Chapter 7 05 HERACLITUS I "Everything Flows" Universe View

5.1 The Intuition of "Everything Flows" Heraclitus of Ephesus (the Greek colony of Ephesus on the west coast of Asia Minor) came into the mysterious night that engulfed Anaximander's question of becoming, and illuminated it with divine lightning. it.He exclaimed: "I have gazed at becoming, and no one has gazed so carefully at this eternal wave and rhythm of things. What do I see? Regularity, unfailing accuracy, the same the law of the law, the Nemesis who judges all violations of the law, the justice which governs the whole world, and the magical and permanent natural forces in its service. I do not see punishment for what is made, but Is the justification of becoming. When will sin and depravity take place in firm form, in holy and reverend law? Where injustice prevails, there is arbitrary, disorder, disorder, contradiction; but, If only the law and Diana, the daughter of the god Zeus, ruled there, as in this world, how could it be the place of sin, redemption, and judgment, as if it were the execution ground for punishing all sinners?" From this intuition , Heraclitus advanced two mutually related negations, which will become apparent only when compared with the teachings of his predecessors.First of all, he denied the duality of the entire universe that Anaximander had to assume. He no longer compared a physical world with a metaphysical world, a definite qualitative field and an indefinable uncertain field. separate.Having taken this first step, he can no longer restrain himself from a more courageous further negation: he denies existence at all.For the world he retained, sheltered by the hidden law of eternity, ebbs and flows in a sonorous rhythm, this world does not show any persistence, indestructibility, any breakwater to stop the rapids.

Heraclitus declared more loudly than Anaximander: "I see nothing but becoming. Let yourselves not be deceived! If you believe that you see some solid land in the sea of ​​becoming and passing away, then , it is only in your hasty glance, not in the essence of things. You use the names of things as if they had an obstinate continuity, yet even the river you step into for the second time is not the first It's the same one that went in." Heraclitus possessed extraordinary intuitive thinking ability, which was his supreme endowment.Facing another kind of thinking that relies on concepts and logical reasoning, he appears indifferent, indifferent or even hostile.And he seems to be quite comfortable when he intuits the truth in propositions like "Everything contains in itself an opposite" and is able to counteract that thinking with that truth.No wonder Aristotle wanted to impose the biggest crime in the court of reason on him, accusing him of violating the law of contradiction.

However, intuitive thinking includes two aspects: the first is the colorful and ever-changing present world that rushes towards us in all experiences, and the second is the premise that makes any experience of this world possible, namely time and space.Even if there is no definite content, time and space can still be perceived through intuition, they can be intuitively perceived purely and freely without relying on any experience.Now, when Heraclitus considers time in this way, setting aside all experience, he obtains on it a revelatory alphabetic diagram that weaves everything that comes under the sphere of intuitive thinking.Schopenhauer also knew time like him.Schopenhauer has repeatedly declared: In time, each instant exists only if it annihilates the previous instant, its own father, and thereby annihilates itself just as quickly; past and future are as insignificant as any dream, But now there is only no limit of dimension and duration between the two; space is like time, and everything that exists in time and space has only relative existence, only through and for another like it— —that is, what still has only relative existence—and exists.

This is the most direct truth that everyone can see intuitively, and because of this, it is also a truth that is extremely difficult to reach with concepts and reason.But whoever looks directly at this truth must immediately go further and admit Heraclitus' conclusion, and declare that the whole essence of reality is nothing but activity, for which there is no other kind of existence.Schopenhauer articulates this point (Vol. 1 Book 1 Section 4): Reality fills space and time only as living things.Its action on the immediate object is the presupposition of intuition, and it exists only in intuition.The effect of any material object acting on another object can only be realized when the latter now acts on the immediate object in a different manner than before.Besides, there is no such thing as reality.That is, the whole essence of matter is cause and effect (Wirkung), its being is its activity.In German, therefore, the totality of all material things is called reality (Wirklichkeit) with the utmost exactness, a word which is much more exact than Reality (Realita C).What the present practice acts on is always matter, that is to say, its whole existence and essence consist only in the lawful changes which are brought about by the action of one part of it on another.It is thus entirely relative, moving according to a relationship valid only within its boundaries, like time and space.

5.2 The dialectic of "everything flows" The one and only becoming of eternity, the inconsistency of all real things-they are only constantly moving and becoming, but they do not exist, all this Heraclitus advocates is really a dizzying and terrible thought, The effect is similar to that experienced by a person experiencing an earthquake and losing faith in solid ground.To turn this effect into its inverse, into the sublime and the astonishing, required incredible power.Heraclitus did this by examining the real process by which everything comes into being and passes away.He grasps this process in the form of bipolarity, the differentiation of one force into two heterogeneous, opposing activities that seek to reunite.A quality is constantly dividing itself in two, into its opposites, and the two opposites are constantly striving to recombine.Ordinary people think that they see something solid, complete, and lasting. In fact, at every moment, light and darkness, bitterness and sweetness are intertwined and inseparable, just like two wrestlers. Sometimes that person has the upper hand.For Heraclitus, honey is both bitter and sweet, and the world itself is a mixed drink that must be constantly stirred.All becoming comes from the struggle of opposites.A determinate quality, which seems to us to be enduring, simply means that one side in the struggle has temporarily gained the upper hand, but that does not end the struggle, it continues forever.All things happen according to this struggle, and it is this struggle that reveals eternal justice.

It is a marvelous idea drawn from the well of the purest Greek spirit, which conceives of struggle as the eternal reign of strict justice connected with eternal law.Only the Greeks would have taken this idea as the basis of a cosmology.The mythical Eris (the personification of the quarrel) was transformed into the world-principle.The idea of ​​the contest between the Greek individual and the Greek state was derived from sports and games, from artistic duets, from parties and gladiatorial contests between states, and became so universal that the wheel of the universe now revolves around it.Every Greek fights with an air of solipsism, and an infinitely reliable measure of judgment decides at every moment where victory is favored.This is how the different qualities struggle with each other, obeying the indestructible laws and measures inherent in the struggle.Convinced by the narrow minds of men and animals that all things are solid and durable, they do not even have a real existence, but in the qualitative struggle of opposites they are but flickers and sparks of fencing, the glory of victory.

About the struggle inherent in all becoming, about the eternal alternation of victories, Schopenhauer described it this way again (Book 1, Book 2, Section 27): Subsisting matter is constantly changing form in such a way that along the lines of causality, mechanical, physical, chemical, and organic phenomena greedily rush to the foreground, plundering each other's matter, because each wants to manifest its idea.We can see this struggle throughout nature, in fact it can be said that the whole of nature depends on this struggle for its existence. The next few pages offer some noteworthy confirmation of this struggle.However, the tone of the description remains far from that of Heraclitus, for for Schopenhauer the struggle is evidence of the will's self-fragmentation into life, the self-consumption of this dark and gloomy impulse, an utterly terrible , is by no means a lucky phenomenon.The place and object of this struggle is matter: the natural forces try to rob each other of matter, just as they also try to rob each other of space and time; and matter is the unity of space and time through causality.