Heraclitus

Philosophical reflection on the conditions of knowledge did not begin in a cultural vacuum. Several centuries before the Ionian thinkers began their investigations, the Homeric bards had identified various factors that militate against a secure grasp of the truth. In the words of the ‘second invocation of the Muses’ in Iliad II: “you, goddesses, are present and know all things, whereas we mortals hear only a rumor and know nothing.” Similarly Archilochus: “Of such a sort, Glaucus, son of Leptines, is (...) the mind of mortal man, whatever Zeus may bring him for the day, for he thinks such things as he meets with.” When one adds the truism that the scope of human experience pales in comparison with the synoptic view of events enjoyed by the gods, it follows that for most matters it is for the gods to know and mortals merely to conjecture. Traces of the older ‘poetic pessimism’ can be seen in the teachings of many of the first philosophers. Alcmaeon reaffirms that “while the gods enjoy clear and certain knowledge of all things, mortals must conjecture from signs” (B 1). Although Xenophanes encourages inquiry into a wide range of phenomena, he concludes that “No man has known nor will there be anyone who knows the clear and sure truth concerning the gods and what I say about all things” (B 34). And when philosophers begin to affirm a more optimistic view they often do so in terms that invite comparison with the older outlook. The chief truth Heraclitus claims to have discovered is the logos or ‘basic formula’ which holds everywhere and forever (B 1, 30, 80, and 90). Parmenides provides reason to think that human beings can discover the truth even about things located “far off” (B 4). And both Empedocles and Democritus contrast the inferior awareness of those “who think in terms of what they have met with” with the wisdom available to those who have heard and ponder their teachings (B 131). For these thinkers, separation in space and time—the old ‘locality problem’—no longer posed an impediment to knowledge. -/- . (shrink)

This essay offers an original interpretation and defense of the doctrine of flux, as it is presented in Plato’s Theaetetus. The methodology of the paper’s analysis is in the style of rational reconstruction, and it is highly analytic in scope, in the sense that I will focus on the text itself, and only on certain parts of it too, while ignoring the rest of Plato’s extensive corpus, and without worrying about whether, how, and to what extent the interpretation of the (...) view coheres well with the other elements of the secret doctrine view discussed in the dialogue, as well. In the first part of the essay, I’ll offer my interpretation of the doctrine. Then, in the second part of the essay, I’ll examine two potential criticisms of the doctrine, including Socrates’s infamous linguistic paradox, and show how my interpretation of Heraclitean flux metaphysics is able to circumvent both. (shrink)

