Page 32 - GALIET METAPOIESIS AND TRUTH IV+

Galiet & Galiet
The natural sameness of tree seems to symbolize the natural sameness of Heraclitus’ flowing, running river symbolizing, in turn, the crystalline rivers of beingness: the river that sings and runs through every human heart; the river of sadness giving way to joy, of hope giving way to despair, of life giving way to death, of sleep giving way to awakening, of water giving way to earth and to the soul,114 or as Empedocles would later claim, of love giving way to strife and strife to love.115 Heraclitus T3, says, ‘we step and do not step into the same rivers, we are and are not.’”116 This can be read as “when we step in the same rivers, we are, and when we do not step in the same rivers, we are not.” In Heraclitus’ river, there is a feeling of things “scattering and gathering, coming together and dissolving”117 insinuating a constancy, a flow where being is always in- between things, dwelling always in-between the current of change. Being, in this sense, is the running stream where every contrary of Heraclitus’ gathers in unity: the ever flowing, ever filling and ever emptying river of the same thing that is and is not118 singing and mirroring the order of beauty and of harmony expressed in its sameness. Its waters beckon true being, that is, that the infinite flows into the finite, the atemporal into the temporal, and unity into separation. The ever-flowing river seems to flow into the sameness of the same just as becoming-in-being flows into the sameness of the soul. Being and soul as mirrors of each other and of the sameness of the same: unlimited, crystalline and pure. “You will not be able to discover the limits of the soul on your journey, even if you walk every path. So deep is the principle it contains,”119 says Heraclitus. The soul is boundless, yet what is this profound principle that sustains it? Is it the river of logos or mythos, the phosphorescent river of immanence or transcendence?120 Is it the nymphs’ streams or Lethe’s? Is it Oceanus’ or dark Acheron’s, seducing Stygion’s or boiling Pyriphlegethon’s? What heaven and starry universe is not reflected upon the waters of a river, what green fields do not beam their face upon it, what fates do not enter it, what Muses do not swim in Parnassus’ fresh and natural streams? The streams of logos (for all is logos to Heraclitus) flow as if they moved all things, in it flowing changes and opposites are reconciled, becoming one with being and one with
114 F 44. “Death for souls is the birth of water, death for water is the birth of earth, and earth is the source of water, and water is the source of soul.” Heraclitus. Fragments. Trans. Brooks Haxton. New York: Penguin Books, 2003.
115 T7 Empedocles. Waterfield. The First Philosophers. In a way, Heraclitus’ flux and Empedocles’ dynamic love-strife cycles, are reminiscent of Anaximenes’ new world view. Anaximenes postulates that elements are not opposed but are at different stages of a continuum. Thus, he rejects Anaximander’s view that opposites are always unjustly in conflict. Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers. Parmenides. Fragment 4. (Clement Miscellanies 6.23.3) Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. 116 Heraclitus Homericus, Homeric Questions, 24.10-12 Oelmann 41. On page 317 of Waterfield, see note 41. Waterfield says, “with regards to we are and are not, it is possible that an original single fragment of the river existed from which these testimonies derive.” Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
117 F 34 Plutarch, On the E at Delphi 392b 10-c3 Babbit. 41
118 Aristotle. Metaphysics, Book 4, Chapter 3, 1005b, 25. Aristotle. The Basic Works of Aristotle. Metaphysics. Ed. Richard McKeon. New York: The Modern Library, 2001.
119 F 48 Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers 9.7.6-8 Long. 44. Waterfield, Robin. The First Philosophers. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.
120 This certainly requires rumination and study beyond the time constrains of this essay. These conjectures need to be substantiated with further research and analysis and interpretation of different translations.
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