By Ryan Smith
Heraclitus is arguably the most important philosopher with regards to Jungian typology.[1] At the very least, if one wishes to approach typology from a function-based perspective (as opposed to a trait, dichotomy, or temperament-based one), there is no getting around Heraclitus. In fact, a lot of the methodical errors surrounding the function-based approach to typology would (in my 
“Jung proposed one of the first models of adult personality development. … Instead of traits, he described various functions or structures in the psyche that governed the flow of behavior and experience.” – Costa & McCrae: Personality in Adulthood (Guilford 2003)
So Heraclitus is indeed important. Bearing this fact in mind, it is all the more bizarre to discover that there exists no adequate introduction to the thought of Heraclitus. While I have personally met several scholars and thinkers who seem to have understood the thought of Heraclitus, none have succeeded in writing a good introduction, and most have agreed that this would be an exceedingly difficult task. His thought is tricky, since one cannot do it justice by describing it deductively or laying it out in terms of principles. One has to enter into it phenomenologically, as it were; to hypnotize one’s cognition to follow suit.
Thus, rather than provide an analytical explanation of Heraclitus, I shall attempt to enter into his thought through snapshots – a series of themes, each of which forms a major pillar of Heraclitean thought.
Fire and the Stream of Becoming
Becoming is a pervasive, incessant stream where everything is constantly undergoing movement and change. Rivers run, iron rusts, and people age – nothing stays the same from one moment to the next. Though most things escape our conscious notice, everything is changing all at once. We do not see flowers bloom, iron rust, or loved ones age. When we take stock of these processes, we do so as a rationalization and reconstruction of what must have taken place. We fail to recognize the process and see only one state superseding another. What once was has now rusted (iron), withered (flower), or aged (human being). True reality is an incessant stream of change. What it now is is not held fast by what it was. There are no static objects or substances, except in the make-believe of our minds. No, there is only process and becoming, and everything that is is constantly in the process of becoming something else. Strife and opposition are ubiquitous; opposition between one moment and the next, one state and the next, one time-point in the process and the next. To grip one moment out of this torrential stream of becoming and proclaim that HERE we have the intimate truth about a thing is arbitrary and unjustified. It is to live in a private world of one’s own making. How could it be possible to isolate one point on a continuum and to proclaim that THIS HERE is the true reality?
The world is a chaos of tones, scattered at random. There is no static Being, only an eternal chaos of potentialities; a world where borders, boundaries, isolation, compartmentalization, and stable assemblies are impossible – a chaos of tones with no meaning to be called a melody.
Some have argued that Heraclitus’ tendency to identify everything with fire should be read in the same vein as Thales identifying everything with water or Anaximenes (possibly) identifying everything with air. That is to say, they think Heraclitus is an Ionian proto-scientist. This is incorrect. To Heraclitus, fire is no arch-quality or original substance. His extolling of fire must be understood metaphorically, as a metaphor for radical strife, change, and becoming. On the one hand, one can understand this as the truth of objects, people, and phenomena in the cosmos, but on the other, fire should also be understood as the logos or arche about the cosmos. It is not merely the descriptive truth about objects, but the transcendental principle governing the world.
“This world, which is the same for all, no one of gods or men has made. But it always was, is, and will be, an ever-living Fire, with measures of it kindling, and measures going out.” – Heraclitus DK B30
“All things are interchangeable for Fire, and Fire for all things, just like goods for gold and gold for goods.” – Heraclitus DK B90
Heraclitus does not intend fire to be the literal arch-quality of objects. This can be seen in the fact that just as often as he mentions fire, Heraclitus describes the process of radical change and becoming by reference to rivers and streams. We shall have more to say about this duality of fire and water – of burning rivers – when we explore his doctrine of the unity of opposites. For now, we will merely note that the incessant stream of change and becoming might equally well be signified by rivers as by fire – indeed by rivers of fire.
“On those who enter the same rivers, ever different waters flow.” – Heraclitus DK B12
“Into the same rivers we step and do not step. We are and we are not.” – Heraclitus DK B49a
Just as we make the ever-changing flames of a fire into a stable ‘thing,’ so we refer to the stream as something stable. We give it a name. Mentally, we make an entity out of it, but in reality, the stream is naught but our arbitrary mental fixation on one point of what is really a process of continual change. Without that extra ‘something’ – that ‘lie of thinghood’ – that is added to the phenomenon by our minds, there is really no such entity; no permanence and no stability. Stable Being is a fiction born of our own cognition. In reality, the sun is new every day.[2]
“[The Heracliteans] saw that all this world … is in movement, and that no true statement can be made about that which is in constant flux. … Regarding that which is in every respect changing, nothing [can] truly be affirmed.” – Aristotle: Metaphysics 1010A
Heraclitus’ predecessor Anaximander had postulated a cosmos of impermanent becoming, with objects being lent their temporary being from the immutable One, in accordance with what the One found just. Pythagoras believed in a universe characterized by unity and harmony.[3] Both believed that the cosmic stage-play of coming-into-being and passing away was governed by some higher congruence, be it justice, harmony, or agreement. To Heraclitus, the only truth of the cosmic stage-play is strife. War is the father of all things, and there is no justice or truth but the advantage of the stronger.[4] Insofar as there is harmony, the harmony of the universe is the domination of the stronger force against the weaker one, and Pythagoras is a fool and a fraud for believing in a cosmic unity the way he did.[5] Tension and strife are not only beautiful; they are creative forces that uphold the universe; they tend to the flame of its becoming and keep the universe in being. Without conflict and strife, the flame of becoming would die out and the universe would dissolve into nothing.[6] It remains in being by changing.[7] By yielding to the dominion of the stronger.
To Heraclitus, whatever rest we experience in the world is merely the result of two opposing forces, each of which, for the time being, has failed to subjugate the other. The fairest harmony is born of immanent strife.[8] If the opposition dies away, so too does the unity, and with it, the harmony.
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Image of Heraclitus commissioned for this publication from artist Francesca Elettra.
NOTES
[1] Bennet: Meetings with Jung (Daimon 1985) p. 27
[2] Heraclitus: DK B6
[3] The Anaximanderian Conception of Function Axes (CelebrityTypes 2016), cf. Smith: Philosophical Archetypes: Pythagoras (ENFJ) (CelebrityTypes 2015)
[4] Heraclitus: DK B53
[5] Heraclitus: DK B129
[6] Heraclitus: DK B34d
[7] Heraclitus: DK B84a
[8] Heraclitus: DK B8