Heraclitus, Pre-Socratic Philosopher, Inspiration for Stoics and Church Fathers

What can we learn from reflecting on the surviving
fragments of Heraclitus, the Pre-Socratic
Philosopher?
Many of his pithy sayings inspired the later Cynic and
Stoic Philosophers, and the Church Fathers, including
Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus of Rome.

These sayings by Heraclitus include:
God is day and night, winter and
summer, war and peace, plenty and
hunger.
Life and death are the same; so are
waking and sleeping, youth and
age.
Man is called a baby by God, even
as a child by man.
Asses prefer straw to gold.
All things are in a state of flux.
Man’s character is his fate.”
Weeping Heraclitus, by Giuseppe Antonio Petrini, 1750

Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources
used for this video.
Feel free to follow along in the PowerPoint script
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Philosophy was not invented by Socrates and Plato; they were
influenced by the pre-Socratic philosophers. The first
philosophers hail from the Greek colonies on the Ionian coast,
which is Turkey today. Heraclitus was an aristocrat born in
Ephesus about a hundred years before Socrates.

Ephesus was part of the kingdom of Lydia, which fell
to the Medes and Persians in 547 BC, we read about
this struggle in Herodotus, so Ephesus was part of a
satrapy of the Persian Empire when Heraclitus was
alive. Though the cultural impact was minimal, as the
satrapies were self-governing, there were Persian
influences. How extensive these were we can only
guess.

Map of the Lydian Kingdom in its final period of
sovereignty under Croesus, c. 547 BC.

As Copleston puts
it, “Heraclitus was
a melancholy man,
of aloof & solitary
temperament, who
expressed his
contempt for the
common herd of
citizens, as also for
the eminent men
of the past.”
Crying Heraclitus and laughing Democritus, by Donato Bustamante, 1477

He relinquished his hereditary office of Basileus, or leading local official,
to his brother.
Heraclitus’ main work, On Nature, is lost to history, only fragments and
quotations from other authors survive. These fragments are quoted more
than the other pre-Socratic philosophers, by ancient, medieval, and
modern philosophers. In particular, he was quoted by Marcus Aurelius,
Aristotle, St Hippolytus of Rome, and St Clement of Alexandria.. We have
no shortage of paintings of Heraclitus, in Raphael’s School of Athens two
philosophers are seated in front of Plato and Socrates, to the left is
Heraclitus, to the right is the Cynic philosopher Diogenes of Sinope.

School of Athens, by Raphael, 1511, Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, Heraclitus and Diogenes of Sinope are in front.

In medieval paintings, Heraclitus is often depicted
seated next to another pre-Socratic philosopher,
Democritus, who was the teacher of Protagoras, the
Sophist in Plato’s dialogue. This is an artistic
convention, it was highly unlikely that they met,
Democritus lived in Abdera in Thrace, far from
Ephesus, in the generation after Heraclitus.
Democritus is best known for his belief that atoms
were the building blocks of all matter.

Crying Heraclitus
and laughing
Democritus, by
Donato Bustamante,
1477
Birthplace of Democritus

Aristotle calls him Heraclitus the Obscure, many of his surviving
fragments are puzzling, if his main lost work is ever found we will
then guess less about his meaning. We know that many ancient
authors quoted him from his original work. Perhaps one day
some future magical CAT-scan type device can read the volumes
in the volcano-baked library of Herculaneum that locks many
ancient works in charred papyrus. Since we are more interested
in reflecting on how Christians and philosophers interpreted
Heraclitus’ sayings than his writings themselves, since only
fragments survive, we will reflect on them author by author.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_papyri

Diogenes of Laertius, Heraclitus’ Biography

Our most significant source is Diogenese of Laertius. We
know little about his life of Diogenes of Laertius, he was an
ancient historian in the third century AD. In Book 9 of his
Lives of Eminent Philosophers, he included short
biographies of the latter pre-Socratic philosophers, starting
with Heraclitus, and including two Sophists known from
their Platonic dialogues, Protagoras and Parmenides.
Diogenes is both a valuable and a problematic source, at
times he seems more gullible than was Herodotus, and
scholars are skeptical of his more outlandish statements.

