Heraclitus
Greek philosopher (late 6th/early 5th-century BC)
Heraclitus (; Ancient Greek: Ἡράκλειτος, romanized: Hērákleitos; fl. c. 500 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from the city of Ephesus, which was then part of the Persian Empire. He exerts a wide influence on Western philosophy, both Ancient and Modern philosophy, through the works of such authors as Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martin Heidegger.
Little is known of Heraclitus's life. He wrote a single work, of which only fragments survive. Even in ancient times, his paradoxical philosophy, appreciation for wordplay, and cryptic, oracular epigrams earned him the epithets "the dark" and "the obscure". He was considered arrogant and depressed, a misanthrope who was subject to melancholia. Consequently, he became known as "the weeping philosopher" in contrast to the ancient atomist philosopher Democritus, who was known as "the laughing philosopher".
The central ideas of Heraclitus's philosophy are the unity of opposites and the concept of change. Heraclitus saw harmony and justice in strife. He viewed the world as constantly in flux, always "becoming" but never "being".
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q41155. VIAF identifies the subject as 101906635. The Library of Congress control number is n78095675. 4 of 21 selected statements include explicit references; 5 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank.
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This entry incorporates text from “Heraclitus” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.