John Anderson. from Introduction to Philosophy (Lecture Notes, 1943 Sydney University Archive P42 Series 3/ Item 024) pp.

Transcription

1 John Anderson from Introduction to Philosophy (Lecture Notes, 1943 Sydney University Archive P42 Series 3/ Item 024) pp XXVII-XXVIII; p. 73 XXXVIII, p. 76 XXXIX-XL from Early Greek Philosophy (Lecture Notes, 1943 Sydney University Archive M242 03/ pp ) XXVII-XLI from The Servile State (AJPP December 1943) SEP from Lectures on Samuel Alexander s Space, Time and Deity (Lecture Notes, 1944 Sydney University Archive P42 Series 3/ Item 025) from Introduction to Philosophy (Lecture Notes, 1943 Sydney University Archive P42 Series 3/ Item 024) pp XXVII-XXVIII [XXVII] [53]... Some have taken [Heraclitus] as giving simply a variant of Milesian doctrine, according to which the fundamental substance is fire, and anything at all can be transformed into fire and generated out of fire. Now that may be one particular strain in the Heraclitean theory, but we find in it also a quite opposed tendency, one in which what is common to things is treated not as any particular substance but as the fact that they are in process: i.e. a philosophy of process is substituted for a philosophy of substance. And from this point of view fire merely provides a good illustration of the doctrine of process and one in which the question of transformations is specially important. As Burnet points out, we can take what we call a particular fire or a particular flame, and we can recognise two conditions of its continuance, viz. that it is continually supplied with fuel and that it is continually giving off waste products such as smoke and ash. This is expressed by saying that not-fire is becoming fire and fire is becoming not-fire: and it is the keeping up of these transformations, these changes in opposite directions, that allows the fire to continue as a recognisable thing. The general theory of Heraclitus is that such opposite tensions are a condition of the existence of anything whatever, that not only fire but any other thing exists by receiving something from its surroundings and giving off something to its surroundings. Thus the objects we ordinarily take to be static and motionless are not so. They are constantly contributing to, and being contributed to by, other things, and such changes are constantly going on within them (between their parts). To recognise this continual agitation of things (as is done also by modern science) is what Heraclitus calls understanding, and many thinkers have taken him to depreciate sense-knowledge as contrasted with understanding, to put reason above sense, as e.g. in the fragment Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men, if they have souls that understand not their language (Burnet). It is false, however, that he took that line, though the Stoics took that to be his meaning (and themselves put reason above sense). XXXVIII? We have only fragments (references in other people s works) of the works of Heraclitus and other early philosophers. Heraclitus was proverbially known as the dark (obscure). Point here is that these are thorny questions, and truth only comes through struggling and wrestling with problems. Heraclitus was deliberately attacking those who tried to get easy solutions, simple explanations of facts which were themselves complex. The Pythagoreans were one such group, taking things as

2 (composed of) mathematical units and comparing them by this means... Heraclitus use of λογος has made easier the application of that term to this position; but this is only his word or doctrine. We should not read into it at this stage the significance it later came to have. (Cf. Church s translation of Phaedo λογοι as concepts ). Natural meaning is what we say: and what Heraclitus says (his doctrine) is a doctrine of exchanges. Thus the presence everywhere of exchanges (of opposite tensions, strife ) is the Heraclitean λογος. [54] What understanding is opposed to, on his theory, is not sense but desire. The distinction can be compared with that of Freud between the pleasure principle and the reality principle, a distinction not to be taken to imply that there is any way of knowing except by the operation of our interests. Scientific interest can become distinct, but is developed out of other interests. Heraclitus would say of Pythagoreans, not that they are affected by mere desire, but at least that they are under the influence of motives which keep them from having an objective view of things desire to have clear, tidy, simple view. Assumption of units as foundation (as constituents) of things is opposed to the treatment of things as complex and of any constituents of things as complex, etc. which leaves things untidy (no complete analysis or account of them) and makes us less certain of our predictions, but in the end gives a more coherent view of things and avoids problems in which Pythagoreanism is entangled. Heraclitus of course doesn t think of this type of procedure as characteristic only of theorists but attributes it to human race in general, and connects it with sleep. (Another link with Freud.) We see things acting in accordance with our desires dream-falsification of events. Analysis as finding passage back from dream to incidents in dreamer s career in which he had failed to get what he wanted and substituted phantasy for reality (so satisfying his desire). XXXVIII [p. 73]... Justice arises where there are conflicting claims and a sort of adjustment or balance among them is the State (which is not permanent but changes: States have a history). It is just in this opposition of tendencies that culture resides culture requires diversity some friction, straining tension attempt to alter (the given balance)... [L]evelling out of differences will ruin culture. Socrates wish to get a thoroughly regimented and stable State loses the conflict which is the basis for culture. Good is not something which can be made secure and fixed; it can exist only in conflict with evils. It is not possible to get rid of evils neither is it desirable, for a dead level would cut out goodness... XXXIX [p. 76]... Heraclitean logic of events or doctrine of things, whether mental or nonmental, as processes; but even this logical doctrine doesn t, as we ve seen, give direct guidance to life. First of all, its influence would be mainly negative. There are certain things we should refrain from doing if we didn t believe there was any permanent reality. But secondly, it is not so much a question of whether beliefs are influential in themselves as of their being incidental to the life we follow, arising of course to a considerable

