The philosophical world of senior two is a living fire.

Hello! If you want to know more, read it yourself. It is clear that high school textbooks are also written under these guidance. Among them, "logos" is the earliest description of "logic" that we often say in mathematics now.

Regarding the origin of all things, Heraclitus clearly declared: "This self-identity universe was not created by any god or anyone. It was, is and will be an eternal living fire, burning and extinguishing according to a certain scale. "

Compared with predecessors' thoughts, Heraclitus' philosophical declaration has distinct and profound characteristics. He not only openly denied God's creationism, but also clearly emphasized the eternity, universality, fluidity and order of origin from the very beginning. Fire is not only the origin of the world, it turns into everything, and everything is reduced to fire. Moreover, in the process of burning and extinguishing, the fire itself is restricted or dominated by certain principles, so its movement is not arbitrary. It can be seen that Heraclitus inherited and developed the militarism school's thought about the uncertainty and fluidity of origin. On the one hand, he advocates that everything is fluid and nothing is eternal, thus taking living fire as a symbol, indicating that everything in nature is always in motion and change, and the real constant is "change" itself; On the other hand, he also realized that although only change is constant, there are rules to follow. In other words, change also has a certain scale, and everything in nature changes along this scale. This standard for regulating the movement and change of all things is logos.

In Heraclitus' philosophy, the most distinctive and profound important concept is logos. In ancient Greek, logos was originally a common noun derived from the verb "Shuo", and its basic meaning was speech and discourse, from which many other meanings such as truth, reason, reason, consideration, proportion, rule and so on were derived. Because it is difficult to find the corresponding concept in Chinese, it is usually transliterated as logos, and sometimes translated as Laozi's "Tao". Heraclitus introduced logos as an important concept into philosophy for the first time and gave it new meaning.

In Heraclitus, logos has many meanings, and the academic circles have different views on how to recognize and understand logos. We think it should be mainly understood as the scale or proportion, universal principle or inevitability that everything must be based on and observed, which is equivalent to what we call the law. Although it sometimes refers to universal reason, these two aspects are consistent. Because he pointed out that this logos not only exists forever, but also "everything is generated according to this logos" and "logos are all the same". Whoever does not know and then obeys logos cannot gain wisdom and grasp the truth. On the other hand, "if you listen to this logos without listening to me, you will say with one voice that all things are one, that is, wisdom."

The presentation and elaboration of the concept of "logos" is a great historical contribution of Heraclitus to philosophy, which has a far-reaching impact on his own philosophy and the development of his later thoughts. In a sense, it was logos who made knowledge possible. Early Greek natural philosophy, starting from simple dialectics, concluded that everything in nature was moving and changing. However, if everything is in motion, knowledge has no foundation. Therefore, the logos of Heraclitus, as the measure of movement change, which is what we call the law, makes knowledge certain. On the other hand, due to the intervention of logos, Heraclitus' philosophy has a dual structure: natural things that are always in the process of life and death and eternal logos. All these are reflected in the later philosophy of parmenides, Anaxagoras, Plato and Aristotle. More importantly, in the later development of western philosophy, theology and science, the concept of logos and its derived logic have always played an important role.

Another notable feature of Heraclitus' philosophy is his rich and simple dialectical thought. Before him, Miletus School had proposed that two opposing forces (such as cold and heat, cohesion and evacuation) contained in the original work were the root of metaplasia, and Pythagoras School had also studied various categories of opposites, but really realized that the struggle and unity between opposites was the root of movement change, or Heraclitus. He not only emphasized the endless fire, affirmed the flow and immortality of all things, advocated that people could not step into the same river twice and insisted on the objectivity and universality of movement, but also summed up the identity between opposites from a large number of phenomena and realized that the root of movement change lies in struggle. There are many fragments that embody this idea, such as "opposing forces create harmony, just like bows and harps", "life and death, waking and sleeping, young and old are the same", "the upward road and the downward road are the same", "We must know that war is universal, justice is struggle, and everything is produced according to struggle and necessity" and so on.

Of course, Heraclitus' dialectical thought is simple, intuitive and purely judgmental after all, and has not yet risen to the height of the concept of consciousness. Not only that, on the whole, his thoughts are also tinged with relativism and circular theory, which leaves room for his disciple Kratylos to give full play to his thoughts. It is said that Kratylos declared that "one cannot step into the same river once". In addition, as far as the proposition that "people can't step into the same river twice" is concerned, Heraclitus seems to be mainly concerned with the change of the river, but in fact, people who step into the flowing river are also moving and changing, which is exactly the thinking of later wise men.

Heraclitus not only mainly discusses the source, basis and existing mode of things, but also involves the issue of epistemology for the first time in the history of western philosophy. On the one hand, he fully affirmed the necessity of understanding through the senses, claiming that people who love wisdom must be familiar with many things, so he prefers those things that can be seen, heard and learned; On the other hand, he stressed that nature is used to covering itself up, and its nature is hidden in the depths, so logos is invisible and intangible, so "if the human soul is the appearance, eyes and ears are the worst witnesses."

Heraclitus' influence on later generations is mainly reflected in his simple dialectical thought. He took the militarism school's thought about the formlessness of primitive people to the extreme, and logically came to the conclusion that "everything flows and everything does not die". In this respect, fire, as the origin of all things, may be more symbolic because of its changeable characteristics. On the other hand, he also realized that because everything in nature is always in motion and change, only the change itself is really constant, but the change also has laws to follow, which provides a basis for understanding nature. However, because nature is used to covering himself up, Heraclitus seems uncertain about how to make people know logos, which makes his dialectical thought contain relativism and skepticism.

Heraclitus' philosophy has an important position and influence in the history of Greek philosophy. His emphasis on the absoluteness of logos and movement and his discussion of epistemology profoundly influenced Plato and others from both positive and negative aspects. His theory of fire and logos was directly inherited and developed by the Stoic school; Hegel called it the founder of dialectics. Hegel once said without exaggeration: "There is no proposition of Heraclitus, and I have not been included in my logic."

From Professor Zhang Zhiwei's History of Western Philosophy p32.