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ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus, I Author(s) : Martha C. Nussbaum Source: Phronesis, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1972), pp. 1-16 Published by: Brill Accessed: 18-03-2020 23:03 UTC
ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus, I Author(s) : Martha C. Nussbaum Source: Phronesis, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1972), pp. 1-16 Published by: Brill Accessed: 18-03-2020 23:03 UTC
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V'YXH in Heraclitus, I
MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM
* For modern works referred to in this article, please see Bibliography on p. 15.
1 Explicitly in DK 22 A 22, B 42, B 56; implicitly, as I hope to show, in many
other fragments.
2 See the thorough discussion in Snell, Discovery, ch. I, esp. pp. 8-12. Also Snell,
Gnomon 77 ff. and B6hme passim.
3 See Snell, Discovery, p. 8.
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The +uXC is, vaguely, a principle of breath; we know this from its
etymology, and from the fact that when it leaves a man it is breathed
out, flies away, or departs through a wound. But its function in the
living man remains undefined, and it is mentioned only in connection
with death. When one's life's breath leaves, it is called 4uXf But when
a hero wishes to say "as long as the breath of life remains in me", he
says: eL5 6 xX'Otrp- / 'v a sacaC. ZAv-1 (K 89-90). A hero may fight M p't
4uXyj (X 161) or risk his su in battle (I 321) or discourse about the
irrecoverability of the ~iqu once it is lost (I 408). But he is never
aware of doing anything by means of it in life; only once is it mentioned
as being present in a living man at all. And the sole point of mentioning
its presence there is to declare the man mortal and vulnerable. Agenor,
attempting to persuade his 9,uLO not to fear Achilles, says (D 569):
xM yocp 0h2v Tovx tputOG xjpw O;t xmax&,
eV 8i 'LOX UX &V e' pa.' &V?5pG 7toL
9tu~evoca.
Each mortal man has within him a single 4uv', and it is this which
characterizes him as mortal. The gods are not credited, either in Homer
or in subsequent literature, with the possession of su 4
4 This seems to hold true even after the word 4uX' has acquired a wider usage
and can, on occasion, be substituted for Ou[L6q, or even for v6oq. In the non-
philosophic literature of the fifth century, +uZ' is ascribed in only four cases to
a god. Aristophanes, Frogs, 1468 - puataocat yxp OV7rtp i +uXA O0,et - seems for
metrical and contextual reasons to be a quotation from tragedy, and the fact
that it is Dionysus, a god, who quotes it may be yet a further dimension to the
joke. In line 1472, Euripides addresses Dionysus as X [LCapc r' awv,&pw7rwv. The
Oceanids (Aesch. Prom. 693) are characterized throughout more as females than
as immortals, and the poet's desire to juxtapose Puxn with q6XeLv may have
allowed him to admit this irregularity. A more startling exception is at Pindar,
Pyth. 3.41, where Apollo speaks of enduring in his iuZ. This must be understoo
I think, as connected with Pindar's ideas concerning the fundamental similarity
of gods and men (Nem. 6.1 ff.) and the divinity of +uX' (frs. 116, 127). The
fourth exception is Euripides, fr. 431 (following the attribution by Clement,
though Stobaeus attributes it to Sophocles):
gpC, y&p &vgpmc ov 6vouq lnipXeaL
a' Ac yUvatxac, ,&XX& xaxl &e&v &vc
X4~ux& rapraact, x&TrI n6vrov gpXeroct.
