Daily Linz 8 - Fundamental Stuff, Part 2
by Lindsay Perigo
In the first installment in this series we acquainted ourselves with Western man’s first fitful philosophical gropings—with the Milesians, who wrestled with the question of, what was the “fundamental stuff” of the universe? We noted that the importance of this inquiry lay not so much in the answers posited, but in the fact that it was occurring at all. Though we would now classify it as “scientific” rather than “philosophical,” it represented an attempt by the inquirers “… to understand the world by the use of their reason, without appealing to religion, or revelation, or authority, or tradition. This in itself was something wholly new, and one of the most important milestones in human development.”
The purpose of this series is to gain an understanding of the historical context in which philosophy has wound up in its current corrupt, moribund state, where reason is disdained. It’s too early yet to talk of villains, since the early philosophers were innocents, proceeding in good faith, but we can certainly see in the next thinker we’ll consider the seeds of one strand of contemporary delinquency. Heraclitus (flourished in the early sixth century, B.C.) was greatly admired by and influential upon, among others, Hegel and Nietzsche, two-and-a-half millennia after his death.
Heraclitus was preoccupied with the phenomenon of change. For him, the “fundamental stuff” of the universe was not a substance, but a process (or a substance—fire—embodying the process). “Everything changes, nothing abides.” “Everything is flux.” Famously, “You cannot step twice into the same river, for fresh waters are ever flowing in upon you.” It's not the same river, nor the same foot, nor the same you. Before you can say, “Here’s the river, here’s me, there’s my foot in the river,” all have changed in some way. Yet of course it is the same river, the same you, the same foot! So— recognition of change requires the recognition of contradiction. The dialectician variously known as Chris Sciabarra and Dr. Diabolical Dialectical is the same Dr. Diabolical Dialectical who wrote Ayn Rand: Russian Radical, yet he is not—all his cells have reproduced, his hair has fallen out and he wears a wig, and his brain has turned gooey from too little wine and too much dialectics (he doesn’t wear a wig really). A is non-A. A thing is what it was, but not what it was. A thing is what it is, and what it is not. A thing is the same as itself and different from itself. A thing is always in the process of becoming. The process is driven by strife, and bespeaks a unity of opposites.
This would appear to be a flat-out contradiction, ahead of time, of the Law of Identity, according to which a thing is what is and only what it is. I did warn last week that we would find in our historical journey that there’s nothing new under the sun. Let’s pause to contemplate a couple of quotations:
"The law of [non-]contradiction is afflicted with falsity. It says nothing can both be and not be. But anything that can change defies it. It can both be and not be with the utmost ease." F. C. S. Schiller, (twentieth century British pragmatist philosopher).
"Life consists before all just in this. That a living creature is at each moment itself and yet something else. Life is therefore also a contradiction, present in processes, continually occurring and solving itself." (Frederick Engels, Karl Marx's sidekick and theoretician. We know the importance of contradiction in the dialectics of Marx, who got them from Hegel.)
Change was for Heraclitus what water was for Thales, the “indeterminate boundless” for Anaximander, air for Anaximenes. The process of change was embodied for Heraclitus in fire. Fire is transformation—it takes things in and turns them into heat, smoke and ashes. (Actually, commentators seem to differ as to whether he thought it was the basic reality or a metaphor for it, the basic reality being change. In the end it doesn't matter. Everything changes, nothing abides.)
Amusingly, Heraclitus had a follower, Cratylus, about one hundred years later, who took him very seriously indeed. If everything is in flux, Cratylus reasoned, words have no referent in reality. I might say “Chris Sciabarra” but before I've got the words out he's gone. Poof! Fluxed out of existence! Cratylus rebuked Heraclitus for saying you can't step into the same river twice—you can't step into it once. The term river is meaningless—there is nothing in reality to which it refers. In which case there’s nothing for it but to stop speaking. Which Cratylus did—he communicated by means of moving his finger! Given that he couldn't wag the same finger twice, or once, and that there was nothing to communicate, you have to wonder why he bothered doing even that. I would heartily commend this course of action, however, to the various modern-day proponents of the view that words are “vague” who, contrarily, always seem to want to use words interminably.
Heraclitus didn't stop at change, though. For him, behind the flux and the chaos and the contradictions was Law, Reason, God. The contradictions were evident to the senses; the Law, the true underlying reality was not. There was appearance, manifest to the senses; there was reality, the unity underlying the diversity, which was accessible to our reason, which was a collective phenomenon (oh boy, what was this setting us up for?!).
It seems our Heraclitus was something of a misanthrope, deeming most of his fellow-men to be cretins in general and his philosophical predecessors to be particularly cretinous: “Of all whose discourses I have heard, there is not one who attains to understanding that wisdom is apart from all.” He glorified war as the manifestation of strife: “War is the father of all and the king of all …” Because men were such cretins, what was good for them needed to be forced up on them: “Every beast is driven to the pasture with blows.” (The faith/force liaison already?)
It was his views on change, though, that truly set the agenda.
Cue, Parmenides.
(To be continued …)
P.S. – Please note there’ll be no Daily Linz tomorrow, Thursday October 13, as I’m having a new computer installed.
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