On Cosmogony and Ecpyrosis in Heraclitus

The traditional attribution to heraclitus of the theory of recurrent reabsorption of the world into fire was challenged as early as 1807 by F. Schleiermacher. That contention, supported by F. Lassalle, was criticized by E. Zeller but was restated by J. Burnet in 1892. Burnet’s argument was elaborated by K. Reinhardt and then revised and restated by G. S. Kirk. The endeavors of these commentators, supported by the contributions of a number of other critics, have firmly established the new interpretation (which I call “cosmological”). However the controversy has not ceased: the traditional interpretation (which I conventionally term “cosmogonical”) has been maintained and defended by a number of critics.¹ The argument against cosmogony and ecpyrosis in Heraclitus is not easy to appreciate. Concerned as it is with a wide range of evidence, both secondary and authentic, and repeatedly refashioned and improved, it has accumulated many assessments, exegeses, and inferences. The critical objections put forward by supporters of the traditional interpretation, failing to meet the argument in its entirety, remain indecisive. Discussion is further complicated in that both sides tend to treat the problem within the broader framework of Heraclitus’ teaching. It thus seems desirable to examine the problem thoroughly as a separate issue, seeking a judgment independent of one or another general construal of Heraclitus’ thought. Hence in the first part of this essay I discuss the argument of Burnet and his followers with the aim of appraising its success in producing conclusive evidence against cosmogony and ecpyrosis. In the second part I propose a reconsideration of the evidence, in order to appreciate whether and to what extent it supports the cosmogonical interpretation.

THE ARGUMENT AGAINST COSMOGONY AND ECPYROSIS

Secondary Evidence

Burnet and his followers contend that the earliest testimonia do not ascribe the theory of cosmic cycles to Heraclitus, whereas the later authors followed Theophrastus’ supposedly erroneous interpretation which was adopted by the Stoics,² eager to see in Heraclitus a partisan of their own theory of world conflagration, and, through the Stoics, by Christian writers. This assessment rests on questioning Aristotle’s support of ecpyrosis,³ on relying heavily on Plato’s Sophist 242d–e, and on tracing a heterodox opinion in certain late sources.

(1) Aristotle De Caelo 1.10.279b12 and Physica 3.5.205a1–6:

(De Caelo 1.10)

. . . and some, as Empedocles of Acragas and Heraclitus of Ephesus, [believe] that it [the heaven] alternately is now in this state and now, in the course of destruction, in another...

(Physica 3.5)

Grammatical construction of the latter passage is ambiguous. Burnet (1930, 157–59) dismisses both passages as irrelevant. Yet as Kirk (1962, 320–21) acknowledges, Burnet’s interpretation of the De Caelo passage, to the effect that Aristotle’s reference to the alternations of the in Empedocles and Heraclitus concerns not the whole world but only the first heaven, “unfortunately involves a neglect of the context, in which without question refers (as often in this treatise: see the definition at 1.9.278b11) to the whole sum of things enclosed by the outer ‘heaven.’ ” In dismissing the second passage Burnet quotes the dependent clause and says that nothing implies that all things become fire at once. Again unfortunately, this interpretation makes the example from Heraclitus irrelevant to the view Aristotle is refuting, namely that , the world as a whole, becomes one of the elements.⁴ But if Heraclitus’ doctrine exemplifies the view Aristotle is refuting, then, on the traditional construal of the Greek, he says that Heraclitus believed that “at some time or other” the world becomes fire, which would mean a recurrent conflagration, or, on Cherniss’s reading,⁵ that “at some time or other” fire becomes the world, which would mean a recurrent cosmogony and would imply a recurrent conflagration.

(2) Plato Sophist 242d–e:

According to one [person] there are three real things, some of which now carry on a sort of warfare with one another, and then make friends and set about marrying and begetting and bringing up their children. Another tells us that there are two—moist and dry, or hot and...