Parmenides Vs Heraclitus Essay

Parmenides v/s Heraclitus (Being v/s Becoming)

Introduction:

Through this assignment, I intend to critically view the ideas of the Pre Socratics – Parmenides and Heraclitus. It would be an interesting clash of ideas as both of them have exactly opposite views towards the creation of world though they agree that it is formed from a single substance. My job is to find how do other philosophers view this clash and also whose ideas I would accept.

Body:

I wish to take a brief look at the metaphysical systems of Heraclitus (535-475 BCE) and Parmenides (515-445 BCE). These men were similar in many regards. They were both “presocratic” philosophers who were primarily concerned with metaphysis (“the first philosophy”). They both asked the very fundamental question: what exactly is the nature of reality/ being? Both philosophers came to the conclusion that all the universe can be reduced to one basic substance: this

The idea that the universe was always in a war of change and flux was the central tenant to this reasoning. Heraclitus believed that Fire not only gives structure to the world, but is also the primary stuff from which everything is made.

The ordered universe, which is the same for all, was not made by one of the gods or by humans, rather it always was, is now and forever will be an ever-living fire, ignited in measure and extinguished in measure. [DK]

Fire can be said to be while it annihilates itself. This Fire illustrates, although figuratively, the intermingling of opposites that are held together by an all-encompassing Logos that harmonizes them. Logos is also the organizing intelligence or principle of the universe . All change is regulated by it. Therefore he believed that fire was the incarnation of a divine will that caused all change within reality and that the one undeniable law of the universe was that everything was always transforming into something else