For several reasons I believe the fragment to be Euripidean. Stobaeus mentions
a Phaedra play of Sophocles. Could it instead be the first Phaedra of Euripides,
which so shocked contemporary sensibilities? And could this not be one of its
more shocking lines? In any case, though absence of context prevents sure inter-
pretation, it seems worth noting that this humanization of the gods takes place
in connection with gpw,, which, for Heraclitus too, is, next to death, the prime
disturber of the 4uX' (see our Part II, later in this volume). To be vulnerable to
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Two elements in this Homeric picture will be of importance to our
discussion of Heraclitus: the tendency to mention 4uxn only in "nega-
tive contexts" (i.e. its functioning is noticed only when it goes wrong),
and the absence of any sense of a central faculty connecting the dis-
parate faculties of the living man. Snell has shown that the same is
true of the Homeric notion of body: it is spoken of as a collection of
parts, and there is no word to describe its unity.5 We shall now observe
that the Homeric picture of language presents similar features: MOC,
frequently mentioned, are a series of unordered units.6 Aoyo4, implying
order or connection, is employed, as is fuX', primarily in "negative
contexts." And there is no sense of a central faculty by virtue of which
one learns to use language properly.7
Guthrie, discussing the meaning of ?o6yog in Heraclitus, outlines "the
ways in which the word was currently used in and around the time of
Heracitus."8 Now it is true, accepting Guthrie's own dating, that most
of the meanings he lists are current within a generation or two after
Heraclitus' death. Several examples he cites - those from early works
of Pindar - even fall, probably, within his lifetime, although it is
unlikely that he ever became acquainted with Pindar's work or with
the social milieu in which he worked. What is interesting, however, is
that if we examine the works of those writers known to have been read
by Heracitus (Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, Xenophanes), as well as
those of other poets distinctly prior in date (Solon, Theognis, etc.), we
find, instead of an impressive diversity of usage, a singular unanimity.
A6yo4 in early writers is not used frequently. When it is used, it always
means a story, or some sort of connected account told by a specific
person. And, in the vast majority of cases, this account is a falsehood,
a beguiling tale, one which is intended to deceive the hearer or to make
him forget something of importance." Common formulae with Xoyo4
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are: 4i8ee& Ca cljiuxouq TE xo6youq (Hes. Op. 78, 788) and oc'IpMoLaL
6yOLaL (cX 56, H. Herm. 317, Hes. Th. 890, Theognis 704; cf. also
0 393; Theognis 254, 981, 1221). Less frequently, Xoyoq designates
simply a tale or story, without regard to content; a legendary nature,
however, is often suggested (Hes. Op. 106, Tyrtaeus 9.1, Theognis 1055,
Xenoph. B 1, 14; B 7, 1). Ao6yoL are personified in the Theogony:
hateful Eris gives birth to NeLxs& re +eu8aex xr Aoyouq ApXoytcLo
Te (229). And the only mention of an explicitly true ?6yoq in the wor
of the authors mentioned is in Archilochus 35, at line 12: A6yo[L v]uv
'[60' oik}]M' 7rop[%. We are reminded that the word for truth itself
in Greek is a privative term, designating the absence of concealment,
or "'uncoveredness".10
A6yoq by itself does not mean only falsehood, any more than +uX'
means merely the shade of the dead man. But men's notions of language
at this time appear to have been simple. As a man speaks of his life
in terms of separate faculties, but fails to notice their unity until this
unity is destroyed, so he speaks of his words as separate units, and
usually refers to connected statement only when the connecting has
been done improperly, so as to produce a falsehood. When the im-
pressive effect of Odysseus' speaking is described, his words (9nza) are
compared to wintry snowflakes (P 222) - apparently an early case of
semantic atomism. And T 248 ff., a section of Aeneas' speech to
Achilles, gives us an even clearer idea of the Homeric man's lack of
awareness both of syntax and of the mental processes by which language
is learned and understood:
atp~7r' 8& yeaa' ?OL POTrV3p 7, i7OXe 8 9VL [0d&OL
CV'rQoOL), ?7t?()V & 7UOkU' VO[L6q 9VIXOX 6,50C
07r7r0Z6V x'e'UMa&N 97rOq, to6Ov x'e7r0xouaLacL.
