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The Πόλεμος That Gathers All: Heraclitus on War

Claudia Baracchi
Università di Milano-Bicocca

Abstract

Heraclitus reportedly said that πόλεμος is “father of all, king of all” (Fragment B53).
However, we should be cautious around the translation of πόλεμος as “war.” How
to hear this term in its multifarious signification is precisely the theme of the pres-
ent essay. The analysis of various Heraclitean fragments, furthermore, may call into
question the view of politics as constitutively involving war and violence (thinkers
as diverse as Carl Schmitt, Walter Benjamin, Hobbes, and Marx offer varying formula-
tions of this position) and contribute to the task of understanding politics otherwise.
Granted, the examination of Heraclitean texts may appear rather tangential, even
remote, with respect to this question. And yet, however obliquely, this study points
to a meditation on politics as genuinely and meaningfully resting on the practice of
peace—or, one might say, on a radically other understanding of the word “war.”

Keywords

Heraclitus – violence – war – logos – peace

…
. . . while, to be sure, our consciousness of our own
meaning is hardly other than that which soldiers painted
on canvas have of the battle presented on it.
Friedrich Nietzsche

© koninklijke brill nv, leiden, ���5 | doi 10.1163/15691640-12341311

268 Baracchi

The present essay finds its inception and motivation in the current debates
on the possibility of understanding politics as otherwise than constitutively
linked to war and violence, or as others put it, to the logic of capital and con-
sumption. Towards the variously formulated positing of violence in its origi-
nary and necessary character converge thinkers as diverse as Carl Schmitt and
Walter Benjamin, Hobbes and Marx (to the latter belongs the well-known defi-
nition of violence as the indispensable “midwife of history”).
To be sure, the discussion here articulated through an analysis of Heraclitean
fragments may appear rather tangential, indeed remote, with respect to this
question. And yet, however obliquely, this study aims at contributing to a
meditation on politics as genuinely and meaningfully resting on the practice
of peace—or, one might say, on a radically other understanding of the word
“war.” Indeed, in the course of the analysis here presented the affirmation of
the word “war” as designating that which initiates and moves (the informing
principle at the heart of becoming) will turn out to be incompatible with the
affirmation of “war” as designating the human exercise of warfare.
One might perhaps object that the present interpretive approach exhibits
the traits of violence, that contemporary concerns are illegitimately forced
upon what remains of Heraclitus’ work. To this, one might reply that such a vio-
lence may be inevitable and signal at once the impossibility, risk, and respon-
sibility of any hermeneutical endeavor as such. Such, however, would be the
“violence” (if the word may still be retained here) of an engagement in dia-
logue, not that of willful silencing. Furthermore, taking seriously the hypoth-
esis of the forgetfulness enshrouding the past—a forgetfulness that makes the
past indeterminately remote, irretrievable, and hence yet to be discovered—
entails receiving and undergoing texts, most notably the fragmentary traces
of Heraclitus, in their obscurity. It entails taking up the task of a radical inter-
rogation of those sayings and exploring the energy of their intractable words.

Heraclitus is said to have said, and thereby to this day says, that πόλεμος is
“father of all, king of all” (B53).1 Πόλεμος, war: but let us begin by being cautious
around this translation. How to hear this term in its multifarious signification
will precisely be the issue here.
The saying evokes divisiveness and restlessness as that which governs what
is—as that which, at the heart of what is, steers its course by taking it apart.
Heraclitus, however, also says that those who are awake and do not live in their

1  The translations of Heraclitus’ fragments are mine throughout. I follow the numbering,
indicated in parentheses in this essay, of the edition by H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente
der Vorsokratiker (Berlin: Weidmann, 1951–52).

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The Πόλεμος That Gathers All 269

“private understanding” realize that “all comes to be according to λόγος,” rec-

ognizing “this λόγος” as that which is “common” and reveals: “all one” (B1, 2,
and 50). What follows is a reflection on the belonging together of these two
moments in Heraclitus’ thinking which may on the surface appear as irreduc-
ibly diverging, yet aim at naming the same, namely, the principle of that which
is and becomes. The ἀρχή, the origin and structure of all that is, emerges in
Heraclitus’ originary words already as irreducible to one name: not so much
the principle of difference but principle as difference. As a matter of fact, let
this be said in passing, it emerges through a proliferation that exceeds the
bifurcation into πόλεμος and λόγος (θεός, κεραυνός, πῦρ for instance, also point
to “the same,” the ἀρχή). Here, however, the focus will be on πόλεμος and λόγος
and what is revealed in their “naming the same.” Suggested here is what could
be called their “identity in difference,” an identity entailing neither their sim-
ple unity, nor their being undifferentiated, let alone a matter of indifference.
It may indeed be the case that πόλεμος, the unsurpassed reign of conflict,
demands to be thought in light of the all-gathering work that λόγος designates,
that πόλεμος and λόγος demand to be acknowledged in their being at one. Their
togetherness would thus illuminate an intimacy dynamically marked by ten-
sion and non-coincidence. The operation of such a differential slippage would
not only pervade the unity of the two signs (their being at one and designating
one) but, most remarkably, would qualify the unity of each of them, agitating
and complicating the way in which each signifies.

“War is father of all, king of all, and some he shows [ἔδειξε] as gods while some
as human beings, some he makes [ἐποίησε] slaves others free” (B53). Πόλεμος
presents itself in a twofold fashion: as father and as king, πατήρ and βασιλεύς.
(1) On the one hand, under the guise of paternity, war bespeaks generativity:
generativity through strife. In a rending that is at once procreative and determi-
native, all that is comes to be as what it is, separated from what it is not: human
beings come to be as what they are precisely in their being held apart from
gods. (2) On the other hand, under the guise of kingly rule, war indicates the
striving that dominates and possesses humans; it names the coming together
of humans in strife. As a sovereign, war names an ordering contention. War
orders the world through conflict and, accordingly, reveals order (legal, for
instance) as at once born of conflict and perpetuating conflict (between slaves
and free human beings, for instance). To put it schematically, then, the frag-
ment develops war as “father of all,” who “shows” “gods” and “humans” in their
distinctness, and as “king of all,” who “makes” some “enslaved” and some “free.”
A brief digression is in order at this point. For the apparently obvious corre-
spondence between father and king as well as the immemorial interpretation

