(15) Blogging Through Prof Martin Heidegger’s Interpretations of Greek Philosophy (Heraclitus Part 2)
There are 2 famous stories about Heraclitus
The first famous story about Heraclitus involves him at a stove or oven, where he is said to have been warming himself. According to Diogenes Laërtius in his “Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers,” some visitors came upon Heraclitus while he was at the stove:
“They say that some strangers came to visit him and, finding him warming himself by the stove, stood hesitating whether to approach him. Seeing this, Heraclitus invited them to come in, saying, ‘Even here the gods are present.'”
This is quite the contrast with Thales we looked at previously who was oblivious to the present and fell into a well while thinking. Heraclitus is at home with the simplicity of the hearth. Heidegger is able to connect Heraclitus’ fire with the lustrous radiance ofthe gold of Pindar, “[t]he hearth is the site of being-homely … Latin vesta is the Roman name for the goddess of the hearth fire … para: alongside – beside, or more precisely, in the sphere of the same presence; parestios, the one who is present within the sphere of protection and intimacy belonging to the homestead and who belongs to the radiance and warmth and glow of this fire (Heidegger, HHTI, 106). “
Contrast this with adventure seeking Odysseus. In Homer, Kalypso is the deine theos, the uncanny Goddess (O, 7, 246), and is understood as preventing Odysseus from returning home. This is why Heidegger can understand the deinon as opposing the homely in the Greek. Athena says “[i]t is Laertes’ son, whose home is in Ithaca. I have seen him on a certain Island, weeping most bitterly: this was in the domains of the nymph Kalypso who is keeping him with her there and thwarting return to his own country (Odyssey, IV, 549-643). The connection between Lustre and the uncarmy (deinon) that captures ones’ eye, is brought out quite explicitly when Hermes comes to the Island of Kalypso, the deine Theos, to demand the release of Odysseus, “[ijn the space within was the goddess herself, singing with a lovely voice, moving to and fro at her loom and weaving with a shuttle of Gold. Around the entrance a wood rose up in abundant growth – alder and aspen and fragrant cypress … Even a Deathless One, if he came there, might gaze in wonder at the sight and might be happier in the heart (from Odyssey, V, 38-125).” The general point of the Odyssey is the absurdity of man’s condition that he at all times abandons and neglects his hearth and family in the pursuit of adventure and the lustrous and that, in the end, the greatest and most lustrous beauty is nothing in comparison to what one already has anyway in the Everyday of one’s home. Hence Kalypso, complaining that Penelope, to whom Odysseus wishes to return, cannot possibly be as radiant as she, receives the following response from Odysseus, “Goddess and queen, do not make this a cause of anger with me. I know that my wise Penelope, when a man looks at her, is far beneath you in form and stature; she is a mortal, and you are immortal and unageing. Yet, notwithstanding, my desire and longing day by day is still to reach my own home and to see the day of my return (from Odyssey, V, 210-91).” What we see is the emphasis by Heraclitus to learn to appreciate the everyday since we spend most of our time there anyway.
The second famous story about Heraclitus in the Temple of Artemis involves him playing with children. According to various ancient sources, including Diogenes Laertius in his “Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers,” he had himself withdrawn into the temple of Artemis in order to play knucklebones with the children; here, the Ephesians stood around him, and he said to them: “What are you gaping at, you scoundrels? Or is it not better to do this than to work with you on behalf of the polis?”
This is clearly odd since the connection between the person and the polis in ancient Greece was firm, as I posted about previously, but perhaps something else is going on here. To begin with, Artemis is named, the goddess of the Hunt. Xenophon wrote about hunting. In his work titled “Cynegeticus” or “On Hunting,” he discusses hunting practices, the training of hunting dogs, and the virtues of hunting as an activity. His detailed and positive treatment of the subject suggests that he viewed it very favorably. He emphasizes the benefits of hunting for physical fitness, character building, and as a preparation for warfare. Anyone who has tracked a deer into the woods until it suddenly appears or like a philosopher hunting an idea knows what captivating activities they are. The thrill of the hunt is preserved in our language with what we hunt being called “game,” from Old English: gamen (amusement, sport) and Proto-Germanic: gamana (mirth, joy). When an adult is on the hunt, they are caught up like a child at play, and in fact children play hunting games even before picking up a bow. Even when hunting is for survival and not sport, then too is it a thrill.
