Though the presocratics were notable for their studies of the world and how it worked, there was one presocratic philosopher who stands out for his interest in wisdom and the upkeep of the soul. In this way, he was very unusual for his time, and in fact very modern. This was Heraclitus, a philosopher reputed “for both misanthropy and obscurity.” (29). Heraclitus was clearly invested in the search for truth and what makes a good soul: This is made extremely obvious through his obsession with the meaning of what he called “logos”.

I intend to look at Heraclitus’ theories. In his fragments, he speaks of the difference between a wet soul and a dry soul, the implication being that a dry soul is optimal. I will examine what I believe he means when he talks of the “dry soul”, particularly in relation to his concept of logos. This interperetation is intrinsically linked with Heraclitus’ ideas on ignorance and a lack of wisdom. It is my jope that by the end of this paper, the reader will have gained some understanding of Heraclitus’ more modern ideas of the soul.

Before we go into Heraclitus’ soul theory, it is essential that we have an understanding of what he means when he describes logos. His most cophrehensive definition of logos appears in a fragment translated by Sextus Empiricus:

This logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be [or, happen] in accordance with this logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep. (f1)

That is to say, to Heraclitus, logos is a binding principle that holds the universe together. However, logos is much more than cosmic glue, so to speak. It is also a concept that humanity is constantly in search of, and forever trying to understand. It is my belief that Heraclitus’ conceptual logos is very much like Socrates’ theory on wisdom and truth: They are both binding principles essential to mankind, as well as ideas that we spend our lives on a proverbial quest to find.

So how does this relate to Heraclitus’ ideas about the soul? This all begins to make more sense when we examine what Heraclitus believes to be a “wet soul”. Thales, an early presocratic, once suggested that everything was made of water. Heraclitus elaborates on this when he says, “It is death to souls to becomes wet, death to water to become earth, but from earth comes water, and from water soul.” (f71). Essentially, what he is saying is that the soul is borne from water. Ergo, a wet soul would be a new soul, and therefore also an ignorant soul. Heraclitus furthers this point (and stresses that a wet soul, or ignorant self, is not a good thing) when he states that, “It is death for souls to become wet.” (f95).

It is important to note at this point that when Heraclitus spoke of “death”, he often did not mean literal death. For him, death was interchangeable as a metaphor for ignorance. This assumption can be drawn from fragments such as those translated by Clement: “A man in the night kindles a light for himself when his sight is extinguished; living he touches the dead while asleep, when aake he touches the sleeper.” (f23)

And so, if Heraclitus condemns the wet soul as ignorant, it is can be inferred that the optimal state according to him would be a dry soul. he confirms this when he explains that, “A gleam of light is a dry soul, wisest and best.” (f96). Now, because all we have left of Heraclitus are his fragments, it is nearly impossible to confirm exactly what he meant. However, his use of affirmative words such as “wisest and best” allow for certain plausable inferences. It is plausable to assume that Heraclitus believed that every man ought to work towards a dry soul, just as it is equally plausable to parallel his quest for a dry soul to Socrates’ search for perfect knowledge. And since to Heraclitus, the equivelent of perfect knowledge would be understanding of logos, one could conclude that the life’s work of drying out the soul is working towards the end goal of knowing logos. This is further confirmed by his assumption that, “A man when drunk is led by a boy, stumbling and not knowing where he goes, having his soul moist.” (f97). Here Heraclitus implicates that when drunk, a man loses his wisdom, and his soul returns to a wetter state (moist), thus taking him further from the realization of logos.

Of course, it can be argued that Heraclitus never intended or expected anybody to achieve logos, as he often cited it as unattainable in his fragments: “For this reason it is necessary to follow what is common. But although the logos is common, most people live as they had their own private understanding.” (f2). This fragment suggests that although logos is everywhere, the common man is too wrapped up in his own ideas of what he thinks logos is to ever truly know logos. Whether it be due to his disdain for humanity or his reverence of logos, Heraclitus seems to suggest that logos is not possible to achieve, and if this is so, how could he ever condone the idea that one must dry out their soul and realize logos? Is this not an impossible task? That he finds the search for logos to fruitless is further understood in the fragment, “Those who seek up gold dig up much earth but find little.” (f37) In other words, those who attempt to seek out logos will come up with nothing but dirt.

This can easily be defended if we look at Heraclitus as an early influence of Socrates. Socrates famously said that the only thing he truly knew was that he knew nothing. This was because he was well aware of the fact that once he thought he has learned everything, more ideas would be born. The same can be said of logos. Heraclitus was a firm believer that the universe is in constant flux, and since logos holds the universe together, it is fair to assume that he also thought logos was in constant flux. Although the soul can never be perfectly dry, so to say, Heraclitus believed that the attempt was still important. To be moist is still better than to be completely wet.

Heraclitus was an incredibly modern thinker for his time, and perhaps this is why he was so often labelled a misanthrope. His ideas regarding the soul had little place in a time where philosophy was focused on understanding why the word worked, rather than why mankind continues to persist. However, his theories are essential to the foundations of epistemology, and were likely extremely influential to those who followed after.