Wisdom (Metaphysics 2005)
10. Heraclitus: Hidden Harmony, Strife as Father of All, and Fire
Class of 2005-01-27
https://berquistcourse.com/course/philosophy/7a-wisdom-2005/010-heraclitus-hidden-harmony-strife-as-father-of-all-and-fire/

[0:00] The Son, the Holy Spirit, Amen. God, our enlightenment. Guardian angels strengthen the lights of our minds, order and illumine our images, and arouse us to consider more correctly. Saint Thomas Aquinas, Angelic Doctor, pray for us. And help us to understand all that you have written. In the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, Amen. Amen. The last time we were on page two of the current readings, and we had seen this group of fragments, where Heraclitus speaking about change, had pointed out what seems to be contradictions, right?

[0:39] And he spoke as if change is between opposites, which it is. And since we actually say that what the hard becomes soft, and the healthy becomes sick, and so on, and day becomes night, we seem to be saying that one opposite becomes the other, which would be a what contradiction, right?

[1:03] Now does Heraclitus really think that day and night are the same, and the sleeping and the waking are the same? Well, some people took that as being the truth, like Hegel in modern times, and Karl Marx, and people like that, right? But notice now around the middle of page two there, DK fifty four, and a few fragments there, which show that maybe Heraclitus is pointing out what seems to be a contradiction, huh?

[1:34] He says the hidden harmony is better than the what? Appearance. Now Socrates brings out this very well, doesn't he? Socrates would always what say? What do you think? And you tell him what you think, and maybe some things you think lead to a contradiction with something else you think, and therefore your thoughts are not in what harmony, okay? Now most people walking around though they think their thoughts fit together, right?

[2:16] You say, but when Socrates pulls them out of your head and compares them and sees what follows from some of them, they tend to what contradict others, right? Okay.

[2:30] So the simplest example of that in Socrates is the first conversation with the slave boy in the Meno, where the slave boy is asked by Socrates how do you double a square? Double the side, he says. Okay. Well, if you take an example like a square that's two by two, and you double the side and get a square four by four, eventually you'll see that four by four is not double of two by two.

[2:55] Even the slave boy can see that, right? So Socrates leads you out of a state of apparent harmony. Into what contradiction? But hidden underneath this contradiction is a what? Harmony. A harmony that is true, right? And hidden underneath that contradiction is the way you actually do double a square, which is to take the diameter of the square, and that would be the side of a square twice as big.

[3:30] Okay. Now, notice what he said at the beginning: nature loves to hide. And now he's saying the hidden harmony is better than the apparent harmony. But that's what's really out there in what nature? Okay.

[3:51] Now you could apply that to other things too, besides knowing. You could apply it to what? Friendship, right? The hidden harmony is better than the apparent. The parent harmony is the harmony of the cocktail hour or something, right? Mm-hmm. Or the harmony when the man and the woman are going out and you know, placing entertainment on and being entertained, right? Huh? And so they seem to be in harmony, right?

[4:17] But can you really become a good friend to somebody without coming into some kind of conflict with them? See? But maybe hidden underneath this conflict is a true what? Harmony, right?

[4:37] They do not understand how that which is opposed agrees with itself. There is a harmony of opposites, as in the case of the bow and the lyre Well, you know, an Indian I know better Indian, I know better than bow. Example there, right? If I start pushing with this hand in that direction, and I start pulling with this hand in this direction, my hands are working at cross purposes, aren't they?

[5:07] But now with the bow, when I aim the guy over there. I'm pulling this way with this hand, and I'm pushing with this hand. But are they working at cross purposes? No. The more I pull the more I'm gonna do it this way, the greater force, right? The arrow will go all the way across the room and through that man there and put him to the wall.

[5:29] Do you see? So although my hands are pulling in opposite directions, they're really working together, aren't they? Right. So maybe things seem to be opposed when they're not.

[5:48] And now this beautiful statement: the opposite is useful. I tell my American students the American economic system is based on that, isn't it? It's based on competition, right? Competition is useful, right? Keeps the price down, right? So if I'm charging too much for the product, and someone else offers it for a lesser price than me, I will be out of business, right? Unless I come down my price, right?

