1972 ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus, I

ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus, I
Author(s): Martha C. Nussbaum

Source: Phronesis, Vol. 17, No. 1 (1972), pp. 1-16
Published by: Brill
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V'YXH in Heraclitus, I
MARTHA C. NUSSBAUM
In the fragments of Heraclitus*, frequent mention is made of 4uxiC;

to understandwhat Heraclitus means by +uynwould seem to be cen-
tral to any attempt to discuss his ideas about human life and death.
In order to understand Heraclitus' own usage, however, we must first
attempt to review the meaning of the word 4u ' as traditionally used,
and particularly as used in the poems of Homer, of whose ideas and
influence Heracitus is harshly critical.' It will also be useful to sketch
the pre-Heracitean history of the word ?o6yoq, since its history parallels,
in certain important respects, that of 4uZ', and since the two notions
will be seen to be vitally related in Heraclitus' 4u i fragments. The
first section of this paper wil deal briefly with the history of these
words, and go on to investigate the role which, for Heracitus, +Uzl
plays in the living man, and the way in which this role may be seen as
dependent upon Heraclitus' ideas about language.
The iuyC in Homer2is that which leaves a man at death to continue
existence as a shade in Hades. Without +uX', a man cannot live; it is
the single factor the presence or absence of which differentiates the
living man from the corpse. But it is mentioned as present only insofar
as it may potentially depart, and is thus the characteristic sign of
human vulnerability and mortality. It becomes plain, upon examining
the passages in which it is used, that the term 4uX, alone, implies the
presence of none of those faculties which we would regard as charac-
teristic of human life. Tu ' is a necessary condition for human life, for
consciousness,thought and emotion; but it is not a sufficient condition.
In speaking of his faculties, the Homeric man distinguishes a number
of "organs"with separate functions and locations: Ou~tu,xVp,irop,
ypev?, voO4,etc. He does not refer explicitly to anything wich connects
them, or in virtue of which he is a single being.3
* For modern works referred to in this article, please see Bibliography on p. 15.
1 Explicitly in DK 22 A 22, B 42, B 56; implicitly, as I hope to show, in many
other fragments.
2 See the thorough discussion in Snell, Discovery, ch. I, esp. pp. 8-12. Also Snell,
Gnomon 77 ff. and B6hme passim.

3 See Snell, Discovery, p. 8.
The +uXCis, vaguely, a principle of breath; we know this from its
etymology, and from the fact that when it leaves a man it is breathed
out, flies away, or departs through a wound. But its function in the
living man remains undefined, and it is mentioned only in connection
with death. When one's life's breath leaves, it is called 4uXf But when
a hero wishes to say "as long as the breath of life remains in me", he
says: eL5 6 xX'Otrp- / 'v a sacaC. ZAv-1 (K 89-90). A hero may fight M p't
4uXyj (X 161) or risk his su in battle (I 321) or discourse about the
irrecoverability of the ~iqu once it is lost (I 408). But he is never
aware of doing anything by means of it in life; only once is it mentioned
as being present in a living man at all. And the sole point of mentioning
its presence there is to declare the man mortal and vulnerable.Agenor,
attempting to persuade his 9,uLOnot to fear Achilles, says (D 569):
xM yocp 0h2v Tovx tputOG xjpw O;t xmax&,
eV 8i 'LOX UX &V e' pa.'
&V?5pG 7toL
9tu~evoca.
Each mortal man has within him a single 4uv', and it is this which
characterizeshim as mortal. The gods are not credited, either in Homer
or in subsequent literature, with the possession of su 4
4 This seems to hold true even after the word 4uX' has acquired a wider usage