Diogenes says that “Heraclitus was
exceptionally haughty and disdainful, as
is clear from his book, in which he says,
‘Much learning does not teach
understanding; otherwise, it would have
taught Hesiod and Pythagoras.’” Also,
“he used to say that Homer should be
thrown out of the public contests and
beaten with a stick.” Plato’s Socrates
also condemned Homer, banning poets
from his Republic. Homer and His Guide, by William-
Adolphe Bouguereau, 1874

Some quick sayings by Heraclitus: “You should
extinguish pride more quickly than a fire,”
which some translators render as: “You should
extinguish violence more quickly than arson,”
and: “The people should defend the law as
they would their city wall.”
Diogenes of Laertius has a curious account of
how Heraclitus died. “Having become a
misanthrope, he departed for the mountains
where he lived on grass and herbs.” Perhaps
this inspired the later Cynic philosophers, in
particular Diogenes of Sinope, who spurned
property and lived in a barrel in the market.
Diogenes, by John William
Waterhouse, 1882

Diogenes of Laertius continues, “But
when this diet gave Heraclitus dropsy,”
where fluid is retained in the legs, “he
returned to town and asked the doctors,
enigmatically, if they could produce a
drought after heavy rain. When they
failed to understand him, he buried
himself in a cowshed, hoping that the
heat of the cow dung would draw the
fluid out of him. But as even this had no
effect, he died at the age of sixty.” Bust of Heraclitus, Victoria and Albert
Museum, London, England, 1700's

In the ancient world, noblemen and warriors
died a noble death. This ignoble death of
Heraclitus suggests that the locals in Ephesus did
not think highly of him. Otherwise, they would
have remembered that Heraclitus had died a
much more noble death.

Leonidas at
Thermopylae,
by Jacques-Louis
David, 1814
“The dead were buried where they fell,”
“over them is this inscription:”
“Four thousand here from Pelop’s land
Against three million did stand.”
“The Spartans have a special epitaph, it
runs:” “Go tell the Spartans, you who read:
We took their orders, and here lie dead.”

Diogenes of Laertius says that
“Heraclitus’ doctrines are as
follows. All things are made of fire,
and into fire they are dissolved; all
things come about by fate, and it is
by the convergence of opposites
that beings are brought into
harmony.” Perhaps he was
influenced by the fact that his
Persian overlords worshiped fire.
Great Fire of London, with Ludgate and Old St Paul's, 1670

The ancients speculated that everything was made
from four basic elements: Wind or Air, Water, Earth,
and Fire. Which was the primary element was
disputed among the pre-Socratic philosophers,
Heraclitus thought it was fire, Thales thought it was
water, Anaximander thought it was air, other
philosophers said the elemental substance could be
transformed into these four elements.

The Four Elements,
Fire, Wind or Air,
Water, and Earth,
by Artus Wolffort,
before 1641

The four elements
with scenes from
the Creation, by
Hendrick de Clerck
and Denis van
Alsloot, 1608

Was the end of the world as depicted by the Book
of Revelation influenced by speculations that fire
was the predominant element? Were the stories of
the primordial flood that engulfed the world
influenced by speculations that water was the
predominant element? We do know that these four
basic elements were core to the ancient Greeks’
view of the world.