[6:20] Or if he makes an improvement in his product, and I'm going to have to what? Improve my product, right? And our government is based upon the idea that opposing parties is what? Useful, right? And soon in the 20th century, a one-party state is usually a tyranny, right? Communist party or the Nazi party or the fascist party or something.

[6:56] So the other ways that the opposite is useful. In the courtroom, courtroom, same thing, right? We think in the courtroom there ought to be one guy trying to prove he's guilty, another guy trying to prove he's not guilty, right? And we think out of that opposition we'll get closer to the truth, right? That if you just heard the guy saying he's guilty, or you just heard the guy saying he's not guilty.

[7:27] So our legal system, in a way, and our political system, and economic system are based upon the idea that the opposite is what? Useful, right?

[7:39] And character develops when you have somewhat opposition, right? It is useful for someone to oppose my thinking. What I think. Well, if I'm mistaken in what I think, then his opposition to me is useful because I might discover my error and escape from it, right? But even if I have true thinking, right? When he opposes me, then I'm forced to what? Think it out. Yeah, to defend it better and so on, right?

[8:12] And so Augustine says that heresy helped to develop theology, right? And so you see so many works that we see in Augustine and other works in the patristic period, contra so and so, contra Manichaeos, contra Donatistas, whoever it is, right? And contra this man or that man, right, who's come up with some crazy idea, right, who's attacked some article of the faith, right? And the opposition was useful for the development of what?

[8:38] Theology. And from those differing comes the most beautiful what? Harmony. Well, just take example of a beautiful painting, right? If the whole painting is filled with light, or the whole painting is dark, it would not be beautiful, right? But you have, say, Rembrandt, the man in the helmet, and there's a shaft of light that catches the thing, right? Okay. So my mother used to say that a diamond is most.

[9:09] Beautiful under candlelight, right? Rather than under say this kind of a light, huh? Because out of opposites, right, It, seems to kind of sparkle, right? And the stars at night are beautiful, but if the whole sky was illuminated, wouldn't be beautiful, would it? Or if the whole sky was dark, but the black sky with the stars against it is what beautiful, huh? And usually the sun is more beautiful at sunrise or sunset, right?

[9:38] Where there's shadows and things of this sort, right? Then the during midday, right, when it's just all light, huh? Maybe you notice in this kind of weather that we had the moonlight, a full moon, and you get that pattern of the trees, you know, on the snow. It's really beautiful, huh? But those are What opposites, right?

[10:05] We get the moon in our new chapel now. It does. Yeah. Moon beams. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And obviously, this is true about marriage and the present controversy, right? Yeah, right. From opposites comes the most beautiful harmony, huh?

[10:25] But now he says all things come to be by strife, huh? Well, here he seems to be talking about a third kind of cause, right? The cause of motion and becoming, right? The mover, the maker, right? And he attributes this to the opposites, right? That are in things, and to the struggle of the opposites, right? So he says, "War is the father of all things, the king of all things.

[11:00] " In these he has shown gods, but those men; these he has made slaves, and those free. Well, now Hegel took this over, right? The Hegel's dialectical method, in his sense, is that everything is a struggle of what opposites, right? And the communists or Marxists got this from what Hegel. So, Karl Marx says that what dialectics, in the Marxist sense, is the struggle of opposites, huh? Okay.

[11:32] War is the father of all, right? Okay. So sometimes the Marxists go right back to the statement here, right? Heraclitus and say, "ah, a good exposition." Lenin says, "Of the rudiments of dialectical materialism, right?" But notice, dialectical materialism is saying what that everything starts with matter, right? And things develop out of matter through a struggle of what opposites, right? And there is some truth to this, right?

[12:02] But notice what he says here: "War is the father of all things." He doesn't say the mother, but the father, right? And we saw before how, with Mother Earth, huh, the mother, and in Latin there with the word materia, is derived from mater, mother, right? That his use of the word "father" here is that he's thinking of another kind of cause now, huh? The mover or the what maker?