The tongue, herding the single words here and there like sheep, is the
only acknowledged linguistic organ, both here and elsewhere. And the
general effect of Aeneas' succeeding arguments is to demonstrate the
heroes' contempt for speeches."l Speaking requires little skill; one
verschleiern, was im Blick bleiben sollte, schieben anderes vor und stellen es in
ein giinstiges Licht."
10 Krischer, pp. 163-4, and Boeder, who reminds us that the false x6yot of the
Theogony are sisters of Lethe.
11 Benardete (p. 2) has observed that this contempt for speeches is evident in
the hero's description of speeches as the work of &v&pwtrot (T 204, etc.) and of
deeds as the work of &v&pe5 (I 189, etc.). "The hero's contempt for speeches is
but part of his contempt for &v,p7o L."
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simply says the sort of words one hears, and anyone, even a woman,
can do this (T 252). Fighting, not speaking, is a genuine test of skill,
and proves the hero's worth.'2 There is no recognition here that the
learning of language involves anything more than the ear and the
tongue. And the Homeric man has no term at all for any faculty of
connected reasoning; even voos, generally considered a "rational"
faculty, has been shown by von Fritz to stand, in Homer, for a non-
discursive, a-logical faculty of insight, more nearly similar to the
sense of sight than to what we think of as "reason".13
In general, then, Homeric man fails to recognize explicitly that in
virtue of which he is a single individual. His use of the first person
shows that he is conscious of the self, and that he is somehow aware
that his limbs and faculties form a unity. But he cannot explain what
connects his separate faculties; and though he implicitly acknowledges
the centrality of +u ' as a necessary condition for consciousness, he
has not yet acquired a notion of its activities and its role. His under-
standing of language reveals similar limitations: he is aware of words
rather than of syntax, of the ear and the tongue rather than of the
discursive reasoning and connection-making necessary for the proper
learning of language. Heracitus sees deficiencies in this view, and
attempts to formulate a more complex picture of human life and
language, conceiving the role of 4uXn as that of a central faculty
connecting all the others, and ascribing to it the power of connected
reasoning and language-learning for which his predecessors have no
explanation.
12 This passage, and others like it, seem to indicate that Kirk (HCF, p. 32)
insists too emphatically upon the parallelism of word and action in early Greek
thought when he denies the existence of a "sharp distinction between the two,
at any rate until the development by the sophists and rhetoricians of the
),6yoq-9pyov contrast . . ." His analysis assimilates Heraclitus to his predecessors,
and ignores certain definite distinctions between the Homeric and the Hera-
clitean views of language and its relationship with action. Cf. also Verdenius'
remarks (p. 97) on early examples of the X6yo4-9pyov contrast.
13 Von Fritz, "NOOE in Homer," pp. 79-93. Also von Fritz, "NOON in Pre-
Socratics," 225ff., where he says: "There is absolutely no passage in Homer in
which this process of reasoning is so much as hinted at, when the terms V6os and
vo?tv are used. On the contrary, the realization of the truth comes always as a
sudden intuition: the truth is suddenly 'seen."' D. G. Frame's thesis, The
Origins of Greek NOOX, contains an excellent study of the etymology and seman-
tics of v6oq which, while supporting von Fritz's general conclusions, provides a
much more likely etymology and a far more precise and thorough study of
contexts and associations in the early epic tradition.
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The prominence which Heraclitus gives to 4uXq among the faculties
of the living man can clearly be seen in those fragments in which iuXy
takes the place of fire, the central element of the cosmic Xoyoq, in the
6Oyo4 of human existence (36, 77), and in many other fragments as
well. Fragment 67a is not indispensable for an understanding of
Heraclitus' +uX' doctrine; and if one denies its authenticity, one mus
still, I think, admit that it is in no way inconsistent with what we
learn from other fragments. But I believe, with Pohlenz, Diels, Kranz,
Kirk, and others, and against Marcovich,14 that it is genuine; and since
it presents with greater clarity than any other single fragment the
central role of tuxy in the living man, it seems appropriate to discuss
it briefly before moving on to a consideration of specific aspects of
this central role as they can be seen in other fragments.
