Author

Heraclitus

Greek philosopher of Ephesus who taught the hidden unity of opposites, governed by the logos.

fl. c. 500 BCE

Also known as Herakleitos, Heraclitus of Ephesus

Biography

Heraclitus lived at Ephesus, a Greek city on the coast of Asia Minor, and was active around 500 BCE. Later biographers report that he came from an aristocratic family and gave up a hereditary office to his brother, and that he held most of his fellow citizens, and most poets and philosophers, in contempt. Their stories about him are colourful and largely unreliable.

He wrote a single book, later known as On Nature, in short and striking sentences. It does not survive, but more than a hundred fragments are quoted by later authors. Its style earned him the name “the Obscure” in antiquity, and he himself said that nature loves to hide.

His teaching centres on the logos, the account or order that governs all things and is common to all, though most people fail to understand it even when they hear it. Opposites are bound together in this order: the road up and the road down are one and the same; day and night, war and peace, hunger and satiety belong together. The world is an ever-living fire, kindled and quenched in measures, and everything is in change, though the measures remain. Plato took him as the philosopher of universal flux, and the Stoics adopted his fire and his logos.

Major works

The First Philosophers of GreeceTranslation, tr. Arthur Fairbanks, 1898Fairbanks’s edition of the fragments of the early Greek philosophers, from Thales to the atomists, with the Greek text, an English translation and the principal ancient reports of their views, including the fragments of Heraclitus and Parmenides’ poem.

Philosophical ideas

Scholarship

Listening not to the speaker but to the logos, it is wise to agree that all things are one.

Opposites are one in their tension, like the bow and the lyre: what is at variance agrees with itself, and the hidden harmony is stronger than the visible one.

Cite this entry

Chicago (bibliography): “Heraclitus.” Author. The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society. Last modified November 7, 2026. https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/heraclitus.
Chicago (note): “Heraclitus,” author, The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, last modified November 7, 2026, https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/heraclitus.
MLA: “Heraclitus.” The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society, 7 Nov. 2026, www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/heraclitus.
BibTeX: @misc{authors-heraclitus, title = {{Heraclitus}}, howpublished = {The Library, Unitive Knowledge Society}, note = {Author. Last modified November 7, 2026}, year = {2026}, url = {https://www.unitiveknowledge.org/library/authors/heraclitus} }

Related authors

Contemporary of: Parmenides

Related concepts

Related traditions

Early Greek PhilosophyTraditionThe Greek thinkers before Socrates, who first asked what single source and order underlie the many things of the world.

Continue the inquiry

Questions

Do opposites meet in the ultimate?Whether the contraries that structure thought, being and non-being, one and many, light and dark, are reconciled at the source of things.