and can, on occasion, be substituted for Ou[L6q, or even for v6oq. In the non-
philosophic literature of the fifth century, +uZ' is ascribed in only four cases to
a god. Aristophanes, Frogs, 1468 - puataocat yxp OV7rtp i +uXA O0,et - seems for
metrical and contextual reasons to be a quotation from tragedy, and the fact
that it is Dionysus, a god, who quotes it may be yet a further dimension to the
joke. In line 1472, Euripides addresses Dionysus as X [LCapc awv,&pw7rwv.
r' The
Oceanids (Aesch. Prom. 693) are characterized throughout more as females than
as immortals, and the poet's desire to juxtapose Puxnwith q6XeLvmay have
allowed him to admit this irregularity. A more startling exception is at Pindar,
Pyth. 3.41, where Apollo speaks of enduring in his iuZ. This must be understood,
I think, as connected with Pindar's ideas concerning the fundamental similarity
of gods and men (Nem. 6.1 ff.) and the divinity of +uX' (frs. 116, 127). The
fourth exception is Euripides, fr. 431 (following the attribution by Clement,
though Stobaeus attributes it to Sophocles):
gpC, y&p&vgpmcov 6vouq lnipXeaL
xaxl &e&v&vc
a' Ac yUvatxac, ,&XX&
X4~ux& n6vrovgpXeroct.
rapraact, x&TrI
For several reasons I believe the fragment to be Euripidean. Stobaeus mentions
a Phaedra play of Sophocles. Could it instead be the first Phaedra of Euripides,
which so shocked contemporary sensibilities? And could this not be one of its
more shocking lines? In any case, though absence of context prevents sure inter-
pretation, it seems worth noting that this humanization of the gods takes place
in connection with gpw,, which, for Heraclitus too, is, next to death, the prime
disturber of the 4uX' (see our Part II, later in this volume). To be vulnerable to
Two elements in this Homeric picture will be of importance to our
discussion of Heraclitus: the tendency to mention 4uxn only in "nega-
tive contexts" (i.e. its functioning is noticed only when it goes wrong),
and the absence of any sense of a central faculty connecting the dis-
parate faculties of the living man. Snell has shown that the same is
true of the Homeric notion of body: it is spoken of as a collection of
parts, and there is no word to describeits unity.5 We shall now observe
that the Homeric picture of language presents similar features: MOC,
frequently mentioned, are a series of unorderedunits.6Aoyo4,implying
order or connection, is employed, as is fuX', primarily in "negative
contexts." And there is no sense of a central faculty by virtue of which
one learns to use language properly.7
Guthrie, discussing the meaning of ?o6yog in Heraclitus, outlines "the
ways in which the word was currently used in and around the time of
Heracitus."8 Now it is true, accepting Guthrie'sown dating, that most
of the meanings he lists are current within a generation or two after
Heraclitus' death. Several examples he cites - those from early works
of Pindar - even fall, probably, within his lifetime, although it is
unlikely that he ever became acquainted with Pindar's work or with
the social milieu in which he worked. What is interesting, however, is
that if we examine the works of those writers known to have been read
by Heracitus (Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, Xenophanes), as well as
those of other poets distinctly prior in date (Solon, Theognis, etc.), we
find, instead of an impressive diversity of usage, a singular unanimity.
A6yo4in early writers is not used frequently. When it is used, it always
means a story, or some sort of connected account told by a specific
person. And, in the vast majority of cases, this account is a falsehood,
a beguiling tale, one which is intended to deceive the hearer or to make
him forget something of importance." Common formulae with Xoyo4
Ipc; is almost to be vulnerable to death. Elsewhere the notion of mortality