[12:32] Yeah. And that's one reason why we call God a father and not a mother, right? Because he's a cause in the sense of a mover, the unmoved mover, right, or the first maker. He's not a cause in the sense of matter, right?

[12:51] And so, when Aristotle talks about the mover cause, he says, "As the adviser or the father, right." Giving the example of the father as a cause in the sense of nature, and then the advisor, uh a sense of mover or maker by reason, right? So it's very significant the use of the word father here.

[13:14] Next fragment is touching upon that same thing. We must know that war is common and strife is justice, and that all things come into be into being by strife and fate or necessity. I see. Heraclitus is the man who most of all emphasized the change in the world around us. All things flow; nothing abides. So it's not strange that he should begin to think of this third kind of cause, which is the source of motion, right?

[13:43] The source of becoming. Now, the next fragment here. We mentioned in the beginning how we look at these fragments as reasonable guesses, and a guess can be reasonable because there's a reason for it, right? Good reason for it, especially, or because reason, meaning the power, of the ability, is naturally inclined towards it. And notice in this beautiful fragment, he says, "It is wise listening not to me, Heraclitus, but to reason, to agree that all things are one, right?

[14:32] That it's the very nature of reason to look for something one, unity, yeah, yeah. Now perhaps it's more known that That reason looks for order, right? But order is based upon something one. So we order all events, for example, chronologically by one event, right? So I was born in 1936, right? And everybody could have go around the table here and say when he was born, right? Okay.

[15:06] And when Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, and when George Washington crossed the Delaware, and so on, but all these events are put in order by one event, the birth of Christ, right? Or we say Aristotle died in 322 BC. Okay, so we order all other events in time before or after one event. Okay, and the army is what ordered by going back to one man.

[15:45] Of course, we spoke of this already when we talked about how Thales, the very first philosopher, looked for something what one, right? Okay. If you read the great physicists too, they always talk about the search for unity. How they never give up looking for something one right to explain everything

[16:06] equation of everything now in the fragment in the bottom of page two you get the position of Anik of Heraclitus on the first matter and instead of taking mother earth or water or air he takes what fire in this fragment all things are exchanged for fire and fire for all things

[16:39] just as goods for gold and gold for goods huh or we could say goods for money and money for goods right huh although they don't really turn things into money right and then return money to something else but it's kind of a nice little comparison right now is fire as good a guess as water or air

[17:04] in in a way looking looking coming from his position it see it seems to be a very good guess simply because it's so volatile and looking for something constantly changing okay if you're thinking of a mover fire would be a better guess than water or air right it's transforming yeah yeah but if you're thinking of fire as the matter out of which things are made then fire would not seem to be as good as water or air because it has more definite qualities than they have right okay although perhaps in terms of being fine and thin and penetrating things it would be a better guess huh so in one way it's a better guess being finer maybe and thinner and more penetrating in other ways

[17:52] insofar as it has more definite qualities even than water it's more definitely hot and dry than water is cold right it's not as good a guess right but maybe he's thinking a bit of the mover when he guesses fire too right wouldn't it be wouldn't it be natural for him to yeah come at it from that position yeah yeah point of view but it's kind of interesting that what makes it a good mover it's being so hot so it can boil the water and make the hot air rise and so on what makes it a good mover makes it in a way a bad guess as the first matter which is a kind of a sign maybe that you shouldn't identify the matter with the

[18:37] mover and we'll see in Empedocles and more so in Anaxagoras that they'll start to separate more and more the what matter and the mover right Empedocles much more than than Heraclitus does where they're kind of jumbled together and even more so in what Anaxagoras—they'll be separated, huh? But the Marxists like to go back to this, you see, because they don't want to separate matter and the mover, because that's going to put you on the road to the immaterial unmoved mover, right?

[19:13] On the road to God, so they want to keep that confusion, right? Now, the modern physicists, like the great Heisenberg, said if you exchange for the word fire energy, you can repeat word for word what he says, right? Because we say in modern science that all things are exchanged for energy and energy for all things, according to Einstein's equation, right? Four equals—I mean, equals mc squared, right?

