Unresolving Paradox: Heraclitus’ Harmony of
Holism and Individualism
Koen Vacano
Bachelor Thesis
University of Amsterdam,
Department of Political Science, Political Theory
Student ID: 10001554
E-mail: koenvacano@hotmail.com
Supervisor: Sebastiaan Tijsterman
Second assessor: Martin van Hees
1
Unresolving Paradox: Heraclitus’ Harmony of
Holism and Individualism
Koen Vacano
Who wrote these words? Did ‘I’ write them, a free person with the internal desire to pose this question? Or was it the social ‘me’ who wrote them, my role as a student observing the practice of writing a catchy and thought-provoking introduction? In short, who am I? Is my identity constituted by some personal essence or by social roles (Hollis, 1994)? Second, in what way am I responsible for the contents of this thesis? Am I responsible if I completely conform to the expectations of university, supervisor, and second assessor? Surely then it would not be my own words I wrote, so how could I be responsible for them? Still, if there were no academic regulations to answer to, how could I be held accountable for the contents? So is responsibility to be equated with accountability or individual discretion (Harmon, 1995)?
These are just two examples of dichotomies, literally ‘cuts in two’, divisions into two mutually exclusive, opposed and contradictory categories that draw the battle lines for almost every conceptual debate in socio-political science: republican versus liberal citizenship (Bellamy, 2008), structure versus agency (Giddens, 1984), public versus private (Weintraub, 1997), positive versus negative liberty (Berlin, 1958) – though obviously diverse, these pervasive dichotomies are similar in one respect: they all “reflect the interminable struggle to define a proper relation of the individual to the collectivity,” the relation of part to whole (Harmon, 1995: 57). The perseverance of these debates rests upon the opposition of two irreconcilable definitions of this relation at the ontological-epistemological level. Holism on the one hand proceeds from the assumption that all individual behaviour is determined and thus explainable by collective social structures (Hollis, 1994). Individualism on the other hand maintains that society is nothing but an aggregate of individuals and consequently that all collective ‘structures’ or institutions must ultimately be explained by reference to individual human behaviour (Hollis, 1994). As long as there is no established way of deciding between these two mutually-exclusive fundaments, dichotomous debates are impossible to overcome, since every conclusion is intrinsically open to attack by reasoning from the opposite premise (MacIntyre in Harmon, 1995: 37). Making progress in any of these debates thus requires overcoming the central holism-individualism dichotomy, which is the purpose of this thesis.
During the last three decades the development of such middle positions has increasingly enjoyed scientific interest. Most recently, Sawyer (2002) and List and Spiekerman (2013) have convincingly argued that certain aspects of holism are completely reconcilable with certain aspects of individualism. Regrettably, they do not try their hand at uniting holist and individualist ontology, and merely argue for the possibility of combining individualist ontology with holist methodology (List & Spiekerman, 2013: 629). The most influential attempt to unite the two ontologies remains Anthony Giddens’ theory of ‘structuration’ (1980), which argues significantly that structures and agents stand in a reciprocal relation, i.e. the one cannot exist without the other. Even Giddens however cannot avoid the dichotomous reasoning of the holist and individualist ontologies, and invokes in turn the dominance of the one to deny the dominance of the other (Callinicos, 1985, cf. §1). Giddens, as much as List and Spiekerman and the holist and individualist approaches, still assumes an utterly
2
rationalist ontology, which departs from the Aristotelian axiom that it is impossible “that the same thing is and is not”1 (Metaph. 1005b).
Therefore, if this thesis is to succeed in its ambition of transcending the holism-individualism divide, it must start from a different perspective than the rational basis of thought in which something cannot be its opposite. Indeed, this approach would need to be paradoxical, both in its original Greek meaning of ‘against-assumptions’ and in its modern meaning of a ‘self-contradictory thing, situation or statement’ (Harmon, 1995: 72-73). Such paradoxical philosophy has been rare2; so rare indeed that its primary proponent may still be found in the sixth century BC3, in the presocratic Heraclitus. Called ‘the obscure’ by Aristotle (Mu.396.b20) and a ‘cuckoo-like, mob-reviling riddler’ by Timon (D. L. 6.1) because of the incomprehensible aphorisms he wrote, the Ephesian philosopher was always destined to remain non-canonical. The central claim of this thesis however is that precisely this ‘obscure’ thinking and the concomitant appreciation of paradox as a legitimate social and scientific category – both in ontology and epistemology – offers a perspective on the individualism-holism dichotomy that has the power to transcend the current polarised debate. Although Heraclitus has been an inspiration to many eminent philosophers such as Nietzsche, Hegel and Heidegger, who have consequently developed interesting perspectives on the relationship between individual and collective of their own, it is necessary to limit the current inquiry to Heraclitus. This is not only because the approximately 130 extant fragments prove sufficiently numerous and difficult to interpret; it is also because, while those inspired by Heraclitus have generally used his thought as an asset to their own moral, ontological and historical theories, Heraclitus’ philosophy completely centres on the present issue. Like all presocratic philosophy, Heraclitus is concerned with the basics, with the nature or ‘physis’ of reality as a whole: what is and what is not? What can we know and how can we know it? What is the world made of and how does it change? Since the answers to these basic questions are the primary source of disagreement between holism and individualism, a new perspective on the debate can only be arrived at by reconsidering these fundamentals.
Because of the obscurity of the fragments, their reception through texts of later authors only, and the minimal quantity of reliable secondary sources, interpreting Heraclitus is not an easy task. Still there may be some methodological footholds to start from. First, although the fragments apparently concern a great variety of subjects, Heraclitus consistently refers to the truth he reveals, the ‘logos’, in the singular4. Any interpretation of the fragments should therefore at least attempt to construe a coherent vision of reality which flows from them5 by (following standard hermeneutic practice) continually relating part to whole and vice versa (cf. Curd, 1991: 533-534, Dilcher, 1995: 7-8, Kahn,
1
Translations in this thesis are my own, unless otherwise mentioned. 2
Hegel is another thinker who can be said to propose a paradoxical philosophy, which, as he himself admits, is greatly inspired by Heraclitus (1892: 279). His take on paradox and Heraclitus will be discussed in §4.
3
Although the dating is a matter of some controversy, Appolodorus is generally followed in placing Heraclitus’ ‘akmè’ (someone’s ‘prime’ at the age of forty) around 500 BC (Hussey, 2006: 88, Kirk, 1954: 3).
4
However it should be noted that he uses the plural ‘logoi’ to refer to other authors’ works (DK 108). 5
From varying perspectives philosophers have disagreed with this idea. In a post-modernist vein for example, Waugh claims: “The style and content of Heraclitus’ sayings, as well as the notion that philosophy as we know it had yet to emerge, suggests we should be wary of reading too much philosophy, let alone philosophical profundity into these fragments” (Waugh, 1991: 614). Though her emphasis on “word-play, riddling, puns, orational style and exploitation of popular sayings” (614) is valuable to interpreting the fragments, there is no evidence to support that this makes Heraclitus less serious about his philosophical message.
