commentators took their editions of it in hand. Martin Litchfield West notes that the existing fragments do not give much of an idea of the overall structure, but that the beginning of the discourse can probably be determined, starting with the opening lines, which are quoted by Sextus Empiricus:

Of this Word’s being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Word they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and declare how it is. Other men are unaware of what they do when they are awake just as they are forgetful of what they do when they are asleep.

The Obscure

Aristotle quotes part of the opening line in the Rhetoric to outline the difficulty in punctuating Heraclitus without ambiguity; he debated whether "forever" applied to "being" or to "prove". Theophrastus says (in Diogenes Laërtius) "some parts of his work [are] half-finished, while other parts [made] a strange medley".

According to Diogenes Laërtius, Timon of Phlius called Heraclitus "the Riddler" (αἰνικτής; ainiktēs), saying Heraclitus wrote his book "rather unclearly" (asaphesteron); according to Timon, this was intended to allow only the "capable" to attempt it. By the time of Cicero, this epithet became "The Obscure" (ὁ Σκοτεινός; ho Skoteinós) as he had spoken nimis obscurē ("too obscurely") concerning nature and had done so deliberately in order to be misunderstood.

Heraclitus has been the subject of numerous interpretations. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Heraclitus has been seen as a "material monist or a process philosopher; a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician and a religious thinker; an empiricist, a rationalist, a mystic; a conventional thinker and a revolutionary; a developer of logic — one who denied the law of non-contradiction; the first genuine philosopher and an anti-intellectual obscurantist."

Flux and unity of opposites

The hallmarks of Heraclitus' philosophy are change, or flux, and the unity of opposites. Several fragments seem to relate to this, for example "The way up is the way down," "As the same thing in us is living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old. For these things having changed around are those, and those in turn having changed around are these" and "Cold things warm up, the hot cools off, wet becomes dry, dry becomes wet". Diogenes Laërtius summarizes Heraclitus's philosophy, stating; "All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things (τὰ ὅλα ta hola ("the whole")) flows like a stream". According to Aristotle, Heraclitus went so far as to be a dialetheist, or one who denies the law of non contradiction.

Panta rhei

Jonathan Barnes states that "Panta rhei, 'everything flows' is probably the most familiar of Heraclitus' sayings, yet few modern scholars think he said it." Barnes observes that although the exact phrase is not ascribed to Heraclitus until the 6th century by Simplicius of Cilicia, a similar saying expressing the same idea, panta chorei, or "everything moves" is ascribed to Heraclitus by Plato in the Cratylus.

You cannot step into the same river twice

The Halys River

Since Plato, Heraclitus's theory of flux has been associated with the metaphor of a flowing river, which cannot be stepped into twice. This fragment from Heraclitus's writings has survived in three different forms:

"On those who step into the same rivers, different and different waters flow" — Arius Didymus, quoted in Stobaeus
"We both step and do not step into the same, we both are and are not" — Heraclitus (commentator), Homeric Allegories
"It is not possible to step into the same river twice" — Plutarch, On the E at Delphi

Heraclitus illustrated the same point using the Sun: "the Sun is new each day." The fragment reading "we both are and are not" seems to suggest that not only is the river constantly changing, but we do as well, perhaps hinting at existential questions about humanity and personhood.

Some authors such as the classicists Karl-Martin Dietz or Karl Reinhardt interpret the metaphor as illustrating what is stable, rather than the usual interpretation of illustrating change. "You will not find anything, in which the river remains constant ... Just the fact, that there is a particular river bed, that there is a source and an estuary etc. is something, that stays identical. And this is ... the concept of a river."

Attempting to follow Aristotle, Guthrie sees the flux versus stability interpretations as a matter versus form interpretation. According to scholars like Guthrie who follow Aristotle, Heraclitus is a flux theorist because he is a materialist. Since there are no unchanging forms like Plato, but only the material world, then everything changes.

M. M. McCabe has argued that the three statements on rivers should all be read as fragments from a discourse. McCabe suggests reading them as though they arose in succession. The three fragments "could be retained, and arranged in an argumentative sequence". In McCabe's reading of the fragments, Heraclitus can be read as a philosopher capable of sustained argument, rather than just aphorism.

Strife is justice

Relief of Dike in Ephesus. According to Aristotle, Heraclitus considered strife a fundamental part of a just world.

