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1 - Heraclitus, Ethics, and Knowledge
Majid Mollayousefi Maryam Samadieh

Heraclitus was one of the important pre-Socratic philosophers who had some scattered notes on ethics. In order to understand his ethical views, in addition to referring to his existing notes, it is necessary to pay attention to the context in which his philosophy was fo More

Heraclitus was one of the important pre-Socratic philosophers who had some scattered notes on ethics. In order to understand his ethical views, in addition to referring to his existing notes, it is necessary to pay attention to the context in which his philosophy was formed. Heraclitus was under the influence of two traditions of his time. The first was the influence of Homer and early poets and philosophers, such as Solon, Bias of Priene, and the like, who were distinctively characterized by believing in human-like Gods or anthropomorphism. The other was the influence of a new scientific and technical tradition which was developed during the same century in Miletus under the influence of some figures such as Thales and Anaximander, who were mainly concerned with cosmology, that is, an understanding of the quality of the creation, survival and, finally, annihilation of the world order. In fact, Heraclitus’s philosophy can be viewed as a bridge between these two different traditions. Since he considered the world order and human order to be the same, it can be said that his main purpose and concern was explaining the status of human beings in the physical world and not the physical world itself. The ethics of Heraclitus, similar to those of other ancient Greek philosophers, described a kind of ethics of virtue, the core of which comprised virtue and happiness. In the field of virtue, he dealt with both moral virtues and intellectual virtues. Regarding moral virtues, through distinguishing bodily joys from non-bodily joys, he ultimately rejected excessive acts and introduced moderation in joys as the criterion for human behavior. With respect to intellectual virtues, Heraclitus also relied on the knowledge of wisdom and acknowledged that wisdom does not simply mean to have vast knowledge; rather, it means a kind of conscious and well-scrutinized knowledge which conforms to logos. As a result, he mainly emphasized intellectual rather than ethical virtues. Finally, he viewed man’s happiness a result of knowing and behaving in line with logos. Manuscript profile
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2 - Purpose of Rational Training in Heraclitus’ Logos-Centered Philosophy
Maryam Barati Rezaali Norozy
20.1001.1.20089589.1400.12.1.2.8

The purpose of the present study is to introduce some practical solutions to the problem of transgression in society through benefitting from the teleology of the rational training of Heraclitus, the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher. This qualitative study was carried out More

The purpose of the present study is to introduce some practical solutions to the problem of transgression in society through benefitting from the teleology of the rational training of Heraclitus, the Greek pre-Socratic philosopher. This qualitative study was carried out following Frankena’s practical syllogism. In doing so, the researchers firstly investigated Heraclitus’ works and extracted the related discussions. Next, in order to gain access to the ultimate and intermediary goals of rational training, they considered an initial must as the premise of the first deduction and, then, based on a realist philosophical proposition as the second premise of the practical syllogism, its conclusion, which is the same ultimate goal of rational training in Heraclitus’ logos-centered philosophy, was extracted. Finally, based on this ultimate goal and other philosophical principles, they inferred the intermediary goals of Heraclitus’ rational training and, given the findings, presented some strategies for establishing the culture of normativeness. The findings of the study indicate that the end of rational training in Heraclitus’ view is to connect to logos (universal intellect) and to learn about it so that Man can discover the principles and rules of the universal intellect, move ahead accordingly, and attain perfection. Hence, it can be said that attaining the knowledge of laws is the first goal in the process of solving the problem of norm-breaking and moving towards the ideal society based on the laws. Moreover, given the intermediary goals of Heraclitus’ rational training, it can be concluded that, in order to attain knowledge and act according to the norms, rational training must be realized at three levels: cognitive, including self-knowledge and social understanding; strategic, including reference-orientedness, and ethical, including fighting against whims and developing good behavior. In this way, one can overcome the problem of transgression or norm-breaking. Manuscript profile

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