Philosophy and Heraclitus Essay Example

same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.

This statement is the essence of the concept of "flux" as it means that the river is always different every time you step into it. He looked at everything being in the state of change and that only change is permanent. "He told people that nothing is the same now as it was before, and thus nothing what is now will be the same tomorrow. With this he planted the idea of impermanence into Greek thought, and indeed, after Heraclitus Greek philosophy was not the same anymore. "(Thomas K. ). Another influential idea is the "unity of opposites".Heraclitus believed that opposites are the same and cannot exist without each other. He thought that opposites are identical. For instance, to Heraclitus, hot and cold are the same.

Heraclitus saw unity as being harmony. To modern people, it seems silly to assume that opposites are identical but to the Greek, it completely makes sense. Hot and cold can both be expressed as a level of temperature, dark and bright as a degree of light. This is why opposites cannot exist without each other because when you say something is hot, it should be hot in comparison with something colder.

The ideas of "flux" and "unity of opposites" are somehow connected to each other. It is sometimes argued that Heraclitus' quote: "You cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you. " Is actually referring to the unity of opposites because the river is the same but at the same time it is different because new fresh waters flow on it. To

conclude, Heraclitus was a very independent thinker and a huge critic of everything around him. His puzzling writings and deviant thoughts made him popular and influential among the later philosophers.His ideas of flux and the unity of opposites are still admired by today's philosophers.

Unfortunately, not all his writings survived the years and only fragments of his writings exist. As much as we write about Heraclitus and try to understand him, in the end "Much learning does not teach understanding".

References:

1. website name and author are unknown, http://home. wlu.edu/~mahonj/Ancient_Philosophers/Heraclitus. htm
2. Thomas Knierim, "Heraclitus",http://www. thebigview.com/greeks/heraclitus. html,
3. N. S. Gill, About. com, http://ancienthistory.about. com/od/philosophers/g/Heraclitus. htm