3
1979: 95). Second, the fragments are inescapably intentionally paradoxical (Dilcher, 1995: 7, Kahn, 1979: 91-2, Maly, 1980: 45, Waugh, 1991: 614); ingenious linguistic tinkering – “the bow [βιός] has the name of life [βίος], but the function of death” (DK 48) – shows that much effort has been put in making the text intrinsically counter-intuitive. Interpretation should therefore not start with, as one is inevitably eager to, trying to solve the paradoxes, but with explaining why the fragments are paradoxical in the first place (Kahn, 1979: 20). Third, accepting the post-structuralist ‘death of the author’, this thesis has no intention of singling out a Grundbedeutung of the fragments (following Kahn, 1979: 88). Instead, recognizing the multiplicity of possible meanings, it undertakes the more modest but by no means less difficult attempt of construing from the fragments a coherent perspective on the relation between collective and individual, which has explicit relevance to modern readers. The acceptance of historical context as a legitimate limit to interpretation – it would be folly to attribute concepts such as ‘holism’ and ‘individualism’ to Heraclitus – does not preclude reading him with present-day applicability.
The contents of this thesis are divided into four parts: §1 explicates how the holist-individualist debate runs ajar, that is, how a dichotomous way of thinking leads to the irreconcilable conclusions (1) that holism and individualism are contradictory, yet (2) that neither approach can convincingly account for social behaviour without referring to its counterpart. §2 deals with the core of Heraclitus’ philosophy, the ‘unity of opposites’, which is argued to convey a paradoxical ontology, fundamentally different from the dichotomist approach of holism and individualism, and which consequently has the potential of overcoming the deadlocked debate between them. §3 centers on two interrelated epistemological issues: 1) why is attaining knowledge about paradoxical reality apparently so hard, and 2) what method would lead to knowledge about it? The answer to both, it is argued, is Janus-faced language. For on the one hand, its one-sided, referential nature is inherently incapable of capturing paradox; but on the other hand, it possesses a hidden richness of perspectives that may lead to understanding, if one is not eager to avoid contradiction. Lastly, §4 considers how the static, analytical ontological-epistemological framework developed so far may be employed to study dynamical, empirical social reality. By examining the Heraclitean notion of ‘fire’ and Hegel’s interpretation of it, a dialectical model is expanded, which may function as an analytical tool for both long-term and short-term social dynamics. Also, in order to show the relevance and applicability of the philosophical insights propounded in this thesis, I will return to two concrete social debates at the end of each paragraph: (1) the responsibility debate, which concerns the chiefly normative question whether responsible behaviour requires full accountability (the holist position) or personal discretion (the individualist position); (2) the identity debate, dealing with the explanatory-descriptive question whether social roles (the holist position) or personality (the individualist position) is the locus of identity.
4
§1 The dichotomy of holism and individualism
“Why does Monsieur Rouget, age twenty four, blond hair, brown eyes, a worker in a large factory vote Communist?” (Przeworski & Teune in Hollis, 1994: 40) This illustrative question from Przeworski and Teune’s scientific method textbook is cited by Martin Hollis as particularly helpful for explaining the difference between two broad approaches to social change: holism and individualism. By considering how both approaches would explain the vote of M Rouget, this paragraph aims to achieve two goals. First, it will show how and why holism and individualism stand in such strong opposition, if their relation is ascertained ‘logically’ by avoiding paradox. Second, it will argue that each approach taken by itself is insufficient to explain social change: both approaches somehow presuppose each other. The inevitable result is deadlock.
Were Marx to read the M Rouget question, his answer would undoubtedly be this: “The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general” (1859). Thus M Rouget votes Communist because his (low) socio-economic position as a factory worker leaves him no choice. This explanation of Marx’ is firmly rooted in holism: the scientific “approach which accounts for individual agents (human or otherwise) by appeal to some larger whole”, which is therefore considered ‘greater than the sum of its parts’ (Hollis, 1994: 15). Marx claims that in reality, there exist certain (socio-economical) structures that determine the actions of individuals. He is therefore not only a methodological holist who thinks that all (including individual) action should be explained ‘top-down’, as the result of the existence of social structures; he is also a ontological holist who gives objective status to these not directly observable structures in social reality.
Liberals such as J.S. Mill radically disagree with the determinism present in the holist explanation and prefer a different answer to the M Rouget question: “The laws of the phenomena of society are, and can be, nothing but the laws of the actions and passions of human beings united together in the social state” (Mill in Hollis, 1994: 10). Thus Mill may grant Marx that factory workers vote Communist with law-like regularity, but he would explain this by referring to “the laws of the actions and passions of human beings” instead of social structures. Such a law may be that people universally try to promote their own happiness. M Rouget’s vote is thus much better explained as a rational, individual choice, considering his preference not to be exploited by his capitalist employer, which maximizes his own happiness. This approach is completely individualistic: it contains “[t]he idea that the individual should be the ultimate unit of social analysis” (List & Spiekerman, 2013:). If social patterns or structures such as capitalist exploitation or communist revolution can be shown to exist, then surely they “must be treated as solely the resultants and modes of organization of the particular acts of individual persons” (Weber in List & Spiekerman, 2013: 630). A structure is merely the sum of the individuals that operate within it. Thus Mill is both an ontological and a methodological individualist: eventually there exist only individuals and so everything should be explained by reference to them.
Yet this retort will not satisfy holists. It is fair enough to postulate that individuals act according to their own preferences, but the real question is: where do these preferences come from? The answer of course, holists say, is structure. Or as Marx puts it: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness” (1859). Thus he may explain why M Rouget did not partake in a communist revolution before the
5
French Communist Party, or worker class consciousness for that matter, was even formed: the socio-economical domination of the capitalist class ‘falsified’ his consciousness, so that it was not his preference to do so. Only when this falsification of consciousness was pointed out by Marx himself (and those he inspired) could M Rouget act in accordance with his ‘real’ interests: voting communist. At this point individualists generally point to the epistemological difficulty of such an assertion, which reveals the empty nature of absolute holism. If Marx is adamant that social structures determine consciousness, then how can he know what people’s ‘real’ interests are, or more poignantly, that these structures exist at all? Those philosophers who are suspicious of conscious-determining structures, such as Marx, Nietzsche and Freud, ironically seem to undo the validity of their claims that such structures exist precisely by claiming that such structures exist (Ricoeur, 1970). Their own consciousness cannot be exempt from these structures. If holism is taken in the absolute then, leaving no room for agency, it self-destructs: if structures completely determine consciousness, no consciousness of structures can ever be achieved – one might just as well say: ‘this is a lie’. For Marx to claim that he has discovered the ‘Unterbau’ that determines consciousness then, it is necessary to allow for some individualist element, at least in epistemology: if Marx were not slightly autonomous from socio-economic structures, he could never (at least not with any validity) unmask them as the driving force of history.
