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100 LETTERS IN CANADA 1987 T.M. Robinson. Heraclitus: Fragments. A Text and Translation with a Commentary Phoenix Supplementary Volumes 22. University of Toronto Press. xi, 214. $30.00 Although it draws heavily on the work of Kirk (1954) and Kahn (1979), this book is a welcome addition to the translation of and commentary on Heraclitus fragments. The fragments are newly translated and commented on by Robinson; the testimonia are largely drawn from previous translations and are left without commentary. The basic text stems from Marcovich's edition (1967), but Robinson has wisely chosen not to follow Marcovich's ordering of the fragments, or the ordering of any other interpreter, including Kirk, Kahn, Wheelright, etc. Instead, he follows the Diels-Kranz edition. This has the virtue of enabling the reader to approach the text without adopting the special interpretations of other commentators. Kahn had correctly noted that 'Any lucid approach will be explicitly hermeneutical; which is only to say that we must provide the framework for making sense of Heraclitus.' Robinson's translation and commentary assist the philosophically minded reader to enter more freely and fully into the interpretative mode. But the chief virtue of this book is the fine and sensitive translation of the fragments, which pays special attention to the puns, ambiguities, and word plays which are characteristics of Heraclitus; and to what Kahn called the 'linguistic density' (a multiplicity of ideas expressed by a single word or phrase) and the 'resonance' (a verbal image echoed from one fragment to another) of the text. Robinson also adds a 'tentative summary' of Heraclitus's beliefs, in addition to commenting on the individual fragments. He rejects the Stoic interpretation of logos (following West) as a cosmic principle, but accepts some Stoic interpretations of the physical theory of Heraclitus. There is strong evidence to suggest that in Heraclitus's time logos did not mean a rational principle or a cosmic law or reason. It meant an 'account,' as fragments 1 and 2 indicate. Heraclitus claims that there is an account (logos) which is true forever, and is common to all, but which individuals either hear or fail to hear: in Robinson's words, 'Wisdom's own description of the way things have been, are, and always will be and ... Wisdom's own prescription of the norms of conduct' (183). The unity which underlies the diversity of things means, for Robinson, that apparent opposites are, in fact, not the same (logical identity), but are basically interconnected ('perspective identity') through a cyclical form of change. Fire is the physical terminus aquo and the terminus ad quem of that change. Robinson also accepts Kahn's view that Heraclitus believed in four elements (air, earth, fire, water) not three (leaving air aside); and he accepts the Stoic interpretation of ecpyrosis (periodic consumption of the world by fire). This latter has been vigorously contested by Barnes (1979), who argues that Heraclitus reject~d cosmogony. But Robinson is on HUMANITIES 101 stronger ground, and Barnes on weaker, it seems to me, regarding the apparent unity of opposites, with regard to which Barnes charges Heraclitus with having committed a logical fallacy. Robinson rightly interprets the common 'account' (logos) as applying both to the physical nature of things and to human conduct, but his interest in the Stoic interpretation of Heraclitus's physical theory distracts him from giving full consideration to the moral (ethical) doctrine in the fragments. It could be argued that the moral philosophy embodied in the fragments deserves a place of primacy in relation to the physical and metaphysical doctrines. This is evident even in fragments 1 and 2. The theme is how people should live their lives, seeking the divine common perspective ofwisdom amid changing perceptions, emotions, and circumstances. To live that kind of life, as Bias of Priene did, is to be of 'more account' (pleon logos) than the rest (fragment 39). The play on words in this fragment means more than that logoi are uttered about him as Robinson says (106); it means that he lived according to the common (xunos) logos, not his own private understanding (fragment 2). Robinson's translation and commentary deserves to be ranked among the finest scholarly works...

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