20 Great Thinkers and Their Wisdom-Laden Lives

Author: Tian Hongjiang, Guan Hua
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2006-09-01
Features:
(1) The World is an Eternal Living Fire Concerning the Origin of All Things, Heraclitus explicitly declared: "This universe of self-similarity is neither any god nor the creation of any human being; it was, it is, and it will be an eternal living fire, burning and extinguishing according to certain measures." Compared to the thoughts of his predecessors, this philosophical declaration of Heraclitus has distinct and profound characteristics. He not only openly denied the theory of divine creation of the world but also clearly emphasized from the outset the eternity, universality, fluidity, and orderliness of the origin. Fire is not only the origin of the world but also the transformation of fire into all things, and all things return to fire. Moreover, in the process of burning and extinguishing, fire itself is subject to certain principles or domination, so its movement is not arbitrary. Therefore, it can be seen that Heraclitus inherited and developed the thought of the Milesian School about the indeterminacy and fluidity of the origin. On the one hand, he advocated that everything flows and nothing is permanent, thereby using "living fire" as a symbol to explain that all natural things are always in motion and change, while the truly unchanging thing is "change" itself. On the other hand, he also recognized that although only change is unchanging, this change is also governed by rules. In other words, change also has certain measures, and all natural things change according to this measure. This norm that governs the movement and change of all things is logos.
(2) All Things Are Generated According to Logos In Heraclitus' philosophy, the concept of logos is one of the most distinctive and profound. For Heraclitus, the meaning of logos is multifaceted, and how to recognize and understand it is not uniform in academia. We believe it should primarily be understood as the measure or proportion, universal principle, or necessity that all things must follow and obey, equivalent to what we call "laws," although sometimes it also refers to universal reason. However, these two aspects may also be consistent. Because he pointed out that this logos not only exists eternally but also "all things are generated according to this logos," and "logos is common." P044