5/5/2017 Being and Becoming: Parmenides, Heraclitus, and Hegel

Being and Becoming: Parmenides,

16th March 2012
Heraclitus, and Hegel

[http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K4FFBWifChk/UV2-i5fm-
7I/AAAAAAAABWQ/xmPBvruhKw8/s1600/Hendrik_ter_Brugghen_-_Heraclitus.jpg]
At the still point of the turning worldthere the dance isExcept for the point, the
still point,

There would be no dance, and there is only the dance. (T.S. Eliot)

The core question of metaphysics is the question of Being. As Aristotle

and John Duns Scotus understood the proper object of this discipline,

metaphysics studies being qua being. Qua is the Latin for in the capacity
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of, as, and therefore implies metaphysics studies being insofar as it is

being, and not insofar as it is a particular being, accident, mode, or attribute.
Being could be said to be the attribute par excellence, the conditio sine qua

non. Hindus understood that Sat (existence, being, or truth) comes rst because it

is basic and ontologically prior. Kant later came to deny that being is an
attribute (predicate) and instead asserted that being is mere positing. And when

we posit being, we do not thereby add anything to a thing: one hundred

possible thalers is no different than one hundred existing thalers. Thus, being

is not a real predicate. Real in this sense comes close in meaning to

essence and we know that we can effect a distinction between essence and

existence. At any rate, if we go back before Kant, Duns Scotus, and Aristotle, we

nd thinkers in this particular philosophical tradition who had already posited

this concept and incipiently expounded on it. These two thinkers are Parmenides
and Heraclitus. The formers conception entails a static understanding of being

while the latter understands being as essentially dynamic, changing or in ux.

At rst sight, one would conclude that these two thinkers are stating or asserting

antithetical and irreconcilable ontological positions, which no doubt they are on a

certain level. But as Hegel points out many centuries later, being is not the

opposite of becoming but the opposite of nothing. And as Hegel would also

point out, these opposites are in dynamic tension, and what issues out of this
conuence of ontological opposites is becoming. This paper will attempt to argue

that Heraclitus and Parmenides do not necessarily represent two antagonistic and

necessarily contradictory ontological stances, but instead, that their positions are

complementary, and in the last analysis, enrich our understanding of the

metaphysical totality or Being itself, as is clearly demonstrated by Hegel.

Parmenides was arguing against Heraclitus. While Heraclitus emphasizes

the fundamental role of change and viewed it as the essential condition for all

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that exists, Parmenides argued that change was in principle impossible.

Parmenides relegated change to the illusory and unreal.

A good many interpreters have taken the poem's rst major phase
as an argument for strict monism, or the paradoxical view that
there exists exactly one thing, and for this lone entity's being
totally unchanging and undifferentiated. On this view, Parmenides
considers the world of our ordinary experience non-existent and
our normal beliefs in the existence of change, plurality, and even,
it seems, our own selves to be entirely deceptive
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/#StrMonInt
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/#StrMonInt] ).

How, then, do we account for this seemingly irreducible feature of experience

that we call change? Could it be that we are conating our experiences with

the way things are in themselves? Is this distinction a meaningful one?

Parmenides seems to be referring to the way things are, and not to our

experience, to the wisdom of the goddess in his poem, rather than the conviction

of mortals (experience). In any case, Parmenides maintained that change

involved the impossibly absurd conclusion that something comes from nothing:

Parmenides goes on to consider in the light of this principle the

consequences of saying that anything is. In the rst place, it
cannot have come into being. If it had, it must have arisen from
nothing or from something. It cannot have arisen from nothing;
for there is no nothing. It cannot have arisen from something; for
here is nothing else than what is. Nor can anything else besides
itself come into being; for there can be no empty space in which it
could do so. Is it or is it not? If it is, then it is now, all at once. In
this way Parmenides refutes all accounts of the origin of the
world. Ex nihilo nihil t (http://www.iep.utm.edu/parmenid/
[http://www.iep.utm.edu/parmenid/] ).

Ordinarily we do not think of change as the transition of something from

nothing into being, which in Parmenides account is impossible. And here we

can see what Parmenides has in mind. So, how does Parmenides conceive of

being? He likens being to an undifferentiated, unchanging globe or sphere:

But since there is a furthest limit, it is perfected/ from every side,

like the bulk of a well-rounded globe,/ from the middle equal
every way: for that it be neither any greater/ [45] nor any smaller
in this place or in that is necessary;/ for neither is there non-being,
which would stop it reaching/ to its like, nor is What Is such that
it might be more than What Is/ here and less there. Since it is all
inviolate,/ for it is equal to itself from every side, it extends
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uniformly in limits
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/#WayCon
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/parmenides/#WayCon] ).

