Eternal Flux

CONCERNING HERACLITUS' DOCTRINE OF ETERNAL FLUX

Everything flows, observed Heraclitus some 6 centuries before the Common Era. Is this 'doctrine of flux' right?

And if so, how should it affect the way life is to be lived?

These questions open up in a great many directions which however remain related.

1) The proposition that everything flows, if true, possibly undermines the notion of "substance", understood as that which persists and about which propositional statements make assertions and denials. Aristotle (See Metaphysics, Book IV) attempted to debunk the doctrine of flux which he saw as a hinderance to the development of logic which in turn, he supposed, would help us to arrive at some reassuring certainties. Philosophers as diverse as Russell and Nietzsche have noted that the cultural ramifications of this move have been vast and long-lasting.

2) You should smell a rat or two here! First of all, we encounter the problem of self-reference: if the proposition that everything flows is true, and that it does indeed undermine the possibility of making propositional statements and demonstrating and refuting them, then that everything flows simply cannot be asserted. This does not mean that the statement 'everything flow' is false. It simply means that the statement is not propositional at all: that it can be neither true nor false since it negates the possibility of asserting or denying any propositions whatsoever, including itself.

3) It's tempting at this point to throw the doctrine of universal flux into the trash, as indeed most philosophers do with any (quasi) proposition that falls foul of self-reference. This is too hasty, however. For a start, our lived experience rubs our noses in endless change and impermanence whilst we continue nevertheless to rely on logical inference and the notion of substance in all sorts of practical ways. The non-propositional nature of the statement that everything flows is surely no excuse to regard our everyday experience of change as somehow illusory or inferior to some imagined realm of the unchanging?

4) So what kind of thing is it - this quasi proposition that everything flows? Could it be the poetic initiation of a discursivity which can be used to organise a mode of life?

5) Aristotle's pessimism with regard to the incompatability between the doctrine of flux and the possibility of developing logic and a "first philosophy" which could "ground" the special sciences was, incidentally, not shared by the Buddhist logicians Dharmakirti and Dignaga. These thinkers actually derived a logic from Buddha's version of the doctrine of flux - the doctrine of impermanence.

6) What might motivate a denial of that aspect of our lived experience which tells us that everything flows? Besides the oxymoronic nature of a metaphysics of becoming? Why has an unchanging realm been posited so universally and often vaued more highly than the world we find ourselves in? And why has humanity more often than not lived through values which derive from the notion of an unchanging?

7) If everything flows, we must include in that, discourse itself. This is in fact what we find. Cultural relativity and historical change in the narratives and ideas that people live by have long caused us to question our presuppositions. We attempt to salve the resultant metaphysical insecurity by seeking the last word, the Truth capital 'T'. Aristotle was thus motivated. This is understandable in so far as it enables technology which helps (at its best) to secure and enhance life. But there is another itch here, is there not? Isn't there a need to be certain about the big questions? And isn't this a need which eternal flux makes it impossible to meet, as todays certainties are eroded by time as yesterday's were? Won't that need then drive us to posit the unchanging and value it above our lives as we perforce experience them?

8) If eternal flux obtains, then what are we? What is the self, indeed is there a self at all if everything, incuding us, is constantly shifting and unstable?