Abstract
Heraclitus accepts as a principle that any particular insight into things is necessarily partial and perspectival. Edward Halper has discussed how, for this reason, it is in principle impossible for a particular thinker to attain the perspective of the Logos by which the whole can be made intelligible. So, metaphysics itself tells us that metaphysics is impossible. According to Halper, Heraclitus was wrong to take the Logos as applying to itself, as the Logos should properly be understood as applying only to what is not a product of human agency. I argue that Halper’s move cannot serve as a corrective patch to Heraclitus’ metaphysical thought, since it posits a distinction between the human and the rest of reality which Heraclitus could never accept. Although not a radical monist who denies the reality of all multiplicity, a fundamental principle of his thought is that all distinctions and oppositions are grounded in a more fundamental unity. I instead approach the Heraclitean paradox by appealing to the strategy, familiar from a number of ancient Greek philosophers, of making a distinction between different levels of knowledge inherent within the same knower.
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Notes
- 1.
Sainsbury (2009, 1).
- 2.
“This sentence” refers to the very sentence that contains the phrase. The Russell paradox draws our attention to a set whose membership is determined by implicit reference to the membership of that very set.
- 3.
Consider Plato’s struggles to find the right way of talking about the relation between Forms and particulars. “A takes part in B” is unproblematic when referring to divvying up a pie, but generates paradoxes when referring to the relation between a tall man and Tallness Itself.
- 4.
Kant 2007, A517/B545—A523/B551.
- 5.
Rescher (2001, 145–51) calls these “illicit totalization paradoxes.” There are of course yet other kinds of paradox. Zeno’s paradoxes of motion, for example, do not fall neatly into one or another of these kinds.
- 6.
Halper (2017, 453–72).
- 7.
Kirk, Raven and Schofield (2007, 187). Here and elsewhere, unless otherwise noted, translations given are from this volume.
- 8.
For this view, see Conche (1986, 23–4).
- 9.
On the apparently anomalous DK B 124 see n. 37 below.
- 10.
See DK B 41: “The wise is one thing, to be acquainted with true judgment, how all things are steered through all.” The fragment contains two ambiguities. “The wise” both refers to the Logos, as a wise directive principle, and the content of wisdom. Further, the fragment is ambiguous between saying that wisdom consists in knowing that there is a principle of intelligence directive of all things, and knowing the content of that directive intelligence.
- 11.
On this see Lebedev (2017, 231–67).
- 12.
We have here a prime example of what Kahn (1979, 89) called “linguistic density,” “the phenomenon by which a multiplicity of ideas are expressed in a single word or phrase.”
- 13.
In DK B 108: “Of all of the logoi that I have heard, none have reached the point by which one could know this, that which is wise, separate from all” (my translation.) Heraclitus is distinguishing between the logoi of others, which he has heard, and the logos that he himself expresses. Presumably what his own logos expresses is the Logos as wise, directive principle; his logos alone expresses the Logos as it is. On the other hand, in the fragments now in question, Heraclitus affirms that even his own logos does not reach the point by which others can know the Logos, for they fail to attain that knowledge even after hearing it. There is however the clear implication that the problem with the other logoi consists in what is being said, while the problem with his own logos is how it is heard. I take DK B 50 to explain the deficiency in the auditors: if they heed Heraclitus at all, it is by virtue of accepting his word, as wise or learned, as opposed to seeing how thing are, for themselves.
- 14.
On the controversy, and an appeal to “linguistic density” in support of the answer “both” see Aristotle (Rhet. 3.5 1407b11ff) and Kahn (1979, 92–5).
- 15.
As Dilcher (1995, 11–12) points out, Heraclitus’ “both before they have heard it and once they have heard it” indicates that people’s ignorance of the logos is an unalterable fact about human nature but also has a temporal, causal dimension. A particular discourse that relates the Logos, such as the uttering of Heraclitus’ own words, is a cause that leads to people’s estrangement from it.
- 16.
Dilcher (1995, 91–5) tentatively argues that some of Heraclitus’ readers, and Heraclitus himself, are thought to be able to follow the Logos. On this interpretation, the paradox to which Halper draws attention would not arise, and Halper’s paper, and this one, can be disregarded, at least as interpretations of Heraclitus’ thought. But the aiei (“always”) speaks against that; to avoid this result one must deny syntactic ambiguity and take the adverb to modify eontos alone—which is what Dilcher does. DK B 78 (“The human character has no intelligence, but the Divine does”) suggests that Heraclitus, as human, is no exception to the rule that human beings cannot comprehend the logos. So even the one who utters the Logos cannot “hear” the Logos.
