Heraclitus, rivers and why everything is in flux
Come and get your feet wet with this elusive philosopher...
Imagine the sound of a river flowing. You can hear it bubbling away, flowing steadily through rocks and bullrushes. Maybe you hear some fish splashing on the surface. Or a frog croaking in the reeds. Regardless of who or what might be lurking in the river, the sound of flowing water never stops. The river is constantly moving, and therefore it’s always changing.
Unfortunately this isn’t a guided meditation. It’s actually the setting for Heraclitus’ most famous philosophical theory on the nature of flux. Heraclitus believed that ‘flux’ or constant change defines the existence of our universe. Keep reading to find out what a gently bubbling river has to do with any of this…
To serve
Originally I tried to find a wine that tastes like a river, but that didn’t sound very appealing (has any winemaker attempted to do that?). Instead, this week I chose a sparkling wine variety. Specifically this Sacchetto Col de L'Utia Prosecco Brut 2020. It’s not overly sweet for a prosecco and has lovely apple, cream and lemon zest notes. Best of all, while you’re drinking it you can watch the bubbles constantly fizzing to the top and think about Heraclitus and his river.
Fun fact: Prosecco is available brut, extra dry or dry, in order of driest to sweetest. So if you buy a ‘dry’ prosecco at the shop and wonder why it still tastes really sweet, next time look for a ‘brut’ instead. Saluti!
Heraclitus: man of mystery
First let’s take a look at the life of Heraclitus. This won’t take long, because very little is known about him. He was probably born around 540 BC and died in 480 BC. He grew up in the city of Ephesus, Anatolia (which is now modern day Turkey). At that time, Ephesus was a prominent Greek-inhabited city that had fallen to the Persian Empire (300 style).
Unlike some other philosophers of the time, Heraclitus did write his theories down. Unfortunately, all that remains are fragments of a single papyrus roll, meaning that philosophers have had to decipher his thoughts from a mismatched collection of sentences and paragraphs. Not the easiest way to figure out someone’s ideas. Heraclitus’ writing style doesn’t make things any easier. His sentences are like puzzles that often require re-reading several times to fully interpret. After encountering Heraclitus’ work, Socrates reportedly once said: “What I understand is good; and I think that what I don’t understand is good too - but it would take a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it.” Some academics have argued that Heraclitus was a big fan of the Oracle at Delphi, a soothsayer renowned throughout all of Greece for her cryptic advice. Heraclitus’ habit of writing sentences in semi-riddles was likely influenced by the oracle.
Heraclitus and the river
Despite these hurdles, philosophers have managed to draw some meaning from Heraclitus’ mysterious writing. In one of the fragments, Heraclitus says:
potamoisi toisin autoisin embainousin hetera kai hetera hudata epirrei.
“On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow.”
The English translation sounds a bit strange at first. Basically it means that if you step into a river, as you continue to stand there it’s still the same river, but beneath you the water is constantly flowing. Different (‘other and other’) waters are always rushing through your legs. Bizarrely, the river only remains itself because it is always in transformation.
The same thing can be said of human beings too. From the moment we’re born, our bodies are constantly changing. We grow, we get ill, our skin starts to age, then one day our hair turns grey (growing old is fun). From cradle to grave we are always changing and yet we’re still the same physical person, much like the river.
This can make the nature of the universe sound slightly chaotic. If everything is constantly transforming itself, how does anything endure over time? How do buildings retain their form? Why do the same stars appear in the sky every night? Heraclitus shows us with the river example that many (although perhaps not all) things in our world exist because their constituent parts are always changing. A river is only a river and not a lake precisely because its water is constantly flowing. As the philosopher Daniel W. Graham puts it, Heraclitus highlights how “the fact that some things change makes possible the continued existence of other things.” The river endures in the world because it’s always in flux.
The river is a special example of Heraclitus’ “unity of opposites”. A unity of opposites occurs when something is both the same and not the same over time. Thinking about human beings again, Heraclitus says: “As the same thing in us are living and dead, waking and sleeping, young and old.” We exist in states that are exactly opposite to one another over time. And these opposites are actually united within us - when we are not asleep, we are awake. When we are not alive, we are dead. The river example is a version of this theory. It remains the same but changes constantly at the same time. Phew.
“Learning many things does not teach understanding”
If you’ve got this far, congratulations! Heraclitus would be mildly impressed with your dedication to properly understanding the true nature of the world. That’s because Heraclitus was very dismissive of his fellow human beings. He believed that most people wasted their time reading lots of things without processing any of the information. He compares his fellow Greeks to ‘barbarians’ - a friendly Greek way of referring to all foreigners. Barbarians hear the Greek language without understanding the meaning of it; in the same way, Heraclitus’ fellow countrymen experience the world without truly understanding it.
This is why Heraclitus uses cryptic metaphors involving things like rivers to present his philosophy. He’s trying to sort the men from the boys (women couldn’t practice philosophy back then). He alludes to some general principles of his theory and presents the image of the river, then leaves it up to his readers to sort out the true interpretation. This takes us neatly back to the Oracle at Delphi. Heraclitus says: “The Lord whose oracle is at Delphi neither reveals nor conceals, but gives a sign.” Learning his philosophy is not a straightforward process - you have to dig deeper, sink into the metaphors and work to find true meaning.
So today we can pat ourselves on the back. Despite being barbarians, we successfully unravelled one of Heraclitus’ signs.
Next week
Next time I’ll be looking at the Kyoto School, specifically Nishida Kitaro and the concept of Nothingness.
PS
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