What is a thing?

[FireOlogist]

@Chelydra

We hold the thing and lose the holding.

Yes, but “that which is in opposition is in concert, and from things that differ, comes the most beautiful harmony.” - 8 We can hold the thing AND the holding - it is just with great difficulty, because it is a tension.

@Chelydra

To exist is to stand apart.

I think that is a restatement of my whole post. “It rests with change” means “to exist as a thing is to stand apart” or more dynamically and more presently and more reflective of the world: “to come to be as a thing, is a standing apart.”

@Chelydra

But standing apart requires the apart — the between, the difference, the facing.

Yes.

@Chelydra

The stepping is already it.

Also yes. Dynamism and the “it” resting come as one, or “is already it.”

@Chelydra

You cannot step outside this to examine it.

But no. I disagree. We already did step outside everything to observe about things that “it rests with change” or that “to exist is to stand apart.” We are standing apart right now, and we know it.

@Chelydra

Opposites have no outside.

Yes they do. Us. Me. This discussion. We see both opposites. At once. How else would I hold them together as “opposites” if I could not hold them apart and together at once? This holding arises from a position outside of the opposites. (The logos is outside the things in tension as well.)

@Chelydra

To draw a limit around them you would need a limit — which is already opposition working. It contains its own containment.

I like, "it contains its own containment - but you now bump into the Set of All Sets type of container and paradox (which is where I need to post next!). What if that is what a mind is? The first true limit, the first true finitude, the first truly fixed, immovable yet existing thing, wondering “why is there something at all?” as if there was “a nothing” anywhere out there besides the mind? We are limit. We, the human subject, is outside ourselves. This is how our character is pure potential and becoming as well, while remaining “me”. (But this is another thread - Chapter 2 maybe.)

@Chelydra

This is why the logos has no outside. This is why it is common.

The Logos is the language of the outside. If you call it the ordering principle, than what is there for it to order, but separate things? But I, personally, I think like Aristotle, find the logos is more with things, in them, and observable as much as it is createable, by minds, the limit in the motion, like mirrors that both create a wall, and reflect back into the flowing everything. Logos is always logos of, and what it is the logos of, are the changing things resting in measures and dissolving.

What is “common” has to do with we minds groping through the ever-changing seeming consumption of everything to both identify “things” and speak them through communication with other minds. (A sub-topic of Chapter 2.) Logos is common as language. Language is the birth of the common, and minds recognizing the logos is the birth of language. (And as Aristotle points out in the Metaphysics, identity of the unit, only intelligible as it resists its own contradiction as the LNC grounds signification, is the birth of the logos - I think this point agrees with Heraclitus. Logos is of the identity of the rest, (the ordering tendencies) in the fiery changing of that temporarily resting thing.

@Chelydra

The fire does not hold back. But the fire that burned all would burn out all — including the burning. Perfect consuming is perfect stillness is nothing. So the fire burns in measures. The tension persists before it can fully dissolve. This is what a world is.

Yes - I agree with all of that. I am curious if you take it as far as I do (I suspect not). We seem to be disagreeing and agreeing. The tension is helping me to say more, but I’m curious if a Logos is emerging between us?

@Chelydra

Where tension holds, the lyre sounds. The lyre is the thing.

Can you explain why you said that? I would say, the sound is the thing, not the lyre (in this image). The lyre and the bow create the tension, which is the thing. The tension is the harmonious single note, the sound.

@Chelydra

Not the water — the river. Not the flesh — the man. Not the moment — the life.

I think maybe we agree again? Like I would say, ‘not the lyre or the bow but the sound’, here you are saying ‘not just the river or the man, but the life of the man with the river’? Is that what you mean?

@Chelydra

Each rests in its changing, rests from its changing, rests as its changing. The rest is real. But the rest rides the fire.

Full concurrence.

@Chelydra

We cannot bathe in it twice. But the logos by which we cannot — that is always the same.

Logos is always the same. I think I agree. That sounds more like where a Plato or Aristotle are going. The logos is what knows the same man does not step into the same river twice, ever, and this type of understanding is of the logos which rests eternally as the fire burns eternally.

But I don’t think we have gotten there yet logically. I started this whole thread on the assumption that “there is motion”. We’ve just appended another assumed assertion to it “there is logos”. I am fine with that (and that is what Heraclitus does - he just says “there is a logos” with no specific justification), so I want to see if you think there is some necessary logical connection whereby one has proven the other (things resting with change demonstrates the logos), or if you are just making bald assertions because Heraclitus is cool and his idea of the logos is rad.