Heraclitus' Rebuke of Polymathy: A Core Element in the Reflectiveness of His Thought

History of Philosophy & Logical Analysis 23 (1):21–50 (2020)
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Abstract

I offer an examination of a core element in the reflectiveness of Heraclitus’ thought, namely, his rebuke of polymathy . In doing so, I provide a response to a recent claim that Heraclitus should not be considered to be a philosopher, by attending to his paradigmatically philosophical traits. Regarding Heraclitus’ attitude to that naïve form of ‘wisdom’, i.e., polymathy, I argue that he does not advise avoiding experience of many things, rather, he advises rejecting experience of things as merely many independent things in their manifoldness , and, instead, to understand their unity and thereby to unify our knowledge of them.

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Keith Begley
Durham University

References found in this work

The presocratic philosophers.Jonathan Barnes - 1979 - New York: Routledge.
The Presocratic Philosophers.Jonathan Barnes - 1979 - New York: Routledge.
The Presocratic Philosophers.Jonathan Barnes - 1979 - New York: Routledge.
The presocratic philosophers.G. S. Kirk - 1957 - Cambridge [Eng.]: University Press. Edited by J. E. Raven.

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