As the eldest son of one of the richest families in the city, Heraclitus appears to have had little sympathy for democracy, but Kahn stresses that this does not imply that he was "an unconditional partisan of the rich." but instead as "withdrawn from competing factions" - similar to Solon of Athens. Kahn says that Ephesus appears to have cultivated a close relationship with the Achaemenid Empire during the suppression of the Ionian revolt in 494 BCE, Ephesus was spared and emerged as the dominant Greek city in Ionia.
In the 6th century BCE, Ephesus, like other cities in Ionia, was tied to both the rise of Lydia under Croesus and to the overthrow of Croesus by Cyrus the Great. Although most of the information provided by Laertius is unreliable, Kahn says that the anecdote that Heraclitus relinquished the hereditary title of "king" to his younger brother may at least imply that Heraclitus was the eldest brother of an aristocratic family in Ephesus.
This date can be considered "roughly accurate" based on a fragment that references Pythagoras, Xenophanes, and Hecataeus as older contemporaries, which would place him near the end of the sixth century BCE. Although he is traditionally considered to have flourished in the 69th Olympiad (504-501 BCE), Kahn surmises that this date is based on a prior account synchronizing his life with the reign of Darius the Great. Kahn states that an accurate description of Heraclitus's life is "almost completely unknown". Two extant letters between Heraclitus and Darius I, which are quoted by Diogenes Laërtius, are also later forgeries. Kahn characterizes as "a tissue of Hellenistic anecdotes, most of them obviously fabricated on the basis of statements in the preserved fragments".
The main primary source for the life of Heraclitus is the doxographer Diogenes Laërtius which Charles H. Both Heraclitus and Parmenides had an influence on Plato, who went on to influence all of Western philosophy.Įphesus on the coast of Asia Minor, birthplace of Heraclitus This changing aspect of his philosophy is contrasted with that of the ancient philosopher Parmenides, who believed in " being" and in the static nature of the universe. His use of fire may have been a metaphor for change. He was most famous for his insistence on ever-present change - known in philosophy as "flux" or "becoming" or impermanence - as the characteristic feature of the world an idea expressed in the sayings, "No man ever steps in the same river twice", and panta rhei (Πάντα ῥεῖ, "everything flows"). He also believed in a unity of opposites and harmony in the world. Heraclitus believed the world is ultimately made of fire. According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Heraclitus has been seen as a " material monist or a process philosopher a scientific cosmologist, a metaphysician and a religious thinker an empiricist, a rationalist, a mystic a conventional thinker and a revolutionary a developer of logic - one who denied the law of non-contradiction the first genuine philosopher and an anti-intellectual obscurantist." Heraclitus has thus been the subject of numerous interpretations. He wrote a single work, only fragments of which have survived, increasing the obscurity already associated with him. Consequently, he became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to the ancient philosopher Democritus, who was known as "the laughing philosopher". He was considered a misanthrope who was subject to depression. His paradoxical philosophy and appreciation for wordplay and cryptic utterances has earned him the epithet "the obscure" since antiquity. He regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom.
Little else is known about his early life and education. It is generally believed that Heraclitus was of distinguished parentage, but he eschewed his privileged life for a lonely one as a philosopher. Most of the ancient stories about him are later fabrications. 500 BCE) was an ancient Greek, pre-Socratic, Ionian philosopher and a native of the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire. Heraclitus of Ephesus ( / ˌ h ɛr ə ˈ k l aɪ t ə s/ Greek: Ἡράκλειτος Herakleitos, "Glory of Hera" c. Virtually all subsequent Western philosophy, especially Parmenides, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Plato, Zeno of Citium, Aristotle, Aenesidemus
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