How to Use Language to Explain the Movement: A Dispute between Plato and Heraclitus

Abstract

In this paper I intend to expose some rela-tions between the way Plato and Heraclitus use language to talk about movement. The ontology from which they depart is almost opposite. Heraclitus sees the world as continuous movement while to Plato what is moving participates in stable Ideas. In this framework Socrates (Theaetetus, 183bc) advices the Heracliteans to craft a new language to express their world view. The advice has a critical tone but it does not seem to be wholly wrong if we consult Heraclitus’ fragments. In B1 he claims to speak ‘according to nature’. Based on that premiss I take B67 as a paradigm of how the presocratic repeats the world order (kosmos) in the order of his words (logos). The opening name, god, would be the unifier while the following pairs of opposites cited without syncategorematic connectors emphasize their continuous union. After exposing the ontological basis for this conception I return to the Theaetetus where Socrates offers his strategy to talk about a mobilist world. In critical tone he advises the Mobilists to talk of a thing as being ‘thus’ (houtos) and ‘not thus’. That is how they would show the ambiguous status of moving things. Unlike Heraclitus we can see how this strategy relies on syncategorems to precise the movement. The final step is to verify this opposition in relation to the way Plato exposes his particular ontology. To talk about the Ideas he repeats the same strategy of using syncategorematic terms. The Idea of something is said to be the thing ‘itself’ (autos). The conclusion explores the fact that Heraclitus’ language attempts to suppress words without an external referent (syncategorems) while Plato relies exactly on them to precise his referents.