Replies

Hello, Alamo-Girl! The text of Heraclitus from the Logos site whose link you gave runs thusly:

One must follow what is common; but, even though the Logos is common, most people live as though they possessed their own private wisdom. (Fragment 2)

Cornelis Loew (not E. R. Dodds as I earlier suggested) cites Fragment 2 in Myth, Sacred History, and Philosophy, New York: Harcourt, Brace and World, Inc., 1967, p. 227. In this work, he uses Eric Voegelin’s translation:

But though the Logos is common, the many live as if they had a wisdom of their own.

The Voegelinian translation is, I believe more faithful to the original Greek in terms of the sheer compactness of its language.

Voegelin’s translation of Heraclitus’ Fragment 1 is worth giving here also:

Although this Logos is eternally valid, yet men are unable to understand it – not only before hearing it, but even after they have heard it for the first time. That is to say, although all things come to pass in accordance with this Logos, men seem to be quite without any experience of it – at least if they are judged in the light of such words and deeds as I am here setting forth. My own method is to distinguish each thing according to its nature, and to specify how it behaves; other men, on the contrary, are as forgetful and heedless in their waking moments of what is going on around and within them as they are during sleep.

Certain other of Heraclitus’ Fragments are worthy of note in this connection:

Those who are awake have a world one and common, but those who are asleep each turn aside into their own private worlds. [Fr. 89]
It is not meet [i.e., fitting] to act and speak like men asleep. {Fr. 73]
Those who speak with the mind must strengthen themselves with that which is common to all [i.e., the Logos], as the polis does with the law and more strongly so. For all human laws nourish themselves from the one divine – which prevails as it will, and suffices for all things and more than suffices. [Fr. 114]

Loew observes that “these are striking sentences. Omit the notion of a divine law and Heraclitus sounds very modern; he seems to say that the one common world, which is the corrective for our tendencies to be sleepwalkers in our private worlds, is that with which science deals. The oracles become a call for empirical objectivity over and against emotional subjectivity. But this is not what Heraclitus is saying. The social universality of the human logos is not the universality of scientific language and method, although if Heraclitus were living today he would in no way belittle the impressive and productive results achieved by scientists because their ‘logos’ makes possible dependable worldwide communications within the scientific community. Heraclitus had in mind the community of the polis [i.e., the type of political society of ancient Greece, which was understood as manifesting the dynamic relationship obtaining among the participants in a great hierarchy of being: divine – human – social – natural], its daily life, and its need to be attuned to the one divine logos by which all human laws are nourished.”

Shades of the spirit of the Declaration of Independence here – to my ear, at least. Certainly Heraclitus thought that men who have “turned aside into their own private worlds as if asleep” were no longer fit to be “public men.”

A couple more fascinating Fragments from a fascinating thinker:

From all is One, and from One is all. [Fr. 10]
Immortals – mortals, mortals – immortals, they live each other’s death and die each other’s life.” [Fr. 42]

Voegelin has said that Heraclitus is Plato’s “long shadow.” Indeed, Plato articulated the theme of death-in-life and life-in-death, long before the coming of Christ.

Well, just some “grist for the mill” for any interested thinkers out there. Or not, as the case may be.

Thank you so much for the many excellent articles you posted today, Alamo-Girl! And again, thank you for the great link.

...other men, on the contrary, are as forgetful and heedless in their waking moments of what is going on around and within them as they are during sleep.

Jesus described this condition as deaf and blind.

Those who look but cannot see and listen but can not hear are often violently committed to their ignorance. They will dismiss without consideration what they will not understand.

They demand that their private little hell is the world's reality and nothing short of the fear of eternal death and damnation will drive them from their lair.

So, for the sake of their salvation, we preach their damnation, with as much love and gusto as we can summon.

It is a mighty work to witness to reality, especially in the face of all of the alternate realities being practiced. But, we know that there is one reality and only one and that keeps our feet on the path of truth.