The Last Judgement, by Viktor Vasnetsov, 1904
Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with
the Sun, by William Blake, 1805

Genesis Flood Narrative, by Michelangelo, 1509

St Clement of Alexandria, On Heraclitus
St Athanasius and St Cyril of Alexandria, 985

Many of the Heraclitus fragments are quotes from the Church Fathers, St
Clement of Alexandria and St Hippolytus of Rome in the second and third
centuries. St Clement was deeply influenced by Plato and the Stoic
philosophers, and many of his quotes seek to show how the Greek moral
philosophers echoed truths found in Scripture. Clement claimed that the
Greeks plagiarized the Hebrews: few scholars, if any, agree with his
argument.
St Clement was a catechetical teacher in Alexandria, Origen was among
his students. Although he is considered a saint, he is not widely
venerated in the Orthodox and Catholic churches as some of his
teachings were later determined to be suspect and possibly heretical.

Proverbs 5:16 exhorts us, “Let
thy fountains be dispersed
abroad, and rivers of waters in
the street.
For most people do not
understand the things they
experience, nor do they know
when they have learned; but
they seem to themselves to do
so, according to the good
Heraclitus. So, you see that he
too finds fault with unbelievers.”
Heraclitus here is predicting the
Dunning-Kruger effect!

Heraclitus and the other “Ionian
Muses say explicitly that most men
who think themselves wise follow
the popular singers and obey the
laws, not knowing that most men
are bad, and few are good, but that
the best pursue reputation. For:
The best, he says, choose one thing
in return for all: ever flowing fame
from mortals; but most men satisfy
themselves like beasts,
measuring happiness by the belly
and the genitals and the most
shameful parts in us.”
Heraclitus and Democritus, by Jacob Jordaens, 1649

“Heraclitus caustically remarks that some
people are without faith,
not knowing how to hear or even to speak,
he was aided here by Solomon in
Ecclesiasticus 6:33: ‘If thou desire to hear,
thou shalt receive; and if thou incline thine
ear, thou shalt be wise.’”
“Knowledge and ignorance are the
boundaries of happiness and unhappiness.
For: philosophical men must be versed in very
many things,
according to Heraclitus, and it is indeed
necessary to make many journeys in the
search to be good.”
Heraclitus, by Judith Leyster, 1600’s

“Hence the apostle exhorts us in 1
Corinthians 2:5 that ‘your faith should not
stand in the wisdom of men’ who promise to
persuade you, ‘but in the power of God,’
which in itself and without proofs has the
power to save by faith alone.
As the Ephesian Heraclitus says:
For the most esteemed of men knows and
guards what he believes, and moreover,
justice will convict the fashioners and
witnesses of falsehoods.
For he leaned from foreign philosophy about
the purification through fire of those who
have lived evil lives.”
Heraclitus, by Franz Timmermann, 1538

Clement says, “I know that Plato, too,
supports Heraclitus when the writes:
The One alone is the wise, unwilling
and willing to be called by the name
of Zeus, and again: It is law also to
follow the counsel of the One.
As Luke 14:35 states, ‘He who has
ears to hear, let him hear,’ you will
find it expressed as follows by the
Ephesian Heraclitus:
The uncomprehending, when they
hear, are like the deaf: the saying
applies to them, though present they
are absent.”
Democritus and Heraclitus, by Hendrick Terbrugghen, 1600's

“The Scriptures in 1 Timothy 1:9
exhort, ‘The law is not made for a
righteous man.’ Thus, Heraclitus
rightly says,
They would not know the name of
justice if these things did not exist,
and Socrates says that the law
would not have come into being for
the sake of the good.”
“Heraclitus states, Gods and men
honor those slain in battle.”
Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher, by
Hendrik ter Brugghen, 1628

St Hippolytus of Rome, On Heraclitus

Although Hippolytus of Rome was an influential
second century theologian, little is known about him,
scholars are not sure of either his identity or his
community. St Photios I of Constantinople claims he
was an apostle of St Irenaeus, but scholars doubt
this. St Hippolytus includes quotes from the Greek
philosophers in his Refutation of All Heresies.

