I was thinking about the quotation “The only constant is change,” and how much it reflects our modern world. I wondered who said it first and was shocked to learn it was a philosopher from Ancient Greece, one I was unfamiliar with. Heraclitus. He lived around 500 B.C.E. so his ideas feeling so current is indicative of the quality of his ideas. I decided to read what else he had to say, which is not a lot because only Fragments remain.

A lot of us have probably also heard that we only step in the same river twice as well. That’s another one from Heraclitus as is the idea that life is flux, life is change. What remains are short refrains, full of impatience with ignorance and human weakness. He probably was not a fun guy at parties. But he had a lot to say about how we perceive the world.

If everything
were turned to smoke,
the nose would
be the seat of judgment.

I chose this because it is not famous, but it is true. We perceive the obvious. How do we discern more? Through wisdom and judgment. His ideas are a good antidote to disinformation, such as his suggestion “Let us not make rash guesses our most lucid thoughts.”

I don’t know Greek, let alone ancient Greek, so have no capacity for judging the translation by Brooks Haxton. I like how he presents it in poetic refrains, unlike another translation I looked at. The Greek is on the facing page, so scholars can check his work.

Fragments is short and sweet. You can read all of his work in thirty minutes and then you can reflect on it for a lifetime.

Fragments at Penguin Random House
Heraclitus at Ancient.eu

https://tonstantweaderreviews.wordpress.com/2019/05/06/9781440679285/ ( )

The introduction to this work is inevitably longer than the fragments themselves. What survives is a mish-mash of various interpretations and I daresay unreliable sources. What strikes me about the pre-Socratics, and Heraclitus specifically, is the melding of religion and reason in a way that the West would not mention when the modern cultural monolith seeks its origins in a part of the world where it is fine to claim mythic philosophical ancestry, yet it is despised when one's pedigree is pure. On the first page of the fragments, Heraclitus mentions the trouble with those who will not learn:

"III. - ...Those who hear and do not understand are like the deaf. Of them the proverb says: "Present, they are absent,"

IV. — Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to men having rude souls.

V. — The majority of people have no understanding of the things with which they daily meet, nor, when instructed, do they have any right knowledge of them, although to themselves they seem to have.

VI. — They understand neither how to hear nor how to speak.

This is not entirely a Western idea, for indeed, Confucius said, “When you see that [students] do something wrong, give them sincere and friendly advice, which may guide them to the right way; if they refuse to accept your advice, then give it up”.
Reading Heraclitus leads me to Pythagoras as my next venture into pre-Socratic philosophy, and also to Hesiod's Theogony. It would seem that there is much to learn from this period of history, and how it echoes down through the ages.

( )

Sort of the Ur-book of Greek philosphy. But more than that. Maybe less. It's all the same, right? ( )

A very loose, non-literal translation (Brooks Haxton in the Penguin paperback), but interesting because it's got the Greek text on the left-hand facing pages to the English translation. A volume that could entice someone to learn ancient Greek. ( )

I found this translation of the Fragments of Heraclitus to be disappointing. When comparing Brooks Haxton's translation of various fragments to other translations, I often find Haxton's to be rather off-base. Sometimes it even seems that his translations convey the opposite meanings to that of other translations. I believe the problem lies in his desire to see similarities between Heraclitus and Lao Tzu.

While there do seem to be some surface similarities with regard to Heraclitus' ideas about flux and the logos, many of the fragments attributed to Heraclitus seem pretty far from the Tao Te Ching's philosophy. (Those fragments in which Heraclitus scowls at the behaviour of his fellow men seem to be especially at odds with the playfulness of Taoism & Haxton's poetry.)

Of course with anything like the fragments of Heraclitus, it's impossible to tell which if any were actually written by him. More so, how can anyone know with any degree of certainty what the tone of the original manuscript (if there was one) was?

Still, my favourite thing about this edition is the abundant white space, which leaves plenty of room for marginalia.