6 - MM McCabe on Heraclitus

Hi, I really enjoyed the podcast of MM McCabe on Heraclitus. I want to ask you if you could please send me the passage in Greek and the new translation of fragment B.125 or tell me where can I look for the information on it. Thank you and keep on with the good work.

Hi Peter,

Absolute catcher-upper, thanks so much for this resource. In uni it was all exam- focussed, so I actually retained very little. That said, I studied in Maynooth, in Ireland, so I am NOT looking forward to re-dismissing Aquinas! :-)

I thoroughly enjoyed this podcast and indeed the entire series so far.
I am doing a paper on Nietzsche's use of Heraclitus' form of the aphorism in his (Nietzsche) early and later periods.
I was struck by her argument that each aphorism contains an argument and often a resolution - I think N. might have been drawn to this as well.
Has she published anything on this thesis? I was unable to find anything at the university databases?
Thanks for any consideration and thanks so much for this series.
After reading his book so many times it was delight to here 'S' of the famous KRS!

The series is a good review of philosophy. Thanks for the work to produce it! I felt somewhat dissatisfied after this segment. It seems we know so little about Heraclitus that everything said in the podcast is very speculative. And further the idea seemed to be that if you do not understand one of the aphorisms then rewrite it to state something you can understand.

So I suppose Heraclitus is enslaved and emancipated through clear ambiguities . He really had no choice but to speak in contradictions since otherwise he'd refute himself within the the ever changing unchanged One.

I'm beginning to realize how my favourite, Plato, might have misinformed me about Heraclitus.

Whether or not Heraclitus had this in mind, I find a profound truth that at 84 never occurred to me; namely, every day is different; every person we meet is not the same as he was yesterday. We do ourselves and others a great injustice in assuming that we feel the same, believe the same, see things the same, as we did yesterday. Even the words we use mean something different today than they did yesterday, and the words mean one thing to us and another to our hearers and readers. 

How do you spell the word you referred to from fragment 125 (that describes the Greek "salad dressing like" / emulsion drink (oil/wine/cheese +/- grain))? What does it look like?

I don't have anything else to say , but thank you for all of this wonderfull podcasts

anytime i hear or read someone's interpretation of h., i come back and listen to this [and the previous podcast] for refreshment. of course, coming in with new knowledge and experiences, the podcast is different each time. thanks for all the knowledge you make available freely, even if the credentials are expensive [writing from usa].
 

Peter,

    This is brilliant. I so appreciate your talks. It's a wonderful review from college philosophy courses and so much more - so much clearer. Maybe I am ready to hear now!

Question: I know this isn't related to philosophy, but I was wondering if the philosophers of the ancient Greek world were exposed to, familiar with, engaged in the Eleusinian and Orphic Mysteries and if so, whether it influenced their ideas?  Thank you.

I am using your Podcasts and the works of Copleston to get a comprehensive understanding of the history of philosophy. I studied philosophy for my undergraduate, but the courses were too sporadic. It's difficult to remember the heat felt convictions of the philosophers and the arguments that came before them if you don't have any history. I find that Podcasts such as this one create a web of philosophers and their ideas. 

Thank you! I can't wait to keep learning.  

This idea of opposites (that the road is both up and down at the same time, that the seawater is both bad for humans and good for fish at the same time) is quite similar to the Muslim scholar, mystic, poet and philosopher Ibn Arabi. He writes in his Wahdat ul Wujud (unity of existence) that the term 'wujud' to refer to God as the Necessary Being. He also attributes the term to everything other than God, but he insists that wujud does not belong to the things found in the cosmos in any real sense. Rather, the things borrow wujud from God, much as the earth borrows light from the sun. The issue is how wujūd can rightfully be attributed to the things, also called "entities" (aʿyān). Ibn Arabi declares that wujūd belongs to God alone, and, in his famous phrase, the things "have never smelt a whiff of wujud." From the point of view of tashbih, he affirms that all things are wujūd's self-disclosure (tajalli) or self-manifestation (ẓohur). In sum, all things are "He/not He" (howa/lāhowa), which is to say that they are both God and other than God, both wujud and other than wujud. So in this sense the creation is existent and non existent at the same time.
Do you think Ibn Arabi would have developed his philosophy based on Heraclitus'?

You're doing a great job, I'm new to philosophy so I'm ever more enthusiastic in sharing my thoughts with others and welcoming theirs. :)

I like aphoristic philosophers, exposing their thought and leaving it out their for challenge. There is something incomplete that invites a challenge.

I think he is dealing with Time, changes over time.

The river is flowing, it is comprised of H20 all the time, but they are different molecules of H20. The reference is to the replacement by the old with the new of the same, which is how change occurs over time.

Heraclitus was a master in elaborate trolling?

Does Heraclitus think of fire as an object, or as a subject?