Heraclitus was a philosopher, born in Ephesus in modern day Turkey. Not much is known about his life, and all that we do know was made up by others based on his writings. Other philosophers at the time were concerned with the beginning of the world, Heraclitus was concerned with the rhythm of nature and eternal change. While we do not know much of Heraclitus’s life, we do know of his death; recorded by Diogenes Laertius, who wrote about the death of Heraclitus, in the 8th book of his Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers series. Diogenes stated one-day Heraclitus withdrew from the world until he became afflicted from Edema, he then described the illness to doctors in a riddle; When the doctors did not understand he secluded himself in a cow barn, expecting the heat to evaporate the water. In the end, this did not help, and Heraclitus died at the age of 60 (Diogenes).
Among Heraclitus’s writings he talks about the harmony of opposites and that the composition of opposites was what sustained nature. This philosophy is exposed in his quote “Opposition brings concord: Out of discord comes the fairest harmony.” This quote is a distillation of Heraclitus’s ideology, as concord means harmony in this case two opposing forces will synthesize into a middle ground as happens in nature – for example, the extreme cold at the poles and the extreme heat at the equator and between these you get a temperate climate. In other words, from the discord of the two temperatures in this example creates a harmony in nature. This reflects on Heraclitus because his writings were confusing and difficult to understand. Heraclitus did this, so his readers would be forced into independent thought. One could say the discord created from the plain, and boring, philosophies of others and the confusing philosophy of Heraclitus, creates a harmony when thinking independently. In this way, Heraclitus always lived this quote.
As this quote relates to Heraclitus’s life; I can relate this quote to my life as well. One time in my middle school technology class. The class did a movie project where we were in groups, and as a group, we had to come up with an idea of what our movie was going to be about. Naturally, there were many ideas, many of them opposing other ideas in concept. To get to a point where we could all agree, we took elements of our ideas and fused them together making sure the plot was coherent. This way our initial discord turned into harmony, as we compromised our ideas into one we could all be happy with.
Works cited
Graham, Daniel. “Heraclitus (fl. c. 500 B.C.E.).” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 2161-0002, n.a, http://www.iep.utm.edu/heraclit/. Accessed 11 Nov 2017.
“Heraclitus the Obscure.” Archimedes Laboratory, n.a, n.a, http://www.archimedes-lab.org/heraclitus_aphorism.html. Accessed 11 Nov 2017.
Mark, Joshua J. "Heraclitus of Ephesus." Ancient History Encyclopedia, n.a, 14 Jul 2010, https://www.ancient.eu/Heraclitus_of_Ephesos/. Accessed 11 Nov 2017.