Heraclitus' suggests the world and its various parts is kept together through the tension produced by the unity of opposites. Each substance contains its opposite, making for a continual circular exchange of generation and destruction, and motion, that results in the stability of the cosmos. This can be illustrated by the quote "Even the barley-drink separates if it is not stirred."

Heraclitus said "strife is justice"; he called the oppositional processes ἔρις (eris), "strife", and theorized the apparently stable state, δίκη (dikê), "justice", is a harmony of it, in contrast to Anaximander who described the same as injustice.

Aristotle said Heraclitus disliked Homer because Homer wished that strife would leave the world, which according to Heraclitus would destroy the world; "there would be no harmony without high and low notes, and no animals without male and female, which are opposites". It may also explain why he disliked Pythagoras, with the Pythagorean emphasis on harmony, but not on strife.

Another of Heraclitus' famous sayings highlights the idea that the unity of opposites is also a conflict of opposites (B53): "War is father of all and king of all; and some he manifested as gods, some as men; some he made slaves, some free;" war is a creative tension that brings things into existence. According to one author, "War is the central principle in Heraclitus' thought."

Cosmology

Fire as arche

An Eternal flame from a Zoroastrian fire temple in Yazd, Iran. The role of fire in the philosophy of Heraclitus has been compared with the practice of fire worship in Zoroastrianism, which was the state religion of the Achaemenid Empire during Heraclitus' life.

Like the Milesians before him, Thales with water, Anaximander with apeiron, and Anaximenes with air, Heraclitus was considered by Aristotle to have fire as the arche, the fundamental element that gave rise to the other elements. In one fragment, Heraclitus writes: This world-order [Kosmos], the same of all, no god nor man did create, but it ever was and is and will be: everliving fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.

Heraclitus believed in an eternal universe: the cosmos was and is and will be. From fire all things originate and all things return again in a process of never-ending cycles. Heraclitus regarded the soul as a mixture of fire and water, and that fire is the noble part of the soul and water is the ignoble part, and he considered mastery of one's worldly desires to be a noble pursuit that purified the soul's fire. While drunkenness damages the soul by causing it to be moist.

On one interpretation rejecting both the flux and stability interpretation, Heraclitus is not a material monist, but a revolutionary process philosopher who chooses fire in an attempt to say there is no arche. Fire is a symbol or metaphor for change, rather than the basic stuff which changes the most. Perspectives of this sort emphasize his statements on change such as "The way up is the way down," as well as especially the quote "All things are an exchange for Fire, and Fire for all things, even as wares for gold and gold for wares," which arguably says, while all can be transformed into fire, not everything comes from fire, just as not everything comes from gold.

Foreign influence

Heraclitus' description of a doctrine of purification of fire has also been investigated for influence from the Zoroastrian concept of Atar. Many of the doctrines of Zoroastrian fire do not match exactly with those of Heraclitus, such as the relation of fire to earth, but he may have taken some inspiration from them. Zoroastrian parallels to Heraclitus are often difficult to identify specifically due to a lack of surviving Zoroastrian literature from the period and mutual influence with Greek philosophy.

The interchange of other elements with fire also has parallels in Vedic literature from the same time period, such as the Kaushitaki Upanishad and Taittiriya Upanishad. and West stresses that these doctrines of the interchange of elements were common throughout written work on philosophy that has survived from that period, so Heraclitus' doctrine of fire can not be definitively be said to have been influenced by any other particular Iranian or Indian influence, but may have been part of a mutual interchange of influence over time across the Ancient Near East.

Logos

A fundamental term in Heraclitus is logos, an ancient Greek word literally meaning "word, speech, or discourse," but with a variety of other meanings. Heraclitus might have used a different meaning of the word with each usage in his book. For Heraclitus, logos provided the link between rational discourse and the world's rational structure. Logos seems like a universal law that unites the cosmos, according to a fragment: "Listening not to me but to the logos, it is wise to agree (homologein) that all things are one." While logos is everywhere, very few people are familiar with it. Another fragment reads: [hoi polloi] "...do not know how to listen [to Logos] or how to speak [the truth]"

Kahn stresses that Heraclitus used the word in multiple senses and Guthrie observes that there is no evidence Heraclitus used it in a way that was significantly different from that in which it was used by contemporaneous speakers of Greek. Guthrie considers the Logos as a public fact like a proposition or formula, though he also sees Heraclitus as a materialist, and so grants Heraclitus would not have considered these facts as abstract objects or immaterial things. Another possibility is the logos referred to the book itself.

