I looked into Heidegger a bit and though I haven’t read him yet, I read that one of his influences was the Pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus (Ἡράκλειτος). The last go I had at the Pre-Socratics I remember their texts as being enigmatic to say the least. Nevertheless I decided to have yet another go at one of them. One of Heraclitus’ fragments that struck me follows:
Τίς γαρ αὐτῶν νόος ἢ φρέν ; [δήμων] ἀοιδοῖοι
ἔπονται καὶ διδασκάλῳ, οὺκ
εἰδότες ὅτι πολλοὶ κακοὶ ὀλίγοι δὲ ἀγαθοι.
αἱρεῦνται γὰρ ἓν αντία παντων οἱ ἄριστοι,
κλέος ἀέναον θνητῶν, οἱ δὲ πολλοὶ κεκόρηνται
ὅκωσπερ κτήνεα.
And the English translation1:
For what thought or wisdom have they?
They follow the poets and take the crowd as their teacher,
knowing not that there are many bad and few good.
For even the best of them choose one thing above all others,
immortal glory among mortals,
while most of them are glutted like beasts.
I was struck by how closely this fits with Etica Mircea and how it also fits with avoiding platforms.
- I looked at a few translations and this is the best I could find. Translated by John Burnet in “Early Greek Philosopy,” published in 1920. [↩]