This book presents a new account of Thales based on the idea that Acheloios, a deity equated with water in the ancient Greek world and found in Miletos during Thales’ life, was the most important cultic deity influencing the thinker, profoundly shaping his philosophical worldview. In doing so, it also weighs in on the metaphysical and epistemological dichotomy that seemingly underlies all academia—the antithesis of the methodological postulate of Marxian dialectical materialism vis-à-vis the Platonic idea of fundamentally real transcendental forms. (...) Unbeknownst to many scholars, there are various Neo-Marxian thinkers that position the origin of coinage as the pivotal technological development giving rise to impersonal “metaphysical cosmology,” suggesting that the value of money was more-or-less projected back onto the cosmos in the form of “ideal substances.” While the arguments are incredibly sophisticated and persuasive, their conclusions (either stated or implied) are rather difficult to swallow: the self is merely an illusion, abstract ideas of an ultimate source of value, like God or the Good, are totally delusional (as is the soul, and presumably any notion of inherent human dignity), and essentially everything is reducible to mankind’s enslavement to commodities and the notion of our own objectified labor, which is the true source of all value according to Marx. Not only is this an alarming belief that many scholars (consciously or unconsciously) have adopted, since essentially any action could be “justified,” it is also demonstrably false, since it rests on a misunderstanding of Thales and misconception of philosophy as such. -/- My work rectifies that misunderstanding. In an important sense, it is an attempt at redefining philosophy as a “love of wisdom,” which I argue was accurate even in the Presocratic setting, and it uses the influence of Acheloios on Thales to do so. Throughout its pages I explore the etymology and historical uses of the word ὔδωρ, examine the archaeological context of 7th to 6th century Miletos, consider various aquatic myths Thales encountered, and highlight a hitherto overlooked tradition stemming from Thales and influencing such thinkers as Pythagoras, Empedokles, and Hippo, which culminates in a completely new reading of Plato’s Phaedrus, a dialogue in which Plato responds to the exact type of thinking employed by the Neo-Marxians. It is there that we find Socrates and Phaedrus surrounded by the iconography of Acheloios and the nymphs, all while they lie reclined like river gods (the sinews of Acheloios) on the banks of the Ilisos. And it is in that dialogue that Plato defines philosophy as a love of wisdom—the beholding of a multiplicity of hermeneutical frameworks—and alludes to the fact that it began with the sacrifice of Acheloios, the initial philosophical maneuver which he attributes to Thales. The book ends with a threefold rejoinder to the Neo-Marxian school, corresponding to the λόγος, μῦθος, and ἔργον of Acheloios. It turns out that, (1) the λόγος of Acheloios contained the ideal preconditions conducive to an abstraction to a more refined philosophical worldview in which divine water operated as the One among the Many; (2) the μῦθος of Acheloios actually encouraged the application of the notion of sacrifice to Acheloios himself (thus revealing his essence as divine water); and, (3), the ἔργον of Acheloios, in which he kneels in assent to sacrifice, is found on a coin that was probably designed by Thales. In the final analysis, I suggest that the tradition of Acheloios is reflective of a greater philosophical truth, and that by following Thales’ lead, we transcend the Marxian hermeneutic of doubt and reorient ourselves toward the οὐσια ὄντως οὖσα. (shrink)

This article considers an interpretative model for the study of Heraclitus, which was first put forward by Alexander Mourelatos in 1973, and draws upon a related model put forward by Julius Moravcsik beginning in 1983. I further develop this combined model and provide a motivation for an interpretation of Heraclitus. This is also of interest for modern metaphysics due to the recurrence of structurally similar problems, including the ‘colour exclusion’ problem that was faced by Wittgenstein. Further, I employ the model (...) to shed new light on Heraclitus’ image of the river, while relating potential readings to various contemporary metaphysical views. (shrink)

This article investigates how different philosophical traditions and schools of thought have understood the practice and the discipline of archery. Whereas the scholarly literature on the history, the techniques and the uses of bows and arrows is diverse and extensive, my aim is to contribute to the less developed research on the relationship between philosophy and archery. Specifically, I will explore in what terms philosophers have employed the bow as a metaphor for both their standpoints and, more generally, significant aspects (...) of everyday life. (shrink)

In his adventurous monograph in comparative philosophy, The Origins of Philosophy in Ancient Greece and Ancient India, Richard Seaford offers to explain why philosophy, which on his account originated in the sixth century BCE separately in both Greece and India, took such a similar form in both cultures.

Both Heraclitus and Democritus, as the philosophers of historia peri phuseôs, consider nature and human character, habit, law and soul as interrelated emphasizing the links between phusis, kinesis, ethos, logos, kresis, nomos and daimon. On the one hand, Heraclitus’s principle of change (panta rhei) and his emphasis on the element of fire and cosmic motion ultimately dominate his ethics reinforcing his ideas of change, moderation, balance and justice, on the other, Democritus’s atomist description of phusis and motion underlies his principle (...) of moderation and his ideas of health and measured life. In this series, particularly referring to the main principles of motion, moderation and justice, I attempt to describe a coherent pre-Socratic ethical perspective based on the Heraclitean and Democritean fragments. I explore the connections between their physics and ethics also borrowing from Nietzsche’s lectures and writings on the Pre-Socratics. I redefine such Heraclitean and Democritean concepts as harmony, order, perfection, health, self-control, contentment, cheerfulness, concord, sound judgment, wisdom, measure and balance and discuss them under the principles of motion (phusis), moderation (sophrosyne) and justice. In doing so, I also expose the relevance of the Heraclitean notion of logos (interpreting it as the underlying categorical principle of transition between phusis and ethos) in bringing together these ideas and principles. Finally, based on this pre-Socratic Weltanschauung, I assess the possibility of a coherent picture of humanity, its nature and conduct as extending from or fitting into or extending-from-when-fitting-into the cosmos of moving forces and atoms. (shrink)