3 extent from its problems or difficulties 1 and from its conflicts, as well as cooperations, with other ways of life. And without imagining that all conflicts can be overcome, we can think of the solution of such problems as something which enables co-operation to extend itself, something which facilitates communication... XL... Possibilities of communication may be found where we least expect it. Even opposition may be a stimulus, e.g. to science. Opposition isn t co-operation but guards against complacency: cf. general notion of liberties as fixed or settled then people wake up to find them disappearing and that they must struggle again. (In terms of good and evil, one of the conditions of goodness is that it should have evils to fight against.) from Early Greek Philosophy (Lecture Notes, 1932) pp XXVII-XLI Trinity Term Lecture XXVII (7/6/32) One function of philosophy [is] to save science from degenerating into scepticism. All sciences belong to a common level of reality. No separation between field[s] of observation and speculation. Xenophanes says [there is]; so objects of mathematics not different to objects of physics. Objects of physics have mathematical characters; all things have logical characters i.e., come under one level of existence as Heraclitus says. Just as we had two reactions to Milesian philosophy viz. rationalism of the Xenophanes and Pythagoreans, the latter being much the more influential and the more scientific, although both have a sceptical tendency, so we have the two reactions to Pythagorean philosophy the reaction of Heraclitus and the Eleatic reaction, initiated by Parmenides. Both Heraclitus and Parmenides brought out inconsistencies in Pythagorean doctrine. They both saw, as we may put it, that we cannot combine in the same theory the notions of the simple and the complex, or the notion of unitary being and that of multiplicity, but whereas Heraclitus took the logical line in view of that incompatibility of denying the simple, of denying unitary being, Parmenides denied complexity and multiplicity and thus arrived at the conception of a single simple entity which constitutes reality, a conception which can be subjected to the same kind of criticism as Parmenides brought against the Pythagoreans because however we try to formulate that conception we cannot avoid introducing the complexity and multiplicity that were supposed to be eliminated, But whatever the weaknesses of his own substantive philosophy, Parmenides did, like Heraclitus, bring out inconsistencies in Pythagoreanism and he raised important points (further developed by Zeno) on the mathematical side. It is partly because of his weakness in mathematics and astronomy, in physical science as it had been developed up to the time of the Pythagoreans that Heraclitus, in spite of the way in which he developed logic, had so little influence on his immediate successors. In fact, we may describe Heraclitus, as Burnet does, as a reactionary in 1 [J.A. pencilled margin note:] impasses: αποριαι

4 respect of physical science. We find him re-introducing the notion of an absolute up and down and confusing, like the Milesians, between astronomical and meteorological considerations. We get then from Heraclitus no such picture of the solar system as we get from the Pythagoreans, and it may well have been because of the primitiveness of his views in this field that his logical views had so little influence. There is also, of course, what is called the obscurity of the writing of Heraclitus but while this may be partly due to his style it is even more due to the difficulty of the subject of logic itself. These are questions which cannot be put in a simple and obvious way because that would only be to falsify them. Now we find Burnet, who has done much to elucidate the position of Heraclitus, nevertheless denying that his theory is a logical one at all. According to Burnet, the theory of Heraclitus is simply to be considered as a physical theory comparable to the physical theories of the Milesians and we are not entitled to say that logical questions had been raised at that period. But, although we might describe the position of Thales as a physical theory, although he is discussing physical objects like water, we have seen that he is really raising logical questions and that the main point is not the investigation of the physical properties of water but the consideration of the nature of existence. Similarly then, although there is some ground for saying that Heraclitus substituted fire as the substance of things for the substances postulated by the Milesians (water and air and so forth) we cannot take his theory as a discussion of the physical characteristics of fire and of the part played by fire in the composition and decomposition of other things because we have, along with the reference to fire, a consideration of the general conditions of change and persistence among things; we have, in fact, a theory of reality as process; and that is not a physical but a logical theory. Of course if we take logic to deal with processes of thought or with reasoning valid or invalid on the part of persons then we should have to admit that Heraclitus and his predecessors are not concerned with logic. But if we recognise that logic has to do with the conditions of existence and that it is only on the basis of such a theory that we can distinguish between sound and unsound reasoning then we can see that physical objects are also logical objects and that a discussion of their characteristics may quite well be a logical discussion. We cannot say, of course, that Heraclitus has developed a special logical terminology; he does not speak about propositions, about implication or contradiction but this does not prevent him from discussing the conditions of existence even if these special questions have to be raised and these special terms have to be employed in order that logic may progress. And we can say that Heraclitus was implicitly concerned with that constitutes contradiction and what does not, and when we find fragments to the effect that we step and do not step into the same river, we are and are not, we certainly cannot take Heraclitus to be denying the law of contradiction; so far Burnet is right. But equally we cannot take him to be raising a purely physical question. To say that at a certain stage of intellectual or theoretical development a man cannot understand the problem of contradiction is to say that he cannot understand the meaning of the expression not and so cannot have any theory at all. Heraclitus certainly understood that he was contradicting the theories of his predecessors and equally we cannot suppose him to have thought that he was contradicting himself and therefore when he specifically speaks of being and notbeing, in the various fragments, we must admit that he had some understanding of what logical questions are. The same applies incidentally to the theory of Parmenides

