Logos: Harmony and Recipe

One Marc Cohen of the University of Washington, offers this account of the “logos” of Heraclitus in an online lecture outline:

First, “There is an orderly, law-governed process of change in the universe. (Compare fragment 80 with Anaximander, who equates strife with injustice; for Heraclitus, strife is justice, and is ranked along with necessity as that in accordance with which all things happen.)”

Second, “the unity of diverse phenomena is to be found not in their matter, but in their logos. Indeed the very identity of an object depends not on the matter that composes it, but on the regularity and predictability of the changes it undergoes. (Again, a huge departure from the Milesians, who emphasized the material unity of all things.)”

Third, “the lyre (cf. above) is a good example of a logos in action. The orderly balance of opposed forces is what keeps the lyre functioning. The harmony of the lyre is an instance of the logos.”

“Another good example in which the nature of a thing is given by its logos, and by the changes it undergoes, rather than by a list of its ingredients, is found in his discussion of the mixed drink that the Greeks called kykeon (here translated “posset”) — a mixture of wine, barley and grated cheese (76=B125):

‘even the posset (kykeon) separates if it is not being stirred.’

“His point is that the continued existence of a certain kind of thing depends on its undergoing continual change and movement. What makes something a posset is not just what it’s made of (not just any collection of wine, barley, and cheese is a posset), but how it behaves, what kind of process it undergoes.”

Finally, “in a way, then, the logos for something is rather like a recipe. That is, it is more than a list of ingredients. It includes an account of how they are put together, and how they interact.”

Cohen also suggests that, contrary to Plato, Heraclitus was not an “extreme fluxist” who denies the persistence of objects:

“But even if Heraclitus was a Fluxist (which is far from clear) it does not follow that he had to deny that there are persisting objects. If an object is more like a process than like a static thing, then one and the same object can endure even though it is undergoing constant change.

“Further, there are different degrees of Fluxism:

Extreme fluxism : The most extreme is: at every moment, every object is changing in every respect. Perhaps an extreme Fluxist is committed to the denial of persisting objects.

Moderate fluxism : A less extreme version of Fluxism: at every moment, every object is changing in some respect or other. A proponent of this less extreme Flux doctrine could well allow for the persistence of objects through time.”

In Cohen’s view, “it is unlikely that Heraclitus was an extreme fluxist. His discussions of change in general, and the river fragments in particular, suggest that he thought that change and permanence could co-exist, that is, that an object could persist in spite of continually undergoing change in some respect or other.”