remains central to the notion of 4uyX. Cf. also Plato, Phaedrus, 246 c 7 ff.
5 Snell, Discovery, pp. 5-8.
6 Cf. Fournier, pp. 211-12: "Dans Homere gTrog etait un vase vide de pens6e:
il pr6sentait les paroles prononc6es comme un fait, un objet, ou un instrument...
Il peut etre compl6ment de 3azeXv.Il est utilise comme arme. . . C'est quelque
chose de passif et d'inerte".
7 On the history of X6yoq,see also Hoffmann; Verdenius, pp. 81-82; Boeder,
p. 85; Fournier, pp. 53 ff., 217-219.
8 Guthrie, pp. 420-424; also Kirk, HCF, p. 38.
9 Cf. Boeder, p. 20: "Jedesmal eignet diesen ),6yot etwas Beruckendes und sie
gelten daher als mittel der Bezauberung und Ablenkung und Irrefuhrung. Sie
are: 4i8ee&
Ca cljiuxouq TE xo6youq (Hes. Op.78, 788) and oc'IpMoLaL
H. Herm. 317, Hes. Th. 890, Theognis 704; cf. also
6yOLaL (cX 56,
0 393; Theognis 254, 981, 1221). Less frequently, Xoyoqdesignates
simply a tale or story, without regard to content; a legendary nature,
however, is often suggested (Hes. Op. 106, Tyrtaeus 9.1, Theognis 1055,
Xenoph. B 1, 14; B 7, 1). Ao6yoL are personified in the Theogony:
hateful Eris gives birth to NeLxs& re +eu8aex xr Aoyouq ApXoytcLoyx
Te (229). And the only mention of an explicitly true ?6yoqin the works
of the authors mentioned is in Archilochus 35, at line 12: A6yo[Lv]uv
'[60' oik}]M' 7rop[%. We are reminded that the word for truth itself
in Greek is a privative term, designating the absence of concealment,
or "'uncoveredness".10
A6yoqby itself does not mean only falsehood, any more than +uX'
means merely the shade of the dead man. But men's notions of language
at this time appear to have been simple. As a man speaks of his life
in terms of separate faculties, but fails to notice their unity until this
unity is destroyed, so he speaks of his words as separate units, and
usually refers to connected statement only when the connecting has
been done improperly, so as to produce a falsehood. When the im-
pressive effect of Odysseus' speaking is described,his words (9nza)are
compared to wintry snowflakes (P 222) - apparently an early case of
semantic atomism. And T 248 ff., a section of Aeneas' speech to
Achilles, gives us an even clearer idea of the Homeric man's lack of
awarenessboth of syntax and of the mental processesby which language
is learned and understood:
atp~7r' 8&yeaa' ?OL POTrV3p
7, i7OXe 8 9VL [0d&OL
?7t?()V & 7UOkU'VO[L6q9VIXOX 6,50C
CV'rQoOL),
07r7r0Z6Vx'e'UMa&N97rOq,to6Ovx'e7r0xouaLacL.
The tongue, herding the single words here and there like sheep, is the
only acknowledgedlinguistic organ, both here and elsewhere.And the
general effect of Aeneas' succeeding arguments is to demonstrate the
heroes' contempt for speeches."l Speaking requires little skill; one
verschleiern, was im Blick bleiben sollte, schieben anderes vor und stellen es in
ein giinstiges Licht."
10 Krischer, pp. 163-4, and Boeder, who reminds us that the false x6yot of the
Theogony are sisters of Lethe.
11 Benardete (p. 2) has observed that this contempt for speeches is evident in
the hero's description of speeches as the work of &v&pwtrot (T 204, etc.) and of
deeds as the work of &v&pe5(I 189, etc.). "The hero's contempt for speeches is
but part of his contempt for &v,p7o L."
simply says the sort of words one hears, and anyone, even a woman,
can do this (T 252). Fighting, not speaking, is a genuine test of skill,
and proves the hero's worth.'2 There is no recognition here that the
learning of language involves anything more than the ear and the
tongue. And the Homeric man has no term at all for any faculty of
connected reasoning; even voos, generally considered a "rational"
faculty, has been shown by von Fritz to stand, in Homer, for a non-
discursive, a-logical faculty of insight, more nearly similar to the
sense of sight than to what we think of as "reason".13
In general, then, Homeric man fails to recognize explicitly that in
virtue of which he is a single individual. His use of the first person
shows that he is conscious of the self, and that he is somehow aware