Fragment 67a is cited by an early twelfth-century scholiast,
Hisdosus, in his commentary on Chalcidius' translation of the Timaeus
(Codex Parisinus Latinus 8624), with regard to 34b, the discussion of
the world-soul's position in the center of the cosmos. The scholiast
remarks that there are others who believe the sun to be the center; just
as the anima, with its seat in the heart, diffuses energy throughout
the limbs, so the heat proceeding from the sun gives life to all living
things:
14 Pohlenz, p. 972; DK I ad. Ioc.; Kranz, pp. 111-113; Kirk, Archiv, p. 76;
Marcovich, pp. 576-9.
15 I have retained the de fili perfectione of the manuscript rather than accepti
Diels' persectione. Persectio seems to occur nowhere else; and the usage de aliquo
dolere with the meaning "to mourn for" or "to grieve over something which is
no longer" is perfectly good Latin (e.g. Cic. Att. 6, 6, 2; Hor. Ep. 1, 14, 7), and
is an easy and natural extension of the ordinary meaning, "to grieve over."
Thus I would translate, "grieving over the wholeness of its thread (which is no
longer, whole, being broken)."
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an analogy which Marcovich uses to prove just the opposite point, and
one which, as I will show, is confusing rather than enlightening. In
addition to the arguments cited by Pohlenz in favor of the ascription
of this simile to Heraclitus (the absence of such a reference in Chal-
cidius, the scholiast's general awareness of ancient literature), I would
point also to the consistency of the fragment's general import with
that of other Heraclitean fragments, and to the interesting suggestion
Hisdosus gives in cui sententiae . .. adquiescens that his Heraclitean
source contains some sort of a further analogy between solar energy
and fu That Heraclitus draws an analogy between cosmic fire and
the Puxn' the "fiery" element in man, is certainly an accurate ob-
servation, and is one of the only points about Heraclitus' theory of
4uyI on which there is general agreement. Such an observation would
not have been possible, I think, for a man who knew Heracitus' work
only through the pneumatic theory of the Sceptics. And yet this,
Marcovich alleges, is the case with Hisdosus, although he gives us no
concrete reason for rejecting Pohienz' assessment of the scholiast's
knowledge of the ancients.
Indeed, the arguments used by Marcovich to deny the fragment's
authenticity are based on highly dubious analogies with later doctrine.
The fragments of Straton of Lampsacus (110-111), which he considers
an indispensable basis for the spider analogy, give us an extremely
passive notion of 4u ' as the seat of perceptual 7rah', drawn to that
ap' o6 7t6tovl. If Hisdosus were familiar with these fragments, and
were constructing his "Heracitean" simile on the basis of this familiar-
ity, it is difficult to see how it could have occurred to him to mention
the simile in a passage of commentary relating views concerning the
energizing and active properties of Qu Moreover, Straton gives no
account of Pux as microcosm, which Hisdosus' source apparently does.
Nor does Marcovich argue convincingly when he declares that
Hisdosus became familiar with Heraclitus through the Sceptics and
their pneumatic-diffusion theory of vu As an example of this theory,
he cites Tertullian's de anima 14,5, which Diels and Kranz cite in
support of the fragment's authenticity. This passage, which attributes
to "Straton, Aenesidemus, and Heracitus" an analogy between 4u X
and Archimedes' water-organ, obscures the issue here more than it
clarifies it. Tertullian is rarely reliable when he paraphrases; and his
ascnption of doctrines to a group of people of widely divergent dates
and views is a confusing and inaccurate polemical expedient. This
pneumatic doctrine bears even less resemblance to fr. 67a than do the
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fragments of Straton. Hisdosus does not describe the Heraclitean +u
as generally diffused, a breath rushing through the body; the impli-
cation of the whole passage is, rather, that 4ux' is analogous to the
sun, a central, definitely locatable, possibly fiery, source of energy.