Yet although less obvious, free individual action may become an equally empty concept when taken absolute, holists reply from a more hermeneutic perspective. Consider the following plausible, individualist answer to the question why M Rouget votes Communist: M Rouget’s preference is to have as much welfare as possible. The Communist party is likely to increase the welfare of factory workers. Since M Rouget is a factory worker, he votes Communist. Though seemingly consistent, holist may argue that such answers contain a blatant contradiction between an individualist conclusion and a holist methodology. Even strictly individualist explanations require the mentioning of concepts such as ‘welfare’ and ‘preference’ and since such concepts can only draw their meaning from structures such as language, culture and society, any explanation is holist in methodology. Moreover, how does one determine that M Rouget’s blond hair, brown eyes, and thousands of other characteristics are irrelevant to the current inquiry, while his being a factory worker is? Surely, this can only be because of the pre-existence of certain ideas about politics and economics. Hard-core holists such as Quine would even add that the observation of M Rouget voting Communist is impossible without knowing basic concepts such as ‘voting’. To put it strongly, the claim that free individual thought, and consequently action, exists, could not even be made if we would all think and act completely free from structures.
This leaves us in an awkward position indeed. On the one hand, Marx cannot claim that M Rouget’s vote is determined by structures without considering himself a free individual, while on the other hand Mill cannot claim that M Rouget’s vote is a free, individual choice without applying concepts in thought and speech which are determined by structures. On the other hand, holism and individualism seem quite irreconcilable: at the ontological core lies the tenacious chicken-and-egg question whether individuals freely create structures, or whether their choice to do so is determined by structures in the first place – it is a question that cannot be avoided. Ergo holism and individualism appear mutually exclusive, but at the same time mutually dependent. It is a paradox both parties struggle to solve, but are unable to escape.
6
Consequently, several attempts have been made to reconcile the two positions6, the most influential of which is probably Giddens’ theory of ‘structuration’ (1980). For the sake of brevity I give Miller’s adequate summary of the theory:
According to Giddens, structure is both constituted by human agency and is the medium in which human action takes place…. This seems to mean, firstly, that structure is nothing other than the repetition over time of the related actions of many institutional actors. […] But it means, secondly, that this repetition over time of the related actions of many agents provides not just the context, but the framework, within which the action of a single agent at a particular spatio-temporal point is performed. Structure qua framework constrains [and enables] any given agent's action at a particular spatio-temporal point. (Miller, 2012)
The main purport of this theory – and its difference from holism and individualism – lies in considering the causal relation between individuals and structures as reciprocal. Individual action is necessary for structures to exist, while conversely individuals cannot act without this structural ‘framework’ (Giddens, 1984: 25). This contention is actually very straightforward – irritably so to some critics – but it is refreshing in pointing out the futility of the polarized either-or debate (Gauntlett, 2008: 94). Nevertheless, each time that Giddens attempts to show that neither structure nor agent is dominant, he unintentionally gives prominence to the other (Callinicos, 1985: 140). For example, when attempting to disprove Foucault’s holist view of history, he is necessitated to emphasize that “human agents… resist, [and] blunt or actively alter the conditions of life that others seek to thrust upon them” – individuality is given prominence in order to disprove the dominance of structure (Giddens in Callinicos, 1985: 140). On other occasions, when countering individualist, rational-choice claims, Giddens explicitly inflates structure: "The realm of human agency is bounded" (Giddens in Callinicos, 1985: 136). Especially when he distinguishes his ‘practical consciousness’ from individualist hermeneutic approaches “which tend to regard society as the plastic creation of human subjects,” he cannot but emphasize structures as “unacknowledged conditions for action” (Giddens, 1984: 26-27). So even while Giddens is at pains to reconcile the opposites of structure and agency, he cannot avoid applying the dichotomy (Callinicos, 1985: 146). Remaining within the dichotomous framework of holists and individualists – ‘a thing cannot be its opposite’ – he may successfully criticize either ontological position from the perspective of its counterpart, but he is ultimately unable to capture the relation of both within a single ontology.
Having thus reformulated the current predicament in the philosophy of social science, the rest of this paragraph will serve to illustrate the problem by means of two examples: a debate on the nature of responsibility and a debate on the nature of identity – both of which are exemplary of the fierceness and failure of the discourse.
The Responsibility Debate
Within the field of public administration a rather technical debate is taking place on the nature of responsibility, which concerns primarily the question of whether or not a public servant has or should have some discretion in interpreting his directives. The debate is mentioned here for three
6
Another interesting middle road is developed by List and Spiekerman (2013). Following Sawyer (2002), they argue that “being an individualist in some respects is compatible with being a holist in others” (629). They make a strong case that what I have called methodological holism – the idea that social phenomena must be explained by referring to structures – is completely reconcilable with what I have called ontological holism – the idea that that society is at its core nothing but a collection of individuals (629).
7
reasons: first, it shows how a discussion at the philosophical basis may be directly relevant to the practical organization of major political institutions; second, it sheds light on how traditional distinctions between methodological, ontological and normative issues are blurred – how one looks at responsibility shapes how one construes responsibility and determines how one should act responsible (or in any different order); third, Michael Harmon pitches an alternative, paradoxical framing of this debate in his Responsibility as Paradox (2008) which has significant similarity with the approach I will construe in this thesis, and to which I will therefore return throughout paragraphs as an example of ‘good practice’.
Those in the ‘holist’ camp stand in the tradition of Rousseau and consider administration responsible only when public servants are completely accountable to the will of the people. Since the democratic collectivity is the only legitimate source of authority, administrative discretion is considered an obstacle to the effectuation of democratic decisions. Moreover, if public servants, including politicians, were allowed to modify policies as they implement them, the way to (Soviet or Nazi) tyranny is open. So, as Herman Finer puts it (not coincidentally in 1940), “the servants of the public are not to decide their own course,… [but are] to be responsible to elected representatives of the public, and these are to determine the course of action of the public servants to the most minute degree that is technically feasible” (Finer in Harmon, 1995: 50). The democratic collectivity being normatively absolute, the public servant is to be no more than a puppet dancing to its legitimate will.