In this article, I elucidate Martin Heidegger’s interpretation of Soph-ocles’ tragedy Antigone from a topological point of view by focusing on the place-character of Antigone’s poetic ethos. Antigone’s decision to defy Creon’s order and bury her brother Polynices is discussed as a movement that underpins her poetic disposition as a demigod. Antigone’s situatedness between gods and hu-mans is identified as the place of poetic dwelling, and the significance of Antig-one’s relation to the polis is explained. The main argument of the (...) article is two-fold: 1) When we read Antigone focusing on the notion of dwelling, we can better make sense how Heidegger’s engagement with the question of finitude closes the envisioned gap between ontology and ethics. 2) The idea of poetic dwelling is a confrontation with spatio-temporal limits of human existence, and requires a more holistic way of thinking about the place of humans in the world, thinking beyond being-action dichotomy. (shrink)

This paper examines the relation between Pythagorean and Heraclitean political views. I argue that for Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Archytas the cosmological and musical notions of harmony (ἁρμονία) and the related notion of concord (ὁμόνοια) have an intrinsic political significance. These thinkers variously reflect upon political harmony and concord, and agree that a crucial condition for it is law (νόμος), which according to Pythagoras and Heraclitus has a divine origin. I begin with the Heraclitean fragments 22 B51, 54, 72, and 114 (...) DK, in which social and political reflection is connected with the theory of the harmony of opposites. In the case of Pythagoras and early Pythagoreanism, the intense, albeit indirect political influence in Magna Graecia—as transmitted by Iamblichus and Porphyry—offers evidence for social and political ideas determined by a reflection on the cosmological role of harmony and number. Finally, Archytas’ political application of rational calculation in fragment 47 B3 DK, which aims at producing concord by establishing the just measures of wealth in the city, together with the testimony on Archytas’ intense and fruitful political activity, can be taken as confirmation that the thinker’s wider cosmological views were indeed intertwined with his political reflection and action. (shrink)

I offer an examination of a core element in the reflectiveness of Heraclitus’ thought, namely, his rebuke of polymathy . In doing so, I provide a response to a recent claim that Heraclitus should not be considered to be a philosopher, by attending to his paradigmatically philosophical traits. Regarding Heraclitus’ attitude to that naïve form of ‘wisdom’, i.e., polymathy, I argue that he does not advise avoiding experience of many things, rather, he advises rejecting experience of things as merely many (...) independent things in their manifoldness , and, instead, to understand their unity and thereby to unify our knowledge of them. (shrink)

This chapter aims to illuminate ways in which hope was significant in the philosophy of classical Greece. Although ancient Greek philosophies contain few dedicated and systematic expositions on the nature of hope, they nevertheless include important remarks relating hope to the good life, to reason and deliberation, and to psychological phenomena such as memory, imagination, fear, motivation, and pleasure. After an introductory discussion of Hesiod and Heraclitus, the chapter focuses on Plato and Aristotle. Consideration is given both to Plato’s direct (...) comments on hope and to the narrative contexts of his dialogues, with analysis of Plato’s positive and negative representations of hope, hope’s relationship to reason, and Plato’s more psychological approach in the Philebus, where hope finds a place among memory, recollection, pleasure, and pain. The chapter then reviews Aristotle’s discussions of confidence, hope, and courage, observing that although Aristotle does not mention hope as a virtue, he does note its importance to human agency and deliberation and as a foundation for the further development of virtue. The chapter concludes that discussions surrounding hope in ancient Greek philosophy are rich and challenging and can serve as a lively stimulus to further exploration of the concept of hope. (shrink)

This paper argues that Heraclitus was deeply and centrally interested in ethical questions, understood broadly as questions about how human beings should live. In particular, I argue, Heraclitus held that wisdom is essential for living well, and that most people lack the kind of fundamental insight into the nature of reality in which wisdom consists. Topics covered include Heraclitus’ views on: the good and bad condition of the soul, the nature and sources of wisdom, the reasons why most people remain (...) oblivious to the world in which they live, and the connections between acquiring genuine insight into reality and becoming like god. (shrink)