If Hisdosus used the sources Marcovich describes, it is amazing that he
should have produced a picture of suX' which is so much closer in its
general import to other known fragments of Heraclitus that it is to the
alleged sources themselves.
It is also worth remembering that Hisdosus claims to quote directly
from Heraclitus, and seems to have no polemical point in view, as does
Tertullian, which might cause him willfully to present a false picture.
Even Tertullian, however, quotes correctly in the single reference to
Heraclitus where he actually claims to quote (de an 2: fr. 45).
We can, I think, conclude that Hisdosus' source was one which did
not assimilate Heraclitus to the Sceptics, and which was generally
more faithful to his words than those "sources" upon which Marcovich
claims the fragment is based. We may accept as Heraclitean the
comparison between spider and +uX', though not necessarily in all its
detail, and the suggestion of a further analogy between 4uX' and cosmic
fire.
What, then, can we learn from the spider-simile itself about Hera-
clitus' notions of +uXy 's role in life? First, that it is the central life-
faculty, upon which the others depend, and through which they oper-
ate. A man is not, as in Homer, a loosely-joined collection of limbs;
he does not react to one sort of stimulus in his 4upok, and to another
in his 9pe'v. All stimuli are referred to 4uy', which holds the body and
its faculties together. It is an active faculty, and not merely the seat
of the -ta't. It responds to stimuli, but these stimuli remain external
to it. It is locatable, and not generally diffused, but its location is not
fixed, as it is in the very similar analogy of Chrysippus (II 879 A).
Unlike Tertullian's flatus in calamo, it is apparently self-moving, and
capable of directing its movement. And there is the further implica-
tion that, since it is the essential animating force in the body, nothing
done merely to the body will be sufficient to produce death. If the
simile is accurate, we will expect to see death explained as something
which happens specifically to 4uXn, and neither merely to the body,
nor to the creature as a whole. And, indeed, this prediction is borne
out by the evidence of fragments 36 and 77, as we shall see.
It would not be wise to push the details of the analogy further. The
interesting suggestion, embodied in firme et proportionaliter, about the
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relation of +u ' to body cannot be accurately assessed in translation;
one supposes that proportionaliter translates some phrase involving
XO6yoq, but it is hard to know whether the translator has grasped the
appropriate sense of the word 6Oyoq in its context; without the original
one cannot judge.
We see, then, in general, that +uX( is the essential life-faculty in the
living being (in men specifically, if we accept hominis anima as genuine).
Two gaps in the Homeric picture of man are filled simultaneously, as
Heraclitus accounts for the life-activity of that which was previously
noticed only in terms of death, and also accounts for the unity of the
individual, who had been described as a collection of limbs and facul-
ties. Now we will see that his 4utx doctrine answers yet a further need:
the need to account for language, and the ability to use it, in some
more satisfactory way than had the epic poets and their followers.
Fr. 107: xocxo' p'upA V9p@tOlaLV 4pOL XMX &rA papous
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observes that the word was not used until a sense of Greek unity had
arisen, with reference to which fO'poCXpoL, too, could be defined as a
single group. Liddell and Scott remark that it is not until after the
Persian war that the term even began to be extended to mean generally
rude or uncomprehending. In the period which concerns us it refers
only to linguistic understanding, and has no implications of general
inability to comprehend. Aeschylus in the Persians, has the Persian
characters of the drama refer to themselves as r3&prapoL (255, 337, 391,
etc.), a fact which proves that even shortly after Heraclitus' time the
term still retained a very narrow sense, and was not pejorative in
connotation. Thus it seems that Heracitus is not making the rather
bland and vague statement that sense-data are deceptive if you have a
crude and uncomprehending 4uxB, but the far more interesting state-
ment that your senses will deceive you if you do not have an accurate
understanding of your own language. Addressing his remarks in the
Greek language to a Greek-speaking audience, he seems to say, "You
divide mankind into two groups, Greeks and fpo3xppQL, describing
yourselves as those who understand the Greek language, and all
other men as those who do not. But I intend to show you that, in fact,
you have no better understanding of your language than those whom
you call r3&pcxpoc, since linguistic understanding is dependent not only
upon birth in a certain locality, but also upon the proper training of
the 4ux ."
