The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus

The Collected Wisdom of Heraclitus

By Heraclitus

Book overview

Heir to the throne of Ephesus, Heraclitus gave up his kingdom and chose, instead of the trappings of power, to seek the word of wisdom. Twent-five hundred years before Einstein, Heraclitus declared that energy is the essence of matter, that everything becomes energy in flux, in relativity: "All things change to fire, /and fire exhausted/falls back into things". His great book, On Nature, the world's first coherent philosophical treatise, has been long lost to history -- but its surviving fragments have for thousands of years tantalized our greatest thinkers -- from Plato and Aristotle to Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Jung.

Now Brooks Haxton brings together all of the surviving fragments in a powerful new free verse translation, with the ancient Greek originals beautifully presented en regard. James Hillman, author of The New York Times number one best-seller The Soul's Code, contributes an illuminating foreword, affirming the vitality of Heraclitus's teachings for twenty-first-century wisdom-seekers.