that his limbs and faculties form a unity. But he cannot explain what
connects his separate faculties; and though he implicitly acknowledges
the centrality of +u ' as a necessary condition for consciousness, he
has not yet acquired a notion of its activities and its role. His under-
standing of language reveals similar limitations: he is aware of words
rather than of syntax, of the ear and the tongue rather than of the
discursive reasoning and connection-making necessary for the proper
learning of language. Heracitus sees deficiencies in this view, and
attempts to formulate a more complex picture of human life and
language, conceiving the role of 4uXn as that of a central faculty
connecting all the others, and ascribing to it the power of connected
reasoning and language-learning for which his predecessors have no
explanation.
12 This passage, and others like it,
seem to indicate that Kirk (HCF, p. 32)
insists too emphatically upon the parallelism of word and action in early Greek
thought when he denies the existence of a "sharp distinction between the two,
at any rate until the development by the sophists and rhetoricians of the
),6yoq-9pyovcontrast . . ." His analysis assimilates Heraclitus to his predecessors,
and ignores certain definite distinctions between the Homeric and the Hera-
clitean views of language and its relationship with action. Cf. also Verdenius'
remarks (p. 97) on early examples of the X6yo4-9pyovcontrast.
13 Von Fritz, "NOOE in Homer," pp. 79-93. Also von Fritz, "NOON in Pre-
Socratics," 225ff., where he says: "There is absolutely no passage in Homer in
which this process of reasoning is so much as hinted at, when the terms V6osand
vo?tv are used. On the contrary, the realization of the truth comes always as a
sudden intuition: the truth is suddenly 'seen."' D. G. Frame's thesis, The
Origins of GreekNOOX, contains an excellent study of the etymology and seman-
tics of v6oqwhich, while supporting von Fritz's general conclusions, provides a
much more likely etymology and a far more precise and thorough study of
contexts and associations in the early epic tradition.
The prominencewhich Heraclitus gives to 4uXqamong the faculties
of the living man can clearly be seen in those fragments in which iuXy
takes the place of fire, the central element of the cosmic Xoyoq,in the
6Oyo4 of human existence (36, 77), and in many other fragments as
well. Fragment 67a is not indispensable for an understanding of
Heraclitus' +uX' doctrine; and if one denies its authenticity, one must
still, I think, admit that it is in no way inconsistent with what we
learn from other fragments. But I believe, with Pohlenz, Diels, Kranz,
Kirk, and others, and against Marcovich,14that it is genuine; and since
it presents with greater clarity than any other single fragment the
central role of tuxy in the living man, it seems appropriate to discuss
it briefly before moving on to a consideration of specific aspects of
this central role as they can be seen in other fragments.
Fragment 67a is cited by an early twelfth-century scholiast,
Hisdosus, in his commentary on Chalcidius'translation of the Timaeus
(Codex Parisinus Latinus 8624), with regard to 34b, the discussion of
the world-soul's position in the center of the cosmos. The scholiast
remarksthat there are others who believe the sun to be the center; just
as the anima, with its seat in the heart, diffuses energy throughout
the limbs, so the heat proceeding from the sun gives life to all living
things:
cui sententiae Heraclitus adquiescens optimam similitudinem dat de aranea
ad animam, de tela araneae ad corpus. sic(ut) aranea, ait, stans in medio
telae sentit, quam cito musca aliquem filum suum corrumpit itaque illuc
celeriter currit quasi de fili perfectione15 dolens, sic hominis anima aliqua
parte corporis laesa illuc festine meat quasi impatiens laesionis corporis, cui
firme et proportionaliter iuncta est.
I believe that the general content of this simile can be attributed to