In his summary of philosophy of
Heraclitus, he comments on his
intellectual arrogance: “Heraclitus,
a natural philosopher of Ephesus,
surrendered himself to universal
grief, condemning the ignorance of
the entirety of life, and of all mortal
men and their existence, for he
asserted that he himself knew
everything, whereas the rest of
mankind know nothing.”
The Sorrowful Heraclitus, by Charles-Antoine Coypel, 1746

Nevertheless, Heraclitus’
philosophy includes much
wisdom. Both he and
Empedocles said “that the
originating principle of all
things is discord and
friendship, and that the Deity
is a fire blazing with
intelligence, and that all
things are unified, and never
stand still.” However, the
world around us “is full of evil
things, that these evil things
reach as far as the moon.”
Heraclitus and Democritus, by Jan van Bijlert, 1650

“Heraclitus says that the universe is divisible
and indivisible, generated and ungenerated,
mortal and immortal, Word and eternity, Father
and Son, God and Justice. Listening not to me
but to the universal, it is wise to agree that all
things are one.”
“Heraclitus states that the universe is a child
and an eternal king of all things for eternity:
Eternity is a child at play, playing draughts: the
kingdom is a child’s.”
Heraclitus states “that the father of everything
that has come about is generated and
ungenerated, creature and creator, War is father
of all, king of all: some it shows as gods, some
as men; some it makes slaves, some free.”
Protected by Ares, Achilles Overwhelms Hector,
by Antonio Raffaele Calliano, 1815

We are always reminded that the ancient Greek
world is a warrior society, with roots in the warrior
ethos of the Iliad and the Odyssey, where if your city-
state is defeated, it is pillaged and plundered, and
your military age men are slaughtered, and your
women and children are sold into slavery. You can
also be enslaved when you are captured by pirates.

https://youtu.be/DpmuhZJUJn0
https://youtu.be/7lI2ZQ50wRc
https://youtu.be/bGHHD7XTvr0
https://youtu.be/ynIx-AVI2f8

“Heraclitus praises and admires the unknown
and unseen part of God’s power above the
known part. That he is visible to men and not
undiscoverable he says in the following
words:
I honor more those things which are learned
by sight and hearing,”
he says, the visible more than the invisible.”
“God is unapparent, unseen, unknown to
men, as Heraclitus says:
Unapparent connection is better than
apparent.”
And Aristotle was right when he calls him
Heraclitus the Obscure.
Heraclitus, by Gerard ter Borch, 1648

“Heraclitus explicitly says: Immortals
are mortal, mortals immortal: living
their death, dying their life.”
“Heraclitus speaks of a resurrection
of this visible flesh in which we are
born, and he is aware that God is the
cause of this resurrection, saying:
They are said to rise up and to
become wakeful guardians of the
living and the dead.”
Heraclitus, by Pinacoteca Querini Stampalia, 1653

Other Fragments and Quotes of Heraclitus
“Men fail to notice what they do
when they are awake, just as they
forget what they do when asleep.”
“It is better to hide folly than to
make it public.”
“It is not good for men to get all
they want.”
“To be temperate is the greatest
excellence. And wisdom is speaking
the truth and acting with knowledge
in accordance with nature.”
Heraclitus, the weeping philosopher, by Johannes Moreelse, 1630

“All men can know themselves and be
temperate.”
Here Heraclitus adds good advice to this
famous inscription at the Temple of the
Delphic Oracle.
Sextus Empiricus says, “Heraclitus rejects
perception when he says,
Bad witnesses for men are the eyes and ears
of those who have foreign souls:
as foreign souls trust in non-rational
perceptions.”
Priestess of
Delphi
(1891) by
John Collier,
showing the
Pythia sitting
on a tripod
with vapor
rising from a
crack in the
earth
beneath her

The Neo-Platonist philosopher
Porphyry in his notes on Homer’s Iliad
comments, “They say it is indecent if
the sight of warfare pleases the gods.
But it is not indecent, for the noble
deeds please the gods. Again, wars
and battles seem terrible to us, but to
God not even they are terrible. For
God makes all things contribute to the
harmony of the universe, so
Heraclitus says that to God all things
are fair and just, but men have
supposed some things unjust, and
other just.”
Porphyry and Plotinus
Dispute Astrology

We are not suggesting that this observation is moral
and just, we do suggest that this illustrates the stoic
forbearance with which many ancients faced the
inequities and violence they often faced in a warrior
society.