Ethos

The phrase Ethos anthropoi daimon ("man's character is [his] fate") attributed to Heraclitus has led to numerous interpretations, and might mean one's luck is related to one's character. The translation of daimon in this context to mean "fate" is disputed; according to Thomas Cooksey, it lends much sense to Heraclitus's observations and conclusions about human nature in general. Other translations on offer are Charles Kahn's "a man's character is his divinity;" and Philip Wheelwright's "A man's character is his guardian divinity."

Death and legacy

According to Diogenes Laertius, Heraclitus died covered in dung after failing to cure himself from dropsy. This may be to parody his doctrine that for souls it is death to become water, and that a dry soul is best.

Influence on philosophy

Heraclitus' writings have exerted a wide influence on Western philosophy, including the works of Plato and Aristotle, who interpreted him in terms of their own doctrines. Heraclitus is also considered a potential source for understanding the Ancient Greek religion since the discovery of the Derveni papyrus. His influence also extends into art and literature, and medicine when one considers some of the writings in the Hippocratic corpus also shows signs of Heraclitean themes.

Ancient

Pre-Socratic

The surviving fragments of other pre-Socratic philosophers including Empedocles and Democritus show Heraclitean themes. The sophists such as Protagoras may also have been influenced by Heraclitus.

Heracliteans

It is unknown whether or not Heraclitus had any students in his lifetime. Diogenes Laertius claims he did, that his book "acquired such fame that it produced partisans of his philosophy who were called Heracliteans," including an Antisthenes who wrote a commentary on Heraclitus.

In his dialogue Cratylus, Plato presented Cratylus as a Heraclitean and as a linguistic naturalist, one who believes names must apply naturally to their objects. According to Aristotle, Cratylus went a step beyond his master's doctrine and said one cannot step into the same river once. He took the view that nothing can be said about the ever-changing world and "ended by thinking that one need not say anything, and only moved his finger." To explain both characterizations by Plato and Aristotle, Cratylus may have thought continuous change warrants skepticism because one cannot define a thing that does not have a permanent nature.

Parmenides

Parmenides, a contemporary who espoused a doctrine of unchanging Being, has been contrasted with Heraclitus and his doctrine of constant change.

Parmenides, an Eleatic philosopher and near-contemporary, is generally agreed to either have influenced or have been influenced by Heraclitus, either as an influence or response to Heraclitean doctrines, or as an extension of them. Parmenides proposed a doctrine of changelessness, which has been contrasted with the doctrine of flux put forth by Heraclitus. Different philosophers have argued that either one of them may have substantially influenced each other, some taking Heraclitus to be responding to Parmenides, but more often Parmenides is seen as responding to Heraclitus.

Some also argue that any direct chain of influence between the two is impossible to determine. Although Heraclitus refers to older figures such as Pythagoras, neither Parmenides or Heraclitus directly refer to each other in any surviving fragments, so any speculation on influence must be based on interpretations of the surviving fragments.

Parmenides's followers were Zeno, who argued via his famous paradoxes that motion was impossible, and Melissus, the commander of the Samian fleet in the Samian War.

Classical

Plato

Plato is the most famous philosopher who tried to reconcile Heraclitus and Parmenides; through Plato, both of these figures influenced virtually all subsequent Western philosophy. Plato knew of the teachings of Heraclitus through his follower Cratylus. Plato held that for Heraclitus knowledge is made impossible by the flux of sensible objects, and thus the need for the imperceptible Forms as objects of knowledge.

Coin from c. 230 CE depicting Heraclitus as a Cynic, with club and raised hand.

Hellenistic

Cynics

The Cynics were also influenced by Heraclitus, attributing several of the later Cynic epistles to his authorship.

Skeptics

Aenesidemus, one of the major ancient Pyrrhonist philosophers, claimed in a now-lost work that Pyrrhonism was a way to Heraclitean philosophy because Pyrrhonist practice helps one to see how opposites appear to be the case about the same thing. Once one sees this, it leads to understanding the Heraclitean view of opposites being the case about the same thing. A later Pyrrhonist philosopher, Sextus Empiricus, disagreed, arguing opposites' appearing to be the case about the same thing is not a dogma of the Pyrrhonists but a matter occurring to the Pyrrhonists, to the other philosophers, and to all of humanity.