Heraclitus, although I would not agree with Kranz that every partic-
ular is likely to be genuine. Kranz' argumentsfor verbatim acceptance
are largely based on the dubious analogy with Tertullian, de anima, 14,
14 Pohlenz, p. 972; DK I ad. Ioc.; Kranz, pp. 111-113; Kirk, Archiv, p. 76;
Marcovich, pp. 576-9.

15 I have retained the de fili perfectione of the manuscript rather than accepting
Diels' persectione. Persectio seems to occur nowhere else; and the usage de aliquo
dolere with the meaning "to mourn for" or "to grieve over something which is
no longer" is perfectly good Latin (e.g. Cic. Att. 6, 6, 2; Hor. Ep. 1, 14, 7), and
is an easy and natural extension of the ordinary meaning, "to grieve over."
Thus I would translate, "grieving over the wholeness of its thread (which is no
longer, whole, being broken)."
an analogy which Marcovich uses to prove just the opposite point, and
one which, as I will show, is confusing rather than enlightening. In
addition to the arguments cited by Pohlenz in favor of the ascription
of this simile to Heraclitus (the absence of such a reference in Chal-
cidius, the scholiast's general awareness of ancient literature), I would
point also to the consistency of the fragment's general import with
that of other Heraclitean fragments, and to the interesting suggestion
Hisdosus gives in cui sententiae . .. adquiescens that his Heraclitean
source contains some sort of a further analogy between solar energy
and fu That Heraclitus draws an analogy between cosmic fire and
the Puxn'the "fiery" element in man, is certainly an accurate ob-
servation, and is one of the only points about Heraclitus' theory of
4uyI on which there is general agreement. Such an observation would
not have been possible, I think, for a man who knew Heracitus' work
only through the pneumatic theory of the Sceptics. And yet this,
Marcovich alleges, is the case with Hisdosus, although he gives us no
concrete reason for rejecting Pohienz' assessment of the scholiast's
knowledge of the ancients.
Indeed, the arguments used by Marcovich to deny the fragment's
authenticity are based on highly dubious analogies with later doctrine.
The fragments of Straton of Lampsacus (110-111), which he considers
an indispensable basis for the spider analogy, give us an extremely
passive notion of 4u ' as the seat of perceptual 7rah', drawn to that
ap' o6 7t6tovl. If Hisdosus were familiar with these fragments, and
were constructing his "Heracitean" simile on the basis of this familiar-
ity, it is difficult to see how it could have occurred to him to mention
the simile in a passage of commentary relating views concerning the
energizing and active properties of Qu Moreover, Straton gives no
account of Puxas microcosm, which Hisdosus' source apparently does.
Nor does Marcovich argue convincingly when he declares that
Hisdosus became familiar with Heraclitus through the Sceptics and
their pneumatic-diffusion theory of vu As an example of this theory,
he cites Tertullian's de anima 14,5, which Diels and Kranz cite in
support of the fragment's authenticity. This passage, which attributes
to "Straton, Aenesidemus, and Heracitus" an analogy between 4uX
and Archimedes' water-organ, obscures the issue here more than it
clarifies it. Tertullian is rarely reliable when he paraphrases; and his
ascnption of doctrines to a group of people of widely divergent dates
and views is a confusing and inaccurate polemical expedient. This
pneumatic doctrine bears even less resemblance to fr. 67a than do the
fragments of Straton. Hisdosus does not describe the Heraclitean +u
as generally diffused, a breath rushing through the body; the impli-
cation of the whole passage is, rather, that 4ux' is analogous to the
sun, a central, definitely locatable, possibly fiery, source of energy.
If Hisdosus used the sources Marcovich describes, it is amazing that he
should have produced a picture of suX' which is so much closer in its
general import to other known fragments of Heraclitus that it is to the
alleged sources themselves.
It is also worth remembering that Hisdosus claims to quote directly
from Heraclitus, and seems to have no polemical point in view, as does
Tertullian, which might cause him willfully to present a false picture.
Even Tertullian, however, quotes correctly in the single reference to
Heraclitus where he actually claims to quote (de an 2: fr. 45).
We can, I think, conclude that Hisdosus' source was one which did
not assimilate Heraclitus to the Sceptics, and which was generally
more faithful to his words than those "sources" upon which Marcovich
claims the fragment is based. We may accept as Heraclitean the
comparison between spider and +uX', though not necessarily in all its
detail, and the suggestion of a further analogy between 4uX' and cosmic
fire.
What, then, can we learn from the spider-simile itself about Hera-
clitus' notions of +uXy 's role in life? First, that it is the central life-
faculty, upon which the others depend, and through which they oper-
ate. A man is not, as in Homer, a loosely-joined collection of limbs;
he does not react to one sort of stimulus in his 4upok, and to another
in his 9pe'v. All stimuli are referred to 4uy', which holds the body and
its faculties together. It is an active faculty, and not merely the seat
of the -ta't. It responds to stimuli, but these stimuli remain external
to it. It is locatable, and not generally diffused, but its location is not
fixed, as it is in the very similar analogy of Chrysippus (II 879 A).
Unlike Tertullian's flatus in calamo, it is apparently self-moving, and
capable of directing its movement. And there is the further implica-
tion that, since it is the essential animating force in the body, nothing
done merely to the body will be sufficient to produce death. If the
simile is accurate, we will expect to see death explained as something
which happens specifically to 4uXn, and neither merely to the body,
nor to the creature as a whole. And, indeed, this prediction is borne
out by the evidence of fragments 36 and 77, as we shall see.
It would not be wise to push the details of the analogy further. The
interesting suggestion, embodied in firme et proportionaliter, about the
relation of +u ' to body cannot be accurately assessed in translation;
one supposes that proportionaliter translates some phrase involving
XO6yoq,but it is hard to know whether the translator has grasped the
appropriate sense of the word 6Oyoq in its context; without the original,
one cannot judge.
We see, then, in general, that +uX( is the essential life-faculty in the
living being (in men specifically, if we accept hominis anima as genuine).
Two gaps in the Homeric picture of man are filled simultaneously, as
Heraclitus accounts for the life-activity of that which was previously
noticed only in terms of death, and also accounts for the unity of the
individual, who had been described as a collection of limbs and facul-
ties. Now we will see that his 4utxdoctrine answers yet a further need:
the need to account for language, and the ability to use it, in some
more satisfactory way than had the epic poets and their followers.
Fr. 107: xocxo' p'upA V9p@tOlaLV 4pOL XMX &rA papous
The syntax of the participle CxOvtwvhas been adequately explained as