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270 Baracchi

of the figure of the king as a father, of his subjects as children, and of the striv-
ing community, of the political tout court, in terms of familial structures, are
worthy of the utmost attention. I will limit myself here to emphasizing that
the distinction between father and king can hardly be referred to a simple
dichotomy between, on the one hand, (1) procreation as the originary, natural
upsurge of phenomena in their determinacy and, on the other hand, (2) the
allegedly derivative creativity of legality or convention proper to the human
sphere. Indeed, far from being a matter of simply recognizing or arranging
that which would already present itself as such and subsist autonomously, the
kingly gesture decisively structures the world, institutes, constitutes a world,
and thus must be seen as a genuine bringing forth, a “making” (ποιεῖν). In sev-
ering slaves from free human beings, the king of the world brings forth the
slave and the free in an originary fashion and is thereby revealed as essentially
a maker.
Thus, father and king are not contraposed according to the disjunction of
nature and politics—a disjunction that would grant analogical as well as imi-
tative relations in their calculability. Nor is their belonging together plainly a
matter of simple identity. How, then, would they be related? How would the
fatherly and kingly modes of πόλεμος be joined, recognizable at once, in one
and the same gesture? Would this incipient polysemy of war be anchored to
one common underlying signification? It can minimally be said that, if not
identical, father and king operate analogously—not so much in the sense of an
analogy or proportion between the separate orders of natural generation and
of political configuration but, rather, in the sense that political authority seems
to be primordially inscribed in the paternal function concomitant with physio-
logical generation. In this sense, the function of the king is precisely to take up
and articulate the ruling power attributed to the father more or less immedi-
ately, in virtue of his power to fecundate.2 The king resembles or even imitates
the father, not so much because he transposes natural power into political
terms, but because he takes up the political authority always already resting
in the natural as the father’s prerogative, and in doing so, he seeks a harmony,
a correspondence, with the source that the father embodies. But the king also
takes things further: he takes up what is shown as distinct from others, i.e.,
human beings as distinct from gods, and organizes their togetherness, guides
them in their development, operates further distinctions in their community.
He leads, “educates,” them. In this way, he assumes the paternal function more

2  In the study Il gesto di Ettore (Torino: Bollati Boringhieri, 2000), through an analysis of
cultural as well as socio-economic factors, Luigi Zoja retraces the development of the nexus
of masculinity and paternity in Western history, illuminating its connections with the
phenomenology of political rule.

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The Πόλεμος That Gathers All 271

fully, well beyond the basic masculine ability to beget. Kingly rule seems, thus,
to be nested within natural authority, irreducible to it yet not separate from it,
in fact supplementing it, providing a “political interpretation” (an interpreta-
tion originative of the political) and even an extension of the father’s seminal
authority. The assimilation of the father, of the institution of paternity, to the
natural, of course, is in turn not quite, not simply a natural datum.
But let us return to our main task. It is crucial to observe that the Heraclitean
fragment in no way discloses war as a matter of warfare stricto sensu or, in gen-
eral, as mere destructiveness. Whether as the authority that sustains becoming
in the broadest sense, partitioning the differing domains of what is, or as the
informing power at work in the human community, war names a “critical” prin-
ciple: a principle of division and discernment, tearing apart and distinguish-
ing. Procreation and creativity alike entail precisely this: the differentiation
that sunders and thereby determines, defines and makes finite, definite, recog-
nizable as such. Generation, the phenomenon of natality and bringing forth,
demands or even signifies this struggle of beings taking a stand over against
each other in a constitutive interplay of mutual encroachment—where mutual
encroachment indicates both the undergoing of others that implies heterono-
mous determination and the self-affirmation that requires the suppression of
others. As Origen reports,3 Heraclitus would have said: “The knowing needs
to be enjoyed, brought to fruition [εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ] that war is common [ξυνόν],
and order strife [δίκην ἔριν], and all comes to be according to strife and fruition
[γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ἔριν καὶ χρεών]” (B80).4 A certain synonymity of πόλεμος
and ἔρις as well as their being common to all, ordering γένεσις, or becoming, are
equally illuminated here. Πόλεμος and ἔρις, the father and mother of all, impart
order and scansion, δίκη. They indeed are δίκη.
Far from designating war without any further qualification, let alone war-
fare strictly taken as a human endeavor, then, πόλεμος names the διαφέρειν of
becoming, the coming to be of all that is as the eventuation, at once conflicted
and fecund, of difference. According to Aristotle’s testimony in De Mundo,5
Heraclitus would assert: “Conjunctions [συνάψιες] [are] wholes and not
wholes, that which is being brought together and brought apart [συμφερόμενον

3  Origen, Contra Celsum, translated with introduction and notes by Henry Chadwick
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 6.42.
4  Concerning the translation of χρή, χρεών, by reference to the enjoyment implied in usage
and fruition, that is, enjoyment as using or undergoing with a sense of fulfillment, benefiting
from it, see Martin Heidegger, “The Anaximander Fragment,” in Early Greek Thinking, trans.
D. F. Krell and F. A. Capuzzi (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1984), esp. 50–58. This decision
deploys crucial semantic aspects of the verb χράομαι and related terms such as χρῆσις.
5  Aristotle, De Mundo, trans. E. S. Forster (Oxford: Clarendon, 1914), 396b20.

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272 Baracchi

διαφερόμενον], singing together and singing apart [συνᾷδον διᾷδον]; out of all one
and out of one all” (B10).6 “Conjunctions,” “joints,” are and are not “wholes”: they
indicate the συν- always already complicated as the δια-, the joining together
that does not erase the rifts of the space in between. The language of unity and
wholeness, then, must be understood in light of this radical qualification, as
designating the self-differing movement of that which, though “apart [differ-
ing] from itself, comes together with itself [διαφερόμενον ἑωυτῷ ὁμολογέει].”7 In
another fragment, πόλεμος itself is understood as a pole in an oppositional pair,
as a one-sided and transitory designation of the whole: “The god [is] day night
[ἡμέρη εὐφρόνη], winter summer, war peace [πόλεμος εἰρήνη], satiety hunger”
(Hippolytus, Refutatio 9.10.8 = B67).
As διαφέρειν, πόλεμος means quarrelsome fertility. Such a fertility, however,
must be understood primarily in terms of order and regularity, not just random
growth, let alone devastating outbursts or upheavals. While these, under the
guises of diseases ranging from erratic organic proliferations to so-called natu-
ral disasters, are ineluctable aspects of generation, the articulation of becom-
ing can by no means be reduced to them. Thus, πόλεμος evokes generation in
its normality and irreducibility to trauma. It therefore designates the upsurge
of all that is in terms of diverse yet highly structured proliferation, or even in
terms of an oscillation between opposing poles (whole and not whole, one and
all, winter and summer . . .), and hence in terms of rhythmic exchanges and the
periodical reverting of complementaries into one another. Πόλεμος: the con-
troversy of becoming, simultaneously disclosing becoming in its oneness and
oneness in its non-simplicity.8