Heraclitus, in contrast, holds to an essentially dynamic metaphysics. The

ontological stuff is in motion, as a river is in motion. The incessant

intermingling of waters in a river, according to his account, would make

impossible stepping into the same river twice. The paradox is that it is and it is

not the same river. This image is generalized to the entire cosmos, to the entirety

of existence. It is undeniable that change is occurring, but how? Heraclitus has

recourse to another image; this all-consuming process is Fire, and re can be said

to be while it annihilates itself. Fire illustrates, albeit guratively, the

intermingling of opposites. And opposites, in this view, are held together by an

all-encompassing Logos that harmonizes them. Logos is also the organizing

intelligence or principle of the universe. All change is regulated by it.

Although his words are meant to provide concrete vicarious

encounters with the world, Heraclitus adheres to some abstract
principles which govern the world. Already in antiquity he was
famous for advocating the coincidence of opposites, the ux
doctrine, and his view that re is the source and nature of all
things. In commenting on Heraclitus, Plato provided an early
reading, followed tentatively by Aristotle, and popular down to
the present (sharpened and forcefully advocated by Barnes 1982,
ch. 4). According to Barnes version, Heraclitus is a material
monist who believes that all things are modications of re.
Everything is in ux (in the sense that everything is always
owing in some respects, 69), which entails the coincidence of
opposites (interpreted as the view that every pair of contraries is
somewhere coinstantiated; and every object coinstantiates at least
one pair of contraries, 70). The coincidence of opposites, thus
interpreted, entails contradictions, which Heraclitus cannot avoid.
On this view Heraclitus is inuenced by the prior theory of
material monism and by empirical observations that tend to
support ux and the coincidence of opposites
(http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/#PhiPri
[http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heraclitus/#PhiPri] ).

A modern analogue to this concept of Logos can be found in the scientic

conception of laws of nature. Leibniz would point out that nothing happens

without a sufcient reason. Heraclitus seems to have had something similar in

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mind, and even though he afrms the existence of universal change, he does not

leave us with a kaleidoscopic and chaotic conception of existence. He also leaves

us with an open system that can be continuously enriched by our experiences and

insights, thus bestowing an open-ended quality to the process involved.

Heraclitus was a genius, and unbeknownst to him, he was planting a seed that

was later developed by Hegel, Alfred North Whitehead, Bergson, Heidegger,

among others.

Hegel takes up the problems posed by Parmenides and Heraclitus and

presents us with an ingenious solution. Instead of simply opposing Being and

Becoming, in his dialectical triad he situates being in the thesis. He denes

being as the Indeterminate Immediate. This is being in the abstract,

stripped of all determinations or predicates. In this phase being really comes to

resemble its opposite, namely, Nothing. Both Being and Nothing are lacking in

all determinations, and in this sense, they can be said to pass into each other.

Nothing, on the other hand, occupies the place of the antithesis. The resultant

expression of the coming together of Being and Nothing is Becoming. Becoming

partakes of both Being and Nothing.

Pure Being makes the beginning: because it is on one hand pure

thought, and on the other immediacy itself, simple and
indeterminate; and the rst beginning cannot be mediated by
anything, or be further determined.
All doubts and admonitions, which might be brought against
beginning the science with abstract empty being, will disappear if
we perceive what a beginning naturally implies. It is possible to
dene being as I=I, as Absolute Indifference or Identity, and so
on. Where it is felt necessary to begin wither with what is
absolutely certain, i.e. the certainty of oneself, or with a denition
or intuition of the absolute truth, these and other forms of the kind
may be looked on as if they must be the rst. But each of these
forms contains a mediation, and hence cannot be the real rst: for
all mediation implies advance made from a rst on to a second
and proceeding from something different. If I=I, or even the
intellectual intuition, are really taken to mean no more than the
rst, they are in this mere immediacy identical with being: while
conversely, pure being, if abstract no longer, but including in it
mediation, is pure thought and intuition.
If we enunciate Being as a predicate of the Absolute, we get the
rst denition of the latter. The Absolute is Being. This is (in
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thought) the absolutely initial denition, the most abstract and

stinted. It is the denition given by the Eleatics, but at the same
time is also the well-known denition of God, as the sum of all
realities. It means, in short, that we are to set aside that limitation
which is in every reality, so that God shall be only the real in all
reality, the superlatively real. Or, if we reject reality, as implying a
reection, we get a more immediate or unreected statement of
the same thing, when Jacobi says that the God of Spinoza is the
principium of being in all existence (Hegels Logic, pp. 124-125).

