Allgemein
Heracleitus:
Encyclopaedia Britannica
b. c. 540 BC,, Ephesus, in Anatolia
d. c. 480
also spelled HERACLITUS, Greek philosopher remembered for his
cosmology, in which fire forms the basic material principle of
an orderly universe. Little is known about his life, and the
one book he apparently wrote is lost. His views survive in the
short fragments quoted and attributed to him by later authors.
Though
he was primarily concerned with explanations of the world
around him, Heracleitus also stressed the need for men to live
together in social harmony. He complained that most men failed
to comprehend the logos
(Greek: "reason"), the universal principle through
which all things are interrelated and all natural events occur,
and thus lived like dreamers with a false view of the world. A
significant manifestation of the logos, Heracleitus claimed,
is the underlying connection between opposites. For example,
health and disease define each other. Good and evil, hot and
cold, and other opposites are similarly related. In addition,
he noted that a single substance may be perceived in varied
ways--seawater is both harmful (for men) and beneficial (for
fishes). His understanding of the relation of opposites to
each other enabled him to overcome the chaotic and divergent
nature of the world, and he asserted that the world exists as
a coherent system in which a change in one direction is
ultimately balanced by a corresponding change in another.
Between all things there is a hidden connection, so that those
that are apparently "tending apart" are actually
"being brought together."
Viewing
fire as the essential material uniting all things, Heracleitus
wrote that the world order is an "ever-living fire
kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures."
He extended the manifestations of fire to include not only
fuel, flame, and smoke but also the ether in the upper
atmosphere. Part of this air, or pure fire, "turns
to" ocean, presumably as rain, and part of the ocean
turns to earth. Simultaneously, equal masses of earth and sea
everywhere are returning to the respective aspects of sea and
fire. The resulting dynamic equilibrium maintains an orderly
balance in the world. This persistence of unity despite change
is illustrated by Heracleitus' famous analogy of life to a
river: "Upon those who step into the same rivers
different and ever different waters flow down." Plato
later took this doctrine to mean that all things are in
constant flux, regardless of how they appear to the senses.
http://www.britannica.com/bcom/eb/article/4/0,5716,40944+1+40089,00.html
Heraklit
von Ephesos (ca. 540 - 480 v. u. Z.)
Das bis heute sprichwörtlich gebliebene pánta rhei stammt
zwar nicht vom griechischen Philosophen
Heraklit von Ephesos (um 540 bis um 480 v. u. Z.), sondern
wird ihm von Platon
zugeschrieben; er trifft aber, wenn man es richtig versteht,
den Kern der Philosophie des Heraklit.
http://www.philosophenlexikon.de/heraklit.htm
Heraclitus
of Ephesos
mikes@techlink.gr
Heraclitus, son of Vloson, was born about 535 BCE in Ephesos,
the second great Greek Ionian city. He was a man of strong and
independent philosophical spirit. Unlike the Milesian
philosophers whose subject was the material beginning of the
world, Heraclitus focused instead on the internal rhythm of
nature which moves and regulates things, namely, the Logos (Rule).
Heraclitus is the philosopher of the eternal change. He
expresses the notion of eternal change in terms of the
continuous flow of the river which always renews itself.
Heraclitus accepted only one material source of natural
substances, the Pyr (Fire). This Pyr is the essence of Logos
which creates an infinite and uncorrupted world, without
beginning. It converts this world into various shapes as a
harmony of the opposites. The composition of opposites
sustains everything in nature. "Good" and
"bad" are simply opposite sides of the same thing.«To
God all things are beautiful and good and just, but men have
supposed some things to be unjust, others just».
http://www.forthnet.gr/presocratics/heracln.htm
Heraclitus
of Ephesus
Anthony F. Beavers
Heraclitus
of Ephesus
(fl. 500-480 BC), also known as "the Riddler" and
"the Obscure," was the eldest son of a leading
aristocratic family. He was a loner with a general distaste
for mobs. Consequently, he had no pupils, though a small book
that he wrote had a rich tradition of its own and attracted
many followers; the Stoics recognized it as the source of
their doctrines. All that survives of this book is a series of
quotations that scholars have been able to extract from other
sources -- see the Fragments
of Heraclitus -- and that reveal an enigmatic and oracular
style, perhaps adopted by Heraclitus
to protect its true contents from commoners. Owing to its
obscurity, the book engendered many anecdotes about its author,
most of them intending to malign him, and so it is difficult
to know much about his life and character that is reliable. It
is equally difficult to discern the details of his true
thought.
http://plato.evansville.edu/comments/beavers/000001.htm
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