Title: «The Questions of What and How in Giuseppina Grammatico». Abstract: This work is intended to be an analysis of Giuseppina Grammatico’s main question: What is a σύναψις? This question, which is part of her text called The Sýnapsis Silence-Word in the Fragments of Heraclitus (1999), has been visited and analyzed through three of the subtitles of that work: 1) What is a σύναψις? 2) The question of How, and 3) The question of What. All this, in order to analyze (...) what is the Grammatico’s understanding of Sýnapsis and how it acts in the connection between silence and word as part of the Logos. -/- Este trabajo consiste en un análisis de la pregunta de Giuseppina Grammatico: ¿Qué es una σύναψις? Esta interrogante, que surge en su texto La σύναψις silencio-palabra en Heráclito (1999), ha sido revisada y analizada a través de tres de los subtítulos de dicha obra: 1) ¿Qué es una σύναψις? 2) La pregunta por el cómo y 3) La pregunta por el qué. Lo anterior se realizará con el fin de analizar cuál es el entendimiento que Grammatico tiene de la sinapsis y cómo esta actúa en la conexión que se da entre el silencio y la palabra como elementos del Logos. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore a prominent question of Hericlitean scholarship: how is change possible? Karl Popper and G. S. Kirk tackle this same question. Kirk asserts that Heraclitus believed that change is present on a macrocosmic level and that all change is regulated by the cosmic principle logos. Popper, on the other hand, claims Heraclitus believed that change is microcosmic and rejected that all change is regulated by logos. I argue for a combination of aspects from each of their (...) claims and conclude that change is present both microcosmically and macrocosmically and that all change is governed by logos . (shrink)

Title: «Giuseppina Grammatico and Heraclitus’ fragments: Translation in the “σύναψις silence-word”». Abstract: This work is intended to be a first translatological approach of the synapsis in Giuseppina Grammatico’s exegesis called The Synapsis Silence-Word in the Fragments of Heraclitus. Thus, this reflection aims to analyze how in Heraclitus’ fragments visited and translated by Grammatico we can see not only a synapsis —observed by her—, but a union between the silence and the word in which it is produced a translation process. All (...) this, analyzed through the interpretive theory approach (Lederer, 2003; Seleskovitch, 1981; Delisle, 1988). (shrink)

This book represents more than a decade of work (p. ix) by this eminent scholar. It is intended primarily for scholars of Classical Greek; however, F.’s laudable practice of, in most cases, providing English translations and repeating them when needed, makes it accessible to non-specialists and undergraduates, as he intended (pp. ix–x).

Paradoxical Utterances. An Approximation about Nishida’s Use of Heraclitus’ Fragments in An Inquiry into the Good (1911) -/- The paper discusses the use of Heraclitus’ ideas in Nishida Kitarõ early work, An inquiry into the Good (1911), in order to show how both thinkers, distant in time and philosophical tradition, coincide in present the formative process of reality, defending a common principle that impulses the process (named logos and “pure experience”). It also discusses how these principles can be feasible strategies (...) to escape from a substance-based ontology, but resulting in linguistic paradoxical assertions, able to show the possibility for an identity of opposites. (shrink)

Heraclitus is the first philosopher, and one of the few ones, who is aware of original contradiction. His thought still presents some ambiguities mostly due to the still intuitive discovery of the relation between language, contradiction and logos. Heraclitus saw the contradiction. He does not care about how the fact of communication is possible, as it indeed is, but rather he endeavours to put into question its problematic essence. -/- .