Stoics

The Stoics believed major tenets of their philosophy derived from the thought of Heraclitus; especially the logos, used to support their belief that rational law governs the universe. According to one author, "Heraclitus of Ephesus was the father of Stoic physics." Several commentaries on Heraclitean philosophy were written by the Stoic philosopher Cleanthes but none have survived.

Many of the later Stoics interpreted the logos as the arche, and a creative fire that ran through all things; West observes that Plato, Aristotle, Theophrastus, and Sextus Empiricus all make no mention of this doctrine, and concludes that the language and thought are "obviously Stoic" and not attributable to Heraclitus. Long concludes the earliest Stoic fragments are also "modifications of Heraclitus". Burnet cautions that these Stoic modifications of Heraclitus make it harder to interpret Heraclitus himself, as the Stoics ascribed their own interpretations of terms like logos and ekpyrosis to Heraclitus.

In surviving stoic writings, this is most evident in the writings of Marcus Aurelius. Marcus Aurelius understood the Logos as "the account which governs everything." Heraclitus also states, "We should not act and speak like children of our parents", which Marcus Aurelius interpreted to mean one should not simply accept what others believe.

Early Christianity

Although the early Christian philosophers, following the Stoics, interpreted the logos in terms of a personal God, modern scholars do not believe these associations are represented in the original thought of Heraclitus. When Heraclitus speaks of "God" he does not mean a single deity as an omnipotent and omniscient or God as Creator, the universe being eternal; he meant the divine as opposed to human, the immortal as opposed to the mortal and the cyclical as opposed to the transient; to him, it is arguably more accurate to speak of "the Divine" and not of "God".

Hippolytus of Rome, one of the early Church Fathers of the Christian Church identified Heraclitus along with the other Pre-Socratics and Academics as sources of heresy, and identified the logos as meaning the Christian "Word of God", such as in John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word (logos) and the Word was God"; however, modern scholars such as John Burnet viewed the relationship between Heraclitean logos and Johannine logos as fallacious, saying; "the Johannine doctrine of the logos has nothing to do with Herakleitos or with anything at all in Greek philosophy, but comes from the Hebrew Wisdom literature". The Christian apologist Justin Martyr took a more positive view of Heraclitus. In his First Apology, he said both Socrates and Heraclitus were Christians before Christ: "those who lived reasonably are Christians, even though they have been thought atheists; as, among the Greeks, Socrates and Heraclitus, and men like them".

Weeping philosopher

Donato Bramante painted Heraclitus and Democritus and the Weeping and Laughing philosopher motif

Heraclitus's influence also extends outside of philosophy. A motif found also in art and literature is Heraclitus as the "weeping philosopher" and Democritus as the "laughing philosopher," which may have originated with the Cynic philosopher Menippus, and it generally references their reactions to the folly of mankind. For example, in Lucian of Samosata's "Philosophies for Sale," Heraclitus is auctioned off as the "weeping philosopher" and Democritus as the "laughing philosopher."

Modern

Michel de Montaigne's essay On Democritus and Heraclitus is also about weeping philosopher versus laughing philosopher, and which is better (Montaigne sides with laughing). Heraclitus also appears in Raphael's School of Athens, in which he is represented by Michelangelo.

Continental philosophy

Heraclitus painted as the weeping philosopher by Johannes Moreelse c. 1630

The German idealist G. W. F. Hegel interpreted Heraclitus as a process philosopher, seeing the "becoming" in Heraclitus as a natural result of the ontology of "being" and "non-being" in Parmenides. The influence of Heraclitus on Hegel was so profound that he remarked in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy: "there is no proposition of Heraclitus which I have not adopted in my Logic."

The existentialist and classical philologist Friedrich Nietzsche preferred Heraclitus above all the other pre-Socratics. Oswald Spengler wrote his (failed) dissertation on Heraclitus. Martin Heidegger was also influenced by Heraclitus, as seen in his Introduction to Metaphysics. Heidegger believed that the thinking of Heraclitus and Parmenides was the origin of philosophy and misunderstood by Plato and Aristotle, leading all of Western philosophy astray.