6  Syntax is here underdetermined. An alternative translation, maintaining συνάψιες,

“conjunctions,” as the subject of the opening clause, but suggesting the ensuing pairs of
opposites as paratactic clauses with similarly implicit predication would read: “Conjunctions
are wholes and not wholes, that which is brought together is brought apart, that which sings
together sings apart. . . .”
7  Hippolytus, Refutatio, trans. J. H. MacMahon, in vol. 5 of Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. A. Roberts,
J. Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe (Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Publishing Co., 1886),
9.9.2 = B51.
8  In contrast to this delineation of πόλεμος as broadly signifying the iterative operations of
γένεσις, in the opening of Plato’s Timaeus we encounter a discussion of it as the distinctive
mode of being of that being that has λόγος. The involvement in war-waging would be, first of
all, exquisitely human and, second, essentially destructive. As the properly human mode of
motion, here πόλεμος indicates the human translation or imitation of natural κίνησις, which
is experienced primarily as an impending threat of violation, as a random development or
transgression.

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The Πόλεμος That Gathers All 273

That the articulate scansion of generation may be experienced as πόλεμος

intimates that difference in and of itself entails a measure of competitive-
ness, irreconcilability, and hence conflict—a certain impossibility of resting
together, or otherwise the necessity of understanding “rest” in light of motion
and change (“changing [μεταβάλλον] it rests,” B84). Togetherness is dynami-
cally characterized. What comes to be must pass away in order to clear the
space and time for (the) other becoming. Death is the condition for the possi-
bility of birth and rebirth, of the ongoing unfolding of life. Birth, living, surviv-
ing are here primordially experienced in terms of toilsome endurance, or even
struggle—struggle with and against alterity, which constitutes the limit(s) of
the same, delimits the same in the double sense of (1) always announcing the
end of identified, discrete singularity and (2) always being implicated in the
determination of singularity, in the coming to be of the singular as such, as
what it is, as itself. Analogous to a polemic friendship, the engendering dif-
ferential play of same and other is again alluded to by Heraclitus in another
saying reported by Aristotle—this time, interestingly enough, in the course of
Aristotle’s discussion of friendship and its prerequisites (Nicomachean Ethics
1155b5ff.):9 “What is opposed brings together [ἀντίξουν συμφέρον]; out of the dif-
fering [ἐκ τῶν διαφερόντων] the most beautiful harmony [καλλίστην ἁρμονίαν],
and all comes to be according to strife [κατʹ ἔριν γίνεσθαι]” (B8).
By reference to πόλεμος, thus, separation emerges in its manifold signifi-
cance: as the opposition involved in generativity and generation; as the condi-
tion for the possibility of discrete singularity emerging into its outline as well
as the possibility of the instability or demise of the singular; as the condition
for the possibility of multiplicity, that is, of unity giving itself in and as a mani-
fold; at the limit, even as the extreme possibility of the dispersion of unity, if
not its destruction or dissipation. In a sense the πόλεμος that becoming is, in
its alternation of emergence and re-absorption into latency, points to the con-
stant self-consumption and self-regeneration of the same, to the same feeding
off itself, thus forever abiding and yet not as self-identical. Clement10 attributes
this perception to Heraclitus: “This cosmos, the same for all, neither one of
the gods nor of humans made, but always was and is and will be; ever-living
fire, kindled in measures and extinguished in measures” (B30). It should be
noticed that, analogously to πόλεμος (B53), the cosmos is affirmed in its prior-
ity vis-à-vis the gods themselves, not only humankind.

9  Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University

Press, 1926).
10  Clement, Stromateis, ed. M. Rizzi (Roma: Paoline, 2006), 5.103.6.

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274 Baracchi

Elaborated in this way, the traces of Heraclitus’ understanding of πόλεμος as

the principle of becoming, as the gesture sustaining the unraveling of what is,
may lead us back to Anaximander’s saying (B1, Diels-Kranz), which, according
to Simplicius, concerns the coincidence of that “out of which” generation is and
that “into which” destruction occurs.11 Indeed, Anaximander’s fragment evokes
the becoming of beings as taking place κατὰ τὸ χρεών, “according to coming
to fruition [to what is usual, needed, beneficially or fruitfully used]”: “for they
give order [δίκην] and compensation to one another for their disorder [ἀδικίας]
according to the structuring [τάξιν] of time.” Becoming κατὰ τὸ χρεών signi-
fies the manner in which beings come to be and, in so doing, make manifest
a certain ineluctability of eventuation, revealing themselves as “used,” neces-
sary to and necessitated by becoming. Furthermore, Anaximander elaborates
becoming in terms of δίκη, order, in fact in terms of an ordering that constantly
counteracts the draw towards disorder (ἀδικία) and, hence, points to genera-
tion as the locus of the ongoing struggle between configuration and disfigura-
tion, arrangement and disarray—“according to the structuring of time.”
If we now recall fragment B80, already considered above, we may appre-
ciate the degree to which Heraclitus is taking up Anaximander’s insight and
developing it further: “The knowing needs to be enjoyed, brought to fruition
[εἰδέναι δὲ χρὴ] that . . . order is strife [δίκην ἔριν] and all comes to be according
to strife and fruition [γινόμενα πάντα κατ΄ἔριν καὶ χρεών]” (B80). Consistently
with Anaximander’s pronouncement, Heraclitus will have decisively pre-
sented δίκη as ἔρις and understood both in terms of τὸ χρεών, the necessity
of becoming that deploys itself through and as beings.12 The identification of
δίκη, order, and ἔρις, strife, yoked together under the sway of the inevitable,
τὸ χρεών, can be heard as making explicit Anaximander’s suggestion regard-
ing the dynamic exchanges among beings, their reversibility and convertibility
into one another, their conflicted reciprocity. Indeed, regarding the difficult
togetherness of the different, Anaximander’s saying conveys not only the fight
for survival, setting beings against each other, but also a sense of what is owed,
of what each owes to an other or others, a sense of mutual implication. As
though by a “thunderbolt” (B64) or a “perception” (γνώμη) maintaining the

11  Simplicius, in Aristotelis Physica commentaria, ed. H. Diels (Berlin: Reimer, 1882–1895),
24.13ff.
12  Numerous are the objections to Zeller’s contention that Heraclitus ignored Anaximander,
though, at times, his statements may resonate with those of the Milesian. Giovanni
Semerano, for instance, insists on Heraclitus’ explicit reference to Anaximander’s
language (L’infinito: un equivoco millenario. Le antiche civiltà del Vicino Oriente e le origini
del pensiero greco [Milano: Bruno Mondadori, 2001], 35).