similar to that of certain Homeric examples discussed by Classen,'8
and Marcovich, Kirk, and Guthrie17 are probably right in understand-
ing it as conditional, not causal.
The central problem in this fragment lies in the interpretation of the
word Pappapouq. It has become usual for commentators, following
Diels, to adopt a metaphorical interpretation: the "barbarian" PUxocE
are incapable of understanding the "language of the senses".18 Now it
is clear that, to a certain extent, this is right; it is not, for Heraclitus,
the senses which are deceptive, but the +uyactwhich err in interpre-
tation. But an understanding of 5apf3pou4 as referring to a "language
of the senses" is, first of all, more metaphorical than necessary, and,
secondly, philosophically uninteresting, since it tells us nothing about
why or how the 4uycd make their mistake. A more literal interpretation
will both be truer to contemporary usage of the word, and will also
give far more insight into Heraclitus' theory.
The word Ocppaposin the early fifth century means only one thing:
not speaking (or understanding) the Greek language. Thucydides (I. 3)
16 Classen, pp. 174-5.

17
Marcovich, p. 47; Kirk and Raven, number 201, p. 189; Guthrie, p. 415.
18 DK ad. loc.; Kirk and
Raven, p. 189; Marcovich, p. 47. Compare Holscher's
translation (p. 138): "wenn sie verworrene Seele haben." Verdenius' translation,
"wenn man die Sprache der W6rter nicht versteht" (p. 98), is much nearer the
mark, though perhaps unnecessarily tricky.
observes that the word was not used until a sense of Greek unity had
arisen, with reference to which fO'poCXpoL, too, could be defined as a
single group. Liddell and Scott remark that it is not until after the
Persian war that the term even began to be extended to mean generally
rude or uncomprehending.In the period which concerns us it refers
only to linguistic understanding, and has no implications of general
inability to comprehend. Aeschylus in the Persians, has the Persian
characters of the drama refer to themselves as r3&prapoL (255, 337, 391,
etc.), a fact which proves that even shortly after Heraclitus' time the
term still retained a very narrow sense, and was not pejorative in
connotation. Thus it seems that Heracitus is not making the rather
bland and vague statement that sense-data are deceptive if you have a
crude and uncomprehending4uxB,but the far more interesting state-
ment that your senses will deceive you if you do not have an accurate
understanding of your own language. Addressing his remarks in the
Greek language to a Greek-speakingaudience, he seems to say, "You
divide mankind into two groups, Greeks and fpo3xppQL, describing
yourselves as those who understand the Greek language, and all
other men as those who do not. But I intend to show you that, in fact,
you have no better understandingof your language than those whom
you call r3&pcxpoc, since linguistic understandingis dependent not only
upon birth in a certain locality, but also upon the proper training of
the 4ux ."
We noted that the Homeric man seemed unaware of the processes
by which he learnedand understoodlanguage. He spoke what he heard;
nothing that happened between the ear and the tongue was of essential
importance. Heraclitus insists that sense data must be referred to
+UXI,which is capable of understandinglanguage; only then will the
process be complete.
The meaning of this emphasis on language in connection with per-
ception is not immediately clear. And yet it is evident that for Hera-
clitus, who so frequently contrasts men and animals (frs. 4, 9, 29, etc.),
who places great emphasis on learning how to understand the con-
nections among things, for whom wisdom consists in speaking the
truth as well as in action (fr. 112), the way men understand their
language is of central importance; and their errors in understanding
the nature of the world can be understood, from a slightly different
viewpoint, as failures to understand the structure of their language.
It is, I think, in failures to grasp language that Heraclitus tends to
find the source of the more general error, and Moyoq,the essential
10
meaning of which up until his time has been connected statement, is
that with which he thinks one must deal first, if one is to understand
?O\yoqin its wider, cosmic sense.
Menare misled by their atomistic conception of language. Fragment 1
shows us that men's ears are bad witnesses so long as they remain on
the level of 9nea and fail to graspthe ?o6yo4;they are OCiDvvrot,not making
connections.The a'UvvoLtry out e`nea and ?pyo; their words are detached
units. To grasp single 6`aoc without grasping Xoyoqis futile; their ears
pass on Heraclitus' words, but they understand no better than before
they heard. The &'VUZvOr,as we see from fr. 107, are going wrong be-
cause their iuvxL do not understand Greek. Mere hearing does them
little good.
The sorts of error men can make about things through an inade-
quate understanding of language are frequently discussed in the
fragments.'9Two examples must suffice here. In fr. 23, he says: "They
would not know the name of Dike if such things did not exist." Such
things, presumably, are unjust things.20 The word Dike, which men
consider as the name of an independent goddess, could not have
meaning except with referenceto its opposite. If injustice did not exist,
men would have no reason to speak of justice. And yet men, seeing
words as 97re, miss this essential connection, this interdependence of
words. Fr. 57 gives us an even clearerpicture of popular error: Heracli-
tus declares that men think Hesiod knew more than anyone else; but
he did not even understand day and night; for they are one.21 Now
if we look in the Theogony (123-124), we find that Hesiod makes
Night the child of Chaos and Erebos, and Aither and Day, in turn, the
children of Erebos and Night. Hesiod did not see the illogicality of
making night older than day; his genealogy cannot explain how men
use the words "night" and "day"; for in ordinary usage they are
interdependent and are defined with reference to each other. Thus,
Hesiod's misunderstanding of words leads him to make a mistake in
19 Cf. Snell, Hermes.
20 Clement (Str. IV, 10) cites this statement of Heraclitus together with a
remark of Socrates that law does not exist on account of the good. The end
of the preceding chapter has discussed the relativity of opposites, and how good
can, in some circumstances, come from something we generally consider bad.
It seems safe to assume that Clement understood 3roaxo to refer - if not to unjust
things in general - at least to crimes of some sort. Even if the opposition is not
between justice and the unjust, it is probably between judgment and crimes,
and a similar point can be inferred.
21 Cf. Ramnoux, p. 1 ff.
11
cosmogony, and he gives a false analysis of the nature of the visible
world.
There is another fragment which I believe has been misunderstood
by some commentators, and can be understood more precisely in
connection with fr. 107. This is fragment 34: &(vvToL &xoOixav-t0e
X&WpOtaLV rOLXxavL Cp&TL4 CXTOTLVV aTCp&here
optpTVpELrCOxpeOvVTCX MiLZvCaL.
has usually been translated as "proverb."22 But the proverb in question
is found by Marcovich nowhere earlier than Aristophanes' Knights
1119, where it is not clearly proverbial, and may equally well be a
clever paradox set forth by the comic poet. The use of the simple verbal
noun to mean "proverb" is nowhere else attested. This fragment is the
only evidence given by Liddell and Scott for the existence of such a
meaning. Usually, cpacx-, means simnply "what is said": report, rumor
account, speech, and even language, as in Aes. Ag. 1254:
'EX-nv' 7TLC[OGCaL YpXTLV.
In the light of the connection made by fragment 107 between successful