5 which, according to Burnet, is a physical and not a logical theory; Burnet considering not-being in Eleatic theory simply to mean empty space; but Burnet admits that it was the main purpose of the theory of Parmenides to deny the existence of empty space; and in saying that empty space does not exist or is not Parmenides certainly cannot have meant the empty space is empty space and therefore he must have recognised the distinction between the question of existence and non-existence and the question of a substance which might or might not exist or occupy space. It may be that Parmenides did not consistently adhere to that distinction, but unless that logical distinction were present in his theory his views would be quite meaningless. Lecture XXVIII (8/6/32) [Hastings Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics.] Heraclitus then is endeavouring to present a logic, to give a coherent theory of existence, and he recognises as the first condition of such a theory that there should be only one way of being and correspondingly only one way of knowing (i.e., recognition that something or other is the case); and thus Heraclitus may be described as an empiricist. He refers to the object of his enquiry as wisdom and he says, in fragment 20, Wisdom is one thing, it is to know the thought by which all thing are steered through all things; i.e., the logic or wisdom of Heraclitus is an account of process and it applies to all phenomena whatever and as contrasted with this wisdom, the wisdom claimed by Pythagoras and other predecessors of Heraclitus is described as being a knowledge of many things and an art of mischief. The point is that in Pythagorean theory fundamentally different types of explanation are given in different cases and we have to suppose that there are different kinds of truth and reality; the units having one kind of being, the unlimited having a second and the figures a third. Similarly the harmonious and the discordant are supposed to exist in different ways. There is a fundamental distinction between being which is eternal and exact and becoming which is transitory and inexact, which is only relative to being as the figures are relative to the units. Now if we accept a theory of that kind then whatever initial successes in explanation we may have we are bound to come to insoluble problems and when such inconsistencies arise we have either to admit the unsoundness of our theory or make some attempt to explain the difficulty away. And it is because of this explaining away of difficulties that Pythagorean theory is described by Heraclitus as mischievous; it is mischievous e.g., it is unscientific, to refer certain discrepancies between our ways of measurement and actual mathematical and musical relations, simply to the intrusion of the unlimited to consider that what is indicated is a failure of these relations to be exact instead of a failure of our fixed standards of measurement to give an exact account of these relations. Now this kind of problem will not arise if we do not admit distinctions between ways of being, if we say with Heraclitus that there are no fixed units to which measurable things are relative and that what is called being and what is called becoming are both forms of process, that this characteristic of happening or going on is what is common to things. Heraclitus considers that, in taking this view, he is not explaining away the appearance of fixity or persistence; he is not saying that there is no such thing as being but all is becoming; on the contrary while on the one hand maintaining definitely that the persistence of things is due not to the absence of

