Heraclitus of Ephesus, a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher
Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 535 – c. 475 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, and a native of the city of Ephesus, then part of the Persian Empire.
- He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom.
- From the lonely life he led, and still more from the apparently riddled and allegedly paradoxical nature of his philosophy and his stress upon the needless unconsciousness of humankind, he was called “The Obscure” and the “Weeping Philosopher”.
Heraclitus was famous for his insistence on ever-present change as being the fundamental essence of the universe, as stated in the famous saying, “No man ever steps in the same river twice.”
- This position was complemented by his stark commitment to a unity of opposites in the world, stating that “the path up and down are one and the same.”
- Through these doctrines Heraclitus characterized all existing entities by pairs of contrary properties, whereby no entity may ever occupy a single state at a single time.
- This, along with his cryptic utterance that “all entities come to be in accordance with this Logos” (literally, “word”, “reason”, or “account”) has been the subject of numerous interpretations.
Words of Wisdom
No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man.