Thursday, December 27, 2007

Newness

"Apples and Sun"
Artist: Kit Hoefer

Shortly after I awoke this morning, I read the news of Bhutto's assassination and the evils of the world were very real to me. And so it was uplifting to find this:
The sun is new again, all day.
— Heraclitus quoted in Fragments: The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus translated by Brooks Haxton

I remember studying Heraclitus when I was a young philosophy student many years ago. He is one of the pre-Socratics and I was fascinated by their thought because they were engaged in solving the problem of the basic "element" of reality - the elements, of course, being the classical ones of earth, air, fire and water.

Heraclitus believed that all things had their basis in fire - that is, that all things are in a state of flux or impermanence. He believed that all things are one (and spring from the eternal Logos) and also in the reliability of transformation. He was also known as "the weeping philosopher" because he grieved so over the state of the world. I find his thought to be very encouraging and consoling.

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