- 17.
Philosophers had not yet come to an explicit recognition of the need to distinguish between the logos as a conceptual or linguistic intermediary between the mind and reality. The logos is both what one thinks or says, and that which one is thinking or talking about. See Palmer (2009, 88), according to whom early Greek philosophers “had yet to take proper account of the fact that our apprehension of the world is mediated by a level of conceptualization and linguistic representation. The transition to the new model of understanding and inquiry is most famously represented in the account of Socrates’ intellectual development in Plato’s Phaedo .” It is this feature of Heraclitus’ thought that makes the paradox to which Halper is drawing attention so acute. That most people fail to understand the logos would be less problematic if the logos is an intermediary between the mind and reality. In that case, something goes wrong in the gap between the communication and what is communicated. But if the very act of communication is the communicated, the logos does not mediate, and the expression of the logos should be as complete and adequate as what is expressed.
- 18.
Heraclitus himself makes the connection between the logos, directing the cosmos, and law, directing the polis, at DK B 114.
- 19.
As Long (1975, 148; 2001, 23–57) points out, in spite of the great influence Heraclitus had on the Stoics, this Heraclitean view, according to which everything is, at bottom, good, insofar as is the direct result of the governance of the Logos, differs from the Stoic understanding, deriving from Cleanthes, that evil is a real aspect of the world, and that the Logos “can accommodate those exceptionally recalcitrant parts of the cosmos that are bad.
- 20.
The intuitive appeal of this is made explicit in Gorgias’ “On What is Not”: hōi gar mēnuomen esti logos (“For logos is that by which we communicate.”) (Sextus Empiricus Ad. Math. 7.84). mēnuein has the connotation of successful disclosure.
- 21.
Halper (2017, 456)
- 22.
See DK B 41(“The wise is one thing, to be acquainted with true judgment, how all things are steered through all”) and DK B 64 (“Thunderbolt steers all things”).
- 23.
Halper (2017, 458) appeals to the universal/particular distinction to make sense of the paradox as follows: “Heraclitus’ point, if I have understood him, is that no universal law could include the possibility of its own assertion.” I am not sure that I fully understand. Why must all universal laws exclude their assertion? This does not seem to be the case even when there is recursive reference. How is a contradiction generated by “all universal propositions are predications”? (See Rescher 2001, 206): “[I]t is best to take a discerning and differentiated view of self-reference, recognizing that it can take both lawful and illicit forms.”) Perhaps the idea is that as Heraclitus understands things, any universal law derives from and cannot be understood in isolation from the Logos, considered as a unified principle governing everything, and it is the content of this unified universal principle that renders itself such as cannot be coherently asserted.
- 24.
Cf. DK B 32: “One thing, the only truly wise, does not and does consent to be called by the name of Zeus.”
- 25.
Interestingly, Aristotle is careful not to attribute to Heraclitus himself a denial of the principle of non-contradiction: “For it is impossible for anyone to believe the same thing to be and not to be, as some think Heraclitus says; for what a man says he does not necessarily believe.” (Meta. Γ 31005b23–6)
- 26.
Halper (2017, 461)
- 27.
Falling in this group are the first of the two alternative approaches to the paradox sketched at Halper (2017, 464–70): to deny that changing reality (including ourselves as cognitive agents) can be known (Plato and Aristotle), and to limit the object of knowledge to the processes of cognition (pre-Hegelian moderns). The third alternative approach indicated by Halper, to accept a multiplicity of knowers and objects known, but to posit a higher level synthesis that resolves contradictions (Hegel), may be a version of the monistic metaphysics I discuss below, but my understanding of Hegel is too deficient to say for sure.
- 28.
Halper (2017, 471)
- 29.
It might not. The move is parallel to attempts to preserve free will in the face of omnipotent divine governance, which are often found to be philosophically problematic.
- 30.
Emphasis added.
- 31.
“Monism” as I am employing the term refers to a view that comprehends both Schaffer’s “existence monism” and “priority monism.” “Existence monism targets concrete objects and counts by tokens. This is the doctrine that exactly one concrete object token exists. Priority monism also targets concrete objects but counts by basic tokens. This is the doctrine that exactly one concrete object token is basic, and is equivalent to the classical doctrine that the whole is prior to its (proper) parts” (Schaffer 2018).
