We are confronted with a developmental story that sounds very Hegelian. First there was Heraclitus, who said all was flux. Then there was Parmenides, who said all was at rest. Then there was Plato, who said that the sensible world was flux, the world of Forms was at rest, and whatever order could be found in lower the sensible world owed its stability to the upper world of Forms. Thesis, antithesis, synthesis. This is not, to be sure, Hegel’s story, but it does seem to represent Plato’s general take on philosophical development.[9] Plato’s account of Heraclitus the radical philosopher of flux is picked up by his student Aristotle, who sees Heraclitus as committed to a self-refuting theory which in which changing facts make all propositions both true and false.[10] This interpretation dominated readings of Heraclitus down to the twentieth century.
Arguably, however, the view of Heraclitus as a radical flux theorist goes back much farther, to Father Parmenides himself. There is a debate over who wrote first, and over who reacted to whom, Heracitus or Parmenides.[11] Parmenides could not have aroused Heraclitus, because Heraclitus was quick to bad-mouth thinkers he disagreed with, both earlier figures and contemporaries, and later commentators were happy to reproduce his scathing comments. “Pythagoras, son of Mnesarchus, practiced inquiry more than all men, and making a selection of others’ writings, he invented his own brand of wisdom: information gathering, fraud!”[12] “Collecting information does not teach understanding. Else it would have taught Hesiod and Pythagoras, as well as Xenophanes and Hecataeus.”[13] Parmenides, on the other hand, presents his theory in a poem with a mythical setting. He can refer to his opponents, if at all, only by allusion, according to poetic conventions.
Yet Parmenides does challenge the possibility of change and in particular coming-to-be, a point that only Heraclitus seems to have defended. Heraclitus makes it clear that of his three basic components of the world, earth, water, and fire, each one arises out of the other, and the birth of one is the death of its predecessor.[14] His predecessors may have assumed that one stuff turns into another, but they did not notice the life-and-death transformation going on.[15] Parmenides in fact echoes some rare and unique Heraclitean language.[16] He also parodies Heraclitus’ elaborate style in one line.[17] He excludes the very possibility of coming-to-be. And he delivers a knockout blow at the end of his refutation: “Thus coming-to-be is quenched and perishing unheard of.”[18] The argument, which had said nothing about fire, uses a word from Heraclitus’ most famous statement about the world being composed of “everliving fire, kindling in measures and being quenched in measures.”[19] Take that, Heraclitus!
When Plato compares Heraclitus’ river to the waters of Ocean in Homer and Hesiod, he is echoing another ancient commentator. The sophist Hippias of Elis compiled a collection of doctrines from early philosophers and, notably, poets. He was the first thinker (we know of) to introduce Homer and Hesiod into the pantheon of philosophers. He also connected them with the universal flux theme and Heraclitus.[20] So already in the late fifth century BCE, Heraclitus was connected with epic poets as part of a perennial philosophy of flux.
Next we meet Cratylus, an Athenian follower of Heraclitus who lived in the late fifth and early 4th centuries BCE. He is famous for saying that, whereas Heraclitus asserted you could not step into the same river twice, he maintained that you could not step into the river even once.[21] In other words, he aimed to outdo Heraclitus in his acceptance of a radical flux.
At this point we need to notice that Aristotle claimed that the young Plato had sat in on the lectures of Cratylus.[22] It was from him that Plato acquired the Heraclitean doctrines and eventually applied them to the sensible world. While we can doubt the veracity of Aristotle’s claim, we must remember that Aristotle spent twenty years associating with Plato, that he was a serious student of the history of philosophy, and that he was in a position to know things about him that few other people knew. It is evident that Plato was not a follower of Cratylus (who appears as a somewhat inaccessible figure in the dialogue named after him) in the same way he was a follower of Socrates. But Cratylus must be the one from whom Plato imbibed his Heracliteanism, such as it was.
[9] Hegel treats of the Parmenides and the Eleatics before Heraclitus in his Lectures on the History of Philosophy, and says little about the interconnections between the rival schools of thought. The thesis-antithesis-synthesis scheme comes from Fichte’s reading of Hegel, not from Hegel himself.
[10] Aristotle Metaphysics IV.8.
[11] See Graham 2002.
[12] Heraclitus fr. 129.
[13] Heraclitus fr. 40.
[14] Heraclitus fr. 36, fr. 76.
[15] See Graham 1997.
[16] Parmenides fr. 6.8-9, palintropos; Heraclitus fr. 88, fr. 51. That the correct reading of fr. 51 is palintropos, not palintonos, see Vlastos **.
[17] Parmenides fr. 4.1 with a chiasmus: ABCBA, echoing Heraclitus’ fr. 34.
[18] Parmenides fr. 8.21
[19] Heraclitus fr. 30.
[20] Patzer 1986: 49-55; Mansfeld 1990: 84-96.
[21] Aristotle Metaphysics IV.5, 1010a10-15.
[22] Aristotle Metaphysics I.6, 987a31-b1.