Yet, there is another ambiguity that puzzles me. Word, or Logos, can have two meanings. Logos has a metaphysical and an epistemological meaning. Metaphysically, Logos refers to the power of creation or to the act of creation. It also may refer to the power of the creator enduring into perpetuity. Epistemologically, Logos means science and reason. It can also mean prophecy and revelation.
The metaphysical and the epistemological meanings are almost inimical to one another. Creation becomes a subject of materialism, externality, and sensory perception. The epistemological meanings are about uncovering the hidden, transcendental knowledge, and abstract thought.
All weekend I have been asking myself, does Heraclitus mean Reason or Creation? Heraclitus is big on reconciliation of opposites. In the first sententence of the fragment, the philosopher uses a universal (Logos) and a particular (men). A universal is a type of extreme, so it must be reconciled with the particular. Likewise, a human is a discrete unit, and must be reconciled with the whole.
The fragment seems to express despair about human cognition. Some humans understand and thereby divide and classify (form particulars for understanding the Logos). Other humans experience life with the same transcience and Lethe-ward slackness of sleeping.
Though this Word is true evermore, yet men are as unable to understand it whenIf Heraclitus is making a social commentary, then he is expressing a pro-science outlook. The world should be inspected and understood through a trial of words and deeds. This is a reasonable interpretation. But, this is the first fragment, and such a banal criticism would not befit the beginning of a book (now lost, of course) concerning metaphysics and logical paradoxes.
they hear it for the first time as before they have heard it at all. For, though
all things come to pass in accordance with this Word, men seem as if they had no
experience of them, when they make trial of words and deeds such as I set forth,
dividing each thing according to its kind and showing how it is what it is. But
other men know not what they are doing when awake, even as they forget what they
do in sleep. (from heraclitusfragments.com)
Rather, Heraclitus is laying the groundwork for understanding understanding, and for understanding the universe. Logos can be heard, but will not understood despite its manifest truth. In fragment two, Heraclitus argues that the Logos is universal, but people live as if each had her own received wisdom. Even those who attempt understand the Logos through inspection, argument, and experiment will fall short of total comprehension.
The great mass of humanity represents the particularity of the created world. The world is not created to understand itself. Men do not understand when they hear. Science and argument will not reveal the truth of creation. Passivity of thought will not naturally bring you to the origins of truth.
Like the Bhakti saints and Sikh Gurus two thousand years later, Heraclitus endorses understanding through introspection. The created world will not reveal the highest truth. How does Heraclitus know Logos: He sought the oracle inside himself (fragment 101). What he does not tell us, however, is whether his Logos is everyone's Logos or if he is trapped in the same folly as every other man, unknowing of the Words that endure forever.
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