Individualist responsibility theorists, drawing on Sartre, reject both the normative dismissal of discretion and the identification of responsibility with accountability; if the public servant were merely a puppet, he could never be really held ‘responsible’ for his actions. After all, one may always deny responsibility on the account of ‘following orders’, just as Eichmann did in his notorious holocaust trial (cf. Arendt, 1965). Instead, responsibility means the “consciousness of being the incontestable author of an event or an object” (Sartre in Harmon, 1995: 18) and is located in the individual alone. Therefore, public servants are not responsible to their superiors, but responsible for what they do (Cooper in Harmon, 1995: 61) and hence discretion is indispensable to true responsibility.
Of course such a standpoint is easily subject to holist criticism, which warns for tyranny and the demolition of democratic legitimacy, but that is not very relevant here. Our attention should be directed towards the deadlock of the debate (cf. figure 1), which is unsurprisingly very similar to the one encountered on the philosophical level; on the one hand, the holist and individualist conceptions of responsibility are completely opposed and mutually exclusive: if public servants are ‘accountable’ to their superiors (and in the end to the democratic collectivity), then they are not the ‘authors of their own actions’, whilst if they are free to determine their own actions, they are bound to violate their accountability (Harmon, 1995: 102). On the other hand, either conception is equally insufficient and potentially destructive if taken by itself: accountability without agency leads to Eichmannist buck passing – the responsible agent vanishes – whilst agency without accountability
Holism Individualism
Claim Agency annuls accountability Accountability annuls agency
Counterclaim Without agency, accountability is not responsible (leads to buck passing)
Without accountability, agency is not responsible (leads to loss of democratic control)
8
leads to arbitrary policy implementation and loss of democratic control – the agent is responsible to no one. Any dichotomous choice between these two mutually exclusive conceptions thus leads to the destruction of responsibility altogether.
The Identity Debate
Perhaps even more than the previous section, a debate on identity can show both how relevant the holist-individualist dichotomy is to how we think about ourselves, and how deep the cut runs. For this purpose, the discussion most relevant is the one between personal identity and social identity theorists (Hollis, 1994: 164). Essentially, this concerns the question who we are and consequently where to look if we want to explain our behaviour. Those on the social side cling to Shakespeare’s classical phrase: “all the world is a stage, and all the men and women merely players”; we are (and act because of) the sum of the many roles we play in society. Personal identity theorists on the other hand focus on the person behind the mask; some character, consciousness, or soul must define us (and explain our behaviour), for evidently someone stripped of his roles, lost on an island like Robinson Crusoe, is still a distinct person with his own thoughts, actions and desires.
This latter position is probably the popular one (Sennett, 1977: 259). The idea that there exists some essential ‘I’ stands at the basis of both Christian and (Cartesian and Kantian) enlightenment philosophy and is not easily rooted out by the acknowledgement that our behaviour is adaptive to the roles we play. Admittedly we play certain roles, this individualist position holds, but surely it would go too far to apply this notion to highly personal activities such as being a father or a lover. When holists reply that the notion of ‘father’ is tied to equally stringent norms as the roles of ‘soccer player’, ‘politician’ or ‘Muslim’, individualists turn a new leaf: if indeed we face so many and divers norms, then these norms are also bound to conflict (Hollis, 1994: 172-3). Therefore it is necessary for actors to use their judgement to choose between conflicting norms both within a role and between roles. In the end, they decide what is important or meaningful. One simply cannot understand the social world if the roles in it are played by mechanical puppets, and so, for individualists, it is an absolute necessity to presuppose the existence of private actors, who invest the public parts they play with their own meanings (Sennett, 1977: 36-37).
Still this will not satisfy holists, for this insistence on individual ‘meanings’ and ‘judgement’ is open to the same criticism as the ‘preferences’ we encountered in the philosophical individualist position. Once again, the question is: where do these meanings come from? The answer is: from an inter-subjective social order, in which “there are schemes of meaning-rules and normative expectations external to each actor” (Hollis, 1994: 249). What it means to be a father and what is expected of such a role is not divined spontaneously by the actor, but is constituted (or as Freud would have it, internalized) by cultural and social values, transmitted to him by friends, family, television, law, religion, and many other people and institutions that convey meaning – i.e. by one’s social identity. If conflict in values arises, this can only be solved by drawing on other meaning-rules one has encountered. Would young ballet dancer Miko Fogarty (in the documentary First Position, 2011) want to give up her friends at school to a professional career in ballet, if her parents and teacher had not stimulated her to dance from her early childhood?
Admittedly, center positions between these two extremes may be envisioned – indeed, I will elaborate the one taken by Sen in §2 – but the relentless chicken-and-egg nature of the debate makes such attempts highly problematic. In the end there remains an unbridgeable divide
9
concerning the pre-existence of purpose, i.e. the presence in a person of certain desires, preferences, and character traits irrespective of social context. If it exists, I have a core personality which may choose how to act in or in between social roles (March, 1979: 70). If it does not, I am a tabula rasa waiting to be written upon by my social surroundings (Davis, 2004: 8). Any claim is easily countered by a claim from the opposite approach as long as there remains a fundamental difference in the ontological priority of either structure (social roles) or agency (personality) (Davis, 2004: 9). So, as was the case in the responsibility debate and in the holist-individualist feud in general, both positions are diametrically opposed, but still insufficient on their own (cf. figure 2): it is hard to envisage the difficult and subtle choices between norms and roles as purely mechanical – not to mention cases in which such choices turn out to be unpredictable in comparison with the values a person supposedly holds – yet it is equally difficult to maintain that we freely choose between roles, when we consider cases such as Miko Fogarty. All in all, this leaves us in quite a conundrum; one might even say, in a paradox. It is to this notion therefore that we must now turn in order to grasp the true relation between structures and agents, accountability and agency, social and personal identity.
Figure 2: deadlock in the identity debate
Holism Individualism
Claim Social determines personal identity Personal determines social identity
Counterclaim Social identity cannot account for
individual choices between roles
Personal identity cannot account for
10
§2 The ontology of bow and lyre
Whatever one may think of his paradoxical aphorisms, Heraclitus could not have predicted the scholarly debate on his work better when he said that “they do not understand [οὐ ξυνιασιν] how differing agrees with itself…” (DK7 51). All commentators, modern and ancient alike, have had to consider the relation between these two central themes in the fragments: difference and sameness, or otherwise formulated, opposition and unity. Indeed there is agreement among scholars that Heraclitus claims a certain ‘unity of opposites’, or coincidentia oppositorum in Latin – apart from the above mentioned fragment most profoundly illustrated by DK 10: “Connections: wholes and not-wholes, convergent divergent, consonant dissonant, out of all one and out of one all.”8 Yet what this paradoxical thesis means has always been, and still is, the object of an extraordinarily intense scientific controversy, which, if anything, proves that we still ‘do not understand’.
