Heraclitus Lecture Notes Ancient Greek Philosophy Dr. Cynthia Freeland Key Topics in Heraclitus 1.
Many readers seem to love it or hate it.
Heraclitus' stylistic devices include metaphor, simile, aphorism, pun, word play, allusion, riddles, rhythm, and sound. My view of Heraclitus is not completely opposed to Professor Cohen's. Perhaps we differ more about the Milesians. They understood changes as alterations of some basic, underylying, material stuff which is, in its own nature, unchanging. While I think there is something new and different going on in Heraclitus in terms of his symbolic or oblique expression of ideas, together with his stern moral imperatives, nevertheless I still find that there are many similarities between Heraclitus' fire and the physical elements chosen by the earlier Milesian thinkers as their archai .