Kant makes a much-unexpected confession in a much-unexpected place. In the Criticism of the third paralogism of transcendental psychology of the first Critique Kant accepts the irrefutability of the Heraclitean notion of universal becoming or the transitory nature of all things, admitting the impossibility of positing a totally persistent and self-conscious subject. The major Heraclitean doctrine of panta rhei makes it impossible to conduct philosophical inquiry by assuming a self-conscious subject or “I,” which would potentially be in constant motion like (...) other thoughts. For it rules out the possibility of completely detached reasoning which necessitates an unchanging state of mind. In this paper, Kaplama uses panta rhei to critically examine the philosophical shortcomings and contradictions of Kantian and Enlightenment ethics. In his examination, he specifically focuses on the teleological nature of Kant’s principle of freedom and ideal of moral autonomy which have dominated the Enlightenment thought. By doing so, he argues that it is essentially inaccurate to posit Überlegenheit (the state of being superior to nature) as the foundation of philosophical inquiry mainly because this would contradict the Enlightenment’s claim to constitute a rupture from classic and medieval metaphysics and would render Enlightenment a mere extension of Christian metaphysics. As in Christianity, Überlegenheit presupposes two separate realms, the actual (contingent) and ideal (pure) realms of thought and assumes that the transcendence commences from the level of the late metaphysical/teleological construction of the ‘subject’ who is completely persistent, self-conscious and immune to change. He then substantiates these points with reference to the philosophical roots of ethnic prejudice displayed by the post-Enlightenment colonialists and the missionaries in Fiji and the Pacific. This brief critical examination of the post-Enlightenment ethnocentrism will be conducted under the following three points: a) On the Enlightenment’s teleological and universalistic understanding of humanity and the concept of progress versus the Fijian concepts of the continuity of life, regeneration, and reproduction b) On the Enlightenment’s ideal of the free-willing and independent individual subject versus the Fijian ideas of 'the cord', reciprocity, and vanua, and c) On the Enlightenment’s (and Christianity’s) strict dualism between physics and metaphysics, nature and human mind, body and soul versus the Fijian bio-centrism, the sanctity of vanua and the cosmological concept of mana. (shrink)

Lähtökohtanaan Jean-Paul Vernantin ja Albrecht Dihlen historialliset teesit artikkeli tarkastelee tärkeimpien ”lakia ja järjestystä” ilmaisevien käsitteiden (nomos, dikē) roolia esisokraattisten filosofien, erityisesti Anaksimandroksen, Herakleitoksen ja Parmenideen, ajattelussa. Arkaaisessa kreikkalaisessa ajatusmaailmassa sekä luonnon että ihmisyhteisön sisäinen tasapaino ilmentää moninaisen jumalmaailman ja ihmisten välistä vuorovaikutusta. Esisokraatikot ajattelevat todellisuutta eriytyneenä ykseytenä, jonka moninaisuutta sitoo yhteen yhtenäinen perusrakenne; tämän mallin uusi filosofia jäsentää uudesta polis-ajattelusta lainattujen käsitteiden avulla. Tämä esisokraatikkojen ”poliittinen ontologia” ja toisaalta nomoksen, yhteisöllisen normiston, enenevä ymmärtäminen inhimillisenä konventiona, mahdollistaa fysiksen ja nomoksen, (...) ”luonnon” ja ”kulttuurin” välisen myöhemmän vastakkainasettelun. (shrink)

The paper outlines a tentative genealogy of the Platonic metaphysics of sight by thematizing pre-Platonic thought, particularly Heraclitus and Parmenides. By “metaphysics of sight” it understands the features of Platonic-Aristotelian metaphysics expressed with the help of visual metaphors. It is argued that the Platonic metaphysics of sight can be regarded as the result of a synthesis of the Heraclitean and Parmenidean approaches. In pre-Platonic thought, the visual paradigm is still marginal. For Heraclitus, the basic structure of being is its discursive (...) articulation (logos) into conceptual pairs of binary opposites, an articulation that at the same time binds differences together into a tensional unity. The fundamental grasping of this ultimate unity-in-difference is conceived primarily through acoustic terms as a non-sensory “hearing.” For Parmenides, the ultimate unity of contraries is based on the capacity of thinking (noos) to intend anything as present; in fragment B 4, the exclusive relationship of thinking to intelligible presence is finally visualized in terms of a seeing or looking (leusso). (shrink)

