Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy: Volume 1 (of 3)
Georg Hegel · en
However much Heraclitus may maintain that there is no truth in sensuous
knowledge because all that exists is in a state of flux, and that
the existence of sensuous certainty is not while it is, he maintains
the objective method in knowledge to be none the less necessary. The
rational, the true, that which I know, is indeed a withdrawal from the
objective as from what is sensuous, individual, definite and existent;
but what reason knows within itself is necessity or the universal
of being; it is the principle of thought, as it is the principle of
the world. It is this contemplation of truth that Spinoza in his
Ethics (P. II. propos. XLIV., coroll. II. p. 118, ed. Paul), calls “a
contemplation of things in the guise of eternity.” The being-for-self
of reason is not an objectless consciousness, or a dream, but a
knowledge, that which is for itself; but this being-for-self is
awake, or is objective and universal, _i.e._ is the same for all. The
dream is a knowledge of something of which I alone know; fancy may
be instanced as just such a dream. Similarly it is by feeling that
something is for me alone, and that I have something in me as in this
subject; the feeling may profess to be ever so elevated, yet it really
is the case that for me as this subject, it is what I feel, and not an
object independent of me. But in truth, the object is for me something
essentially free, and I am for myself devoid of subjectivity; similarly
this object is no imaginary one made an object by me alone, but is in
itself a universal.
There are, besides, many other fragments of Heraclitus, solitary
expressions, such as his saying, “men are mortal gods, and gods
immortal men; living is death to the former and dying is their
life.”[67] Life is the death of the gods, death is the life of the
gods; the divine is the rising through thought above mere nature which
belongs to death. Hence Heraclitus also says, according to Sextus (adv.
Math. VII., 349): “the power of thinking is outside the body,” which,
in a remarkable way, Tennemann makes into: “outside of men.” In Sextus
(Pyrrh. Hyp. III. 24, § 230) we further read: “Heraclitus says that
both life and death are united in our life as in our death; for if we
live, our souls are dead and buried in us, but if we die, our souls
arise and live.” We may, in fact, say of Heraclitus what Socrates said:
“What remains to us of Heraclitus is excellent, and we must conjecture
of what is lost, that it was as excellent.” Or if we wish to consider
fate so just as always to preserve to posterity what is best, we must
at least say of what we have of Heraclitus, that it is worthy of this
preservation.
E. EMPEDOCLES, LEUCIPPUS AND DEMOCRITUS.