hearing and linguistic understanding, I think we can understand cpnrt
here in its more basic sense. Thus: "People who fail to make connectionls,
when they hear, seem like deaf people. What they say (or speech, in
their case), bears witness that although they are present, they are
absent." ocuaroLvwould be simply an ethical dative, and the paradoxical
=peovraOq atreLvat a Heraclitean juxtaposition of opposites. (It did not
seem likely that Heraclitus would have cited a proverb in support of
an attack on the 7no?XA.The style seems peculiarly his own.) With this
interpretation, the fragment reinforces what we know from frs. 1 and
107 about the interrelationships of hearing, understanding, and speak-
ing. (Fr. 19 suggests a similar observation: &xoiaoL oux e'MGOawVOL
oWr'?s=xZv.) Men do not learn language, as many think, simply by hear-
ing and speaking. If they remain ajV'rToL - if they have iuyjxLthat
are incapable of making linguistic connections - they are no better
than deaf people, since what they say shows that they have not
understood what they have heard any better than if they had not
been there to hear it at all. To tell whether someone understands the
words he hears, we have to see whether he knows how to use them
himself in connected statement. A failure to do so is evidence of a
PapDapoq +?XnT-
So far, our elucidation of fr. 107 has been confined to the issue of
misunderstanding of language, and the examples of bad witness have
22Marcovich, pp. 12-13; DK ad. loc.; Holscher, p. 139; Ramnoux, p. 38. But
Kirk (Archiv, p. 75) understands the paradox as Heraclitus' own.
12
been concerned mainly with the mis-hearing of words. We have seen
that it is perfectly correct, according to Heraclitus, to say of most
Greeks that they are really 3cippapoL.And we have seen that a mis-
understanding of words can lead, as in the case of Hesiod, to the for-
mation of a false cosmogony, and thus that false hearing can result in
false interpretation of the seen. But I believe that the critique
implied in fr. 107 does not stop at correcting a false picture of language;
I believe it also asserts the centrality of language in all human learning,
and the importance of speech for the proper interpretation of any
sense data. We need not confine our interpretation to the mis-hearing
of words. In a very fundamental sense nothing seen or heard can be
fully understood without language, since it is in learning and communi-
cating through language that a human being learns to relate and judge
that which he perceives. In fragment 3, we have a classic example of
false witness of the eyes: the sun appears to be a foot wide. Now,
borrowing Aristotle's analysis of this same phenomenon (deAn 428 b 2),
we might say that this immediate and false picture is an "appearing",
common to all animals. But the learning of the true account would
be peculiar to man, and involves connected reasoning and language.
Thus, in any case of perception, to move from appearance to a true
account we need language. We cannot conceive of connected reasoning
existing without it.
This short account cannot do full justice to Heraclitus' ideas about
language; it has elucidated that question insofar as it bears on the
nature of the Heracitean 4uX. To summarize, then, our conclusions
about fr. 107: It is with 4uXi, the central and connecting life-faculty,
that man may potentially understand XGyoq,or connected discourse.
Because of the central importance of language in understanding, the
central life-faculty in man is, first and foremost, a faculty of language.23
Sense data are referred to +u and are interpreted according to the
fUn 's degree of linguistic competence. All mortal living creatures, one
would suppose, have JuZj; only in human beings can that Pux'grasp
?o6yoq.The term X6yo4is not restricted to the meaning "discourse" or
"statement", just as PuxZ is not only a faculty of language. Both are
used in a variety of contexts. And yet the fundamental importance of
language in Herachtus' analysis of cognition cannot be denied. In his
use of the term vwoos,or insight - which has in itself, no linguistic
overtones - he gives it such overtones by introducing the verb Xeyc:
23 Cf. Hoffmann, p. 7.
13
in fr. 114 we may say that tuv vo6)Xyovto means much the same as
using a Pux4 which speaks the language. v6o4,or insight, becomes a
quality of the well-functioning 4uX, gained as a consequence of lin-
guistic understanding; and v6o4is probably emphasized in 114 chiefly
for the sake of the word-play with iuv6v.The fact that the two terms
v6oqand +u are never juxtaposed led von Fritz24to ignore the role of
svxmaltogether in his analysis of the role of v6o4.It seems clear, how-
ever, that for Heracitus su ' is far more central, and v6o4becomes
subordinate to it.
We see, then, that Heraclitus, taking two terms whose meanings be-
fore his time had most often been negatively defined in explicit use, has
given them central positions in his philosophy: suZj as the connecting
and knowing faculty, Xoyo4as the primary object of knowledge. The
creative nature of his achievement can most clearly be seen against the
backgroundof non-philosophicthought, the scope of which Heraclitus
seems deliberately to revise and to enlarge. Insufficient contemporary
evidence makes it difficult to determine how much of his reassessment
of ;k6yoqand +uyJ3is, in fact, his own. If he is really the first to have
accorded these terms such central importance, we may then be forced
to ask ourselves whether he predicted the fifth century or created it;
for no two words take on greater importance in the thought of suc-
ceeding generations (a fact which often has led, I believe, to a failure
to appreciate the originality of Heraclitus' theories).
I think we cannot assume that the novelty of Heraclitus' usage was
as great as the available evidence might lead us to suppose; certainly
the sensesof iuX' and ?o6yog which he developswerein some way inherent
in the senses of the words as earlier used, and it is the contexts in
which it occurredto earlier men to speak about 4ux( and ?O6yog, rather
than what men meant by the words themselves, that were formerly
restricted. Then, too, it is clear that other subsequent uses of the words
in "positive contexts" cannot all be dependent upon an understanding
of Heraclitus; the evolution in their usage must have been under way
24 Von Fritz, "NOOE in Pre-Socratics," pp. 230-236. Frame's study shows that
the role of iuXp as life-principle cannot be ignored in any profitable study of

