Surviving in fragments, and shrouded in mystery, Heraclitus is regarded as the theorist of radical flux: “Everything flows; and nothing abides.” Yet, his philosophical output, just because it’s so enigmatic and “incomplete,” has vexed interpreters and made him a touchstone for a dramatic variety of philosophical thought. To Aristotle, he was simply a peddler of superficial riddles. But to Plato, Heraclitus pointed the way to metaphysics—to the need to ground ever-changing sensible reality in a transcendent source of being. His modern admirers include Hegel (“there is no proposition of Heraclitus that I have not adopted in my logic”), Nietzsche, and Alfred North Whitehead, whose “Process Philosophy” proceeds from a Heraclitian view of endless dynamism. But what kind of thinker was Heraclitus—and why does he inspire such a wide variety of interpretations? What, if anything, can we say about the thought of Heraclitus himself, in contrast to theories attributed to him by his later readers? And just how much of Heraclitus’s thought remains a living insight for philosophy today? What does it mean, for nature, being, and knowledge, if “the only thing that is constant is change?”
In this course, we will start at the beginning—in some ways the very beginning of Western philosophical speculation—with the frustratingly opaque and untrustworthy sources on Heraclitus’ life and thought that have survived from antiquity. We will turn to the reception of these sources in the thought of Plato, Aristotle, and the early Stoics. From there we will move to modern receptions, examining in particular the unity of opposites in Hegel’s conception of dialectic, the Heracliteanism of Nietzsche’s thought, and the place of the concept of flux in process philosophy. Finally, we will consider more speculatively points of contact between Heraclitus and literary explorations of flux, most notably in Clarice Lispector’s Água Viva.
Note:
There *is* no physical Brooklyn Institute. We hold our classes all over (thus far) Brooklyn and Manhattan, in alternative spaces ranging from the back rooms of bars to bookstores to spaces in cultural centers, including the Center for Jewish History, the Goethe-Institut, and the Barnard Center for Research on Women. We can (and do) turn any space into a classroom. You will be notified of the exact location when you register for a class.
Instructors will contact students approximately one week prior to the first class with reading assignments and details about the course location.