Characteristic of how the discussion has developed is once again Aristotle, who, as a founder of modern logic, holds that “it is impossible for anyone to suppose that the same thing is and is not, as some imagine that Heraclitus says…” (Metaph. 1005b). More recently, this same reprobation has been cast by Jonathan Barnes: “Heraclitus’ central contention, the Unity thesis, is inconsistent; it flagrantly violates the Law of Contradiction; hence it is false, necessarily false, and false in a trivial and tedious fashion” (1979: 79). Aristotle himself noted on this ‘logical inconsistency’ of the coincidentia oppositorum that “what a man says does not necessarily represent what he believes” – in other words, Heraclitus probably realized himself that he was talking nonsense (Metaph. 1005b). In an attempt to save Heraclitus’ doctrine however, most scholars have sought to ‘solve’ the logical inconsistency by demonstrating the dominance of one of these principles over the other: all opposition is in fact one, or on the other hand, all unity is subordinated to difference.
The latter camp had already been defended by Plato, who emphasised the notion of ‘flux’ in fragments such as DK 129: “As they step into the same rivers, other and still other waters flow upon them.” For Plato (cf. Crat. 436e), Heraclitus intends to say that ‘all things flow’ (πάντα ῥεῖ in Greek), which would make him neatly contrast to Parmenides, his contemporary, who was a proponent of a stable, unified being (Kahn, 1979: 4). Thus according to the flux-school, in modernity prominently starting with Zeller, Dilcher and Nietzsche, Heraclitus “regarded the one Being as something purely in motion and subject to perpetual change and separation” (Zeller, 1919: 3). Another fragment seems to support this claim10: “One and the same: living and dead, and the waking and the sleeping, and young and old. For these changed round are those, and those changed round again are these”11 (DK 88). Explaining how these oppositions are ‘one and the same’ is most easily done by noting their transformative nature: of course, waking is not sleeping – waking becomes sleeping (Kahn, 1979: 150). “Out of all one and out of one all,” should therefore simply be understood as “all becomes all” (Zeller, 1919: 17). In Heraclitus’ world “war is father and king of all things…” (DK 53), oppositions are
7
The classic classification of the fragments by Hermann Diels and Walter Kranz [DK] is followed here, since despite attempts to order the fragments thematically (cf. Kahn, 1979) this alphabetical ordering remains the most stable point of reference.
8
Here συλλάψιες is translated as ‘connections’, following Marcovich, to emphasize the notion of unity, but it should be noted that the word also implies some sort of (mental or physical) ‘gathering’ or ‘grasping’ (Kahn, 1979: 282). Therefore, Kahn translates ‘graspings’.
9
Compare DK 91: “One cannot step twice into the same river, nor can one grasp any mortal substance in a stable condition, but it scatters and again gathers; it forms and dissolves, and approaches and departs.”
10
The same goes for fragment DK 57 on the ‘unity’ of the living and the dead. 11
11
constantly conquering each other and consequently turning into each other: what ordinary people ‘do not understand’ is that nothing has permanent being. When all things are in flux, the only possible ‘whole’ or ‘structure’ is “war” (cf. DK 53, DK 80) or “fire” (cf. DK 66), that is, change itself. The flux-interpretation of Heraclitus thus amounts to a radical, metaphysical mirror-image of the modern individualist position: indeed there may seem to be wholes or structures like a ‘river’ (DK 12) or ‘class’, and indeed the world may show some regularities like the succession of ‘day and night’ (DK 67) or ‘thesis and antithesis’, but these are merely our way of misperceiving the underlying war of individual, opposing parts, which are the sole determinant of worldly appearance and change. The opposite position, taken not only by some Christian philosophers (cf. Cleve, 1973), but more recently by Burnet, Reinhardt, Gadamer and Kirk, holds that “The "strife of opposites" is really an "attunement" (ἁρμονία). From this it follows that wisdom is not a knowledge of many things, but the perception of the underlying unity of the warring opposites” (Burnet, 1908: 158). Harmony advocates refuse to see Heraclitus’ prominent notion of ‘fire’ as a metaphor for change, as flux-theorists are wont to, but follow Aristotle (Met. 983b-984a) in considering it an ‘archè’ – a basic element that is both the origin and ordering principle of the world12. By explicitly identifying the ‘kosmos’ (the world order which was the prime concern of presocratic natural philosophy) with fire in DK 30, Heraclitus seems to place himself in the tradition of his predecessors Thales, Anaximander and Anaximenes, who respectively proposed water, ‘the infinite’ and air as ‘archè’. From this perspective, other prominent concepts in Heraclitus become fairly obvious as well: the ‘logos’ “according to which all things come to pass” (DK 1), ‘the God’, which is identified with all kinds of oppositions (DK 67), and even the fiery ‘psyche’ (DK 118, cf. Dilcher, 1995: 74, Hussey, 1972: 57) may now be considered just different names for the same universal structure of fire which underlies everything seemingly opposed, many and varied (Kahn, 1979: 278). Thus according to the ‘archè’ interpretation Heraclitus is an extreme holist of natural philosophy, who, even more than modern holists, argues that all is literally one and that all questions about the world must be answered by looking at this all-causing and all-encompassing structure.
Unsurprisingly, like holists and individualists, Heraclitus interpreters quickly find themselves in another chicken-and-egg debate, in turn placing emphasis on the ‘one’ from which all comes and the ‘all’ which makes everything one (DK 10). Recent scholarship, beginning with Kahn, however has stretched that ‘solving’ the paradox by choosing either principle over the other goes against the purposeful paradoxical nature of the work (Dilcher, 1995: 106, Kahn, 1979: 91-2, Maly, 1980: 45, Schindler, 2010, Waugh, 1991: 614). Since so much effort is obviously put in creating contra-intuitive utterances, it seems highly improbable that behind this riddling façade Heraclitus actually had a completely logical message in mind13. Schindler, in a recent and yet to be appreciated article, takes this axiom to its natural conclusion and proclaims Heraclitus’ “affirmation of the equiprimordiality of both unity and difference: he rejects the either-or between these seemingly mutually exclusive alternatives…” (2010: 414). Equiprimordiality here denotes that two things exist simultaneously and in mutual causality. That is, A exists only because there simultaneously is B and B exists only because there is at the same time A. The ‘unity of opposites’ thus literally means that things are, and can only be, at once opposed and unified, one and many, the same and different.
12
These meanings are literally incorporated in the word: ἀρχή originally means ‘beginning’ (from which our ‘archetype’ is derived) and later comes to mean ‘power’ and by extension ‘ordering principle’ (whence comes our ‘monarchy’). 13
It should be added however that Kahn still seems to subordinate the notion of ‘visible’ difference to ‘invisible’ unity, essentially declaring Heraclitus a holist (Kahn, 1979: 197).
