The great proletarian revolutionary Lenin called him "the founder of dialectics", he was also the founder of the ancient Greek Ephesian school, his philosophical ideas appeared in the early stages of the development of Western philosophy, characterized by emphasis on change, and had a profound impact on the philosophy of later generations in the West. Today, let's enjoy Heraclitus's ten maxims, understand the profound connotations behind their words, and read them to agree?
Heraclitus was born into a royal family and could have inherited the throne, but the idea of seclusion was always rooted in his heart, so he passed the throne to his brothers and lived a life of seclusion himself. His philosophical ideas were inherited from the philosophical tradition of the Miletus school, becoming the first philosopher to speak the main points of dialectics in plain language. It is understood that Heraclitus is also one of the most controversial philosophers, and people think that his philosophy is somewhat naïve, but if we consider his philosophical views from the perspective of materialistic dialectics, Heraclitus's thought is much higher than that of later philosophers, until the emergence of modern materialist dialectics, the value of his thought slowly faded.
As we said at the beginning of the article, Heraclitus was a legendary philosopher, and it is said that the ancient Greeks at that time thought he was an outlier, which is ridiculous, and I will tell you a few small stories about him. Heraclitus had no friends in his life, lived in seclusion and was extremely simple and poor, and every day he ate some wild vegetables and drank some white water. Due to long-term consumption of untrophic bark and plants, he suffered from edema. He cured his illness and ran to the cattle pen to suck the water out of his body with the heat of the cow dung, but of course it did not help. At his side, there is no girlfriend to accompany him, and he usually deliberately avoids contact with women. However, it is precisely because he closed himself off, excluded external interference, and immersed himself in the depths of human beings that he could comprehend the philosophical view that transcended the times.
As for the origin of the world, Heraclitus, like the philosophers of the Millidus school, believed that the world arose from some established basic element. But on the question of exactly which elements constitute it, Heraclitus differed from the views of the Philosophers of the Miletus School. The Philosophers of the Miletus school believed that the world was produced by "water" or "breath" or "amorphous", while Heraclitus emphasized that the original nature of the world was made up of other elements, and that this basic element was "fire". He believes that "fire" gives birth to all things, and all things eventually return to "fire".
In Heraclitus's quotation, there is a particularly famous sentence - "The world is an eternal living fire", which is also his most famous thought. "Eternal living fire" has multiple meanings, can be understood as some element of the world, can also be regarded as the original force of the order of the world unity, he advocates "everything is one" and "one is everything", and the "one" represents "fire" and "all" is all things. That is to say, Heraclitus regarded the whole world as "one", that is, the material element "fire", which transformed into all things to its own opposite, and it was also "one is everything", and the core connotation was: fire is all things. Conversely, "everything is one" means that all things are transformed into fire. This view can explain Heraclitus's inheritance of simple materialism and highlight his new ideas and concepts.
He believes that the world we live in is not created by God or man, but "fire", and fire is burned according to a certain scale, extinguished according to a certain scale, and "certain proportion" refers to "Logos", that is, Heraclitus believes that the world is originally "fire", and all things are formed different things according to the rules of "Logos", that is, "Logos" gives wisdom to all things, including not only people, but also all things.
It is worth mentioning that Heraclitus is famous for "everything flows", he said: people can not step into the same river twice, the sun is new every day, these famous sayings are still passed on by word of mouth. In addition, according to Heraclitus, "all things flow" is the manifestation of the unity of all opposites, and the whole world is an eternal living fire that burns and extinguishes, both in nature and in human beings.
Heraclitus's work is "On Nature", which is now only a fragment of the remaining, the language image metaphor, the content is mainly esoteric dialectics, the whole understanding is very difficult, so Heraclitus received the title of "obscure philosopher". Today, we will enjoy the ten aphorisms of the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, and experience the thought of this philosopher more than two thousand and hundreds of years ago, some of which are really too classic to learn from and collect.