We noted that the Homeric man seemed unaware of the processes
by which he learned and understood language. He spoke what he heard;
nothing that happened between the ear and the tongue was of essential
importance. Heraclitus insists that sense data must be referred to
+UXI, which is capable of understanding language; only then will the
process be complete.
The meaning of this emphasis on language in connection with per-
ception is not immediately clear. And yet it is evident that for Hera-
clitus, who so frequently contrasts men and animals (frs. 4, 9, 29, etc.),
who places great emphasis on learning how to understand the con-
nections among things, for whom wisdom consists in speaking the
truth as well as in action (fr. 112), the way men understand their
language is of central importance; and their errors in understanding
the nature of the world can be understood, from a slightly different
viewpoint, as failures to understand the structure of their language.
It is, I think, in failures to grasp language that Heraclitus tends to
find the source of the more general error, and Moyoq, the essential
10
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meaning of which up until his time has been connected statement, is
that with which he thinks one must deal first, if one is to understand
?O\yoq in its wider, cosmic sense.
Men are misled by their atomistic conception of language. Fragment 1
shows us that men's ears are bad witnesses so long as they remain on
the level of 9nea and fail to grasp the ?o6yo4; they are OCiDvvrot, not making
connections. The a'UvvoL try out e`nea and ?pyo; their words are detached
units. To grasp single 6`aoc without grasping Xoyoq is futile; their ears
pass on Heraclitus' words, but they understand no better than before
they heard. The &'VUZvOr, as we see from fr. 107, are going wrong be-
cause their iuvxL do not understand Greek. Mere hearing does them
little good.
The sorts of error men can make about things through an inade-
quate understanding of language are frequently discussed in the
fragments.'9 Two examples must suffice here. In fr. 23, he says: "They
would not know the name of Dike if such things did not exist." Such
things, presumably, are unjust things.20 The word Dike, which men
consider as the name of an independent goddess, could not have
meaning except with reference to its opposite. If injustice did not exist,
men would have no reason to speak of justice. And yet men, seeing
words as 97re, miss this essential connection, this interdependence of
words. Fr. 57 gives us an even clearer picture of popular error: Heracli-
tus declares that men think Hesiod knew more than anyone else; but
he did not even understand day and night; for they are one.21 Now
if we look in the Theogony (123-124), we find that Hesiod makes
Night the child of Chaos and Erebos, and Aither and Day, in turn, the
children of Erebos and Night. Hesiod did not see the illogicality of
making night older than day; his genealogy cannot explain how men
use the words "night" and "day"; for in ordinary usage they are
interdependent and are defined with reference to each other. Thus,
Hesiod's misunderstanding of words leads him to make a mistake in
11
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cosmogony, and he gives a false analysis of the nature of the visible
world.
There is another fragment which I believe has been misunderstood
by some commentators, and can be understood more precisely in
connection with fr. 107. This is fragment 34: &(vvToL &xoOixav-t0e
X&WpOtaLV rOLXxavL Cp&TL4 CXTOTLVV optpTVpEL rCOxpeOvVTCX MiLZvCaL. aTCp& here
has usually been translated as "proverb."22 But the proverb in question
is found by Marcovich nowhere earlier than Aristophanes' Knights
1119, where it is not clearly proverbial, and may equally well be a
clever paradox set forth by the comic poet. The use of the simple verbal
noun to mean "proverb" is nowhere else attested. This fragment is the
only evidence given by Liddell and Scott for the existence of such a
meaning. Usually, cpacx-, means simnply "what is said": report, rumor
account, speech, and even language, as in Aes. Ag. 1254:
'EX-nv' 7TLC[OGCaL YpXTLV.
