Heraclitus

Circa 540-Circa 480 b.c.e

Philosopher

Source

An Enigma . For the ancient world, Heraclitus (also spelled Heracleitus or Herakleitos) was always skoteinos, “dark” and “obscure.” This reputation was due as much to his riddling, prophetic style as to the exact nature of the mysterious logos or reason he saw hidden beneath the flow and flux of appearances. Tradition has it that, despite the political privileges that came from his birth into one of the aristocratic families of Ephesus, he rejected leadership in favor of the life of a misanthropic hermit, living alone in the mountains, eating plants and grass. Haughty and aloof, rude and enigmatic, he was famous for his caustic wit and his rejection of most other thinkers as learned but far from intelligent or wise.

Fire. The one book that Heraclitus apparently wrote, On Nature, or Muses (circa 500 b.c.e.), is lost, and later scholars have summarized his teachings. Heraclitus believed that fire is the basis of the universe, writing that the world order is an “ever-living fire kindling in measures and being extinguished in measures.” The contest between opposite forces (Good and Evil, Hot and Cold, Love and Strife) is a major theme of his teachings. Heraclitus supposedly died at the age of sixty after burying himself up to the neck in hot cow dung in an attempt to cure himself of dropsy.

Source

David Sider, “Heraclitus,” in Ancient Greek Authors, Dictionary of Literary Biography, volume 176, edited by Ward W. Briggs (Columbia, S.C.: Bruccoli Clark Layman/Detroit: Gale Research, 1997), pp. 176-181.