Luke Parker (Vassar College)
This paper considers the relationship between phusis and logos in the extant texts of Heraclitus, focusing especially on the explicit contrast between a logos that is ‘common’ (Laks-Most D2/Diels-Kranz B2) and a phusis that tends to conceal itself (LM D35/DK B123), even as both Heraclitus’ textual exposition (D1/B1) as well as right speech and action (D114b/B112) take place ‘in accordance with nature,’ kata phusin. Importantly, I think, in each case what takes place kata phusin is both expression and action: the ‘words and works’ (ἐπέων καὶ ἐργῶν) Heraclitus claims to be setting forth in D1/B1 and the ‘speaking and acting’ (λέγεινκαὶ ποιεῖν) of the wise and virtuous in D114b/B112.
A great deal of attention has been paid to both logos and phusis, since Heraclitus’ texts offer some of the earliest and most importance evidence for the evolution of these terms and associated concepts in Greek literary culture. So far, however, studies tend to treat each idea in isolation (e.g., Johnstone 2014 makes no mention of phusis and Most 2016 none of logos) or they ultimately conflate the two principles. Naddaf (2005, 129-132) acknowledges the complexity of the relationship here but ultimately identifies both logos and phusiswith fire as the material principle and process of the kosmos: “in the physical universe, logos manifests itself as fire … Heraclitus chose fire as the phusis as archê.” Nightingale (2007, 189) reaches a similar conclusion: “For Heraclitus, physis is Logos (and vice-versa).” Tor (2018) draws on Heraclitus’ logos and emphasis on the way in which language signifies to interpret the sense of philei in D35/B123 but argues that we must ultimately understand this statement and physis in Heraclitus more generally in terms of his theology, framing the ‘inquiry into nature as an inquiry into the inclinations and will of a divine person.’ We are still waiting, then, for a thorough and nuanced treatment of how these two key principles interact in Heraclitus’ texts.
My discussion leans on Johnstone’s re-casting of logos as the world’s consistent and commonly available self-presentation as an ordered and intelligible whole, and on Most’s argument that phusis in Heraclitus refers not to “Nature” as a reified or personified idea but to the character and development of individual entities. I argue that logos expresses the totality of things in their interrelation, while phusis, in denoting the individual character of each thing, may conceal the extent to which this is in fact determined by the individual’s ever-changing relations to others and to the unity of the world in its entirety. In this way, logos and phusis may express the dialectical relations between whole and part in a self-ordering kosmos that maintains its unity in a constantly shifting pattern of diversity. This interpretation lets us make sense of the conjunction of expression and action where we see kata phusin in Heraclitus, as well as understanding how it is that the character of phusis itself is, for Heraclitus, concealment.