In the 1950s, a term originating with Heraclitus, "idios kosmos," meaning "private world" as distinguished from the "common world" (koinos kosmos) was adopted by phenomenological/existential psychologists, such as Ludwig Binswanger and Rollo May, to refer to the experience of people with delusions, or other problems, who have trouble seeing beyond the limits of their own minds, or who confuse this private world with shared reality. It was an important part of novelist Philip K. Dick's views on schizophrenia. The quote is: "The waking have one common world, but the sleeping turn aside each into a world of his own."

Analytic philosophy

The British idealist J. M. E. McTaggart is best known for his paper "The Unreality of Time" (1908), in which he argues that time is unreal. The work has been widely discussed in analytic philosophy of time, and contributed the idea of there being at least two theories of time: A-theory and B-theory. On the A-theory, or tensed theory, time passes; singular events have the dynamic property of either past, present or future. On the B-theory, or tenseless theory, time does not pass; pairs of events are related to each other as earlier than, simultaneous, or later than. The A-theory of time, also known as presentism or "temporal becoming", is associated with a Heraclitean metaphysics of time, as the B-theory is associated with Parmenides.

The British philosopher A. N. Whitehead was a process philosopher, and some will say in the tradition of Heraclitus. In Bertrand Russell's essay Mysticism and Logic he contends Heraclitus proves himself a metaphysician by his blending of mystical and scientific impulses.

Recent approaches in logic have led to logical pluralism and dialetheism, such as philosophers Graham Priest and JC Beall. Priest agrees with Hegel's contradictory account of motion, based on Zeno's Paradox of the Arrow, which is arguably Heraclitus' account of flux. On this account of motion, to move is to be both here and not here.

References

Ancient testimony

In the Diels–Kranz numbering for testimony and fragments of Pre-Socratic philosophy, Heraclitus is catalogued as number 22. The most recent edition of this catalogue is:

Diels, Hermann; Kranz, Walther (1957). Plamböck, Gert (ed.). Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker (in Ancient Greek and German). Rowohlt. ISBN 5875607416. Retrieved 11 April 2022.

Life and doctrines

• A1.  Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "Others: Heraclitus" . Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 2:9. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library.
• A2. Strabo (1929). "Book XIV". Geographica (in Ancient Greek and English). Translated by Jones, Horace Leonard; Sterrett, J. R. Sitlington. London: Heinemann. pp. 632–633.
• A3. Clement of Alexandria (1885). "Book I, Chapter XIV" . Stromateis. Ante-Nicene Fathers. Translated by William Wilson – via Wikisource.
• A4. Aristotle. Rhetoric . Book III, section 5 (1407b) – via Wikisource.
• A5. Aristotle. "Α". Metaphysics. 984a.
• A6. Plato. Cratylus. 402a.
• A7. Aristotle. "Γ". Metaphysics. 1005b23.
• A8. Aëtius. "7". In Stobaeus (ed.). Placita. Anthologium. Vol. I. line 77.
• A9. Aristotle. "Book V". On the Parts of Animals. 645a17.
• A10. Plato. Sophist. 242d.
• A11-14. Aëtius. "13". In Stobaeus (ed.). Placita. Anthologium. Vol. II. line 8.
• A15. Aristotle. "Book II". On the Soul. 405a25.
• A16. Sextus Empiricus. "Book VII". Against the Mathematicians. 126.
• A17. Aëtius. "7". In Stobaeus (ed.). Placita. Anthologium. Vol. IV. line 2.
• A18. Aëtius. "Book V". Vetusta Placita. line 23.
• A19. Plutarch. In Defence of Oracles. 415e.
• A20. Chalcide. Scholia. 251.
• A21. Clement of Alexandria. "Book II". Stromateis. 130.
• A22. Aristotle. Eudemian Ethics. 1235a25.
• A23. Polybius. "Book IV". Histories. 20.