[19:42] Um, and Heisenberg said that the modern physicists, things have energy both as that out of which things are made, right? But also, it's the mover, right? So that kind of confusion of the two, right? Okay. Now. Obviously, though, getting stuff in that comparison, because the fire of Heraclitus is a much more concrete thing than energy in modern physics. Energy in modern physics is something that appears in the what universal equations of modern physics, right?

[20:22] So it's a very abstract mathematical thing, right? The universal equations. But sometimes I make a little comparison here, which is a certain likeness of these universal equations of modern physics to the premises of a syllogism.

[20:48] Because in both cases, you you deduce something from them, right? Now, Aristotle when he talks about the premises of a syllogism. Sometimes he speaks as if they are the material cause of the conclusion, What the conclusion is made out, of, right? Sometimes he speaks of them as if they are the mover or the maker of the conclusion. Well, let's just take the the form of syllogism to illustrate this point.

[21:18] Syllogism is an argument in which some statements laid down, right? Another follows necessarily because of those laid down. So I lay these two down: every B is A, whatever B and A may be, and every C is B. What follows necessarily? Every C is A. Every C is A. Yeah.

[21:45] Now you can say that the conclusion is made out of its parts, right? And its parts C and A are found in the what premises, right? So in that sense, premises are the matter of the conclusion, C and A, right? Okay. But B, the so-called middle term, is not a part of the conclusion, is it? What does it contribute then?

[22:21] What brings together C and A, right? Okay. So the middle term is more like the mover or maker, and the major and the minor terms that are brought together in the conclusion are more like what matter, right?

[22:41] So the universal equations of physics are maybe a little bit like premises, right? They have some likeness to matter and some likeness to mover, without really being those two things, right?

[23:06] It's like this guy, I know, arranged for this man, woman to be at the same party where everybody was married, except for them. They thought they were suitable to each other, right? And they suddenly were. very quickly were engaged. So, is he a part of the marriage or not? A mover catalyst. Yeah, he was a mover. They are the parts of the marriage, right? But they were brought together by him, right?

[23:34] Okay. So the middle term is like that man, right? Like the middleman economics who brings together in some way the consumer and the producer, right?

[23:59] So Heraclitus may be somewhat confusedly thinking of matter and mover together in his what fire, right? Huh. So, in that sense, he represents an advance beyond the guys before who've been talking simply about the matter out of which things are made, right? And he's seen the need for the mover.

[24:28] Beginning and end are common in the circumference of the circle. We saw the importance of that for cause, right? And even for the first kind of cause that we've seen, namely matter, we saw that explicitly in the words of Anaximander, right? But what is the beginning of things is also there, what? In, right, okay. But the materialist is thinking like we think. we say on Ash Wednesday?

[24:57] It's not too far away, I guess. Dust thou art, right? And to dust thou shalt return, right? So if you're made out of dust, you go. The material you go back to dust, right? Huh. Okay. But God also is a beginning and end of things, but in another meaning of beginning and end, right? He's a beginning of things in the sense of a maker or creator, right?

[25:24] And an end in the sense of purpose, that for the sake of which, right? So I'd always like, to say to people, I'd rather have a beginning and end in that sense than the sense which bad would be my beginning and my end, right? Do you see? But that's interesting, huh? That he'll point that out on that same point. So the Greeks are saying that reality is basically what circular, right?

[25:51] In the sense that the what beginning and end are the same, right? Rather than a straight line, right? Okay. We tend in the modern world to. Talk about progress, right? And progress is a straight line. If it has a beginning, it seems to have the end, right?

[26:14] Like these computers, right? Huh? They're always making them better and better, right? And you see these little portable phones now, these little handheld telephones now that they take a picture, right? The advertising now, one of my nieces has one of these things, you know, and she's over to somebody at the house there, you know, take a picture with your telephone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I suppose you could probably transpose it.

[26:39] to somebody Something. I mean, it's constantly, you know, being updated all the time. See, huh? You buy a new computer, and you know, in six months, it's outdated. You know, you get that old thing.

[26:57] We keep on being able to do more and more things, and I have to say, well, a few things. If you word processing, that's all I do, and they usually make things more difficult for me to do what I want to do.