The word “Hunting” can be readily seen as a simultaneous nominal and verbal participle in a sentence such as “Hunting, as both an exhilarating sport and a necessary skill for survival, has been integral to human culture for millennia.” This is exactly the kind of thing we’ve been looking at for the Greeks with “to on” as the being and being. In Ancient Greek, the participle “τὸ ὄν” (to on) from the verb “εἰμί” (to be) can function both as a nominative adjective (describing a noun) and as a verbal element (expressing action or state). Here is an example where “τὸ ὄν” serves both functions: τὸ ὄν αἰεὶ διχῇ διαιρεῖται: Being is always divided into two. Therefore, in the Sophist, Plato uses “to on” both nominally to discuss Being as a concept and verbally to discuss the state or act of existing, reflecting the philosophical depth of his inquiry into metaphysics and language. It is the simultaneity of the participle (the being and being) which is the original sameness for the Greeks. Simultaneity has been a major issue in the history of philosophy. Aristotle formulated the principle of contradiction as “something cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same way.” This became the highest principle of analytic judgments where the predicate just explains the subject and adds nothing to it (All bachelors are unmarried). Kant took “at the same time” out since analytic judgments are merely about the relation of concepts and so no involvement of “time” is needed. Kant reinserted “at the same time” into the principle of synthetic a priori judgements that “the conditions of the possibility of experience are at the same time the conditions of the objects of experience.” Kant thus gave his formulation of Parmenides’s saying “the same: apprehending as well as being.” For example, the point that I experience things causally means the processes will either be encountered as positively one directional (physical chance ball hits ball), comparatively greater one directional (boiling water temporarily changes state until heat is removed) and superlatively (cooking an egg can’t be uncooked).
The child for Heraclitus, then, is specifically what is thought along with lustrous radiance in the Greek, namely, the being caught up in the lustre of things that is peculiar to a child at play. The full sense is that of the child in contradistinction to the old person who has lost a lust for life. This is why Heraclitus gets angry at the adults in the temple of Artemis. They are interrupting Heraclitus teaching the kids the value of play. People grow old in an existential sense when they forget how to play. Heidegger comments with Being for Heraclitus: “The word is difficult to translate. One says: ‘world time.’ It is the world that worlds and temporalizes in that, as cosmos, it brings the jointure of being to a glowing sparkle … [Heraclitus says oiaion:] The Geschick (Fate or Destiny) of being, a child that plays, shifting pawns: the royalty of a child (Heidegger PR, 1 12-3).” So, in Holderlin’s Hyperion we learn that humans are fated or destined to go from the fire of youth to the listlessness of old age unless they are thinkers in which case they are youthful in great age. In The Antigone play, Heidegger notes “[t]he chorus is composed of old and experienced men of the city of Thebes. The Greek world is strong enough in itself to acknowledge the radiance and strength of youth and the level-headedness and wealth of experience brought by age as equally important, and to maintain the tension between them (Heidegger, HHTI, 51).”
In thinking about beings, we noted for Heidegger Anaximander, Parmenides and Heraclitus were the three inceptual thinkers of the western philosophical tradition because they thought beings both nominally, but also in their unity / as a whole. For example, with Anaximander we looked at beings being out of joint but then temporarily falling into place with the example of Anne of Green Gables and “God’s in his heaven and all’s right with the world.” With Parmenides we looked at Thales falling in the well with the idea that thinkers are not close to life, thereby showing the world of being and the world of becoming.
But what about Heraclitus?