In this paper, I offer a new solution to the old problem of how best to understand the meaning of the word ‘logos’ in the extant writings of Heraclitus, especially in fragments DK B1, B2 and B50. On the view I defend, Heraclitus was neither using the word in a perfectly ordinary way in these fragments, as some have maintained, nor denoting by it some kind of general principle or law governing change in the cosmos, as many have claimed. Rather, (...) I argue, Heraclitus deliberately traded on the ordinary use of the word in his time (to refer to a written or spoken presentation of things as ‘thus and so’) to denote the world’s constant presentation of itself as ‘thus and so’ to all of us in our experience – a kind of cosmic self-revelation. I show how this captures the sense in which ‘the logos’ is said to be ‘common’ (xunos) and to be the kind of thing most people fail to comprehend even before hearing Heraclitus’ own account, all without detaching Heraclitus’ use of the word from its ordinary contemporary meaning. This interpretation suggests Heraclitus was a thinker more centrally concerned with human (mis)understanding than with speculative cosmology. (shrink)

This book is founded on a close reading of Kant’s Opus Postumum in order both to explore the essential motivation that drove Kant to write a last comprehensive magnum opus and, by doing so, to show the essential link between his aesthetics and the idea of Übergang, the title of this last work. For this work contains not only his dynamical theory of matter defining motion as preliminary to the notions of space and time, and the advanced version of his (...) philosophy of natural science, but also his arguments for the phenomenal validity of the metaphysical foundations, his teachings on the aesthetic human faculties of judgment and Anschauung, and the discernment of the transcendental philosophy from Platonic idealism carrying it to a cosmological level, i.e. Kant’s insertion of the concept of cosmotheoros. Since the process of transition is an aesthetic process based on human senses, intuitions and judgments, the argument will follow that in order to explicate Übergang, we need to reconcile cosmology, as the oldest branch of philosophy dealing with the interactions between the cosmic forces and the ways they affect human life, with aesthetics, as the youngest branch of philosophy dealing with how we sense, intuit and judge the form and motion of matter. Therefore, in the last analysis, Übergang becomes rather a cosmologic-aesthetic principle similar to the Heraclitean logos. Another building block of the book is the fruitful comparison between the Kantian sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian, which are going to be construed as the aesthetic theories on human understanding representing the transition from nature to art. For they are not only conceptual – aesthetic but also dynamic – cosmological theories due to their reference both to nature and to human nature. Finally, Cosmological Aesthetics employs the principles of transition and motion to analyze Van Gogh’s Starry Night in an excursus. (shrink)

Traditionally, kairos has been seen as a “timely” concept, and so invention is said to emerge fromthe timeliness of a cultural and historical situation. But what if invention was thought of as thepotential to shift historical courses through the injection of something new or alien into a situation?This essay argues that kairos has not been able to free itself from its historical constraints becauseit has been bound to a human sense of temporality. By evolving along patterns different from print,the apparatus (...) of the cinema developed in a way where it was not bound to illustrating movement ortimeas it occurs in human-centered experience. Following the work of Gilles Deleuze on cinema,this article argues that the outside of a human sense of time is an untapped source of invention,already present yet dormant within kairos. (shrink)

This paper is founded on a close reading of Kant’s Opus Postumum in order both to explore the essential motivation that drove Kant to write a last comprehensive magnum opus and, by doing so, to show the essential link between his aesthetics and the idea of Übergang, the title of this last work. For this work contains not only his dynamical theory of matter defining motion as preliminary to the notions of space and time, and the advanced version of his (...) philosophy of natural science, but also his arguments for the phenomenal validity of the metaphysical foundations, his teachings on the aesthetic human faculties of judgment and Anschauung, and the discernment of the transcendental philosophy from Platonic idealism carrying it to a cosmological level, i.e. Kant’s insertion of the concept of cosmotheoros. Since the process of transition is an aesthetic process based on human senses, intuitions and judgments, the argument will follow that in order to explicate Übergang, we need to reconcile cosmology, as the oldest branch of philosophy dealing with the interactions between the cosmic forces and the ways they affect human life, with aesthetics, as the youngest branch of philosophy dealing with how we sense, intuit and judge the form and motion of matter. Therefore, in the last analysis, Übergang becomes rather a cosmologic-aesthetic principle similar to the Heraclitean logos. Another building block of the paper is the fruitful comparison between the Kantian sublime and Nietzschean Dionysian, which are going to be construed as the aesthetic theories on human understanding representing the transition from nature to art. For they are not only conceptual – aesthetic but also dynamic – cosmological theories due to their reference both to nature and to human nature. (shrink)

Two prominent metaphors in Greek and Roman political philosophy are surveyed here, with a view to determining their possible meanings and the plausibility of the claims advanced by those possible meanings.

