Heraclitus

In Our Time: Philosophy

BBC

History

4.5 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 8 December 2011

⏱️ 42 minutes

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Summary

Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus. Writing in the 5th century BC, Heraclitus believed that everything is constantly changing or, as he put it, in flux. He expressed this thought in a famous epigram: "No man ever steps into the same river twice." Heraclitus is often considered an enigmatic thinker, and much of his work is complex and puzzling. He was critical of the poets Homer and Hesiod, whom he considered to be ignorant, and accused the mathematician Pythagoras (who may have been his contemporary) of making things up. Heraclitus despaired of men's folly, and in his work constantly strove to encourage people to consider matters from alternative perspectives. Donkeys prefer rubbish to gold, he observed, pointing out that the same thing can have different meanings to different people.Unlike most of his contemporaries he was not associated with a particular school or disciplinary approach, although he did have his followers. At times a rationalist, at others a mystic, Heraclitus is an intriguing figure who influenced major later philosophers and movements such as Plato and the Stoics.With:Angie HobbsAssociate Professor of Philosophy and Senior Fellow in the Public Understanding of Philosophy at the University of WarwickPeter AdamsonProfessor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy at King's College LondonJames WarrenSenior Lecturer in Classics and a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, University of CambridgeProducer: Natalia Fernandez.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.uk.
0:10.0	I hope you enjoy the program.
0:12.0	Hello, thought have lived about 500 BC.
0:16.0	Heraclitus is one the most important and certainly the most intriguing of the
0:20.0	pre-Socratic Greek philosophers.
0:22.0	He is well known in antiquity for cryptic utterances such as
0:25.1	you can never step into the same river twice, which earned him a reputation for
0:29.2	obscurity. Another of his celebrated epigrams is, if you don't expect the unexpected, you won't find it out, since it's not to be found out, and pathless.
0:38.0	Heraclitus Heraclitus Heraclitus, Heraclitus was known as the weeping philosopher supposedly because of his melancholy view of life.
0:44.0	His philosophy is enigmatic, succinct, surprising and profound.
0:48.0	We'd me to discuss Heraclitus are Angie Hobbs,
0:51.0	Associate Professor of Philosophy and Senior Fellow in the Public Understanding
0:54.4	of Philosophy at the University of Warwick, Peter Adamson, Professor of Ancient and Medieval Philosophy
0:59.4	at Kings College London, and James Warren, Senior Lecture in Classics of the Fellow of Corpus Christi College,
1:05.1	the University of Cambridge.
1:06.1	Angie Hobbs, what do we actually know about Heraclitus?
1:09.1	Well he was born about 535 and lived to about 475 BC in Ephesus, so a Greek settlement on the coast of Asia Minor.
1:18.0	And though it was a Greek settlement, it was by this time part of the Persian Empire, though not happy about that.
1:25.0	And in the four-90s, BC Ephesus was at the forefront of a rebellion against Persia.
1:32.0	So fairly turbulent times. He was born into an aristocratic
1:35.6	family. He, as you said, he had a reputation for being dark or obscure and
1:40.9	riddling and rather misanthropic.
	...

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