In this one and a different lecture course on Heraclitus from the one we are looking at now, Heidegger references Holderlin’s “Hyperion’s Song of Fate” to dis-close the Greeks. This poem says:
“Radiant the gods’ mild breezes / Gently play on you / As the girl artist’s fingers / On holy strings. – Fateless the Heavenly breathe / Like an unweaned infant asleep; / Chastely preserved / In modest bud / For even their minds / Are in flower/And their blissful eyes / Eternally tranquil gazey / Etemally clear. – But we are fated / to find no foothold, no rest, / And suffering mortals / Dwindle and fall/ Headlong from one/ Hour to the next Hurled like water / From ledge to ledge / Downward for years to the vague abyss (Holderlin’s “Hyperion’s Song of Fate” quoted in Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, Heraclitus Seminar, 101)” … [Heidegger and Fink commenting on the passage say] “the gods wander without destiny, their spirit eternally in bloom, while humans lead a restless life and fall into the cataract of time and disappear.” (Martin Heidegger and Eugen Fink, Heraclitus Seminar, 101)
Man is fated to go from the fire of youth to the listless tedium of old age. Where is Holderlin getting this from? Aristotle speaks of the epitome of human life as Theoria, the contemplative life, which is godliness/deathlessness: athanatizein. Deathlessness doesn’t mean immortality, since the Greeks thought everyone were immortal, but rather childlike absorption in life like the eternally youthful ambrosia eating gods among even the old. By contrast Apollo spoke of most humans in the passage Holderlin bases his Hyperion’s Song of Fate on: “Mortals, who are as wretched as the leaves on the trees, flourishing at first, enjoying the fruits of the earth, but then, their hearts no longer absorbed in life (Akerioi), vanishing (my translation modifying Krell, 1999, 105).” We have Apollo contrasting between the fire and absorption of youth and the listless tedium of old age. In Epistles 1.8 Horace describes the lethargic illness of boredom as a trait of old age.
The thinker, by contrast, is a tranquil absorbed youth even in old age. Heidegger comments regarding thinker Heraclitus’s Fragment 52: “The Geschick of being, a child that plays …the being of beings (Heidegger, 1991b, 113).” We will see that restlessness being brought to repose with a calm mind is what Heidegger argues as the purpose the Greeks had for philosophy. Aristotle clarified only a beast, or a god, delights in solitude (Politics 1253a28), and so we picture the general tragic character of the masses (hoi polloi) apart from their distractions as cabin fever. Lucretius for instance speaks of the restless lives of the Roman rich pursued relentlessly by anxiety and boredom. Regarding Aristotle’s Theoria, Heidegger comments “[T]he ‘useful’ as ‘what makes someone whole,’ that is, what makes the human being at home with himself … In Greek Theoria is pure repose, the highest form of energeia, the highest manner of putting-oneself into-work without regard for all machinations. It is the letting come to presence of presencing itself. (Heidegger, 2001b, 160-61).”
So we have a threefold interplay of Anaximander (beings out of joint/adikia-jointure/dike); Parmenides (Thinker not close to life – world of being and becoming); Heraclitus (playing child/tedium of old age). We thus have the world of (i) beings and (ii) beings in their unity
Heidegger notes in his Parmenides lecture course the tragedy of the masses and why the thinker was so necessary for the Greeks:
“Aristotle, Plato’s disciple, relates at one place (Nicomachean Ethics, Z 7, 1141b 77ff ) the basic conception determining the Greek view on the essence of the thinker: ‘It is said they (the thinkers) indeed know things that are excessive, and thus astounding, and thereby difficult, and hence in general ‘demonic (daimonia)’ but also useless, for they are not seeking what is, according to the straightforward popular opinion, good for man.’ … The Greeks, to whom we owe the essence and name of ‘philosophy’ and of the ‘philosopher,’ already knew quite well that thinkers are not ‘close to life.’ But only the Greeks concluded
from this lack of closeness to life that the thinkers are then the most necessary – precisely in view of the essential misery of man (Martin Heidegger, Parmenides Seminar, 100).“