[27:09] But anyway, now the next group of fragments here, you see that maybe Heraclitus is anticipating something we'll meet very explicitly in Empedocles, huh? But he seems to be saying now maybe there's something behind this Earth that the poets talked about, right? This water that Thales talked about, this air that Anaximenes talked about, and this fire that I talk about, right?

[27:46] He's saying the way up and down is one and the same. Maybe this is part of the circle of things, huh? Now he's kind of looking maybe at the universe, huh? As it occurs to us in ordinary experience,

[28:05] what you find here in the center of the universe, so to speak, is the Earth, right? And top of the Earth there's some water, and top of the water there's air, and then the sun, the moon, and the stars there. up there you get some fire, right? Okay.

[28:28] And now he seems to speak as if Earth could become water, right? And water could become air, and air could become fire, and then vice versa: fire could become air, air water, water what Earth, right? Now, if that is in fact true, then is any one of these four the fundamental or first matter? No, unless he's there's something underlying it, right?

[29:01] But he doesn't really go into saying what that first matter would be, right? But he says the death of earth is water coming to be, right?

[29:13] Just like we might say, what? If you had given me a glass here of snow, right? Well, snow is earthy, right? Huh? Or if it was ice, especially, right? That would be like earth, right? And it's the death of ice to become what? Water, right? And the death of water is air coming to be, like when I boil the water, it turns into air, right? Okay.

[29:40] So you got something hot and moist, the air there, right? Huh? And then of air, it's what? The death of that is fire, right? It's like a wax candle, right? It's kind of earthy thing, right? And then it becomes at the top there, liquid like water, right? And then all of a sudden you got fire there, right? Huh? And then vice versa. The death of air is the coming to be for air, and the death of air is the coming to be for water, right?

[30:09] So this way up and the way what? Down, right? Yeah, something like that. You go from the solid to the liquid, and from the liquid to the gas, right? And then steam condenses into water, right? And the water solidifies into ice, right? Okay. Is death to souls to become water? He's speaking like Anaximenes, right? That the soul is air, right? It is death to souls or air to become water, and death to water to become earth.

[30:45] Water comes to be from earth, and the soul or air from what? Water, right? Now, interesting, use the word death there, right? Huh? Okay.

[31:06] Of course, the word nature is taken from what? Birth, yeah. And you make pose birth to death, right? Okay. So interesting how we borrow words sometimes from living things to apply to even non-living things, right? I used to kid the physicist when I was teaching at St. Mary's College in California. You know, talk about quantum jump. You know, I said, "Well, how can it jump? It doesn't have any legs."

[31:33] But the word jump is taken from the act of the legs, isn't it? Yeah. Quantum jump. What are you talking about? Okay. Now in DK thirty, you have this idea that there's some fundamental matter, maybe fire, which what? Underlies. Yeah, stays forever, right? We think this thought is common to the early Greeks that whatever is the first matter, or what they thought was the first matter, that is what eternal, right?

[32:05] It doesn't grow old, right? It remains under all change. The universe, which is the same for all, no god or man has made, but it always was, is, and will be an everlasting fire, kindled in measures, and extinguished in measures. Well, the Marxists will take DK thirty and then DK fifty-three. War is the father of all things, and that's how you get the Marxist philosophy, right? The Marxist philosophy, communism, the official name of it is dialectical materialism.

[32:41] The materialism means what? That matter is the beginning of all things, right? But dialectical is saying that things develop out of matter by what? The conflict of the opposites found in matter. So war is the father of all things. And matter is the beginning of all things, right? Okay. But the opposites in matter, the contradictions in matter, they were called, give rise to development of these things.

[33:15] Did they actually draw on these in constructing that, or did they just think these were interesting illustrations? Well, they kind of come back to these. See, Hegel's original inspiration for the Marx is the dialectical method, you know.

[33:28] And of course, the tendency of modern science is to be materialistic, right? And you know, the thing, even I put it call evolution too in biology, which is so influential. And since behind the the thinking of the way they understand evolution, anyway, is matter is the beginning of all things, right? And the struggle for survival out there gives rise to different forms of life, right? So it's basically this idea.

