Heraclitus
Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535 – c. 475 BCE) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor.
Life
He was of distinguished parentage.
Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom.
From the lonely life he led, and still more from the riddling and allegedly paradoxical nature of his philosophy and his stress upon the needless unconsciousness of humankind, he was called "The Obscure" and the "Weeping Philosopher".
Heraclitus was famous for his insistence on ever-present change in the universe, as stated in the famous saying, "No man ever steps in the same river twice" (see Panta rhei, "everything flows").
This position was complemented by his stark commitment to a unity of opposites in the world, stating that "the path up and down are one and the same".
Through these doctrines Heraclitus characterized all existing entities by pairs of contrary properties, whereby no entity may ever occupy a single state at a single time.
This, along with his cryptic utterance that "all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos" (literally, "word", "reason", or "account") has been the subject of numerous interpretations.
See also
External links
- Heraclitus @ Wikipedia