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The Πόλεμος That Gathers All 275

agitation of becoming, “all beings are steered through all beings [πάντα διὰ
πάντων].” Knowing this, Diogenes Laertius says, would constitute, according to
Heraclitus, “the one thing” that is “wise.”13
Echoes of this primordial intuition of the war-like unfolding of becoming
may still be heard in Aristotle’s language. Indeed, Aristotle displays a quite lucid
appreciation of the implications of Heraclitus’ all-encompassing, not strictly
anthropological treatment of πόλεμος. In Eudemian Ethics, for instance, he
reports that Heraclitus would have rebuked Homer for singing: “may strife per-
ish out of [the domain of] gods and human beings.”14 In motivating Heraclitus’
stance, Aristotle acknowledges that at stake is the Ephesian’s assumption that
“opposites are friends,” for “there would be no harmony if there were no high
and low notes, and no animals without male and female, which are opposites.”)15
But we can also see Aristotle assuming Heraclitus’ language more intimately,
making it his own—when, for instance, at the end of Posterior Analytics, he
discusses the genealogy of universals, and hence of “the principle of art or of
science,” establishing their provenance from sensation, memory, and in the
end from experience:

When one of those without differences has made a stand, [there is

formed] in the soul the first universal (for though one senses an individ-
ual, sensation is of the universal, e.g., of a man, not of the man Callias),
and then again another among these makes a stand, till a universal that
has no parts makes a stand; for example, “such and such an animal,” and
this proceeds till “animal,” and in the latter case similarly. Clearly, then,
we must come to know the primary [universals] by induction; for it is in
this way that sensation, too, produces in us [ἐμποιεῖ] the universal.16

13  Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, ed. T. Dorandi (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2013), 9.1 = B41. See also Clement, Stromateis, 5.115.1 = B32.
14  Homer, Iliad, trans. A. T. Murray (London: Heinemann, 1928), 18.107.
15  Aristotle, Eth. Eud. 1235a25–29. The translation is mine, based on Aristotle, Athenian
Constitution, Eudemian Ethics, Virtues and Vices, trans. H. Rackham, reprinted ed.
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996).
16  Aristotle, An. post. 100a15ff. Here and below I follow, with a few emendations, H. G. Apostle’s
translations of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics (Grinnell, Iowa: Peripatetic Press, 1981) and
Metaphysics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1966). I consulted the Tredennick
edition of the Posterior Analytics, in Aristotle, Posterior Analytics, Topica (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1989) and the Jaeger edition of the Metaphysics (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1957).

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276 Baracchi

The ascription of the formation of universals or noetic principles (simple in

the sense of “having no parts”) to sensation of particulars (simple in the sense
of “without differences”) is, of course, of the utmost consequence. Even aside
from this, however, what is utterly noteworthy here is the “polemic” charac-
ter of the emergence of universals as well as particulars in their distinctness.
The arising of “habits” or “principles” of art and science “from sensation,” in
fact, is treated “like a reversal in battle [ἐν μάχῃ] brought about when one man
makes a stand, then another, then a third, till a principle is attained.” For, we
are told, “the soul is of such a nature as to be affected in this way” (100a12 ff.).
The underdetermined commotion of battle becomes the figure of that out of
which determinacy may present itself: war involves both destructive flight and
generative making a stand. The flux of becoming constitutes at once the pos-
sibility of singularity and of discernment.
Very much in the same mood, Aristotle resorts to “polemic” language in the
Metaphysics, at the end of Book Lambda, where he alludes to the first mover in
terms of the art of strategy. Again, the passage is fascinatingly resounding and
deserves to be quoted at length:

We must also inquire in which of two ways the nature of the whole has
the good and the highest good, whether as something separate and by
itself, or as the order [τάξιν] [of its parts]. Or does it have it in both ways,
as in the case of an army [στράτευμα]? For in an army goodness is both in
the order and in the general [στρατηγός], and rather in the latter; for it is
not because of the order that he is, but order is because of him. Now all
beings are ordered [συντέτακταί] in some way, water-animals and birds
and plants, but not similarly; and they are not without being related at
all to one another, but they are in some way related. For all things are
ordered in relation to one thing. It is as in a household, in which the
freemen are least at liberty to act at random but all or most things are
ordered, while slaves and wild animals contribute little to the common
[good] but for the most part act at random; for such is the principle of
each of these, which is their nature. I mean, for example, that all these
must come together if they are to be distinguished [διακριθῆναι]; and this
is what happens in other cases in which all the members share in the
whole. (Metaph. 1075a11 ff.)

Here Aristotle, while initially surmising that the good (the highest principle)
may be both “separate” from the whole and inhering in it as the “order of its
parts,” ends up making the hypothesis of separation quite unlikely. For he sug-
gests (1) that the principle is the “nature” of the being to which it pertains;

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(2) that each being can be discerned in its distinctness not so much by ref-
erence to a transcendent principle but, rather, thanks to the differential play
in which it belongs along with all other beings. Thus, whether understood in
terms of intellection, intuition, or divinity, the one mover is presented as the
strategic lordship ordering that which, in its teeming difference, restlessly
comes together into one. But such a lordship operates as the “nature” of beings,
as that which inherently defines them. It is in this way that the principle stirs
“all beings.” Beings become what they are and manifest themselves as such in
virtue of the differential motion, the clashing togetherness within which they
are caught. The domain of becoming emerges as a battlefield, indeed, as the
ongoing articulation of beings under the general’s guidance. For, as Aristotle
observes, “[b]eings do not wish to be governed badly.” Then, closing with a quo-
tation from the Iliad (II.204): “The rule of many is not good; let the ruler be
one” (1076a3 f.).

