“Whatever Appears Tends to Disappear”

Mark Steven A. Pandan

Immaculate Heart of Mary Seminary

Nietzsche has argued that no historian can avoid making value judgments about the texts they

explore. Every historian writes for an end that is conducive for life. It is therefore not my intent in this

brief essay to speculate on what was in the mind of the historical Heraclitus when he wrote that

“Whatever appears tends to disappear.” Instead, let me reflect on three areas wherein this text may be

striking to me. The three areas are those that I have been deeply interested in due to their existential

significance: psychology, pedagogy, and philosophy.

An interesting thing I’ve learned about man is that our eyes cannot but move around. It cannot

stay still. Why so? Simple. The part of the eye that receives the light continuously gets tired after some

point, and so quickly at that. So other areas of the eyes can do the job of receiving the light by which we

see, the eye moves involuntarily. It is for this reason that at the sensory level, it is true that what

appears tends to disappear, due to this voluntary motion of the eyes. This, I think, is the same principle

at work as to why the human attention span is quite low. It is low because a certain aspect of the

nervous system responsible for a certain form of cognition could easily get tired, especially that not only

is the data processed by it at each slice of time combinatorially explosive, but also since these

explosions are extended across time. To let this part rest, what appears to us at some point must

disappear. That is, our attention must be directed elsewhere. This mechanism is evolutionary driven,

and thus must have some life-affirming end (so those cells that are overworked will not just die out of

exhaustion). But it must be regulated, as it is too easy for man to live a disintegrated,

compartmentalized life. Due to this awareness of his own psychology, man must therefore actively avoid
being too distracted, and instead do everything within his powers to keep his eyes on the pursuit of the

true, the good, and the beautiful.

Having reflected a bit on psychology, let us now see what this text could mean when it inhabits

the conceptual space of pedagogy. Notice that one of the aims of education is to teach virtue. For

instance, social studies education aims to develop civic competent learners. But this leads us to ask the

perennial question in Plato: can virtue be taught? After all, even “educated” people, meaning those in

whom virtue already seemed to be present thereby enabling them to graduate formally, can still act

viciously. Take, for instance, corrupt politicians who were once educated in top Christian universities.

This leads us to ask though whether virtue was there in them in the first place, and how educators

between real and mere apparent virtue. Well, this text therefore brings home to me this central

question in the field of education: how do we make students (i) truly, and (ii) enduringly virtuous? If we

cannot, formal education seems of no use at all, or it may even bring us harm. Regarding the latter, if

education can only give us technical know how, but not the virtue by which to apply it right, we’re not

far from manufacturing more weapons of mass destruction because why not.

And finally, philosophy. Let me first reflect on the text on the angle of epistemology—one of

philosophy’s key branches. Notice how at lot of what we think we know (appearances of knowledge) we

later end up realizing were false or unjustified (and thus, disappear). This is the Heraclitean fate of the

finite human mind. Nothing in it escapes potential future deconstruction. This brings us to another of

philosophy’s branches, metaphysics.

Notice how material things (assume Thomistic metaphysics as true for the purposes of this

paper) inherently possess prime matter, by which they are predisposed to become something other

than they at present are. As Aquinas says in his tertia via (according to one of the many interpretations

at least), all generables are corruptibles. This is my Thomistic rendition of this Heraclitean principle. This

therefore existentially brings us to ask what could satisfy our thirst for an enduring “home.” As
transcendental Thomists emphasize, only God could fiill this need. This therefore brings us to

philosophy’s final and most “human,” we might say, branch.

Precisely because whatever appears tends to disappear, we have to commit our lives to that

which did not appear, but already always was. Precisely because He is in His Eternal Now, no slice of

time, present, future, or past, eludes Him. He is eternally present. In fact, all value is relative to Him, as

He is that by which they gain their luminosity. He alone, therefore, could satisfy the deepest longing of

man for an enduring home. And this, I think, is why (correct) axiology brings the cosmos back into its

proper end, as though through a reditus, to that whose value can be exceeded by none.