Philosophy
c. 535 to 475 BC, Ephesus
Everything flows: change, the Logos, and the unity of opposites.
Start learning Heraclitus →Heraclitus’ vision that reality is not a collection of stable things but a ceaseless process of change - you cannot step into the same river twice, because the river, like all things, is always becoming something else.
Heraclitus’ idea of the Logos - the hidden rational measure, the common law and order that governs all the flux of the world, which most people fail to grasp even though they live within it.
Heraclitus’ paradoxical doctrine that opposites are secretly one - that strife is justice, that the road up and the road down are the same, and that the hidden harmony of the world is woven from tension between opposing…
Heraclitus’ choice of fire as the fundamental reality - the ever-living fire, kindling and going out in measures, that both symbolises the cosmos of ceaseless transformation and serves as the stuff from which all things…
Heraclitus’ teaching on the human soul - the fiery, dry, deep soul whose limits cannot be found; his ideal of wisdom as waking from the sleep of private opinion to grasp the common Logos; and his stern moral vision of s…
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