[33:57] Um. So that's why Marx, you know, dedicated one of the editions of Das Kapital to to Darwin, right? Yeah, they had that thought in common.

[34:10] But now in this next fragment, DK one twenty four, our friend Heraclitus seems to be contradicting what he said in DK fifty, where he says it is wise, listening not to me but to reason, to agree that all things are one. It's the very nature of reason to make us look for unity, but you could also say it's the very nature of reason to make us look for what order, right?

[34:37] Okay. And perhaps it's even more known. Reason looks for order, right? So if he was being consistent, he would say, "It is wise, listening not to me but to reason, to agree that there is order in things, right? Okay. And

[35:04] you see this, you know, people like Einstein and so on. You know, Einstein was not a believing Jew or Christian, anything like that. But he says all scientific work of a high order is based on a feeling like that. Religion says that there is basically what order in the universe, right? And you can find order if you look for it, huh? Okay. So you see, in Einstein, people like that, that natural inclination of our mind to unity and order, right?

[35:35] Now, in DK fifty, the previous page, he had spoken of this, right? But now he makes a very strange statement: "The most beautiful universe." I translated that way because the Greek word for universe is cosmos, huh? Okay. That's where I get the word cosmetics, huh? Okay, but cosmos has the idea. Of something beautiful, but well arranged, well ordered, right? Okay. So, in calling universe a cosmos, the Greeks were, in the very name they gave to it, respecting the beautiful order that's in the universe.

[36:18] Okay. Now we use the word for the universe, the word universe, which means turned into one, right? So the the Latin word and the Latin-derived word and the Greek word one is taken from unity, the other from order, but the two go together, right? Okay.

[36:42] But now he's making the strange statement that this cosmos, this beautiful ordered whole, is what a heap piled up at random. See. Now, what he's probably thinking of here is that if the universe, the beginning universe, is a mindless matter, right, or a mindless mover like fire, right? What kind of universe would you expect from a mindless mover, a mindless matter? Well, would simply be something at random.

[37:18] Yeah. Yeah. See. And so, if the fire went through this building, right, would you end up with a beautiful ordered whole? When the fire got through with, you know, those terrorists that started that fire in the World Trade Center in New York, right, was that beautiful ordered whole at the end? Not very. No, it was a heap piled up at random, right? So Heraclitus, in a sense, is pointing out an apparent contradiction here, right?

[37:50] Yeah. What I was saying was I didn't I didn't realize that cosmos was rooted in the idea of order, so I simply simply think of a material unity. Yeah. Yeah. Because you would have that, say, at the end of a fire, everything would be charcoal or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But the Greek word is a kind of a sign that men think of the universe as having some beautiful order to it.

[38:16] Okay. And now he's saying this beautiful ordered whole that we what we call before a hole is a heap piled up at random, which would be what would be if it was simply the product of a mindless what. Force. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And this kind anticipates in a negative way, right? Then maybe there is some other mind than ours, right? That is the beginning of this beautiful ordered universe, huh?

[38:47] Okay. Or behind the the order in the parts of your body or the dog's body or the cat's body or even the tree's body, right? There is a what, greater mind, huh? But this greater mind will come out with, and Anaxagoras, right? The man whom Socrates got so enthusiastic reading when he was a young man, right? Okay.

[39:16] But notice what he has to say here about our reason. We'll see that when Anaxagoras develops the idea of the mind, he will also emphasize something infinite about the mind, right? Okay. He says one could not find in going the ends of the soul, having traveled every road. So deep is the reason it has, huh? So he's saying there's something endless, right? Something infinite about this.

[39:50] We'll come back to that when we see the great fragment on the mind by Anaxagoras. The first thing you see about the mind is infinite. Okay. Aristotle talks about that in the third book about the soul when he gets through talking about sensing and understanding and he's saying the soul is in some way all things. Remember that?

[40:16] Because the things we sense and the things we understand are in our senses in some way, right? And in our understanding. And so, through having sense and understanding, we are in some way all things. Okay. It's very important to see.