12
To explain this anti-logical claim, let us return to DK 51, which in full runs as follows: “They do not understand [ξυνιᾶσιν] how differing [διαφερόμενον] agrees [ὁμολογέει] with itself: it is a harmony [ἁρμονίη] turning back on itself, as of bow and lyre.” First some philological remarks: the subject of ξυνιᾶσιν, ‘they’, should be understood as ‘most people’ (Kahn, 1979: 197, Kirk, 1954: 203), while the subject of ὁμολογέει and the participle διαφερόμενον could be understood as the ‘logos’14, the (heavily debated) concept Heraclitus uses to denote both his own work and the structure or principle of the world he attempts to unveil (Kahn, 1979: 98). A preliminary conclusion therefore may be that ‘most people’ fail to understand the logos, i.e. Heraclitus’ message and the structure of the world.15
Of course individualists and holists have respectively emphasized either the qualification of the differing (διαφερόμενον) or the agreeing (ὁμολογέει), given to the logos in this fragment; holists are wont to translate the participle διαφερόμενον as concessive, indicating the ultimate superiority of unity: “though at variance with itself, it agrees with itself” (Reeve & Miller, 2006: 10). Individualists on the other hand tend to translate: “by differing agrees with itself” (White, 1999: 306), which implies that all (apparent) unity depends on difference. Yet these interpretations unnecessarily stretch the meaning of the participle διαφερόμενον, which in principle only “conveys the notion that these two actions occur at the same time, and indeed that there is a causal connection of some sort between them: it is precisely in agreeing with itself that it disagrees; the agreement is what makes the disagreement, or the movement that unites is precisely the same movement that divides” (Schindler, 2010: 432; cf. Kirk, 1954: 216) This interpretation is, I think, highly plausible, not only because it does justice to the paradoxicallity of the fragment(s), but more so because it is substantiated by the image of bow and lyre.
This brings us to another controversy: how are differing and agreeing a ‘harmony’ and how are bow and lyre metaphors for it? The difficulty is the ostensible difference of bow and lyre: while envisioning a ‘harmony of the lyre’ is all too easy, transporting this musical metaphor to the bow seems impossible. Any understanding in this debate must start with the meaning of ἁρμονίη. Originally meaning ‘joining’ or ‘coming together’, Kurtz argues that it lacked any sense of ‘countervailing forces’ (Kurtz in Schindler, 2010: 432; cf. Hussey, 1972: 43). Kahn on the other hand shows that “from the beginning, the word is also used figuratively, for ‘agreements’ or ‘compacts’ between hostile men” and “for the tuning of a musical instrument, the ‘fitting together’ of different strings…” (Kahn, 1979: 196; italics added, cf. Schindler, 2010: 433). Thus, as a ‘joining’ of ‘hostile’ or ‘different’ elements, ‘harmony’ is the perfect image of the ‘unity of opposites’, the logos or structure of the world Heraclitus aims to reveal.
So how are bow and lyre examples of a fitting together of opposing forces? Considering the lyre in function – the plucking of different strings produces a harmony (cf. Hussey, 1972: 44) – has led many scholars to consider the bow in function as well: “the archer's arms and the parts of his instrument are stretched in opposite directions at the instant of maximum tension, just before the arrow is released”, Campbell (and similarly Willamowitz and Kahn) argue (in Kahn, 1979: 150; cf. Kirk, 1954: 216). In this account, bow and lyre ‘fit together’ in very different ways: the first in an “instantaneous
14
The evidence for this claim is twofold: first, Hippolytus, who quotes this fragment, discusses the ‘logos’ right before it (in DK 50), and second, ὁμο-λογέει explicitly recalls the word ‘logos’ (Kahn, 1979: 197).
15
Always misunderstood, Heraclitus’ later depiction as ‘the weeping philosopher’ seems very astute, although the image probably derives from the flux-interpretation: ‘everything flows’ is symbolized in his flowing tears.
13
or momentary” way, the latter through a “process spread out in time” (Kahn, 1979: 152). But although, considering Heraclitus’ purposeful ambiguity, the musical harmony may rightly be valued as a meaningful, additional association, there is a more fundamental similarity between bow and lyre that may connect them to the ‘unity of opposites’ principle. In a basic, but illuminating article McIntosh Snyder (1984) points out that the frameworks of bow and lyre are actually very much alike: though this is not apparent from the usual front-view, the two arms of the Greek lyre were curved in the arc of a circle, if viewed from the side (cf. figure 3, adapted from McIntosh Snyder). In this sense, bow and lyre are both literally “turning back on itself” and have the same structure of curved wood and string.
Figure 3: an ancient Greek lyre (adapted from McIntosh Snyder, 1984: 93)
It is this framework that shows the ‘harmony’ and explains the ‘unity of opposites’ without making inferences about shooting arrows or playing music, of which indeed the fragment makes no mention. Kirk notes that in this structure the differing is “symbolized by the arms drawing the string apart, and so tending to separate it and to disrupt the instrument as a whole”, while the agreement takes shape in “the fact that the string draws in the arms of the instrument and so holds it together” (1954: 217). However, to me Kirk unnecessarily seems to stretch the meaning of ὁμολογέει (‘agree’) by making it a ‘together drawing force’, probably by analogy with συμφερόμενον διαφερόμενον (‘convergent divergent’) in DK 1016. Furthermore, Marcovich points out that we should not focus separately on the forces of string and bow, but on their two points of connection: they are the elements that ‘differ’ and ‘agree with themselves’ (1967: 129). Both Kirk and Marcovich however mistakenly read παλίντονος (‘back-stretching’), indicating a certain force, instead of the lectio difficilior17 παλίντροπος (‘back-turning’), which makes it a remark on the structure of the bow (Kahn, 1979: 195). Accepting these constraints, a provoking interpretation emerges, which (as far as I know) has of yet never been proposed (cf. figure 4): points A and B strive to ‘differ’, but simultaneously ‘agree with themselves’, since they are literally part of the same bow. Thus they are at once the
16
Furthermore, when Kirk notes that “the connexion [sic]… is only maintained so long as each tension exactly balances the other” (1954: 217), he seems to ascribe to Heraclitus knowledge of Newtonian physics which clearly he could not have; unless one is driven by such a need for a logical, physical balance of forces, there is no reason for taking ὁμολογέει to denote a ‘force’. Moreover the word ὁμο-λογέει is directly related to ‘logos’ and thus caries the connotation: “having the same logos” – they are part of the same structure.
17
The very rare word παλίντροπος is found in most manuscripts, but is once replaced by the usual Homeric epithet of the bow, παλίντονος. Therefore, since the second reading is found just once and is most likely a natural mistake, the first reading should be accepted.
14
same and different, a harmony, i.e. a unity of hostile or different parts, that, through the curve of the bow, ‘turns back on itself’.