6 process but to a balance of processes, 2 he likewise maintains that any process has being, that it is a process of a particular kind taking place under particular conditions and thus while we can make a distinction between persistence and alteration we can still say that all being is of the same sort. Process is for Heraclitus the common measure of things and recognition of this fact is wisdom, i.e., it enables us to understand things, to find the connections and distinctions between them by placing them all on a historical basis. That understanding of this kind is not given by mere inquiry is shown by the errors of the Pythagoreans and other thinkers of the time; that it is not given by mere observation is shown by the errors that we make in ordinary life, particularly the error of taking things to be fixed and static when actually changes are going on in them all the time. Heraclitus does not condemn either observation or enquiry; 3 he considers that they are both necessary and that there is no other way of arriving at truth but they do not safeguard us against error, particularly because in our observations and enquiries we have certain fixed expectations, certain fixed ideas (as they might be called), that we demand that nature should conform to our wishes and are frequently misled into supposing that it actually does so. This is the sort of thing Heraclitus has in mind when he says that we should expect the unexpected and he considers that the Pythagoreans do not do this, that they try to dictate to nature, to lay down standards that it ought to come up to, and thus are unscientific and illogical. Lecture XXIX (10/6/32) (Opinion concerned with isolated facts and knowledge the relation not so. Not a difference of attitude but of objects these are things we think about and the opinion may be true (which is then knowledge). No difference of attitude when there is a false opinion we think something to be the case we are wrong but we believe it as much as we believe a true one. One fact we know and another the reason for the former both capable of knowing and both can be subject of discussion; whether physical processes or mental difference if object there but no different type of knowing. Difference of objects does not enable us to assert different attitudes. Some say opinion fluctuates and knowledge is fixed matter of whether we change our beliefs or not and objects themselves; we can consistently hold to a false belief; change of opinion must be of proposition believing or disbelieving a proposition (i.e., believing its contradiction) in knowledge we believe contradiction is false and we believe we have made a correct decision no distinction on side of object no distinction between things fixed and changing no knowledge of these separately. In any cognitive operation we are dealing with questions of fact and we can recognise fact as it is or not recognise it as it is. Is this proposition true or false? No distinction between attitudes only that sometimes we are correct and sometimes not. We cannot distinguish between knowledge and correct opinion. No distinction between knowledge and belief). The position of Heraclitus must be regarded as a reaction to the position of the Pythagoreans and this is brought out by the fact that he says that Pythagoras did not have wisdom but only a knowledge of many things[,] the point being that we must 2 [J.A. pencilled margin note:] having subj & pred. rel. 3 [J.A. pencilled margin note:] obs may lead us astray

7 recognise that all things are on a common level or exist in the same way, or as Heraclitus puts it that all things are steered through all things; and the attempt to make a division in reality to give some things a higher reality than others is an illustration of our propensity to force our preferences on nature; to assume that it must be in accordance with our wishes and to refuse to accept as real that which is opposed to our wishes or makes things difficult for us, this being contrasted with the attitude which Heraclitus describes as expecting the unexpected i.e., not laying down laws for things but accepting them as they come and recognising that our knowledge of any particular thing can never be complete, to assume that we can have a complete knowledge of anything is to assume that that thing is unhistorical, that it has a certain fixed nature instead of having an infinite variety of characteristics[,] some of which change when the thing enters into new situations although, as Heraclitus admits, the characteristics of a thing also determine what situations it will enter into and how it will deal with them, a view which is put in an emphatic way in the fragment man s character is his destiny. And with this demand that we should expect the unexpected (i.e., that we should recognise that things develop and that they will not stay in a certain form merely because we want it) with that is connected the distinction which Heraclitus makes between desire and understanding. We fail to have an understanding of things when we are led away by our wishes 4 and this is not simply a matter of holding false views because it is always possible for us to make mistakes about particular things, we can learn only by trial and error (i.e., with the help of the mistakes we make) but it is a matter of a false logic. Thus the error of the Pythagoreans in thinking that things are made up out of units is not merely a matter of making a particular mistake, it is not simply that the things are not made up of units but that the very conception of the simple and ultimate unit is a confused one and is inconsistent (i.e., if worked out to its logical conclusion) with the possibility of knowledge, i.e., if in order to know what things really are we have to find out what are their ultimate constituents (the elements they are composed of) then we can never know what things really are because there is nothing we can regard as such an element. Accordingly, it is a part of the theory of Heraclitus that there are no simple entities, that anything that is a constituent of other things itself has constituents and has a variety of features so that we can never come down to the elementary; and if we could have elements we could never build up things out of them, this being the line of criticism of the Pythagoreans more particularly stressed by Zeno. The position of Heraclitus in connection with the operation of desire is somewhat similar to modern psycho-analytic doctrine, to the theory of Freud in particular; because Freud not only maintains that we are led into errors by our wishes but he also makes a distinction similar to that between a logical and an illogical way of treating things when he speaks of the mind first of all being dominated by the pleasure principle (in other words the principle of the satisfaction of desires) and afterwards coming to adopt the reality-principle (i.e., recognition of the fact that things proceed independently of us and that it is quite possible for our desires to be frustrated.) Of course, we should not make a rigid division between desire and understanding because it is only by having desires and expectations, only by active manipulation of things that we get to have any knowledge and there can be no time at 4 [J.A. pencilled margin note:] wishes dominating causes false logic