- 32.
This is the thesis that there is just one being. See Curd (1998, xviii).
- 33.
What is O from one perspective is P from another, O and P are complementary aspects of a thing, what is O at one time is P at another, and vice versa, and O can only be understood as not-P, and vice versa.
- 34.
In DK B 57 Heraclitus takes Hesiod to have made this mistake. “Hesiod is the teacher of most people. They ‘know’ that he knew many things, someone unaware of day and night. For they are one” (My translation). The reference is to Theogony 124.
- 35.
This was a principle of Stoicism from the start; Zeno declared “the cosmos is one” (SVF 1.97). Although Zeno’s relation to Heraclitus is unclear, Cleanthes’ Hymn to Zeus explicitly hearkens to Heraclitus, celebrating Zeus/fire as animating and directing the cosmos as an organized whole.
- 36.
- 37.
A problem is DK B 124. The text is vexed, that endorsed by Diels I translate “The fairest cosmos is a rubbish-heap spilling out at random.” On the surface the fragment is denying that there is logos even for the cosmos, which one might think manifests unity, order, and beauty to the highest degree. Such a blanket denial is to be avoided as inconsistent with the other fragments. If we preserve the Diels text it is best to see the fragment as an application of the principle that predicates such as “beautiful” are perspectival, attributed only from a point of view. This holds not only in regard to the particulars that constitute the cosmos, but to the whole itself.
- 38.
There is no need to appeal to a psychology of the “unconscious” to find parallels here. Plato’s teaching that learning is recollection rests on the view that what the mind at some level knows it does not at another. The same idea, arguably, is present in Aristotle’s view that the active intellect eternally knows that which can be known but, “we do not remember” on account of the destructibility of the passive element of intellect (DA 3.5).
- 39.
I here depart from Kirk’s translation.
- 40.
As an anonymous reviewer has pointed out, how this stands with Heraclitus himself is deeply ambiguous.
- 41.
Cf. DK B 107 and B 108.
- 42.
I do not take a stand regarding chronological priority.
- 43.
Space precludes even a brief discussion, but parallel paradoxes and parallel approaches to resolution are found in both the Advaita Vedanta of Shankara and in Lurianic kabbala. Both offer a radical monistic metaphysics according to which there is the appearance of plurality although in reality there is just one being, conscious of its own unity. For Shankara, the appearance of independent realities arises on account of maya, a mode by which the true reality, Brahman, manifests itself. For the Lurianic kabbala, it arises through a contraction of G-d, by which G-d willingly hides from himself. For interesting explorations of parallels between Shankara and Parmenides, see Robbiano (2016b, 290–327). For an attempt to understand the notion of the divine contraction, as dealing with the issues of unity and multiplicity that arise out of ancient Greek thought, see Goldin (1999, 59–74).
- 44.
- 45.
See Giancola (2001, 26:635–653).
- 46.
- 47.
- 48.
As an anonymous reviewer has pointed out, the approach of Parmenides I outline here has much in common with what is identified as the stance of Plato and Aristotle in Halper (2017, 464–7): knowledge is of what is, for which reason aspects of things that generate contradiction are excluded from contradiction. Given the immense influence of Parmenides on later thinkers, this is to be expected. But there is an important difference. As I understand him, Parmenides is not saying that we, as human inquirers, are capable of two modes of cognition, only one of which steers clear of paradox. Rather, there is only one being, not to be identified with any of us as individuals, and it alone grasps things without contradiction. We, as separate thinkers, faced with contradiction and paradox, are just as unreal as the contradictions that are objections of our cognition. The deep mystery is how errant minds such as ours have whatever ontological standing they have. Parmenides, on my understanding, denies them ontological standing, while for Heraclitus they have the cosmic Logos as source. The same reviewer insists that the “somehow” here, and in the preceding paragraph, indicates that the paradox has not been resolved, only displaced. I agree. This is the displacement of the “bump in the rug” to which I allude at the beginning of this paper. Some such displacement, I think, is intended by both Heraclitus and Parmenides.
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Goldin, O. (2022). Monism, Metaphysics, and Paradox. In: Bloom, D., Bloom, L., Byrd, M. (eds) Knowing and Being in Ancient Philosophy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98904-0_6
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