Books by Heraclitus

Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived a lonely life earning him the moniker of the "Weeping Philosopher." His principal philosophy is embodied in the following statement "No man ever steps in the same river twice," in other words man faces an ever-present change in the universe. He believed in the unity of opposites, stating that "the path up and down are one and the same." According to Diogenes, Heraclitus worked on "a continuous treatise On Nature," which "was divided into three discourses, one on the universe, another on politics, and a third on theology." Only fragments of this work remain today many of which are quoted from other authors. Those fragments are presented here in a translation and with critical commentary by G. T. W. Patrick.

This work provides a text and an extended study of those fragments of Heraclitus' philosophical utterances whose subject is the world as a whole rather than man and his part in it. Professor Kirk's method is critical and objective, and his 1954 work marks a significant advance in the study of Presocratic thought.

Behind the superficial obscurity of what fragments we have of Heraclitus' thought, Professor Kahn claims that it is possible to detect a systematic view of human existence, a theory of language which sees ambiguity as a device for the expression of multiple meaning, and a vision of human life and death within the larger order of nature. The fragments are presented here in a readable order; translation and commentary aim to make accessible the power and originality of a systematic thinker and a great master of artistic prose. The commentary locates Heraclitus within the tradition of early Greek thought, but stresses the importance of his ideas for topical theories of language, literature and philosophy.