Everything, then, “happens according to strife [κατʹ ἔριν]” (B80). Yet, Heraclitus
also names otherwise that according to which what is comes to be. He names
it λόγος, and it is indeed through hearing what is said in this word that we may
gain further insight into the polemics of becoming. We owe to Sextus’ Adversus
Mathematicos17 the Heraclitean statement crucial in this regard:

Of this λόγος here, which always is, human beings lack understanding
[ἀξύνετοι], both before hearing and when they first have heard it; for
while all comes to be according to this λόγος [κατὰ τὸν λόγον τόνδε], they
resemble those who lack experience when they experience such words
[ἐπέων] and deeds [ἔργων] as I lay out, dividing [διαιρέων] each according
to nature and saying how it holds itself. But what others do when awake
escapes [λανθάνει] them, just as they forget [ἐπιλανθάνονται] what they do
when asleep. (B1)

It should be noticed without delay that, just as πόλεμος was illuminated above
as irreducible to an exclusively human enactment, so λόγος appears here as
indeterminately exceeding human utterance, that which humans would
“have.” Far from being human “property,” λόγος names that which, if attended
to, would guide one’s experience and investigation of beings, letting them
shine in their constitution and comportment, so that one would speak and live
“according to nature.” In this sense, λόγος is that which configures beings and

17  Sextus, Adversus Mathematicos (Against the Professors), trans. R. G. Bury (Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press, 1949), 7.132.

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278 Baracchi

unveils them to understanding, that through which the all makes itself mani-
fest in its articulation. It is, we might say, the voice of the whole, the sound struc-
turing the cosmos, indeed, making the cosmos what it is, a beautiful order, a
jewel (κόσμος, mundus). Just as beings become according to πόλεμος, then, so
they become and are manifest according to λόγος, this λόγος here. In such a
convergence of πόλεμος and λόγος we may hear the emphasis on difference as
that which is common; as the most basic commonality underlying and exceed-
ing human community; as what we share as well as that in which we belong
and are shared; as what is common to us and makes even us common, that is,
belonging in the community of the sharing and the shared.
Πόλεμος, the struggle of becoming, “is common [ξυνόν]” (B80): it is that which
embraces everything and shows everything as one. Analogously, in the two
following fragments reported respectively by Sextus (adversus Mathematicos
7.133) and Hippolytus (Refutatio 9.9.1), Heraclitus speaks of λόγος as that which
imposes itself as common and, if pursued, discloses the unity of everything as
well as the manifoldness of unity. “Thus,” he says, “one has to follow that which
is common [τῷ ξυνῷ, τουτέστι τῷ κοινῷ]. But although the λόγος is common
the many live as if they had their own private understanding [ὡς ἰδίαν ἔχοντες
φρόνησιν]” (B2). As Aristotle will pervasively lament, it is always possible for
human beings not to listen. This vulnerability of λόγος is evident in B1 already:
often human beings hear, yet this changes nothing in them, makes no differ-
ence to them, as they remain unaffected, inexperienced, and go on as before.
And yet, if followed precisely in its being shared, λόγος can gather the listeners
into a consonant insight: “Listening [ἀκούσαντας] not to me but to the λόγος it is
wise to say concordantly: all one to be” (B50). The saying performs that which
it announces, for its work is bringing the listeners together into one, and, thus,
the truth of “all one” may be experienced. But it is only the wakeful who experi-
ence the truth of the “being” of “all one” and thereby come to be themselves
in harmony, at one, with each other: “For the waking there is one common
world [ἕνα καὶ κοινὸν κόσμον], but when asleep each turns away to a private
[ἴδιον] one” (B89). And it is only by relying on “that which is common to all” (τῷ
ξυνῷ πάντων), in virtue of the experience of the common world (κόσμος) and
understanding (φρόνησις), which λόγος indicates, that speaking (λέγειν) may be
articulated “mindfully” (ξὺν νόῳ), in conjunction with νοῦς (B114).
Even more perspicuously, it is only in virtue of listening that speaking may
properly occur. Undergoing the λόγος is put forth as the unspoken root of
human articulation, most notably of that articulation that bears the aware-
ness of interdependence and thereby transcends “private,” partial or impov-
erished formulations. Listening to the λόγος is generative of that unique mode
of speaking that is ὁμολογεῖν, speaking at one—a speaking that converges

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with itself, a speaking in which many speak and speak the same (B50). Such
a speaking involves a commitment to the truth of beings themselves, a com-
mitment to let them speak and show themselves. It is the compelling charac-
ter of beings themselves that gathers the many into one.18 In this sense, “one”
designates neither forcible homologation nor the resolution of speaking into
silent agreement.
The emphasis on following and listening to the λόγος found in fragments
B1, 2, and 50 is further corroborated by other sayings reported by Clement
(Stromateis 2.24.5 and 5.115.3) and Marcus Aurelius (Meditationes 4.46),19
respectively. Heraclitus joins the lack of knowledge of how to utter words to
the lack of knowledge of how to listen (B19), lamenting the prevalent inabil-
ity to hear and undergo, to take in fully that which is heard and allow oneself
to be touched by it: “Deprived of understanding [ἀξύνετοι] when they have
heard [ἀκούσαντες], they are like the deaf; the saying bears witness that, when
present, they are absent [παρεόντας ἀπεῖναι]” (B34).20 In the context of such
an absence, of such an incapacity for receptively being there, should be sit-
uated the estrangement indicated in B72, an alienation from the quotidian,
making inaccessible and strange that which is closest and most familiar. Even
more emphatically, again echoing the conjunction of word (ἔπος) and deed
(ἔργων) announced in B1, Heraclitus warns against “doing and speaking [ποιεῖν
καὶ λέγειν] like those asleep” (B73), thereby suggesting, among other things, an
understanding of λόγος and λέγειν as enactment, carrying out of a certain work.
Evoked through the sameness of πόλεμος and λόγος, then, is the belong-
ing together, the being bound together of the irreducible, of the differing—a
certain intimacy, or even interiority, of the external, as it were; an intimacy
gathering the strange and exterior. Overcome in its one-sidedness, that which
appears as mutually extraneous is caught in proximity, the ultimately inimical

18  Again, Aristotle will variously insist on the necessitating force of phenomena themselves,
on the way in which the truth compellingly determines the course of an investigation
(Metaphysics Alpha). See also Umberto Curi, Pólemos. Filosofia come guerra (Torino:
Bollati Boringhieri, 2000), 9.
19  Marcus Aurelius, Meditationes, trans. C. R. Haines (London: Heinemann, 1916).
20  Of course, this emphasis on listening does not in any simple or straightforward way
imply a priority of bare sensation. I shall limit myself, here, to recalling how, even when
he exposes his highest regard for sensuous experience, Heraclitus intimates its essential
implication in the broader domain of noetic or psychological structures, for example
in B107 (“Eyes and ears are bad witnesses to human beings who have barbarian souls
[βαρβάρους ψυχὰς]”) and B55 (“Those that can be seen, heard, learned [ὄψις ἀκοὴ μάθησις]
are what I cherish”). On this issue see also M. Heidegger’s “Logos (Heraclitus, Fragment B
50),” in Early Greek Thinking, esp. 64–78.

