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Fragment 80
Some Notes on Πόλεμος
and Δίκη in Heraclitus B80
εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον ἐόντα ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν,
καὶ γινόμενα
πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα [χρεών]. Fragmentum 80.
This fragment, attributed to Heraclitus, is generally considered to
mean something rather abstract such as: war is
everywhere and strife is
justice and all that is arises and passes away because of strife.
That is, πόλεμος is regarded as a synonym for either
kampf, or more generally,
for war. However, I incline toward the view that this older
understanding of - the accepted
rendition of - πόλεμος is
a misinterpretation, and that rather than
kampf (struggle), or a general type of strife,
or what we now associate with the term war, πόλεμος
implies what I have elsewhere termed
the acausality (a simultaneity) [1] beyond
our causal ideation, and which ideation has separated object from
subject, and often abstracted them into seemingly conflicting
opposites [2]. Hence my particular interpretation of Fragmentum 53:
Πόλεμος πάντων μὲν πατήρ ἐστι, πάντων δὲ βασιλεύς,
καὶ τοὺς μὲν θεοὺς ἔδειξε τοὺς δὲ ἀνθρώπους, τοὺς μὲν δούλους ἐποίησε
τοὺς δὲ ἐλευθέρους.
Polemos our genesis, governing us all to bring forth some gods,
some mortal beings with some unfettered yet others kept bound.
Hence my interpretation of Fragment 80 - εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ τὸν πόλεμον
ἐόντα
ξυνόν, καὶ δίκην ἔριν, καὶ γινόμενα
πάντα κατ΄ ἔριν καὶ χρεώμενα [χρεών] - as:
One should be aware that Polemos pervades, with discord δίκη,
and
that
beings
are
naturally
born
by
discord.
[3]
Here, I have deliberately transliterated (instead of translated) πόλεμος,
and
left
δίκη as δίκη - because both πόλεμος
and δίκη (written Πόλεμος and, I suggest, Δίκα)
should
be
regarded,
like
ψυχή (psyche/Psyche) as terms
or as principles in their own right (hence the capitalization), and
thus imply, suggest, and require, interpretation and explanation,
something especially true, in my opinion, regarding Δίκα. To
render them blandly by English terms such as 'war' and 'justice' -
which have their own now particular meaning(s) - is in my view
erroneous and somewhat lackadaisical. δίκη for instance could
be, depending on context: the custom(s) of a folk, judgement (or
Judgement personified), the natural and the necessary balance, the
correct/customary/ancestral way, and so on.
In respect of Δίκα, I
write it thus to intimate a new, a particular and numinous,
philosophical principle, and differentiate it from the more general δίκη.
As
a
numinous
principle,
or
axiom,
Δίκα thus suggests what
lies beyond and what was the genesis of δίκη personified as
the goddess, Judgement - the goddess of natural balance, of the
ancestral way and ancestral customs.
Thus, Δίκα implies the balance, the reasoned judgement, the
thoughtful reasoning - σωφρονεῖν - that πάθει μάθος
brings and restores, and which accumulated πάθει μάθος of a
particular folk or πόλις forms the
basis for their ancestral customs. δίκη is therefore, as the
numinous principle Δίκα, what may be said to be a particular
and a
necessary balance between ἀρετή and ὕβρις - between the
ὕβρις that often results when the personal, the natural, quest
for ἀρετή becomes unbalanced and excessive.
That is, when ἔρις (discord) is or becomes δίκη - as
suggested by
Heraclitus in Fragment 80.
In respect of Πόλεμος,
it is perhaps interesting that in the recounted tales of Greek
mythology attributed to Aesop, and in circulation at the time of
Heraclitus, a personified πόλεμος (as the δαίμων of
kindred strife) married a personified ὕβρις (as the δαίμων
of arrogant pride) [4] and
that it was a common folk belief that πόλεμος accompanied ὕβρις
- that is, that Polemos followed Hubris around rather than vice versa,
causing or bringing ἔρις.
As a result of ἔρις, there often arises πάθει
μάθος - that practical and personal knowing, that reasoned
understanding which, according to Aeschylus [5] is the new law, the new
understanding, given by Zeus to
replace the older more religious and dogmatic way of fear and dread,
often viewed as Μοῖραι τρίμορφοι μνήμονές τ᾽ Ἐρινύες [6]. A
new understanding which Aeschylus saught to explain in the Oresteia.
Therefore one can perhaps understand and appreciate the true and
acausal nature of Πόλεμος which, as suggested by Fragment 53,
is a natural principle (or 'energy' or a manifestation of Being) which
affects, or governs, all mortals and which, as suggested by Fragment
80, causes the manifestation of beings from Being (the causal
separation of beings) and which natural separation results in ἔρις
and thence, as suggested by Fragment 123 [7] a return to Being; a
return which can result, as suggested by Fragment 112 [8] arise from
thoughtful reasoning [σωφρονεῖν] - and which thoughtful,
balanced, reasoning can incline us toward not committing ὕβρις.
David Myatt
April 2011 CE
Notes
[1] For the axiom of acausality, see my Introduction to The
Philosophy of The Numen.
[2] For an outline of opposites, refer to my essay The Abstraction
of Change as Opposites and Dialectic.
[3] Some alternative renderings of this fragment are:
One should be aware that polemos is pervasive; and discord δίκη,
and
that
beings
[our
being]
quite
naturally
come-into-being
through
discord
One should be aware that polemos pervades; with
discord δίκη, and that all
beings are begotten because of discord.
[4] A δαίμων is not one of the pantheon
of major Greek gods - θεοί - but rather a lesser type of
divinity who might be assigned by those gods to bring good fortune or
misfortune to human beings and/or watch over certain human beings and
especially particular numinous (sacred) places.
Furthermore, Polemos was originally the δαίμων of kindred
strife, whether familial, or of one's πόλις
(one's clan and their places of dwelling). Thus, to describe Polemos,
as is sometimes done, as the god of conflict (or war), is doubly
incorrect.
[5] Agamemnon,174-183. qv. my essay, From Aeschylus To The
Numinous Way - The Numinous Authority of πάθει μάθος
[6] Aeschylus (attributed), Prometheus Bound, 515-6
[7] Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ - Concealment accompanies
Physis. See my Physis, Nature, Concealment, and Natural Change.
[8] σωφρονεῖν ἀρετὴ μεγίστη, καὶ σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν καὶ ποιεῖν
κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαίοντας
For this fragment, see my essay The Balance of Physis – Notes on
λόγος and ἀληθέα in Heraclitus.