Fragments

• B1-2. Sextus Empiricus. "Book XVII". Against the Mathematicians. 132.
• B3. Aetius. "Book II". Placita. 21,4.
• B4. Albertus Magnus. "Book VI". De veget. 401.
• B5. Aristocritus. Theosophia. 68.
• B6. Aristotle. "Book II". Meteorology. 355a.
• B7. Aristotle. "Book 5". On Sense Perception. 443a.
• B8-9. Aristotle. "Book II". Nicomachean Ethics.
• B10-11. Pseudo-Aristotle. De Mundo. 396b.
• B12. Eusebius (1903). "Epitomae of Arius Didymus". Praeparatio evangelica. Translated by E.H. Gifford. Clarendon Press. Book XV, Chapter XVIII-XX – via Tertullian Project.
• B13. Athanaeus. "Book V". Deipnosophistae. 178F.
• B14-15. Clement of Alexandria. Protrepticus.
• B16. Clement of Alexandria. Paedagogus.
• B17-36. Clement of Alexandria. Stromateis. Translated by William Wilson – via Wikisource.
• B37. Columella. De re rustica.
• B38.  Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "The Seven Sages: Thales" . Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 1:1. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library. § 23.
• B39.  Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "The Seven Sages: Bias" . Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 1:1. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library. § 88.
• B40-46.  Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "Others: Heraclitus" . Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 2:9. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library.
• B47.  Laërtius, Diogenes (1925). "Others: Pyrrho" . Lives of the Eminent Philosophers. Vol. 2:9. Translated by Hicks, Robert Drew (Two volume ed.). Loeb Classical Library. § 77.
• B49. Galen. On the knowledge of the pulse. VIII, 773.
• B49a. Heraclitus (commentator). Homeric Allegories.
• B50-67. Hippolytus of Rome. Refutation of All Heresies . Book IX, Chapter 4-5 – via Wikisource.
• B67a. Hisodsus Scholasticus (2016). Andrew Hicks (ed.). "De Anima Mundi Platonica, Commentary on Chalcides' translation of the Timaeus (dialogue)". Mediaeval Studies. 78. ISBN 978-0-88844-680-0.
• B68-69. Iamblichus. On the Mysteries.}}
• B70. Iamblichus. On the Soul.
• B71-75. Marcus Aurelius. Meditations.
• B77. Porphyry. The Cave of the Nymphs.
• B78-80. Origen of Alexandria. Contra Celsum.
• B81. Philodemus. On Rhetoric.
• B82-83. Plato. Hippias major.
• B84a-84b. Plotinus. Enneads.
• B85-86. Plutarch. Life of Coriolanus.
• B87. Plutarch. On Hearing.
• B88. Plutarch. Consolation to Apollonius.
• B89. Plutarch. On Superstition.
• B90-91. Plutarch. On the E at Delphi.
• B92-93. Plutarch. On the Pythian Oracle.
• B94. Plutarch. On Exile.
• B95-96. Plutarch. Symposiacs.
• B97. Plutarch. An seni respublica gerenda sit.
• B98. Plutarch. On the face in the moon.
• B99. Plutarch. On Fire and Water.
• B100. Plutarch. Platonic Questions.
• B101. Plutarch. Against Colotes.
• B101a. Polybius. "Book 12". Histories. line 27.
• B102. Porphyry. Ad Iliadem 4.4.
• B103. Porphyry. Notes on Homer.
• B104. Proclus. Commentary on Plato's Alcibiades.
• B105. Scholia to Homer. 289B.
• B106. Plutarch. Life of Camillus.
• B107. Sextus Empiricus. "Book XVII". Against the Mathematicians. 126.
• B108-119. Stobaeus. Florilegium.
• B120-121. Strabo. Geography.
• B122. Suda.
• B123. Themistius. Speeches V.
• B124-125. Theophrastus. On Vertigo.
• B125a. John Tzetzes. Commentary on Aristophanes' Wealth.
• B126. John Tzetzes. "Book XVII". Commentary on the Iliad. 126.

Imitation

• C1. Hippocrates (1931). On Regimen. Hippocrates Collected Works. Vol. IV. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• C2. Hippocrates (1923). On Nutrition. Hippocrates Collected Works. Vol. I. Translated by W. H. S. Jones. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
• C4. Cleanthes. Hymn to Zeus. fr. 537.
• C5. Lucian (1905). Philosophies for Sale. The works of Lucian of Samosata. Vol. 1. Translated by Fowler, H. W.; Fowler, F. G.

