Timaeus

INTRODUCTION.

time the drop reaches the earth, that spot has been filled by it. The drop has a "where," though we can never define the "where." Thus, throughout the teaching of Herakleitos, the "is" is confronted by "is not."

Result of Herakleiteanism.

§ 4. In the preceding paragraph I have confined myself within the limits of the actual teaching of Herakleitos: the Platonic developments of it will occupy our attention later on. What then is the actual result—the contribution to the philosophical capital with which Plato had to start? We have conceived change as continuous; that is, we have conceived Becoming. And Becoming is the negation of stable Being. Also, since change is a transition, it involves motion: therefore, in affirming Becoming, we affirm Motion. And since change is a transition from one state to another, it involves plurality. So in affirming Becoming, we affirm Multitude. Becoming, Motion, Multitude—these are three aspects of one and the same fact; and this is the side of things which Herakleitos presents to us as the truth and reality of nature. The importance of this aspect cannot be exaggerated, neither can its insufficiency. A checkmark appears in the margin here.

Impossibility of knowledge the necessary inference from Herakleitean teaching.

§ 5. For where does this doctrine leave us in regard to the acquisition of knowledge? Surely, we are of all men most hopeless. Let us set aside for the present the question of the relation between subject and object as elaborated in the Theaetetus A dialogue by Plato exploring the nature of knowledge., and confine ourselves simply to the following considerations. The object of knowledge must exist: of that which is not, there can be no knowledge. But we have seen that according to Herakleitos, it is as true to say of everything that it is not as to say that it is: therefore at best it is as true that there is no knowledge as that there is. Again, the object of knowledge must be abiding: how can the soul have cognizance of that which unceasingly slips away and glides from her grasp? For it is not possible that we cognize our elemental substrate now in one form, now in another, since change is continuous: there is no footing anywhere; for each thing the beginning of birth is the beginning of dissolution; every new form in the act of supplanting the old has begun its own destruction. In this utter elusiveness of fluidity, where is knowledge to rest? Plato sums up the matter in these words: "If knowledge itself, as an existence, does not change, then knowledge would always abide and be knowledge; but if the very form of knowledge changes, at the same moment it would change into another form of knowledge, and there would be no knowledge; and if it is always changing, there would never be knowledge; and by this argument, neither would the knower nor the thing to be known exist." Cratylus 440 A.