The Theology of Heraclitus: a Presocratic Pantheism

90a theological ard noral onerr (Guthrte, I,442)anlned the theological side, 1eL us non turnllav lng exattentlon toth 1s moralside,It has sonetimes been held that B102 is a s!atenentthat moral distlnctions a!e in reality illusory (so Vlastos;"On H.",367; cuthrie, I,448; Barnes, I,131-2; cf. Marcovich,484). Such an tnterpretalion was denied by Kirk nho clainedthat Den legitillatelv dlstlngutsh between just afld unjust,even though Kirk does adml! !hat "!he syllthe!ic view (seelng!he underlylng unity ln opposites) is mole adfirlrable" (p,181,approved by Stokes, Onc 6 Many,lO5-6). But Vlas!os arguedthat l(1rkr s vlew dld not forestall the lnevltable conclusion!hat ll. sa moral dlstlnctlons as ultinately fa1se. lle arguesthat !his "syntheElcl vlew nust st i11 be "wlsdom" in Heraclitusrjargon "not only for god, bu! for rnan too as far ashe can reach it". And so, "the !riser man becones, lhe closerhe cones to the vlew that'aI1things are falr and good andJustr, and if this does not make noral distinclions i1lusory,I do noL know lrhat wor1d" (Vlas!os, "0n H.",367 n.65). KirkElght try !o squeeze out of this by replying that such reagoningshol,Is "a grave lack of hlstorlcal sense as ue11 as an over-62one of the most notorlous exanpfes of the built-in anblguity ofrefelence in all of the frr. 1s fr.60 (rrRoad up and down are the sanerr).From antiquily !o today this saying has been 6 bjected to cosmologlcal,cosraogonical, psychical, and elhical interpr etations , See l(irk,I05 ff. andowens,''In!erpretation'r, 15I-2.This sonetimes extrene lnter-conneclion of possible lnterpretationslargely accounts for the divergence of opinior concernln8 the proper orderof the frr. On the varlous attenpls at reconsi:ructing the original order(and a \,'ritten scrol1 must have had onel) see below' p,2O2 n.zI-