8 which a mind gives no recognition whatsoever to the reality principle. i.e., to the independent existence of things. This is involved in recognising anything at all and even the Pythagoreans, in spite of their theory of units, recognised empirical existence i.e., they recognised the existence as a matter of fact of things that they had not analysed into units, things, i.e., of which they could know the reality without knowing the elements of which it [sic] is composed even assuming that it had such elements; and this is an objection to the type of view which maintains that the object of science is analysis, or of the reduction of things to their elements, because if we could not have a definite knowledge of things although they were unanalysed we should not know what we were analysing and the knowledge that we gain, whether or not we say that it is dependent upon a knowledge of elements, it is a knowledge of concrete things. We may, e.g., hold the atomic theory of bodies, but this does not reduce our knowledge of the solar system (say) to a knowledge of atoms; on the contrary, we still continue to talk about the Sun and the Earth and the other planets and satellites and to give as exact an account as we can of the movements of these bodies in relation to one another, movements which we do not and cannot express as movements of atoms. The general position is then that what Heraclitus has to demonstrate as against the Pythagoreans is that the search for the simple is no way of giving an account of things, that logically we have to recognise the infinite complexity of things, the nonexistence of simplicity, and psychologically we may assert that theories of simple elements, however exactly scientific they might profess to be, simply illustrate our desire to simplify things for ourselves, to arrive at easy solutions, to make nature (or as we might better say, to make independent things) proceed in the very way we want them to. This, of course, is not to say that we cannot effect things external to us, we can act upon them so as to change them, and they can similarly act on us. But this interaction would be impossible unless both they and we had independent ways of behaving i.e., unless things of a certain character behaved in a certain way in a certain situation whether we desired them to or not. Lecture XXX (14/6/32) (Difficulty in early thinkers to see how far their theories are consistent. Best we can do consider historical development and material left to get a more or less consistent reasoning with what we know of men and kind of philosophical thought. Although we must reconstruct, we can arrive at definite conclusions, we find them confirmed by other seemingly isolated facts.) Position of Heraclitus criticism of Pythagoreanism and rejects simple reality all things complex and change. We have seen that he criticises Pythagoras for attaining only to a knowledge of many things and not to understanding. We have other fragments which directly refer to Pythagorean views and criticise these views. We have particularly the important fragment The hidden harmony/attunement is better than the open. Now by the open attunement Heraclitus is referring to the harmony postulated by the Pythagoreans in their theory of arrangements or configurations and the point is that in this case we have a certain external or outward arrangement of things, a certain manipulation of things to form a harmonious system and this, as we have seen, implies the operation of certain forces of which we can give no account, forces, viz., which would arrange things in one way rather than in another. These have to be distinct from the units thus arranged and yet if they are not expressible in terms of units they are, according to Pythagorean doctrine, not independently real things and so we cannot consistently say they could act on real

9 things so as to make them take up any open arrangement. The open arrangement is also to be understood as an arrangement of elements which we can take one at a time and which together compose a certain whole; and this implies that we can find the elements of things; but this is a defective theory if for no other reason because, in order that there should be a certain whole, there must be relations between the elements or between the parts and these relations are just as much elements, are just as essential to the existence of that particular whole as are any parts that we can choose. This is connected with the common contention that the whole is not the same as the sum of its parts. The paradoxical appearance of this statement is due simply to the confusion between two different senses of the word whole, for if by whole we mean an aggregate then a whole and a sum are the same thing, i.e., we should be speaking of what is called a collective whole; but if we mean something which could be divided into parts but in which those parts are at present not separated then the whole is clearly not the sum of these parts because that would mean that they could be arranged in any order, but is a certain definite arrangement of the parts i.e., implies certain specific relations between them. If, then, we say that there are certain elements of a thing we are leaving out of account relations between those elements; in other words, we are taking the elements as unrelated and so as incapable of forming a whole or of being arranged in a certain way and this involves a general criticism of the Pythagorean or any other doctrine of elements, viz., that if there are certain units which are reality (which alone are real) then relations between these units are unreal and so are distinctions between these units; and thus the units are not really distinguished in accordance with which criticism the Eleatics assert that there is only one unit. But, of course, to demonstrate that there cannot be more than one unitary being is not to prove that there can be even one. Now for this open attunement which consists of the arrangement of elements and to which these two main objections can be made, viz. that we imply forces which are not expressible in terms of units and also relations and distinctions which are not so expressible, Heraclitus substitutes his doctrine of the hidden harmony in terms of which we do not have elements of things but any constituent of a thing itself has constituents and these constituents take the form not of static or fixed entities but of processes or tensions which work in relation to one another, the result of which conception is that we do not require to suppose any forces apart from things themselves because each thing being itself a balance of forces or activities is capable of developing and of acting upon other things and so in place of the external arrangement of fixed elements we have the interaction of complex things each of which is to be considered as in process or as made up of processes. Now it has to be shown in what way this complexity and activity constitutes a harmony and in what way it can be said to be hidden. Now clearly on the doctrine of complexity, on the view that there are no ultimate constituents of things, there must always be something hidden from us in anything at all that we know; and it is just because of this that Heraclitus says we must expect the unexpected, must realise that there are always unknown factors in things and thus that they may behave in ways with which we were previously unacquainted. This does not mean that we cannot have definite knowledge of things, it simply means that we cannot have complete knowledge of anything; and the very fact that things are complex and changing makes it possible for us to be mistaken in what we believe about things; and to this must be added the fact that we ourselves are complex and changing; and thus, as already indicated in connection with the operation of our desires, that we can be mistaken about things. Heraclitus then admits the possibility of error but considers that the best

