Parmenides and Heracleitus Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Parmenides and Heracleitus - Essay Example A surprising amount of what we feel we know about the world today, and the way in which we interpret the nature of the world around us, was actually shaped by the ideas and concepts brought forward for discussion by the ancient Greek philosophers. Although their ideas have been modified and added to over the millennia since their first recording, the views of these philosophers helped shape the avenue of investigation and thus our concept of our role in the physical plane. Two of these philosophers, Heraclitus and Parmenides, introduced two opposing schools of thought regarding the nature of the physical world, each influencing the thoughts and actions of two more widely known philosophers, Socrates and Plato. Heraclitus proposed that everything around us was in a continual state of flux while Parmenides believed change was nothing but an illusion. To understand how their philosophies differed and how they affected Socrates and Plato, it is necessary to understand the position of eac h man and how he came to his conclusions. Heraclitus based much of his knowledge of the natural world on his concept that everything is in constant flux between one state of being and another. According to Plutarch, â€Å"Heraclitus holds it impossible to go into the same river twice; no more can you grasp mortal being twice so as to hold it. So sharp and swift is change; it scatters and brings together again, not again, no nor afterward; even while it is being formed it fails, it approaches, and it is gone†