Plato in his Hippias Major
dialogue, asks: “Don’t you realize
the truth of Heraclitus’ remark
that the most beautiful ape is ugly
when compared with another
species?” “Doesn’t Heraclitus also
say that the wisest of men, when
compared to a god, will seem an
ape in wisdom and beauty and
everything else?”
Plato and Aristotle, School of Athens, by Raphael, 1511

Aristotle says that “surely nature
longs for opposites and effects her
harmony from them.” “That was
also said by Heraclitus the Obscure:
Combinations: wholes and not
wholes, concurring differing,
concordant disconcordance, from
all things one and from one all
things.
In this way the structure of the
universe, of the heavens and the
earth and the whole world, was
arranged by one harmony through
the blending of the most opposite
principles.”
Plato and Aristotle: dialectics by Luca della Robbia

Aristotle in his
Nicomachean Ethics says:
“It seems that each
animal has its own
pleasure.” “The pleasures
of horses, dogs, and men
differ, so Heraclitus says
that donkeys would
prefer rubbish to gold,”
since it is tastier.
Detail showing Aristotle, by Ludwig Seitz, 1887

Heraclitus and Democritus, by Rubens, 1603
Frederick Copleston: The Word of Heraclitus

Frederick Copleston was an English Jesuit priest and
professor whose multi-volume history of philosophy
was included in the curriculum of Catholic colleges
worldwide. He was best known for his public debate
on the existence of God with Bertrand Russell, and
also for his debate with AJ Ayer.

Although Heraclitus is best known
for his saying that, “You cannot
step twice in the same river, for
fresh waters are ever flowing in
upon you,” he may not have been
the first to proclaim that “all
things are in a state of flux.”
Although this is an important
assertion he makes, Copleston
argues that what is key is
Heraclitus’ emphasis on the Logos,
or Word, on his special message to
mankind, which “consists in the
conception of unity in diversity,
and difference in unity.” Heraclitus and Democritus, by Jacob jordaens, 1600’s

Why was the philosophy of Heraclitus attractive
both to the Stoic philosophers and to many
early Christian theologians? Copleston states,
“For Heraclitus the conflict of opposites, so far
from being a blot on the unity of the One, is
essential to the being of the One. In fact, the
One only exists in the tension of opposites: this
tension is essential to the unity of the One.”
Copleston continues: “For Heraclitus, Reality is
One; but it is many at the same time, not merely
accidentally, but essentially. It is essential to the
being and existence of the One that it should be
one and many at the same time; that it should
be Identity in Difference.”
Heraclitus, by Luca Giordano & Recco, 1600's

Heraclitus argued that the essence of all
things is fire. Although he did base this on
practical observations, this took on the
firmness of religious belief and was a
founding principle of his philosophy. As
Copleston paraphrases Heraclitus: “Sense-
experience tells us that fire lives by feeding,
by consuming and transforming into itself
heterogeneous matter. Springing up, as it
were, from a multitude of objects, it changes
them into itself, and without this supply of
material it would die down and cease to
exist. The very existence of fire depends on
this strife and tension.”
Heraclitus, by Jusepe de Ribera, 1634

Heraclitus speaks of the One as
God, as wise: “The wise is the
One only. He is unwilling and
willing to be called by the name
of Zeus.” The Stoic philosophers
whom he inspires
interchangeably refer to the
One as God and as Zeus, he is
the unitary expression of truth
of all the other gods. Although
this feels like monotheism,
scholars refer to this as
henotheism.
Jupiter Chariot between Justice & Piety, by Noël Coypel, 1671

