Power and Polemos

One of the most significant statements concerning the nature of war is to be found in Heraclitus. Fragment 53 reads as follows: ȘWar [polemos] is father of all, and king of all. He renders some gods, others men; he makes some slaves, others free’ (Heraclitus, 1987: 37).1 On face value this fragment proposes that war is the determining principle in the flux of the cosmos; that life is in essence a conflictual struggle. But while history certainly testifies to the centrality of conflict in human affairs, and this chapter assumes that conflict is a central aspect of our being-in-the-world, this fragment will be used to argue against the simple equation that life is a violent struggle between competing forces. For Heraclitus, polemos is father and king; it is generative (father) and governing or ruling (king); it is productive and it is preserving; it brings things into being and maintains them in their being. Taking such a reading, polemos is not simply a violent struggle of becoming between already existing beings, it is the very possibility of one being standing against, alongside and even with another. It is the very exposition of beings. It is world-creation, and it is in this sense that this fragment will be important for us.