10 way to overcome error is to have understanding, which means to have logical theory of things as in process, to recognise process as the general condition of existence. Now it is in terms of this theory that Heraclitus says that eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men if they have souls that understand not their language; he doesn t suggest that there is any way of getting to know things apart from the senses but only that what we come to believe in that way has to be received critically; only that we are liable to be deceived by the senses if we have not worked out a logical theory. Of course, the main form of deception which has to be guarded against is the supposition that certain things are fixed, that nothing is going on within them, that there are no inner forces or inner tensions of things simply because we do not see all this is going on. These processes then are hidden from us, but they must nevertheless take place because we cannot think of anything as being absolutely static, we must think of things acting on and being acted on by other things and that would be impossible unless both of the interacting things were in process, in fact we cannot think of any relation between the fixed and the changing, between that which has a history and that which has no history; consequently we have to think of all things as historical and of nothing as fixed so that insofar as our senses lead us to suppose that certain things are fixed (viz. because there is no observed movement in them) the senses are misleading. But the fault lies really in our lack of understanding, in our desire for fixity in nature which is a form of our desire for security or safety and for an easy solution to our problems. That being the position of Heraclitus, what he has to do is to show how things can appear to be unchanging; in other words, he has to give an account of the persistence of things as well as of their alteration in terms of his general theory of process. Lecture XXXI (15/6/32) According to the theory of Heraclitus, change should not be contrasted with permanence, in the normal sense of something that is not subject to change but remains fixed[;] but only with persistence, i.e., with the notion of a thing which does not change in certain respects but nevertheless is going through various processes so that we can definitely distinguish a later stage from an earlier stage although we say that these are stages of the same thing. The same applies to things which we can observe moving about and performing various actions (e.g., persons) we can say that is the same person that I saw yesterday although we recognise that that person s activities of today are not the same as his activities of yesterday and if we contend that what this means is that there is in a given person something which does not change while these various processes are going on then we are faced with the problem of showing what is the relation between the fixed and the changing features of the person and how if we regard the fixed element as the person himself we can say that the changing activities are his. If we are going to say that he acts differently on different occasions then we are admitting that he is a complex and active being, in fact that he consists of activities and processes and is not to be contrasted with them. Nevertheless we do distinguish between a thing which continues in existence and one which ceases to exist and even if both continuance and cessation are to be understood in terms of process as there must be some differences in the processes involved in the two cases. We distinguish between the activities of a person while he is alive and that person dying or ceasing to exist even if both of these things are describable as processes. Now Heraclitus solves this problem by means of his theory

11 of exchanges and this can be understood by reference to the example of a fire or a flame as explained by Burnet. When we see the flame of a candle e.g. we speak of it as a certain persisting thing; we call it that flame and yet we know that all the time processes are going on in it, we know that a certain amount of material is being consumed and that if there were not a continued supply of material the flame would cease to exist. Any fire then has to be kept supplied with fuel and at the same time it gives off certain waste products (smoke, ash, etc.) and these two processes of receiving and giving off continue so long as the fire continues. Now Heraclitus applies this conception to things in general; he considers that they all receive supplies or, as we may put it, are nourished by their surroundings and that they all give out certain things to their surroundings; that in all cases we have exchanges going on; and it is this theory of exchanges that makes possible the distinction between persistence and change. A thing persists without apparent change so long as there is a balance between what it receives and what it gives out, so long as we have equality of exchanges; but if there is inequality then the thing alters e.g., if the supply of fuel to a fire ceases or is eliminated the fire itself will be diminished and if the inequality of exchanges continues the fire will eventually go out or cease to exist. Of course these exchanges are processes, things which go on; but the conception of equal exchanges enables us to see how there could be persistence and how we could think that no processes were going on in things. Now this conception of exchanges can be exemplified in many other ways and is in fact essential to the whole theory of Heraclitus and it is this that is meant by the hidden attunement which is the balance of exchanges and it is that which keeps things in existence. And it appears from this that as opposed to the views of the Pythagoreans nothing is to be regarded as self-subsistent, as maintaining itself in existence, but the existence of anything is dependent on the existence of other things which can keep it supplied or fulfil its requirements. Of course, that is not to say that the thing exists relatively to these other things or has a peculiar kind of dependent existence. In order to state the theory at all we have to recognise the actual existence both of the thing itself and of the things surrounding it but we have also to recognise the relation between the two and the fact that only while there are certain relations, certain supplies being given, does the thing continue, just as if we take nourishment in the narrower sense, we can see that animals survive only so long as they obtain nourishment. Things exist then in interaction with their environment and it is a certain balance of actions that ensures their continuance and with that is connected a certain balance of tensions within each thing itself: i.e., we are not to interpret the process of exchange in what is sometimes called a merely mechanical way, i.e., we are not to think that what happens is just that so much matter is put into a certain place and so much is taken out and that so long as these two amounts are equal there will be the same amount of matter in that place because this implies a distinction between matter and the forces operating on matter similar to that which is implicit in Pythagorean doctrine and which is made explicit by Empedocles and Anaxagoras. As we have seen, Heraclitus doesn t accept this distinction between matter and forces but considers that things themselves are the operating factors; and thus while we can say that the environment of a thing gives it nourishment we can also say that the thing seeks and secures nourishment from its environment and that in so far as it fails to do this it fails to survive. It is not then something passively operated on as would be implied by the theory of a mere transference of material to it from outside and the fact that a thing s persistence depends on its own operations and not merely on its surroundings is what