As Copleston explains, “God is the
universal Reason, the universal law
immanent in all things, binding all
things into a unity and determining the
constant change in the universe
according to universal law. Man’s
reason is a moment in this universal
Reason,” “and man should strive to live
by this reason, realizing the unity of all
things and the reign of unalterable law,”
and here he refers to this law as the
Word, or Logos. “By stressing universal
law and man’s participation in Reason,
Heraclitus helped to pave the way for
the universalist ideals of Stoicism.” Detail, Council of the Gods, by Giovanni Lanfranco, 1625

Copleston explains that this
unity in many is appealing to
Christian theologians, as God is
One in Three Persons, Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost. “God
Himself, as we know by
Revelation, is Unity in Distinction
of Persons. In Christ there is
unity in diversity, unity of Person
in diversity of Natures,” divine
and human natures of Christ.
God the Father, and Holy Spirit, as a dove
above Jesus, by Francesco Albani, 1600’s

However, though there is much in the
philosophy of Heraclitus that is reflected in
Stoic philosophy, and also in the Christian
reflections on the nature of God, Copleston
does not reflect on whether Heraclitus’
philosophy of unity in opposites might
have been influenced by the Persian
Zoroastrian dualism of his overlords, with
its everlasting contest between the cosmic
forces of good and evil. This dualism is
suggested particularly by the saying by
Heraclitus, “Good and bad are the same,
goodness and badness are one.” Zoroastrian Eternal Flame at the Fire
Temple in Yazd, Central Iran

We discussed this Persian dualism in our review of St
Augustine’s Confessions. St Augustine was a member
of the Manichean heresy for a decade, before he
converted back to the Catholic Church. Manicheism
was a syncretistic faith that blended Zoroastrian with
Christianity to form a competing Gnostic religious
system.

There is so much we do not know for certain about
the philosophy of Heraclitus, maybe one day his
original work, On Nature, will be resurrected from
the ashes of history.

Our main source is this compilation of fragments and quotations
of Early Greek Philosophy by Penguin Classics. The editor sorted
these sayings by topics, we rearranged them by author. We like
this translation by Jonathon Barnes, as well as his useful
commentary. The bracketed [B] references are for the Diels-Kranz
B Texts, see the appendices.
These quotations include the biography of Heraclitus in the
ancient Lives of Eminent Philosophers by Diogenes of Laertius,
who likely lived in the third century. This volume also includes
many interesting scholarly essays on Diogenes and Greek
philosophy in the Appendix.

We liked the footnote in the
Early Greek Philosophy that
Diogenes’ Lives “is
derivative: it contains
simplifications, confusions
and some nonsense. But it
remains a valuable source
for the pre-Socratics and for
later Greek philosophy.”

It is valuable because it is the most extensive source for many of these philosophers,
many who would be unknown if not for the brief mention by Diogenes. We found
the chapter on Heraclitus in Frederick Copleston’s volume on Greek and Roman
Philosophy to be essential in understanding how his philosophy fits into early
Christian theology.
As always, Will Durant in his Life of Greece in the Story of Civilization series offers
many additional insights and is as quotable as always.
The fragments in the Early Greek Philosophy collection does include the quotes
from St Clement and St Hippolytus.
In our blog we also include the footnote references for St Hippolytus of Rome and
Clement of Alexander. These are also included in the printed edition of the Ante-
Nicene Fathers. We want to warn you that the works of Clement of Alexandria
sprawl over hundreds of pages and are disorganized even by Stoic standards.
Sometime in the future we plan to do videos on both these Church Fathers.

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type in
the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
footnote.
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Heraclitus, Pre-Socratic Philosopher, Inspiration for Stoics and Church Fathers

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Heraclitus, Pre-Socratic Philosopher, Inspiration for Stoics and Church Fathers