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280 Baracchi

is glimpsed in closeness. Catching a glimpse of such a nearness would entail

divining the many in their unity, in their unifying interrelation, in an interde-
pendence that gathers all into one while not reducing all to homogeneity, in
fact, allowing each to be as it is. Such would be the interiority of the cosmos, in
fact, interiority as the cosmos or cosmos as interiority—an interiority prior to
the opposition of interiority to exteriority, an interiority with respect to which
we could think of no exteriority, for such an interiority would designate the
intimate holding together of all, of what belongs and what allegedly does not
belong, of the identical and the differing precisely as co-constitutive. The cos-
mos would thus emerge as the taking place of such hanging together in tension
and interpenetration, in irreducibility and connectedness. Λόγος as πόλεμος
comes to name intimacy as the ἁρμονία of taking a stand against each other,
togetherness as unity of the different beyond the categories of interiority and
exteriority or belonging and non-belonging. Living “privately” in Heraclitus’
sense, that is, according to an idiosyncratic understanding and as though in a
private world, designates precisely the denial of this insight.
The foregoing considerations lead us to realize not only (1) that πόλεμος
is not to be understood merely or simplistically as warfare but also, most
importantly, (2) that a more refined understanding of πόλεμος as becoming,
difference, intimacy-in-struggle, indeed, λόγος, entails a sustained critique of
warfare and the “privacy” that constitutes its ground. For war, narrowly under-
stood as the enterprise in which humans engage, becomes possible in virtue of
a certain “privatization” of λόγος, in virtue of an assimilation of λόγος to one’s
own utterance and posture. Clearly, such a privatization entails at once a claim
to ownership, the appropriation of λόγος as an anthropological function—an
operation that remains always possible for the kind of being that will have
been said to “have” λόγος. But this hypothesis requires further elucidation.
Despite the fragmentary character of Heraclitus’ pronouncements transmit-
ted to us, we could hardly find a more sustained critic and passionate analyst
of the delusional dimension of private opinion. Alienated from its belonging
in that which gathers, the private word, the word spoken by the ιδιότης (the
private citizen, discrete and peculiar), is certainly not λόγος without qualifica-
tion. Nor is such a word the ὁμολογεῖν that speaks after, under, and according
to λόγος. Such a word does not find its articulation out of the shared pathos
of λόγος, out of a being together exposed to and affected by the λόγος that is
to be heard, out of a “being with” and “being together in exposure” that can
be properly understood in terms of empathy. Consequently, the private one
is not even a word spoken communicatively or commonly but is a word nar-
cissistically referring to itself, thriving on its idiosyncrasy, failing to reach out
and draw together (λέγειν also crucially denotes the bond established in the

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communion, communication, and transmission of λόγος). The practice of war-

fare rests on this delusional assumption of severance and mutual exclusion, on
the denial of belonging and involvement.
That war as warfare may be predicated upon the distorted perceptions
caused through isolation and denegation, we hear consistently from Homer,
who sings of the paradigmatic and magnificent insularity of the heroes at
Ilium. In fact, the hero is by definition encircled in his splendid solitude, as the
poem shows from its very inception through the figure of Achilles, in whose
portrait, along with his dismay, we discern impairing elements of vanity, pride,
unresolved emotional wounds. Or we could mention the broader reflection
on the availability of humans to delusion in Euripides’ Helene, based on the
premise that the war between Trojans and Achaeans would have been caused
literally by an appearance or phantasm (εἴδωλον) of Helene, while the mortal
woman would have remained safe in Egypt. Caught in their feuds and opposi-
tions, human beings fail to realize how all of them, on both sides, may be like
tools in the hands of inscrutable powers, whether divine or natural (1137 ff.),
and it escapes them how their wars are caused by a god “in order to disburden
mother earth of the weight of a multitude of mortals” (39 f.).21 Delusion is,
first of all, that condition whereby the field of vision and perception is nar-
rowed and one’s awareness becomes dim, less comprehensive, less hospitable.
Second, and this is even more salient, delusion tends to withdraw from view,
operating below the threshold of consciousness, thereby undetected: it is pre-
cisely in his or her dimmed awareness that a human being overrates the wis-
dom of his or her position over against others and, at once, underrates his or her
belonging in a broader play of forces far exceeding both the peculiar discrete
human being and the human as such.22 Delusion is that condition whereby we
are prisoners of ourselves, hostages of our own “personal” and peculiar exigu-
ity, while at the same time fancying our own centrality and relevance.23
At the root of warfare, thus, would be the failure to acknowledge the truth
of sharing, of commonality, of that belonging that, far from obliterating each,
constitutes the very condition for the possibility of the emergence of each as
such, in its differential contrast with others. Conflict in the mode of extreme

21  The translation is mine, based on Euripides, Elena, Ione, ed. U. Albini, V. Faggi, and
A. Mesturini (Milano: Garzanti, 1982).
22  In this regard, see Simone Weil’s reflections on force in “L’Iliade ou le poème de la force,” in
La source grecque (Paris: Gallimard, 1953).
23  In the Politics, trans. H. Rackham (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944),
Aristotle will note that the human being who is ἄπολις, without a city, solitary “like an
isolated piece in a game of draughts,” is bound to be one who “desires war” (1253a2–7).

