Quote of the Day

It is difficult to fight against anger, for a man will buy revenge with his soul - Heracleitus, 500 B.C.

Via The View From Under The Desk. This sent me on a short wander. I had never heard of Heracleitus, so I had to look him up. Wikipedia's intro gives a good summary, but then I found a website of philosophers with this:

HERACLEITUS THE RIDDLER (EARLY 5TH CENTURY BC) "All things come into being by conflict of opposites"

Overview
"We descend and do not descend into the same river, we are and are not ourselves." Fragment B 49A Heracleitus was one of the first to seek a universal explanation for nature and man's role within it, an explanation not reliant on the gods. Like Parmenides, Heracleitus held that things are not as we perceive them. Unlike Parmenides, he conceives of a world of constant change and conflict. His is a world in which the interaction, the tension, of opposites, is a creative force. The only permanent feature of things is their constant becoming. This most famous part of his doctrine came to be encapsulated in the phrase "all things are flowing".

Heracleitus identified fire as the principle element of nature and creation. This he identified with what he termed the Logos, a sort of world soul which permeated and governed all life.

Much of Heracleitus better fits Eastern philosophy than what has become the western tradition. The Hindu god, Shiva, encompasses many of the elements emphasised by Heracleitus - eg. the the important interaction between destructive and creative forces and the importance of fire as a creative force.

Shiva, huh, imagine that. An ancient Greek and ancient Hindus coming up with similar philosophies.

That second quote, the one about the river, is more commonly phrased as "No man ever steps in the same river twice".

Bonus Word of the Day: Floruit - is a Latin verb meaning "flourished", denoting the period of time during which something (such as a person, school, movement, or species) was active. Via Wikipedia.