Figure 4: the bow of Heraclitus
In a fittingly paradoxical way, this interpretation makes both flux- and archè -interpretations right and wrong at the same time: indeed all unity derives from the differing of individual elements and indeed differing derives from the unity of all, but these two statements are not mutually-exclusive. On the contrary, the symbols of bow and lyre reveal the simultaneity and mutual causality, that is the equiprimordiality, of unity and opposition – they are the speaking image of paradox; for it is only because A and B are unified by the bow that they can oppose each other, and it is only because they oppose each other that they can actually form one, working bow18. Without the bow, there is just a tensionless string, without the string, there is only a tensionless bow. Now taking the bow as a metaphor for harmony and harmony as a symbol of the logos, it becomes clear that, just as the bow can only exist in a tension-filled connection of unity and difference, to Heraclitus, everything19 is “whole and not-whole, convergent divergent, consonant dissonant” at the same time (Kahn, 1979: 203, Schindler, 2010: 433, DK 10). To put it bluntly: if the world would not be in permanent paradox, it could not exist at all.
Now to explain how holism and individualism fail to comprehend this paradoxical ontology, let us ask how we can fit both positions into the schema. Holists can be seen to argue for an all-encompassing bow-arc, the structure of which comprises all individuals (A and B) that are seemingly different. An individualist position on the other hand would maintain that A and B and all other individuals create structures (the bow) by their individual, differing action. In this way the image makes abundantly clear how both sides fruitlessly throw claims and counterclaims at each other: both attack each other’s statements by making equally true observations of the self-same thing. From this point of view, it is completely obvious why theorists such as Giddens (1984) and List and Spiekerman (2013)
18
Similar reasoning is found here: “Heraclitus finds fault with the poet [Homer] for saying: "Would that strife might perish from among gods and men!"; for there would be no attunement [ἁρμονίαν] if there were no high and low [notes], nor animals without male and female, being opposites” (Aristotle, Eudemian Ethics 1235a).
19
This interpretation is strengthened by the neuter of the participle συμφερόμενον, which indicates that the saying has general validity: “what differs, agrees” (Kahn, 1979: 197, Kirk, 1954: 205, Marcovich, 1967: 126).
15
have argued for a reconciliation of the two perspectives: just as the arc and string of the bow do not oppose each other, but are merely two coexisting parts, structures and agents are simply two elements of a world that consists of both – seeing them in tension equals misunderstanding.
Figure 5: the fundamental difference between the holist-individualist and Heraclitean ontologies
A Heraclitean perspective however, fundamentally disagrees with all of these tensionless views, and is consequently radically more helpful for understanding the observed deadlock in social science: things simply cannot exist if not in tension, and therefore it is impossible to equate ‘structure’ with the bow-arc and ‘individuals’ with both A and B. Instead, structures and individuals can only be justly fitted into the schema at the respective positions of A and B, the two points that ‘differing agree with themselves’ (cf. figure 5). Now a complete different image arises: structures and agents are only so strongly opposed because they ‘agree with themselves’, and they can only function in tandem by ‘differing’. Unlike the holist, individualist and middle positions, this paradoxical ontology can explain and overcome the deadlocked debate. To illustrate, let us return to the two examples mentioned earlier.
In the responsibility debate we were left with the apparently irreconcilable conclusions 1) that accountability (‘responsibility to’) contradicts agency (‘responsibility for’) and vice versa, and 2) that either element cannot amount to responsibility without the other (since this would imply either buck passing or a loss of democratic legitimacy). From a Heraclitean perspective however it becomes clear that this debate “should be reframed so that each of its opposing principles might countervail the pathologies to which the other is prone” (Harmon, 1995: 196, cf. figure 6). Exactly because accountability is opposed by agency – i.e. one does not deny the personal authorship of one’s actions – the first does not develop into machine-like buck passing; and exactly because accountability is opposed to agency – one still answers to authoritative social constraints – the latter does not turn into undemocratic, arbitrary decision making. Therefore, in Harmon’s paradoxical conception of responsibility, we should see “the relation between its opposing elements as reciprocal and mutually reinforcing rather than as dichotomous and contradictory” (1995: 195, italics added). Note that in this framework opposition does not imply contradiction or dichotomy; it is instead the prerequisite of mutual reinforcement. Accountability and agency are still permanently striving forces, but this fight is the essential constituent of responsibility. Those endowed with responsibility find themselves in a paradox that “can only be struggled with rather than solved…” and acting responsible thus requires continual reflection on the relation of these two mutually constituting, yet opposed elements (Harmon, 1995: 77).
16
Figure 6: Heraclitus' reframing of the responsibility deadlock
Now let us turn to the identity debate, which ran into an impasse because of the logically inconsistent conclusions 1) that social identity resists personal identity and vice versa and 2) that both conceptions taken by themselves cannot account for identity questions. The central divide boiled down to the pre-existence of purpose: does our social identity determine our personal purpose, or is there a pre-existing personal purpose which determines the social roles we take on. As we have seen, in Heraclitus’ ontology such causal either-ors are quite unnecessary. Indeed the image of the bow suggests that we take the opposed conceptions of identity as mutually constituting elements: on the one hand, “human choice behaviour is at least as much a process for discovering goals as for acting on them” (March, 1979: 72); purpose (‘values’, ‘wants’ etcetera) must be formed in a social context, that is, you cannot want something without knowing what there is to want. Or as Sen formulates it: “Choice does not require jumping out of nowhere into somewhere” (in Davis, 2004: 16). On the other hand, “[t]he capacity to move comfortably across one’s different social affiliations requires being able to both identify with others and yet still preserve an independence and detachment from them” (Davis, 2004: 16). Acting out different social roles is only possible if the individual has some purpose to which the acting is meaningful, and which can plot a course in and between roles (Davis, 2004: 16, Sennett, 1977: 36-37). Thus a paradoxical picture arises (cf. figure 7), beautifully captured by Edward Caird:
The self exists as one self only as it opposes itself, as object, to itself as subject, and immediately denies and transcends that opposition. Only because it is such a concrete unity, which has in itself a resolved contradiction, can the intelligence cope with all the manifoldness and division of the mighty universe, and hope to master its secrets. (1883: 149)
Discovering one’s identity can therefore only occur through the tension-filled process of “[s]elf-reflexivity, wherein people engage in an open and flexible dialogue between their inner and outer worlds…” (Harmon, 1995: 92-93). It is the ongoing attempt to unify the impersonal ‘Me’, the self as known, and the inner, personal experience of the ‘I’, the self as knower (Hollis, 1994: 179, cf. James, 1890: 374). Only be struggling permanently with the paradoxical opposition and unity of the social and the personal can we gain a true identity.
