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Heraclitus and Parmenides


            
             Heraclitus, son of Vloson, was born about 535 BCE in Ephesos, the second great Greek Ionian city. He was a man of strong and independent philosophical spirit. Unlike the Milesian philosophers whose subject was the material beginning of the world, Heraclitus focused instead on the internal rhythm of nature, which moves and regulates things, namely, the Logos (Rule). Heraclitus is the philosopher of the eternal change. He expresses the notion of eternal change in terms of the continuous flow of the river, which always renews itself. Heraclitus accepted only one material source of natural substances, the Pyr (Fire). This Pyr is the essence of Logos, which creates an infinite and uncorrupted world, without beginning. It converts this world into various shapes as a harmony of the opposites. The composition of opposites sustains everything in nature. "Good" and "bad" are simply opposite sides of the same thing. "To God all things are beautiful and good and just, but men have supposed some things to be unjust, others just-. Scholars place his death at about 475 BCE.
             Heraclitus lived in Ephesus, an important city on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor, not far from Miletus, the birthplace of philosophy. We know nothing about his life other than what can be gleaned from his own statements, for all ancient biographies of him consist of nothing more than inferences or imaginary constructions based on his sayings. Although Plato thought he wrote after Parmenides, it is more likely he wrote before Parmenides. For he criticizes by name important thinkers and writers with whom he disagrees, and he does not mention Parmenides. On the other hand, Parmenides in his poem arguably echoes the words of Heraclitus. Heraclitus criticizes the mythographers Homer and Hesiod, as well as the philosophers Pythagoras and Xenophanes and the historian Hecataeus. All of these figures flourished in the 6th century BCE or earlier, suggesting a date for Heraclitus in the late 6th century.


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