Heraclitus (c. 530–475 BCE)

Relativity of Time

The most influential aspect of Heraclitus' thinking about time is the concept of the Great Year or the eternal recurrence of everything, an idea that was taken up later by Zeno of Citium (the founder of the Stoa) and Nietzsche. However, within his philosophy, Heraclitus also clarifies other aspects of time. He was clearly aware of the relativity of time. When he explains that the sun is needed for the alteration between night and day to occur, it becomes clear that he was conscious that daytime and nighttime are dependent upon certain conditions. A certain time exists only within a specific framework or paradigm. If the framework changes, then the concept of time within it changes, too. We would not have daytime within a world without the sun. Time is dependent upon a specific perspective, and many distinctions concerning time cannot be drawn from only a cosmic or universal perspective.

Unity of Opposites

Heraclitus criticized Hesiod for not having the best knowledge concerning daytime and nighttime. Only the masses regard Hesiod as a wise man, but truly he was not. According to Heraclitus, daytime and nighttime are one, which Hesiod had failed to realize. from a global perspective, one cannot distinguish [Page 647]daytime and nighttime. One has to be a participating spectator in order to employ the distinction meaningfully. Even though the distinction in question works well from a pragmatic perspective, this does not imply that it is correct. from a universal perspective, the distinction between day and night is not supposed to make any sense, as God is supposed to represent the unity of opposites; that is, God is supposed to be the unity of day and night, as well as summer and winter.

Figure: Heraclitus, painting by Hendrick ter Brugghen. Heraclitus was a Greek philosopher who proposed that everything is in a state of flux and that fire is the principal element of matter

Time as Metaphor

Even though opposites do not exist, Heraclitus himself employs opposites. Concerning time, he clearly holds that there are people who are connected to the night and others who are linked to the day, and he attributes different values to these two types of paradigms. According to him, only the night-roam-ers are the initiated ones. They have wisdom and they do not belong to the masses. The masses are uninitiated and are connected to the day. Even though, from a global perspective, night and day are one, nighttime and daytime stand for something different. Here, they represent people who are either initiated or uninitiated into wisdom.

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