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282 Baracchi

and programmatic destructiveness seems to rest on the conviction of auton-

omy, characteristic of an individual more or less proudly severed from the
context into which it is nevertheless woven. So much so that, in Heraclitus’
language, lacking understanding is a matter of being ἀξύνετος, being insu-
lated, not together, that is, unrelated, disconnected, out of joint with respect
to the common.
On Heraclitean terms, then, being awake bespeaks the acknowledgment of
difference even as contraposition and friction: (1) of πόλεμος as the temporal-
ity of what is, that is, as the conflicted unraveling and non-self-coincidence of
becoming, and (2) of λόγος as self-differing commonality, that is, as the gather-
ing that grants, protects, and is pervaded by difference. Anticipating what will
have been exquisitely Platonic language,24 Heraclitus calls for vigilance, for a
wakefulness indicating not so much privation of sleep or of dreams but, rather,
not being caught up in the dreaming: seeing through the dream, that is, see-
ing the dream as such, as a dream. This means seeing the unity into which the
phantasmagoria of overflowing diversity is gathered, yet without the “sleep-
lessness” or, in fact, the nightmare, of a unity predicated in its absoluteness,
imagelessness, and simplicity, admitting no discrepancy.
On the ground of what has been observed so far, we could even say that, as
πόλεμος, in its motility and aliveness, λόγος is the same as διάλογος, or mani-
fests itself primordially as διάλογος—if by dialogue we mean the exchange
that occurs through, across, and among the differing, thus naming a certain
agitation or restlessness within the unity of engagement. (As with πόλεμος
and λόγος, διάλογος must here be heard as radically excessive with respect to
human/verbal dialogue proper.) Self-differing λόγος is the same as διάλογος in
its difficulty and toilsome character, in its tension and striving, in its under-
going difference. For, conflicted as it may be, διάλογος still bespeaks coming
into one, inhabiting a shared space. It bespeaks the δια- inhabiting the συν-.
Agreement (ὁμολογεῖν) is not to be, think, or speak identically but to converge
into the open, into an openness to speaking together and being touched by
one another. Διάλογος, thus, says: being, coming, and becoming together—
sharing in difference, in the common work of making the λόγος explicit, pre-
cisely leaving behind all private articulation and the presumption that such
an articulation would come first. It indicates the ongoing task of joining, of
buildinging bridges, acknowledging the connection that always already is the
case, hence speaking in accordance with it. Ὁμολογεῖν will never have meant
“homologizing.”

24  Plato, Republic, trans. A. Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 476a–d.

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The Πόλεμος That Gathers All 283

We could therefore venture to propose that in the beginning would be

διάλογος, and this would be λόγος in its most primordial operation, λόγος at
work (ἔργων), the energy (ἐνέργεια) of λόγος. Indeed, while “the wise is one
only,” it is both “unwilling and willing to be called by the name of Zeus,” i.e., to
give itself, whether in human speaking or in the broader domain of becoming,
univocally (B32). As recalled above, it is wise to speak as one—yet such speak-
ing as one says the truth of “one all,” a truth immediately otherwise than simply
one (B50). Again, “the wise” is said to be this “one” thing: “knowing the per-
ception [γνώμην], how all things are steered through all [ἐκυβέρνησε πάντα διὰ
πάντων]” (B41). Also, as διάλογος, λόγος remains a pursuit, an ongoing assign-
ment; for the ultimate attainment of wisdom eludes it, remains impervious.
Joannes Stobaeus25 attributes the following statement to Heraclitus: “Of all
those whose λόγοι I heard, no one comes to know that the wise is separate
[κεχωρισμένον] from all” (B108).
The contrast that has emerged in these remarks, between war as warfare
and war as dialogue, is not reducible to the simple opposition of war to peace
but is a contrast articulating the equivocity (homonymy) and semantic over-
flowing of the term πόλεμος. It is a contrast between modes of war, one that
is both internal to war and radically irreducible to a πρὸς ἕν analogy. For it
signals a polysemy that can hardly be referred back to one underlying univo-
cal signified.
Far from signifying peace simpliciter, let alone peace as repose, war as dia-
logue indicates peace in its dynamic traits, as a continuing endeavor, even as
contention and confrontation, even as burdensome and toilsome. If it is true
that difference bespeaks conflict and war, let it be in the mode of an endless
global dialogue.26

What is really at stake in the open polysemy of “war”? To be sure, the mode
of πόλεμος is essential to the discourse and search, to the λόγος that philoso-
phy itself is. Yet, what is the difference between πόλεμος strictly understood

25  Joannes Stobaeus, Anthology, ed. C. Wachsmuth, O. Hense (Berlin: Weidmann, 1894–1912),
3.1.174.
26  “The word ‘dialogue,’ as all the Greek words beginning by δια-, indicates the maximum
distance between two points on the circumference, as in the case of the diameter; between
two positions of thinking diametrically opposed in the case of dialogue. Because of this,
Heraclitus could say that ‘λόγος is war,’ because it is ‘harmony’ of contrasting opposites
that come together through dialogue, where opposites face each other. They face each
other to understand, not to elide, each other.” This remark is from Umberto Galimberti,
“Fate del dialogo con gli altri la vostra guerra per la verità,” La Repubblica (January 20,
2004): 29 (my translation).

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284 Baracchi

as warfare and πόλεμος as the most basic engagement in and of λόγος? This
difference needs to be remarked and emphasized, for I will have to maintain
that philosophy, even as πόλεμος, is incompatible, literally, with the exercise
and practice of warfare. First of all, following that which was proposed above,
philosophy would be that mode of human discourse especially striving to draw
out the truth of interdependence and pursue it in all its complexity. Second,
and quite literally, there is no discourse, possibility of discourse, or involve-
ment in discourse where the noise and physical devastation of war prevail.
Otherwise said: the war that philosophy may be, or even the war that all dia-
logical involvement may entail, cannot coincide with warfare, cannot take
place along with warfare at the same time and in the same respect. For what is
named in naming διάλογος is the exercise of sustaining difference—of endur-
ing in the experience of difference, and thereby abiding in becoming other.27
So, what is at stake, if not mere sublimation, in the transfiguration of war-
fare into war in λόγος, war of and as λόγος? What may happen, at the level
of psychological maturation and growth, in this transposition of conflict from
physical combat to an otherwise rending and painstaking involvement? It was
surmised above that, however torn, διάλογος is openness to alterity, acknowl-
edgment of mutual dependence and implication, listening and not just speak-
ing, in fact, speaking informed by listening. Conversely, warfare becomes
possible in the posture of privacy, that is, in the refusal to listen, when the
option of listening (of drawing closer in attentiveness, desiring to discover, to
understand) is no longer available, for the other is already construed in terms
of irreconcilable enmity or antithesis.28 The possibility of destructiveness,
whether as armed conflict between nations or as the drive to physical anni-
hilation tout court, rests on the divisiveness brought about through delusion
and presumption, through the ὕβρις (madness, violence, disproportion) that
should be “put out more than fire” (B43). Hostility comes to be through the con-
viction to know and judge truthfully in virtue of one’s own individual resources
or fancy alone. With words presaging Parmenides’ polemical tone with regard

27  “To this end, ‘tolerance’ is needed; which does not mean tolerating the other’s position
while resting in the conviction that ours is the right one, but rather hypothesizing that
the other’s position may possess a degree of truth superior to ours, and hence disposing
ourselves, in the encounter with the other, to let ourselves be changed by the other”
(ibid.).
28  For the dramatization of a similar circumstance, see Plato, Republic 327c. See also 471a–b,
where a progressively inclusive outlook, closer contact with the allegedly inimical other,
and a nascent awareness of the differences, on the side of the “enemy,” between the
destructive few and the peaceful many, makes war as armed conflict appear as highly
questionable, if not impossible.