12 is conveyed in a rather overemphasised form in the statement that character is destiny. It is not the case that our history depends entirely on ourselves, it does depend to some extent on the opportunities we have, but still it is worth while pointing out that we ourselves make opportunities and that what is an opportunity for us depends upon our own character. That applies not only to animate beings but to all beings. What happens to them depends on what things they are brought in contact with but it also depends on how they react to those things or, as we may put it, on what they bring into contact with themselves. If then we are to avoid the conclusion that a thing is a merely passive recipient we have to think of it as itself characterised by exchange or by a balance of tensions and only in that way being able to enter into active relations with other things and it is this opposition not only between what we may call receipts and expenditure but also between tensions within the thing itself that Heraclitus is referring to when he says that strife is harmony, i.e., existence depends upon opposition and not upon any fixed position or state of rest in which opposition has been overcome. Of course, we can see when we consider the receiving of supplies or nourishment that the continued existence of any given thing depends upon the cessation of other things and this is another example of the strife which is involved in continued existence. But what Heraclitus seems to be referring to more particularly is the internal strife, the way in which the existence of a thing depends upon the opposition of tendencies within itself, on the existence of forces pulling in different directions and that is the hidden harmony. There is this opposition or discord, as we might call it; but if we called it discord it would be because we had failed to recognise that the very existence of things depends upon opposition and so there could be no open harmony as maintained by the Pythagoreans but the sustaining of existence by means of opposition, by the balancing of opposing forces is the only real harmony that there can be and it is this that we have to discover (i.e., we have to understand this hidden harmony) if we are to attain understanding of any particular thing. Lecture XXXII (17/6/32) Now in this matter of exchange we have seen that fire is chosen as a particularly good example viz. of a thing which requires certain material for its continuance and at the same time gives off certain waste products (as we might call them), a thing which exists only through these exchanges, only through being nourished and at the same time nourishing other things, and only through a certain internal tension or opposition of tendencies[,] an opposition which appears in the fact that, at any given time[,] so much that is not fire is becoming fire (or is being kindled); and so much that is fire is becoming not fire (or is being extinguished); and it is through these pulls in opposite directions that the fire continues to exist. Now this opposition of tensions and this exchange are illustrated in the history of any particular thing we like to choose, so that while fire occupies a particularly important place in the theory of Heraclitus, and might even be described as being the most real element (a view which would give a rationalistic character to Heraclitus theory) we cannot say that this affects his main logical position i.e., we cannot say that the theory of exchanges and opposition of tension applies only to a limited set of things. The position is, on the contrary, that everything that exists does so by being in process and by having certain interactions with its surroundings and this may be true even if the special theory of fire is false.