17
To sum up, when we follow Heraclitus’ paradoxical ontology of bow and lyre, structures and agents can only exist in harmony, inevitably exhibiting unity and difference at the same time. If one gives ontological prominence to either, the tension necessary for its existence deflates. While intrinsically opposed, structures and agents are also ‘one and the same’, to use Heraclitus’ terminology. Neither side of the holist-individualist dichotomy can therefore provide a full account of social change or behaviour; eager to choose between the chicken and the egg, dichotomists always view the world as a stringless bow or a bowless string, and never grasp its logos.
18
§3 The epistemology of the oracle
When Heraclitus claims on the one hand that “nature loves to hide” (DK 123) but on the other that he “distinguishes each thing according to its nature and tells how it is…” (DK 1), he owes us an explanation. How come that most people ‘do not understand’, but Heraclitus himself knows the truth? In short, what is the epistemological justification of his paradoxical claims? That is the question this paragraph aims to answer. The matter is divisible into two problems: first, if we do not understand the logos, what prevents us from doing so? Second, what method would lead to an understanding of the logos?
The common take on the first question is that Heraclitus is an elitist who thinks “that most people are too stupid to understand his theory… [and] that only select readers are capable of benefitting from his teachings. And perhaps for this reason he, like Plato, does not teach his philosophical principles directly, but couches them in a literary form that distances the author from the reader” (Graham, 2011; cf. Burnet, 1908: 158, Hussey, 1972: 38). When Heraclitus, obviously referring to his own work, says that “the Lord whose oracle is at Delphi, neither discloses nor conceals, but gives a sign” (DK 93), he means to elevate himself to the divine level of the oracle in order to separate himself and some elite readers from most people, who are simply too stupid to understand him. But this interpretation will not do if one takes into account DK 116, which contains a reference to the Pythia20 of its own (γνῶθι σεαυτὸν, ‘know thyself’, was carved at the entrance of the temple): “It is part of all men to know themselves and to think well.” Apparently, “[a]ll human beings have the ability to think soundly and know themselves” – they are principally capable of following the oracle’s advice21, ‘know thyself’, and therefore of ‘understanding’ Heraclitus who equates himself with the oracle (DK 93) – “but something goes wrong” (Leon Ruiz, 2007: 25).
Unsurprisingly, Heraclitus is quite ambivalent on the exact locus of the error. On the one hand it seems to occur internally in people’s minds or souls: “bad witnesses are eyes and ears to people when they have barbarian souls [βαρβάρους ψυχὰς]” (DK 107). According to Leon Ruiz,
the word “barbarous”… would have had the strong connotation in Greek not, primarily, of an uncouth person, but of a foreigner ignorant of the Greek language. The metaphorical meaning of this work then, is that something or someone “speaks” to human beings through the senses, but if their souls do not know the language spoken, there is no witnessing – no evidence of the truth comes through. (2007: 29-30)22
Thus it seems people “do not recognize what they experience” (DK 17) because their souls are not trained enough in a certain ‘language’ or mind-set. On the other hand Heraclitus says that “people are deceived [ἐξηπάτηνται] in the knowledge of what is manifest…” (DK 56). The passive ἐξηπάτηνται here definitely seems to signify some external agency acting upon (deceiving) people, although its identity is not specified. So when we ask whether according to Heraclitus the cause of people’s misunderstanding is internal or external to the individual, we draw a blank.
20
The oracle-priestess in the temple of Apollo at Delphi. 21
This interpretation is strengthened by Heraclitus comment in DK 101: “I went in search of myself” (translation by Kahn). According to Diels, this fragment should be considered the starting point of his investigation. This would mean that Heraclitus finds all men capable of following his lead, that is, discovering the cosmos within themselves and then finding it for the second time in the world (Diels, 1901: vii).
22
19
This however comes as no surprise if we consider Heraclitus’ concept of ‘logos’ more closely (cf. figure 8). Since it simultaneously means ‘word’, ‘(written) work/argument’, ‘structure/logic of the kosmos’ and ‘reasoning/rationality’, it blurs the distinctions between epistemology, ontology, and language (Brann, 2011: 9-13, Dilcher, 1995: 37-42, Verburg, 1998: 12). The one ‘word’ thus unites both ‘internal’ reasoning and the ‘external’ structure of the kosmos: subject and object, though different, are united by language23.
Therefore, it is language, the link between the internal and external, that we must investigate in order to discover the cause of misperception. How exactly does language connect subject and object? For instance, does it allow the subject to describe or construct reality, as functionalists and constructivists are respectively wont to argue? DK 67 reveals that Heraclitus’ position probably lies somewhere in between: “the god [θεὸς]: day, night, winter, summer, war, peace, satiety, hunger. It alters, as [fire?]24 when mingled with spices; it is named according to the pleasure of each one”. Since θεὸς is connected here to a series of opposites, it has close affinity to the ‘unity of opposites’, Heraclitus’ object, the kosmos (Dilcher, 1995: 124). Although to Heraclitus all of these opposites are, as we have seen in §2, simultaneously unified, language apparently singles out one aspect or opposite. Each individual subject links his singular, partial perception of the object – at one moment I perceive either night or day, not both – to a linguistic concept,
the application of which is only successful when others can consistently use it to describe one of their singular perceptions as well. Therefore by its very nature, “[language] singles out a particular appearance and can only denote something specific” (Dilcher, 1995: 124). Every individual subject perceives some spice of the god and names it accordingly, but none of these necessarily singular names can ever describe something both singular and multiple25 (Goldin, 1991: 572). As Herman Hesse puts it: “everything that is thought and expressed in words is
one-sided, only half the truth; it all lacks totality, completeness, unity” (1957: 144). It is possible to denote the ‘whole’ – θεὸς is an example of such a signifier – just as it is possible to denote a part; it is even possible to describe their sameness and their difference; however, this is only possible in succession, never in one concept that captures the equiprimordiality of unity and difference:
By its very nature… discursive [i.e. ‘wandering’ or ‘linear’] thought can only run in one direction at a time; it begins with a particular aspect and follows out the implications of this aspect in a line. The most that such thinking is capable of achieving in relation to Heraclitus’ paradox, then, is a successive shifting back and forth from one aspect to the other. (Schindler, 2010: 438)
Thus language can neither completely describe reality, for paradox is indescribable, nor construct it, for paradox is the ontological structure of the kosmos; at most, the subject may (consciously or unconsciously) use it to capture (or draw attention to) one element of an immensely complex world.
23
This is a point closely related to the one made earlier: that even Mill cannot make his individualist claims without partaking in common normative, conceptual and linguistic structures.
24
In the manuscripts no subject is found, although the simile seems to demand one. ‘Fire’ and ‘oil’ have been proposed as supplements, and Kahn chooses not to supplement anything. Nonetheless the intention of the comparison seems evident enough: some self-same thing is perceived differently, because it shows alternate manifestations.
25
In this vein, Hesiodus is criticized for not recognizing the unity of day and night (DK 57).
