English Literature

Introduction

No man ever steps into the same river twice, for its not the same river and he is not the same man said the Heraclitus of Ephesus. He  is famous for his ambiguity and often his statements are seemingly contradictory to each other. This has even earned him the nickname, The Riddler. Furthermore, he believed that much knowledge does not constitute understanding. Instead, there should be an insight which should accompany the knowledge of any man.  Famous as the flux and fire philosopher for his all things are flowing philosophy he was the author of a book during his lifetime.

Paragraph 61
Known throughout antiquity as the the obscure, he is difficult even today to understand.  In paragraph 61, he is trying to unify the opposites. If we step into the river, what we are doing is the same river but also different.  The pair of contraries is co-instantiated in the same object.  Heraclitus is trying to address the different qualities of the same aspect. So when we step into the same rivers, the water that has touched one has changed before it touches the next.  This happens for the water that touches the one in the river is not the same for any given time.

Paragraph 62
Here the statement (You do not step into the same river twice) is not impossibility or how things are.  It is just a statement telling us we would not be able to do it even if we try.  We can try however hard we want to, but we cannot do it more than once. Because the water that was the river the first time has changed, as everything is in a change or flux.

Heraclitus view of the world in relation to the above statements
Heraclitus believed that the change is what is real.  Whatever permanence there is, it is only apparent. In fact, the term co-instantiated was used to show that the opposites may be present in one and the same object.  The same thing may be pure and polluted, good and bad.  Furthermore, he contents that day and night is one, sea water is pure and polluted etc.  We find that opposites succeed each other like day by night and night by day.  This gives the key idea of his philosophy change.

Plato believed that in paragraph 61, Heraclitus was using river as a model of the actual world.  Everything is modeled for change nothing stays as it is for any time at all.  No object persists for any given period of time.    When we turn to paragraph 61, we find the reason for this When people do step into the same rivers, different and different streams of water flow.    So this idea, consists of an initial, extremely paradoxical statement, which is clarified by another statement.  So we should see paragraph 61 was a complement statement which presents to us the explanation of what is given in paragraph 62. Another notable point about the paradigm of river is that he used it instead of something that occurs universally.  His writings show that for universalizing something he would use the object singularly.  So river is more suited than rivers in paragraph 61.  Also if used in plural this would give rise to ambiguities in meaning.

Conclusion
He believed in the flux of things and this lead him to believe that you could not do the same thing twice, as Truth would never change. The two aphorisms about rivers are interconnected and well in tune with his philosophy of change, unity of the opposites and consequently, his outlook of the world.  They are not two different statements, but the first is an explanation of the second one, rising from a soul, with whom ambiguity was a trademark (Heraclitus).