13 We can say then, that the logical character of the philosophy of Heraclitus lies in his treatment of things as complex activities. Now as regards the special position allotted to fire we have the fragment that states that fire is exchanged for all things and all things for fire just as gold is exchanged for wares and wares for gold. That would imply that there is a fiery stage of every process that we like to consider and that view is certainly not implied by the general theory of exchanges. On the other hand, we find that Heraclitus illustrates his view by reference to many things other than fire e.g. in speaking of the hidden harmony, in illustrating the view that strife is harmony, he says that it is an attunement of opposite tensions like that of the bow or the lyre; the point being in the case of the bow that the propulsion of the arrow depends upon pulls in opposite directions: i.e., the pulling of the string in one direction and the bending of the bow in the other direction. And similarly, in the case of the lyre, the production of musical sounds depends upon the application by the player of a tension in a different direction from that of the strings. These then are cases quite independent of a special consideration of fire and illustrate the theory of the operation of things through opposition. And again, in the matter of exchanges, Heraclitus refers to the flowing of a river and says that you cannot step twice into the same river because fresh waters are always flowing in on you, the point being that we recognise a certain thing that we call a river but the continuance of this object depends not on the retention of certain material but on equality of exchanges, i.e., on the fact that, while a certain amount of water is passing downstream from a given point, an equal or approximately equal amount is being brought down to that point and it is because of the equality of these exchanges that we are able to recognise that river as a particular thing just as we can recognise a fire as a particular thing while there is a balance between kindling and extinguishing. Then Heraclitus illustrates his theory by reference to the soul and body of man. They also continue by means of exchanges and even if Heraclitus is wrong in describing the materials concerned, the things exchanged, as fire, air, earth and water, this does not affect the theory of exchanges itself; and as far as the body is concerned, the doctrine of Heraclitus is in accordance with the modern theory of metabolism, of the existence in the body of anabolic and catabolic processes, processes of the building-up and breaking down of tissue, the balance of which enables the body to continue in existence. And of course that theory has to be applied universally; we speak of a river as being maintained in existence through exchanges of portions of water but the various quantities of water must be themselves maintained in the same way by means of exchanges; they also must have internal tensions and must be undergoing processes of building-up and breaking-down and that means, as we have seen, that there can be no units, no elements of things, but that everything which is a constituent of something else itself has constituents and that is illustrated in the fragment about the soul (Fr. 71) where Heraclitus says: you will not find out the boundaries of soul so deep is the measure of it; in other words, the soul like other things is to be regarded as infinitely complex and not as being made up of a number of elements which can be rearranged in such a way as to make the soul better according to the theory of the Pythagoreans. The position is that we cannot represent the soul (and similarly with anything else) by means of a Pythagorean figure; one main objection being that such a fixed configuration could have no history and that we couldn t find out any relation between one configuration and another; so that the notion of becoming better or worse by a rearrangement of elements is quite meaningless.

14 That Heraclitus is thinking quite definitely of the Pythagorean theory appears still more obviously in fragment 59 where he says that couples are things whole and things not whole, what is drawn together and what is drawn apart, the harmonious and the discordant. Now this is a direct criticism of the Pythagorean theory of units because a unit on that theory is something which is just one, whose character is unity, and a couple is that which is just two, a couple of units, but when we speak of a couple we imply that in some sense it is also one so that we have something which is both one and two. Now on the theory of absolute units that would be quite impossible and so Heraclitus is bringing out the incoherence of Pythagorean mathematics in that the Pythagoreans could not consistently speak of any number but one, could not have any theory of a group of things and this is so far in accordance with the Eleatic criticism, but Heraclitus goes further and points to the solution of the problem viz. that we must be able to think of the same thing as both 2 and 1 and similarly as both 3 and 1, 10 and 1 or any number and one and therefore we cannot uphold the doctrine of absolute units; the fact that something can be taken as one does not show that it cannot also be taken as many, that it is indivisible or is an ultimate unit. Heraclitus then rejects the theory of ultimate units in favour of the theory of the complexity of things, and just as anything that we like to take has constituents so that anything we like to take is a constituent or is part of a wider system because it is only by being nourished that it can continue; it can exist only in interaction with surrounding things as the river (e.g.) exists only in a wider system which includes evaporation, the formation of clouds and rainfall as well as the flowing of the river itself from source to sea. And again in this connection we have to consider the possibility of a certain inconsistency on Heraclitus part viz. the possibility of his supposing that there is a total system, one which includes all others, which therefore has no environment and which therefore according to the theory of tensions and exchanges would be static. But even if Heraclitus did assume the existence of a total system this inconsistency would not affect his main logical position, which, on the contrary, would help to establish the position that there is not a total system or a totality of things. Lecture XXXIII (21/6/32) We can say that Heraclitus avoids the difficulties of the Pythagoreans and also Anaximander in regard to being and becoming because he does not make these different forms of existence but treats becoming or process as characteristic of things at any time and in treating of what is characteristic of things at any time he is bringing up the really philosophical problem which may be contrasted with the attempt that is made to distinguish stages in a universal history, history being universal according to the theory of Heraclitus only in the sense that everything is historical and not in the sense that there is a history of things in general. It is this common way of being viz. being in process that is the object of philosophical enquiry and the knowledge of which constitutes wisdom; and this is further specified in the theory of exchanges and in the contention that strife is harmony; in fact we can take that assertion as being the word or logos (reason) of Heraclitus, his fundamental contention is that things exist through strife, that we have pulls in opposite directions and that the existence of one thing depends upon the cessation of other things. Thus he says in fragment 62: We must know that war is common to all and strife is justice and that all things come into being and pass away through strife.