Because a certain someone keeps trying to shove Parmenides down your throat, I thought I’d share some Heraclitus. Thanks to Plato’s misunderstanding, most of us attribute to Heraclitus the trite paradoxical aphorism “you could not step twice into the same river.” But, as the Interent Encyclopedia of Philosophy explains, Heraclitus’ phrasing can be translated as more sophistic and complex: “On those stepping into rivers staying the same other and other waters flow.” For a river to exist as Word (as Being), there must be a constant movement (becoming) that betrays the rectitude of the written, graphic signifier (of course, this play of signifiers produces multiple translations). The play of existence not grounded in mere negativity, Parmenides distinction between static contemplation of “is” and “is not” (“On Nature” II). From the Encyclopedia’s explication:
There is an antithesis between ‘same’ and ‘other.’ The sentence says that different waters flow in rivers staying the same. In other words, though the waters are always changing, the rivers stay the same. Indeed, it must be precisely because the waters are always changing that there are rivers at all, rather than lakes or ponds. The message is that rivers can stay the same over time even though, or indeed because, the waters change. The point, then, is not that everything is changing, but that the fact that some things change makes possible the continued existence of other things.
The beauty isn’t anything that we can see. Beauty eclipses sensual experience. Sensual experience is the progeny of becoming’s imperfect, invisible union, a coming into Being. The beautiful mystery underlies the isness of is.
Perhaps it is fitting that Heraclitus now exists only in fragments.
And I feel obligated to admit that Heraclitus probably surpasses Plato in his elitism and disdain for the common cattle of everyday life (much of Plato’s allegory of the cave echoes the politics and characterizations of Heraclitus). But, hay, nobody is perfect.