v6oq, since its earliest traceable Indo-European meaning is that of a faculty by
means of which one returns (the root being the same as that of vio,Lot, v6a-roq,
etc.) from death to life and light. One wins, or keeps, one's +uX' by exercising
v6o; (cf. x 5: &pv.LCevoq~v -r 4uXyv xxl v6a-rovkX(pcav). v6oq, like u is originally
connected with the threat of death; and in making suxi explicitly central,
Heraclitus clarifies what it is that a man's v6oo is to accomplish.
14
by the time he wrote.25But it does seem likely that he is the first
Greek thinker to have elaborated a philosophicaldoctrine of +Uxn,and
to have connected with the life-operations of +u7' the notion of lin-
guistic understanding.
In concluding this section, we ought to deal briefly with the two
fragments which speak of a X6yoqYuyxGIn fr. 45, Heraclitus declares,
+Ux~qMrEPpa-a tv ou'xav ?'eupOLO, 7&aCv tL7top?UOSU6VOq
6 OV. OUTGrPx1hmv
XOyov gZeL. And, in fr. 115: iu(q i-t Xo?yoq Cut6v cu`@ov. These frag-
ments can both be interpreted in a variety of ways; I would like,
however, to see them as a further reference to +ij 's capacity for
learning, and to the central importance of language in all such learn-
ing.26 Fragments 101 and 116 emphasize the possibility and the im-
portance of self-development for all men. Fragment 45 would, then
reinforce the declaration of 116 that development is possible by saying
that there are no limits to man's power to develop his understanding,
of such basic importance is the innate linguistic capacity with which
his +uynis equipped.27Because his fuxZhas the power of ?oyo4,there
are no limits to its development; this capacity increases itself, for the
more one understandslanguage, the better are one's tools for increasing
that understanding.
[To be concluded]
Harvard University
BIBLIOGRAPHY: PART I
Benardete, Seth. "Achilles and the Iliad." Hermes 91 (1963). Pp. 1-16.
Boeder, Heribert. "Der friuhgriechische Wortgebrauch von Logos und A letheia."
Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte 4 (1959). Pp. 82-112.
Bohme, Joachim. Die Seele und das Ich im homerischen Epos. Gottingen, 1929.
Classen, Joh. Beobachtungen iuber den homerischen Sprachgebrauch. Frankfurt,
1879. Pp. 174-5.
Diels, Hermann and Kranz,Walther. Fragmenteder Vorsokratiker.Dublin-ZZurich,
14th edition, 1969. Vol. I, pp. 139-190.
26 Mr. David Furley has suggested to me that the evidence of Xenophanes fr. 7
makes it at least possible that Pythagoras recognized the connections between
Quxnand speeches: the puppy's voice betrays the +uX' of a man.
26 Compare Holscher's notion of an inner space, to be discovered as the world
(p. 143).
27 Cf. Snell, Discovery, p. 19. His analysis of the sense of a@i)q seems to be
substantially correct. On fr. 115, cf. Verdenius, p. 87.
15
Fournier, H. Les Verbes "Dire" en Grec Ancien. Paris, 1946.
Frame, Douglas Gordon. The Origins of Greek NOOX. Dissertation, Harvard,
1971.
Fritz, Kurt von. "NOO, and NOEIN in the Homeric Poems." Classical Philo-
logy 38 (1943). Pp. 79-93. (Cited as von Fritz, "NOON in Homer").
"NOOZ, NOEIN, and their derivatives in Pre-Socratic Philosophy, I."
Classical Philology 40 (1945). Pp. 225ff. Cited as von Fritz, "NOOE in
Pre-Socratics."
Guthrie, W. K. C. A History of GreekPhilosophy. Cambridge, 1962. Vol. I, pp.
403-492.
Holscher, Uvo. Antdngliches Fragen: Studien zur friihen griechischen Philos-
sophie. Pp. 130-172.
Hoffmann, Ernst. Die Sprache und die archaische Logik. Tubingen, 1925.
Kirk, G. S. "Heraclitus' Contribution to the development of a language for
Philosophy." Archiv fur Begriffsgeschichte 9 (1964). Pp. 73-77.
Heraclitus: the Cosmic Fragments. Cambridge, 1954. (Cited as Kirk, HCF).
Kirk, G. S. and Raven, J. E. The Pre-Socratic Philosophers. Cambridge, 1957.
Pp. 182-215.
Kranz, Walther. "Gleichnis und Vergleich in der fruhgriechischen Philosophie."
Hermes 73 (1938). Pp. 99-122.
Krischer, T. "ETYMOZ und AAHOHE." Philologus 109 (1965). Pp. 161-174.
Marcovich, M. Heraclitus. Merida, Venezuela, 1967.
Pohlenz, M. Review in Philologische Wochenschrift 23 (1903). P. 972.
Ramnoux, Clemence. H6raclite, ou l'hommeentre les Choses et les Mots. Paris, 1959.
Snell, Bruno. The Discovery of the Mind. (trans. T. G. Rosenmeyer). New York,
1960.
Review of B6hme, Gnomon 7 (1931). Pp. 77 ff.
"Die Sprache von Heraklit." Hermes 61 (1926). Pp. 353 ff.
Verdenius, W. J. "Der Logosbegriff bei Heraklit und Parmenides." Phronesis
11 (1966), Pp. 81-98.
16

1972 ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus, I

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1972 ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus, I

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ΨΥΧΗ in Heraclitus, I

Author(s): Martha C. Nussbaum

In the fragments of Heraclitus*, frequent mention is made of 4uxiC;

Gnomon 77 ff. and B6hme passim.

Ipc; is almost to be vulnerable to death. Elsewhere the notion of mortality

I believe that the general content of this simile can be attributed to

Marcovich, pp. 576-9.

The syntax of the participle CxOvtwvhas been adequately explained as

16 Classen, pp. 174-5.

In the light of the connection made by fragment 107 between successful

the role of iuXp as life-principle cannot be ignored in any profitable study of

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