Early Greek Philosophy

3. The Problem of Evil in Heraclitus

Kenneth Dorter 3 S The Problem of Evil in Heraclitus I The frequent quotation of Heraclitus by later philosophers resulted in an unusually large number of surviving fragments, but the fragments are brief—even the longest is only three sentences, while in some cases the later writers quoted only a single word. According to the Diels-Kranz edition about 120 fragments survive, but they add up to only about 1,000 words. The brevity of even the longest ones suggests that Heraclitus wrote in a terse epigrammatic style, but there is no independent evidence for it. And since we do not know the order in which they appeared in his writings, we do not know how they may have been meant to reflect on and amplify one another; nor is there always agreement as to which fragments are actual quotations rather than paraphrases or misquotations . Consequently, every attempt by editors or translators to put them into a coherent order results in a different mosaic.1 Moreover, although 36 This chapter was originally presented at the Catholic University of America colloquium series on early Greek philosophy, October 12, 2007. An abridged version was presented at the Canadian Philosophical Association meetings in Vancouver, May 5, 2008. I am grateful to Mark McPherran for his helpful commentary on that occasion and to Enrique Hülsz for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of this essay. 1. Thus Heidegger criticizes Eugen Fink for beginning his interpretation from a fragment that enables him to give disproportionate weight to the concept of light, namely B64: “The lightning bolt steers all.” See Fink and Heidegger, Heraclitus Seminar 1966/67 (hereafter Heraclitus Seminar), 135. It was only the prominence that Fink gave to this fragment that troubled Heidegger; Fink’s interpretation of it derived from an essay by Heidegger himself: “Logos (Heraklit , Fragment 50)” in Vorträge und Aufsätze, 207–29: 222, 229. Heidegger’s own point of departure was B1, which focuses on the concept of logos. The most ambitious attempt to order the fragments coherently is that of Charles Kahn’s The Problem of Evil in Heraclitus   37 it is sometimes obvious that Heraclitus is speaking literally, and at other times obvious that he is speaking metaphorically, he can often be interpreted either way with very different results.2 The longest fragment, which according to Aristotle and Sextus Empiricus was the opening of his book,3 begins: This logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out . . . (B1)4 That is what he means in B123 when he says that “nature loves to hide.” He makes a similar point in B72, saying that people “are at odds with the logos, with which above all they are in continuous contact, and the things they meet every day appear strange to them.” It is best to leave the term “logos” untranslated to preserve its wide range of meanings: word, statement , argument, definition, account, speech, language, reason, ratio, etc.5 Why do we fail to recognize logos even though it is ever present to us? The Thought and Art of Heraclitus, which results in a plausible and illuminating arrangement. At the same time, Kahn’s sensitivity to the systematic ambiguity and multiple implications of Heraclitus’s style has the effect of making us aware that fragments that are grouped together by virtue of one of their implications could have been differently grouped by virtue of other implications . 2. HGP, vol. I, 427: “It is discouraging, certainly, to note how many different impressions of this world-view have been put forward in the past and continue to be put forward; but one can only give one’s own.” Cf. Heidegger’s “Aletheai (Heraklit, Fragment 16)” in Vorträge und Aufsätze, 257–82: “What would be achieved if one wished to reject [a certain interpretation] as simply incorrect? One could at best make it seem that the subsequent remarks believe themselves to hit upon Heraclitus’s teaching in the one absolutely correct way. The task is limited to staying closer to the words of Heraclitus’ saying” (260). At the conclusion of his exegesis he writes: “Did Heraclitus intend his question in the way we just explicated? Does what is said through this explication stand within the field...