Heraclitus by Martin Heidegger

Description

Heraclitus: The Inception of Occidental Thinking and Logic: Heraclitus’s Doctrine of the Logos by Martin Heidegger is a profound philosophical exploration of the early Greek thinker Heraclitus, whose fragments and teachings laid the groundwork for Western philosophy. Heidegger delves deep into Heraclitus’s concept of the Logos, seeking to uncover its original meaning and significance, far beyond the traditional interpretations that came to dominate Western metaphysics and logic. Heidegger presents Heraclitus not as a philosopher in the conventional sense but as a pre-Socratic thinker who articulated an original experience of Being. For Heidegger, Heraclitus’s Logos does not simply mean “reason” or “word” as it came to be translated, but something far more primordial—an ordering principle that both reveals and conceals the truth of existence. The Logos, in this sense, is the gathering and articulation of Being itself, an originary showing that calls for human beings to listen and respond thoughtfully. Heidegger argues that Heraclitus’s teaching was misunderstood and oversimplified by later philosophical traditions, which reduced the Logos to a rational principle rather than an event of disclosure. He interprets Heraclitus’s famous fragments—such as “all things come to pass in accordance with the Logos” and “listening not to me but to the Logos, it is wise to acknowledge that all things are one”—as early expressions of an experience of the unfolding of Being that Western thought gradually covered over with conceptual thinking and metaphysics. In this work, Heidegger suggests that Occidental (Western) thinking began with Heraclitus, but quickly diverted into an oblivion of Being, where thought became increasingly abstract and disconnected from its origin in experience and presence. The book is both a critical analysis of Heraclitus’s fragments and a reflection on the destiny of Western thought, offering Heidegger’s own project of retrieving the question of Being as a return to this early Greek insight. Ultimately, Heraclitus: The Inception of Occidental Thinking and Logic reflects Heidegger’s lifelong concern with reawakening philosophy to its original vocation, inviting us to rethink the foundations of logic, reason, and metaphysics by returning to the earliest expressions of the Logos in Heraclitus’s thought. Heidegger presents Heraclitus not as an ancient thinker to be historically studied, but as a living interlocutor in the effort to understand what it means for Being to be revealed.