In the light of the connection made by fragment 107 between successful
hearing and linguistic understanding, I think we can understand cpnrt
here in its more basic sense. Thus: "People who fail to make connectionls,
when they hear, seem like deaf people. What they say (or speech, in
their case), bears witness that although they are present, they are
absent." ocuaroLv would be simply an ethical dative, and the paradoxical
=peovraOq atreLvat a Heraclitean juxtaposition of opposites. (It did not
seem likely that Heraclitus would have cited a proverb in support of
an attack on the 7no?XA. The style seems peculiarly his own.) With this
interpretation, the fragment reinforces what we know from frs. 1 and
107 about the interrelationships of hearing, understanding, and speak-
ing. (Fr. 19 suggests a similar observation: &xoiaoL oux e'MGOawVOL
oWr' ?s=xZv.) Men do not learn language, as many think, simply by hear-
ing and speaking. If they remain ajV'rToL - if they have iuyjxL that
are incapable of making linguistic connections - they are no better
than deaf people, since what they say shows that they have not
understood what they have heard any better than if they had not
been there to hear it at all. To tell whether someone understands the
words he hears, we have to see whether he knows how to use them
himself in connected statement. A failure to do so is evidence of a
PapDapoq +?XnT-
So far, our elucidation of fr. 107 has been confined to the issue of
misunderstanding of language, and the examples of bad witness have
22 Marcovich, pp. 12-13; DK ad. loc.; Holscher, p. 139; Ramnoux, p. 38. But
Kirk (Archiv, p. 75) understands the paradox as Heraclitus' own.
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been concerned mainly with the mis-hearing of words. We have seen
that it is perfectly correct, according to Heraclitus, to say of most
Greeks that they are really 3cippapoL. And we have seen that a mis-
understanding of words can lead, as in the case of Hesiod, to the for-
mation of a false cosmogony, and thus that false hearing can result in
false interpretation of the seen. But I believe that the critique
implied in fr. 107 does not stop at correcting a false picture of language;
I believe it also asserts the centrality of language in all human learning,
and the importance of speech for the proper interpretation of any
sense data. We need not confine our interpretation to the mis-hearing
of words. In a very fundamental sense nothing seen or heard can be
fully understood without language, since it is in learning and communi-
cating through language that a human being learns to relate and judge
that which he perceives. In fragment 3, we have a classic example of
false witness of the eyes: the sun appears to be a foot wide. Now,
borrowing Aristotle's analysis of this same phenomenon (de An 428 b 2),
we might say that this immediate and false picture is an "appearing",
common to all animals. But the learning of the true account would
be peculiar to man, and involves connected reasoning and language.
Thus, in any case of perception, to move from appearance to a true
account we need language. We cannot conceive of connected reasoning
existing without it.
This short account cannot do full justice to Heraclitus' ideas about
language; it has elucidated that question insofar as it bears on the
nature of the Heracitean 4uX. To summarize, then, our conclusions
about fr. 107: It is with 4uXi, the central and connecting life-faculty,
that man may potentially understand XGyoq, or connected discourse.
Because of the central importance of language in understanding, the
central life-faculty in man is, first and foremost, a faculty of language.23
Sense data are referred to +u and are interpreted according to the
fUn 's degree of linguistic competence. All mortal living creatures, one
would suppose, have JuZj; only in human beings can that Pux' grasp
?o6yoq. The term X6yo4 is not restricted to the meaning "discourse" or
"statement", just as PuxZ is not only a faculty of language. Both are
used in a variety of contexts. And yet the fundamental importance of
language in Herachtus' analysis of cognition cannot be denied. In his
use of the term vwoos, or insight - which has in itself, no linguistic
overtones - he gives it such overtones by introducing the verb Xeyc:
23 Cf. Hoffmann, p. 7.
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in fr. 114 we may say that tuv vo6) Xyovto means much the same as
using a Pux4 which speaks the language. v6o4, or insight, becomes a
quality of the well-functioning 4u X, gained as a consequence of lin-
guistic understanding; and v6o4 is probably emphasized in 114 chiefly
for the sake of the word-play with iuv6v. The fact that the two terms
v6oq and +u are never juxtaposed led von Fritz24 to ignore the role of
svxm altogether in his analysis of the role of v6o4. It seems clear, how-
ever, that for Heracitus su ' is far more central, and v6o4 becomes
subordinate to it.
