Parmemides and Heraclitus

A detailed Summary of Parmemides and Heraclitus

Heraclitus argued there was a single divine law of the universe, which rules and guides the cosmos. This is the Logos. He said that the logos both underlies and governs change. Heraclitus compares the logos to fire an element that is always changing yet always the same. For example he said, "The sun is new each day."(Curd Pg. 38 88) His view was that "all things are derived from a single arche or starting point and that as now constituted all things are organized within a single world structure or Kosmos". (5.17 Robinson) In other words all things are one. In Heraclitean cosmology the components turn into one another according to certain rules. The struggle between the opposites will always be evenly balanced, gains in one region by one force being always simultaneously offset by equal gains elsewhere by the opposed force. Some examples would be "Fire lives the death of earth and air lives the death of fire, water lives the death of air, earth that of water." (Maximus of Tyre 41.4) Another example would be "the changes of fire: first sea, and of sea half is earth, half fiery thunderbolt . . . . earth is dispersed as sea, and is measured out in the same proportion as before it beca

Houghton Mifflin Company Boston 1968

Change is impossible because for change to happen it has to stop being what it is and become something else. That goes against his whole theory. First for something to stop being would mean it would become nothing and that is impossible and second to become something else would mean something would have to come from nothing. An example of this would be the different colors of the leaves on a tree in the fall. The leaf would have to stop being green and become the other color.

Water is another element that is always changing. His reasoning for this is that you can not step into the same river twice. The water is always moving, swirling and flowing. The area of the river may be the same but it is always changing. If it did not flow it would cease to be a river. Both fire and water are in perpetual motion. Heraclitus said, "even the posset separates if it is not stirred." Things are always in motion though they may stay the same.

Of the two arguments I agree more with Heraclitus than Parmenides. I think that everything is always changing. If nothing changed this world would stay the same. To say that fire and water are always in

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Approximate Word count = 806
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

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