Essay --

Heraclitus Heraclitus was born approximately at 540 B.C, He is one of the aristocratic families of Ephesus, near Colophon. Heraclitus had a reputation as a deliberately obscure thinker. Heraclitus often referred as â€Å"The Dark† due to the darkness of his writings. Even though there is no adequate English translation of the term â€Å"Logos† based on the writing, it can be seen that the logos was interpreted by Heraclitus as â€Å"The word of God† â€Å"Unity in Oppositeness†. Due to the fact that it is the controlling, magnificent force within nature, Heraclitus could simply classify it (Logos) as the mind of God. The fundamental dogma of Heraclitus’s orderliness is the allegation that there is a balanced structure of the solar system and that this structure establishes and maintain the stability of the universe. In order to understand what is â€Å"Logos† one should have a soul (Seeing, Hearing, Perception). It is said by Heraclitus that God is always better than men. Unity in Opposites could be interpreted as even though there are things which are the total opposites of each other, they are still able to unite in one unity. For example, Sea could be considered as two things, Sea could be the most pure water for fishes, yet sea water could be the most polluted water for men. For fishes it is drinkable and sanitary, while for men it is undrinkable and deleterious. (Fr. 61) Moreover, looking further on Heraclitus â€Å"Logos† we can say that he thinks that antithesis/opposites make unity. For example, God is day night, winter summer, war peace, satiety hunger (Fr. 67). In this writing, it is safe to say that Heraclitus considered fire as the most fundamental and important element in this world. Heraclitus strongly believes that fire is the most essential com... ...equilibrium is a place where everything is constantly changing. Hence, the idea of fire. Based on this paradigm now we could possibly understand why in the first place Heraclitus uses fire as the most suitable metaphor for the logos as fire never stays in one form, it is always changing. It is probably based on the same reason why Heraclitus likes the nature of river as the river is always changing, new water will continuously flows through replacing the old one, and it will remains the same for a very long period, probably forever. Moreover, still in the coverage of the previous theory, Heraclitus expanded Anaximander’s idea of the interaction of opposites. Heraclitus views that the animosity between all the opposites’ things in this world is actually universal; it never end. In fact, animosity might be the reason behind why we could have justice and equilibrium.