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The Πόλεμος That Gathers All 285

to mortal opining (B6 and B8.50–61 Diels-Kranz), Heraclitus speaks of the err-
ing of humans that breeds division and confinement, making inaccessible the
truth of the common: “To the god all are beautiful and good and just [ordered],
but humans hold some unjust [disordered] and some just [ordered]” (B102).
At stake here is not simply the contrast between human finitude and divine
perfection29 but, more crucially, the implication that what humans find “just”
or “unjust,” “ordered” or “disordered,” will fluctuate, change across time and
space. For, indeed, such is the character of opinion, δόξα.30 In Heraclitean
terms, “the one of utmost repute [δοκιμώτατος] knows but opinions [appear-
ances] (δοκέοντα) . . . yet, indeed, justice [order] (δίκη) will overtake the arti-
sans and witnesses of lies” (B28).
The rigidifying of “private” views of justice and injustice counters the truth
of motility characterizing the unfolding of πόλεμος as becoming, that is, the
enactment of λόγος. Yet, perseverance in privileging “private “ reasons and incli-
nations entails an impoverishment at the level of the ψυχή. That is why, how-
ever “difficult,” it may be vital “to fight against one’s temper [impetus] [θυμῷ
μάχεσθαι], for whatever it wants it buys at the price of soul (ψυχῆς)” (B85).
Again, war in λόγος, war as διάλογος, bespeaks war made subtler, dissolved
in its gross manifestations, brought from a worldly exercise to a practice whose
theater is the ψυχή itself. The πόλεμος that is the same as λόγος, the πόλεμος that
is at one with λόγος in such a way that they form a unity both not simple and
indissoluble (a unity called πόλεμος, as structured becoming, and called λόγος,
as living structure)—πόλεμος thus understood bespeaks a kind of ongoing and
mobilizing self-criticism. It bespeaks the experience and awareness of revers-
ibility: for “it is the same in us that is living and dead and the waking and the
sleeping and young and old; these are shifted and become those, and those are
shifted back and become these” (B88). From such an experience there emerge
simultaneously the evidence and the elusiveness of the common, of what con-
stitutes a shared ground, i.e., λόγος. So much so that, as the common, λόγος
tends to manifest itself less in terms of ground than as the vibrant aliveness
of becoming, which, however mysteriously, informs becoming in its unfold-
ing. Heraclitus illumines λόγος as unfathomable in a saying concerning the
impossibility of circumscribing the ψυχή: “You would not discover the limits

29  This is certainly the case in various other fragments commenting on the human
deficiency vis-à-vis the insightfulness of the deity (B78) or vis-à-vis the law (common and
divine) (B114), or otherwise noting the “ape-like” quality of even the wisest human being
compared to the god (B83).
30  On the oscillating character of phenomena and the convertibility of one opposite into its
other, see B126.

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286 Baracchi

of the soul [ψυχῆς πείρατα] although you traveled every road: it has [ἐχει] so
deep a λόγος” (B45). And again, as if emphasizing the vitality and animation
of λόγος, its growing and developing: “The λόγος of the soul is self-increasing
[αυτὸν αὔξων]” (B115).31
Analogously, Heraclitus highlights the obscurity of other terms that he
employs to gesture towards that which is common. The well-known fragments
on the self-secluding of nature (“Nature loves to hide,” B123) and of harmony
(“An unapparent harmony is stronger than an apparent one,” B54) might be
read precisely as elaborating further on the cryptic nature of the shared and
all-encompassing. One must “hold fast” to the “common” (B114), yet it remains
ungraspable. Along the same lines, Heraclitus reminds his listener that the
cosmos, the utmost beauty shining through its order, may remain essentially
unintelligible to us and be like “a bunch of things scattered at random” (B124).
Again, what is common is less a matter of graspable determinacy than
an undertaking: “Thinking [τὸ φρονέειν] is common [ξυνόν] to all” (Stobaeus
3.1.179 = B113), for “it belongs to all human beings to know themselves and to
think (wisely) [γινώσκειν ἑωυτοὺς καὶ φρονεῖν (σωφρονεῖν)]” (Stobaeus 3.5.6 =
B116). The exercise of reflection and self-examination, if not undertaken by
all, constitutes a genuinely human potential. What gathers all is the ability to
engage in an exploration, in a manner of life entailing vigilance and recep-
tiveness, attentiveness and commitment to the surrounding. Echoing B1 and
the unity of speaking and acting mentioned there, Heraclitus says: “Thinking
(wisely) [φρονεῖν (σωφρονεῖν)] is the greatest excellence [ἀρετὴ μεγίστη], and
wisdom is to speak the truth [σοφίη ἀληθέα λέγειν] and act according to nature,
listening [to its voice, Léon Robin32] [ποιεῖν κατὰ φύσιν ἐπαΐοντας]” (Stobaeus
3.1.178 = B112). Far from representing the trite recitation of a moral maxim in a
stoic-scholastic vein, the saying demands an alignment of speaking and acting
and their attunement to φύσις.33 In such yielding to the guidance of nature,
speaking and acting while heeding its voice, lies the preparedness for a cer-
tain self-transcendence, for an overcoming of one’s own limited convictions
and opening up to the previously unheard-of: for “if you do not expect the

31  On the growing (αὐξάνω) of noetic apprehension and, more broadly, of that which
pertains to the ψυχή or ἦθος, see Empedocles B110.4–5 and B106 (Diels-Kranz). Aristotle
will often utilize the language of growth in relation to the “virtues.”
32  Léon Robin, La Pensée grecque et les Origines de l’esprit scientifique (Paris: Renaissance du
livre, 1923).
33  Contra Semerano, L’infinito, 137. See also C. Diano, G. Serra, Eraclito: I frammenti e le
testimonianze (Milano: Fondazione Lorenzo Valla/Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, 1980),
168–69.

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The Πόλεμος That Gathers All 287

unexpected, you will not find it, since it is hardly to be found and impassable
[ἄπορον]” (B18).
“Speaking the truth,” then, would mean to speak out of this condition and
experience. Such would be the λέγειν, the enactment of λόγος occurring “mind-
fully,” “accompanied by νοῦς” (ξὺν νόῳ) (B114)—the λόγος and availability to
διάλογος of an altogether other warrior.

research in phenomenology 45 (2015) 267–287