Immediately upon the death of Plato in 347 BCE, philosophers in the Academy began to circulate stories involving his encounters with wisdom practitioners from Persia. This article examines the history of Greek perceptions of Persian wisdom and argues that the presence of foreign wisdom practitioners in the history of Greek philosophy has been undervalued since Diogenes Laertius.

In this collection of essays, the author develops a new philosophy of life, which has in fact a long tradition. It goes back to some ancient Western thinkers, such as the Milesians, Heraclitus, Empedocles and Plato, for whom philosophy presupposes an affective engagement with the world and not merely its theoretical description or explanation. This classical tradition has been challenged by ideas of modernity, particularly by the idea that modern scientific knowledge is the highest form of human knowledge. However, as (...) the author argues, this idea is questionable. In his view, scientific knowledge represents merely a partial knowledge. Science looks at the world indifferently as if it were an object, an “It”, but in fact the world is not that. Love, an affective engagement, and not indifference, is the way to full knowledge. Furthermore, it is lov e that fosters life and brings all things into unity. Love and life are thus closely connected. Life is the central concept around which humanity can unite, forming a unity in diversity. The author claims that global solidarity among human beings can be achieved if there is the growing common understanding of what is right for life. (shrink)

This is an obituary notice in memoriam Martina Stemich.

The advent of logical positivism contributed to the sharp definitional demarcation between what we consider mythical (mythos) and what we take to be a true account (logos). This essay attempts to go back to one of the sources of such a supposed distinction. By analyzing the Gorgias, I will show that even Plato did not make such a distinction. In fact, Plato even constructed a theory of justice that made use of myth as its medium. The Platonic Myth in the (...) Gorgias was used as true logos in order to justify Socrates’ use of the myth as the paradigm of a life that is philosophical in contrast to that of his accusers who espoused mere sophistry. By using the concept of historia in relation with the concept of mythos, Plato regarded the futuristic afterlife in the myth as a sufficient condition to live a just life. This sufficient condition exemplified by the Myth in the Gorgias is a measuring rod by which we can compare our present system of justice. (shrink)

This study forms a part of a larger investigation of the influence of the philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus on modern poetry. T. S. Eliot, to mention the best known of the many poets inspired by Heraclitus, selected two Heraclitus fragments (B 2 and B 60) as epigraphs for his “Burnt Norton”, the first of his Four Quartets. Eliot explained that he was drawn to the fragments because of their ‘ambiguity’ and ‘extraordinary poetic suggestiveness’. Similarly, in ‘This Solitude of Cataracts’, (...) Wallace Stevens spoke of ‘the flecked river which kept flowing and never the same way twice’ and elsewhere noted the ‘inherently poetic quality’ of many Heraclitean sayings. To gain some sense of the nature and magnitude of Heraclitus’ legacy for modern poetry we must first explore his vision of ‘a fiery cosmos being kindled in measures and extinguished in measures’ and a river into which one cannot step twice. -/- . (shrink)

In this paper I argue that we can solve the interpretation problem of quantum mechanics and the question of ontology of Quantum Field Theory on the basis of simple metaphysical position: The connection of the phase space with the ancient Theory of Logi of Beings, which is, by giving ontological meaning to the entities which "live" at the phase space, the Hamiltonian or Lagrangian formalism. There is a physical subject of such functions and it is the logos of a being. (...) Therefore we can refer to the logical space as the total sum of logi of being. The result of this position is that we can attribute to the wave function a physical meaning, a special case of logos of a being and also give an ontological meaning at a quantum field. The developed metaphysical scheme can interpret the quantum paradoxes, by using the commonly accepted mathematical formalism. It can also interpret certain issues of Quantum Field Theory, although further study of this topic is necessary. (shrink)