Interestingly, Hegel ties the conception of being as denition of the Absolute

with God. Since this is not an ontotheological discussion, I will not say much

about the "God" idea. But what is signicant is that Hegel reconciled two notions

that have been deemed irreconcilable, namely, Being and Nothing. Being is the

stance of the Eleatics, particularly Parmenides. It is also the stance of Plato via

his notion of unchanging, timeless Forms. In contrast, Nothing, as the

antithetical term, is exemplied by Buddhism: The Nothing which the

Buddhists make the universal principle, as well as the nal aim and goal of

everything is the same abstraction (Hegels Logic, p. 127). In other words,

Nothing is the same abstraction as Being. One would think that Heraclitus
was in possession of a much richer notion of reality when he enunciates

Becoming as the fundamental nature of things, but Hegel reminds us that,

this may be looked at as an instance of the real refutation of one

system by another. To refute a philosophy is to exhibit the
dialectical movement in its principle, and thus to reduce it to a
constituent member of a higher concrete form of the Idea. Even
becoming, however, taken at its best on its own ground, is an
extremely poor term: it needs to grow in depth and weight of
meaning. Such deepened force we nd, e.g. in Life. Life is
Becoming; but that is not enough to exhaust the notion of Life. A
still higher form is found in Mind. Here too is becoming, but
richer and more intensive than mere logical Becoming (Hegels
Logic, pp. 132-133).

Hegel draws implications from Parmenides and Heraclitus ideas that go far

beyond anything they could have conceived. But another important point is that
Hegel would argue that both Parmenides and Heraclitus are partially stating a

fundamental truth and would not side with one more than the other. In Hegels
analysis, Becominglogically and ontologically, would not be possible without
the notion of Being. Being is basic and fundamental in terms of the categories,
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but by no means does this concept exhaust the rich complexity of the concrete
whole or Geist.

In conclusion, a supercial examination of Parmenides and Heraclitus would

reveal what at rst seems like two totally opposed notions. Deeper analysis, in
contrast, demonstrates that in fact these notions entail and deeply interpenetrate

each other. Parmenides also says something that nds echoes in Hegel: there is
an identity between thought, on the one hand, and being, on the other. We often
hear it maintained that thought is opposed to being. Now in the face of such a

statement, our rst question ought to be, what is meant by being. If we

understand being as it is dened by reection, all that we can say of it is that it is

what is wholly identical and afrmative. And if we then look at thought, it

cannot escape us that thought also is at least what is absolutely identical with

itself. Both, therefore, being as well as thought, have the same attribute (Hegels
Logic, p. 132). Although Hegel may not have the last word on the questions that

have been examined and discussed in this paper, he does, to my mind, represent a
more satisfactory solution to the problem of Being, Nothing, and Becoming.

Parmenides way of dealing with the Nothing was merely to negate its very
possibility. Through a Hegelian examination of these concepts, we nd that the

concept of Nothing is the missing link between stances or ideas that would
otherwise remain incommensurate and an innity of worlds apart. In Hegels
distinction between understanding and reason, the higher or more adequate

knowledge belongs to the latter. The former is incapable of discerning the nature
of the whole and is necessarily analytic (it breaks things up); whereas the latter is

necessarily synthetic and looks for how the parts hang together. Metaphysics,
contrary to prevailing opinion, still has a signicant role to play in helping us

form a picture of being qua being or reality. The role of working through
these fundamental concepts is not reserved for science as scientism would have

us falsely believe, but for metaphysics as science of the existent and the
categories of being (ontology). The notions discussed in this paper are still

thrown around indiscriminately, and often any meaningful discussion as we nd

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in Heraclitus, Parmenides, and Hegeldegenerates into verbal disputes that lead

nowhere. Hegel in my opinion bridges the gap that would separate Heraclitus
and Parmenides, or the apophatic philosophies from those that afrm Being as

the rst principle; but he does not represent the last word on this. In the nal
analysis, ultimate existence neither changes nor does not not change, and a hint

of this is given by T.S. Eliot: At the still point of the turning worldthere the
dance isExcept for the point, the still point, There would be no dance, and

there is only the dance.

Posted 16th March 2012 by Giovanni Maximus

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