Modern scholarship

• Barnes, Jonathan (1982). "The Natural Philosophy of Heraclitus". The Presocratic Philosophers. London & New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group. pp. 43–62. ISBN 978-0-415-05079-1.
• Betegh, Gábor (2004). The Derveni papyrus : cosmology, theology, and interpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9780511584435.
• Burnet, John (1892). "Heraclitus". Early Greek Philosophy. A. and C. Black. Retrieved 5 March 2022.
• Curd, Patricia (2020). "Presocratic philosophy". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Graham, D. W. (2008). "Heraclitus: Flux, Order, and Knowledge". In Curd, P.; Graham, D. W. (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Presocratic Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 169–188. ISBN 978-0-19-514687-5.
• Graham, D. W. (2002). "Heraclitus and Parmenides". In Caston, V.; Graham, D. W. (eds.). Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. 27–44. ISBN 978-0-7546-0502-7.
• Graham, Daniel W. (2019). "Heraclitus". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• Guthrie, W. K. C. (1962). A History of Greek Philosophy: The Earlier Presocratics and the Pythagoreans. Vol. 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Hussey, Edward (1999). "Heraclitus". In Long, A. A. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 88–112. ISBN 978-0-521-44667-9.
• Kahn, Charles H. (1979). The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. An Edition of the Fragments with Translation and Commentary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-21883-2.
• Kirk, G. S. (1954). Heraclitus, the Cosmic Fragments. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Long, A. A. (2001). Stoic Studies. University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-22974-7.
• Mansfield, Jaap (1999). Long, A. A. (ed.). The Cambridge Companion to Early Greek Philosophy. Cambridge University Press. pp. 22–45. ISBN 978-0-521-44667-9.
• McCabe, Mary Margaret (2015-05-01). Platonic Conversations. Oxford University Press. pp. 1–31. doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198732884.003.0001. ISBN 978-0-19-873288-4.
• Nehamas, Alexander (2002). "Parminidean Being/Heraclitean Fire". In Caston, V.; Graham, D. W. (eds.). Presocratic Philosophy: Essays in Honour of Alexander Mourelatos. Aldershot: Ashgate. pp. 45–64. ISBN 978-0-7546-0502-7.
• Sandywell, Barry (1996). Presocratic Reflexivity: The Construction of Philosophical Discourse c. 600-450 B.C.: Logological Investigations: Volume Three. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-134-85347-2.
• Warren, James (5 December 2014). Presocratics. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-317-49337-2.
• West, Martin L. (1971). Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient. Clarendon Press. Retrieved 6 March 2022. Chapters 4-6 deal with Heraclitus

Further reading

• Gregory, Andrew (3 January 2008). Ancient Greek Cosmogony. A&C Black. ISBN 978-1-84966-792-0.
• Hussey, Edward (1972). The Presocratics. New York: Scribner. ISBN 0684131188.
• Kirk, G. S.; Raven, J. E. (1957). The Pre-Socratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Mcevilley, Thomas C. (7 February 2012). The Shape of Ancient Thought: Comparative Studies in Greek and Indian Philosophies. Simon and Schuster. ISBN 978-1-58115-933-2.
• McKirahan, R. D. (2011). Philosophy before Socrates, An Introduction With Text and Commentary. Indianapolis: Hackett. ISBN 978-1-60384-183-2.
• Mikalson, Jon (24 June 2010). Greek Popular Religion in Greek Philosophy. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-957783-5.
• Mitchell, John Malcolm (1911). "Heraclitus" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). pp. 309–310.
• Mourelatos, Alexander, ed. (1993). The Pre-Socratics : a collection of critical essays (Rev. ed.). Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-02088-4.
• Naddaf, Gerard (2005). The Greek Concept of Nature. SUNY Press. ISBN 978-0791463734.
• Schofield, Malcolm; Nussbaum, Martha Craven, eds. (1982). Language and logos : studies in ancient Greek philosophy presented to G. E. L. Owen. Cambridge: Cambridge U.P. ISBN 978-0-521-23640-9.
• Stamatellos, Giannis (1 February 2012). Plotinus and the Presocratics: A Philosophical Study of Presocratic Influences in Plotinus' Enneads. State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-8031-1.
• Wheelwright, Philip (1959). Heraclitus. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
• Wright, M. R. (1985). The Presocratics: The main Fragments in Greek with Introduction, Commentary and Appendix Containing Text and Translation of Aristotle on the Presocratics. Bristol: Bristol Classical Press. ISBN 978-0-86292-079-1.

External links

• Works related to Fragments of Heraclitus at Wikisource
• Quotations related to Heraclitus at Wikiquote
• Media related to Heraclitus at Wikimedia Commons
• Stamatellos, Giannis. "Heraclitus of Ephesus: Life and Work". Retrieved 2007-10-12.