We see, then, that Heraclitus, taking two terms whose meanings be-
fore his time had most often been negatively defined in explicit use, has
given them central positions in his philosophy: suZj as the connecting
and knowing faculty, Xoyo4 as the primary object of knowledge. The
creative nature of his achievement can most clearly be seen against the
background of non-philosophic thought, the scope of which Heraclitus
seems deliberately to revise and to enlarge. Insufficient contemporary
evidence makes it difficult to determine how much of his reassessment
of ;k6yoq and +uyJ3 is, in fact, his own. If he is really the first to have
accorded these terms such central importance, we may then be forced
to ask ourselves whether he predicted the fifth century or created it;
for no two words take on greater importance in the thought of suc-
ceeding generations (a fact which often has led, I believe, to a failure
to appreciate the originality of Heraclitus' theories).
I think we cannot assume that the novelty of Heraclitus' usage was
as great as the available evidence might lead us to suppose; certainly
the senses of iuX' and ?o6yog which he develops were in some way inherent
in the senses of the words as earlier used, and it is the contexts in
which it occurred to earlier men to speak about 4ux( and ?O6yog, rather
than what men meant by the words themselves, that were formerly
restricted. Then, too, it is clear that other subsequent uses of the words
in "positive contexts" cannot all be dependent upon an understanding
of Heraclitus; the evolution in their usage must have been under way
24 Von Fritz, "NOOE in Pre-Socratics," pp. 230-236. Frame's study shows that
the role of iuXp as life-principle cannot be ignored in any profitable study of
v6oq, since its earliest traceable Indo-European meaning is that of a faculty by
means of which one returns (the root being the same as that of vio,Lot, v6a-roq,
etc.) from death to life and light. One wins, or keeps, one's +uX' by exercising
v6o; (cf. x 5: &pv.LCevoq ~v -r 4uXyv xxl v6a-rov kX(pcav). v6oq, like u is originally
connected with the threat of death; and in making suxi explicitly central,
Heraclitus clarifies what it is that a man's v6oo is to accomplish.
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by the time he wrote.25 But it does seem likely that he is the first
Greek thinker to have elaborated a philosophical doctrine of +Uxn, and
to have connected with the life-operations of +u7' the notion of lin-
guistic understanding.
In concluding this section, we ought to deal briefly with the two
fragments which speak of a X6yoq YuyxG In fr. 45, Heraclitus declares,
+Ux~q MrEPpa-a tv ou'x av ?'eupOLO, 7&aCv tL7top?UOSU6VOq 6 OV. OUTGr Px1hmv
XOyov gZeL. And, in fr. 115: iu(q i-t Xo?yoq Cut6v cu`@ov. These frag-
ments can both be interpreted in a variety of ways; I would like,
however, to see them as a further reference to +ij 's capacity for
learning, and to the central importance of language in all such learn-
ing.26 Fragments 101 and 116 emphasize the possibility and the im-
portance of self-development for all men. Fragment 45 would, then
reinforce the declaration of 116 that development is possible by saying
that there are no limits to man's power to develop his understanding,
of such basic importance is the innate linguistic capacity with which
his +uyn is equipped.27 Because his fuxZ has the power of ?oyo4, there
are no limits to its development; this capacity increases itself, for the
more one understands language, the better are one's tools for increasing
that understanding.
[To be concluded]
Harvard University
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27 Cf. Snell, Discovery, p. 19. His analysis of the sense of a@i)q seems to be
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15
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