Mouraviev, Serge_Editing Heraclitus (1999-2012). Ten Volumes Plus One_2013_Epoché, 17, 2, pp....

7/29/2019 Mouraviev, Serge_Editing Heraclitus (1999-2012). Ten Volumes Plus One_2013_Epoch, 17, 2, pp. 195-218

1/24

2013. Epoch, Volume 17, Issue 2 (Spring 2013). ISSN 1085-1968. 195218

DOI: 10.5840/epoche20131724

Editing Heraclitus (19992012):

Ten Volumes Plus One1

SERGE MOURAVIEV

Gaillard, France; Moscow, Russia

Abstract: I shall tell you the story, propose an overview, and show the structure,

goal, and peculiarities o this monstrous edition that I undertook orty-our years

ago: the Heraclitea, o which ten volumes have appeared since 1999. One volume was

published in November 2011 and a ew others are still in preparation. While telling

you this story, I shall strive to show the radical dierences between my approaches

and the standard ones taught worldwide in the departments o classics and ancient

philosophy in universities.

1. The Prehistory of the Heraclitea

First, or the record,whatI am. A Russian, born in France rom migr parents,who spent thirty-two years in the USSR when his parental amily repatriatedthere, and who was able to return to France in 1992. My working languages areFrench and Russian, occasionally English.

It so happened many years ago, circa 1967, that I embarked on what turnedout to be a lielong experiment. I was neither a proessional classicist, nor a proes-sional philosopher; my background was, rather, philological and linguistic. Butdisconcerted by the at contradictions I had ound in the literature on Heraclitusthat was available to me, I once set up my mind and ventured to really understandhim mysel.2

Understanding implied taking nothing or granted, learning Greek, collectingand assessing the sources, extracting the ragments and other pieces o inorma-

tion, reading, analyzing, and interpreting texts, even attempting at reconstructingthe lost book, and o course arguing every step to the best o my ability. It also


2/24

196 Serge Mouraviev

impliednot an easy taskgetting thoroughly acquainted with the vast feldo early Greek civilization.

Thus, little by little, I became an independent sel-taught historian o earlyGreek sapiental and philosophical texts. My frst scholarly paper in Russian ap-peared in 1970, the frst one in English in 1973, the frst one in French in 1976. 3

What contradictions was I disconcerted by? Here is how I presented them tocolleagues eight years ago, at a symposium near Ephesus (Kuadas, in Turkey):

Was Heraclitus a philosopher?Some scholars say he wasnt (or instanceGeorgopoulos4), Patricia Curd on the other hand considers the problem per-tinent with respect to the Presocratics as a whole but inclines to the oppositeview.5

Was he the author o a book?Some critics (notably Georey Kirk6) say thecontent o Heraclituss book had been gathered by some pupil o his.

Was this book a continuous treaty or a collection o aphorisms?Both answershave had their partisans (e.g., Diels on the side o aphorisms, ollowed by alot o people, including Kirk, and recently Granger, and by Kahn, Barnes, andmysel on the other7).

Did Heraclitus write predominantly on nature, on ethics, or on politics?(C.,

e.g., the opinions o Kirk with those o Capizzi or Garca Quintela8) Is he the author o a philosophical system or only o a collection o unsystematic

utterances? Can we speak, as an Italian colleague put it, o the disunity o histhought? And in the latter case, did he discuss a variety o philosophical subjectsor merely things said or believed by other people?All o these possibilitieshave been advocated in the twentieth century (the last two ones are deendedrespectively by Rossetti and by Bollack and Wismann9) but no agreement hasyet been reached.

Was Heraclitus logically consistent?as Graham believes, or was he guilty o acertain metaphysical looseness,as Marcovich put it?10

Did he violate the Law o Contradiction, as Aristotle suspected?, or did he ol-low another kind o logic o his own making? or was his logic a mythologicalone, e.g., the logic o ambivalence?(C. the contradictory opinions o Barnes,Marcovich, Rossetti, Bartling, Couloubaritsis, Dilcher, and Graham,11 not tospeak o Hegels and Marxs appropriation o his dialectic.)

Did he propound a Logos doctrine?Martin West, Jonathan Barnes, ThomasRobinson and some others think he did not.12

Did the theory o universal lux belong to him and constitute his maincontribution to philosophy, as the doxographical tradition has it and asnineteenth-century scholars frmly believed, and some researchers continue


3/24

Editing Heraclitus (19992012): Ten Volumes Plus One 197

to believe (e.g., Barnes13)and i yes, to what extent and what was its realplace in his doctrine?

And how many river and ux ragments is there reallyone, two or three,or more?There are partisans o one, F 12 (rom Gigon and Kirk to Marcovichand Graham14), o two excluding F 12 (Bywater, Guthrie, Barnes) or F 91(Reinhardt15), or o all three (the traditional view). I personally believe thereare more than three.16

Or was H. the constancy theoristdepicted by Reinhardt, Kirk, and Marcovich?17

Or perhaps we should better identiy him with the radical Heraclitus imaginedby Daniel Graham, who used Milesian language to conceal his revolutionary

criticism o the Generating Substance Theory o his predecessors under theguise o his ake principle Fire and who built the frst ever metaphysics o theProcess?18

Did Heraclitus believe in world conagration as some scholars (Kahn, Robinson,Finkelberg,19 and mysel) are convinced, or is this Stoic slander, as a majorityo writers20 think, or an invention o Aristotle (an opinion held by Marcovich21),in spite o the ancient evidence to the contrary?

Was Heraclitus a rationalist, a conceptualist, an intellectualist? or was he asensualist, an empiricist, a solipsist(as Colli hinted22)?or perhaps rather anempiriocriticist?or an irrationalist? was he a materialist or an idealist? washe a hylozoist? was he a theist or a pantheist, a mystic or an atheist? was he a

pessimist or an optimist?and so on and so orth;almost any o these andmany other labels have been pasted on him. He has even been termed eleaticby some and post-modernist by others.23

The situation was no better in 1968 than in 2005. (Or than it is in 2013. Thereare new labels, others disappear.) But these were mostly problems o philosophical

interpretation o the sources which I thought I would solve mysel ater havingstudied the texts.

But which texts? I had access almost rom the start to the editions by Schlei-ermacher, Schuster, Bywater, Diels, Walzer, Kirk, Marcovich, later by Bollack andWismann, Kahn, Colli, Conche,24 and others, but they all disagreed on almost everyword, on the authenticity o almost every ragment, they used dierent corpuseso texts. They ignored or discarded scores o sources and almost totally neglectedthe doxography. So either I had to believe someone at random, or see or mysel.

I chose the latter.It was then that I made an observation which played an important role in myuture activity: I discovered that many Heraclitean ragments could be assembledso as to produce a continuous text and I established mathematically, on the basiso the testimonia published by Bywater and o some other considerations, that


4/24

198 Serge Mouraviev

we possess no less than two thirds o Heraclituss original text. So I devised a frstvariant o what was to become the reconstruction o his book. In 1970 I published

in Russia a summary o it.

25

All my knowledge had come rom books. But I soon ound out that bookshad nothing to tell me about how I should proceed with my search. So I had togradually devise my own deontology and methodology. This had many advantagesand many drawbacks.

For lack o classical education, I remained ignorant o a lot o very useulthings which any scholar is supposed to know proessionally. And this was anenormous impediment. But or the same reason I remained ignorant o some othe prejudices and harmul practices which are also taught in the universities. Or

elt ree to reject them. And this was an immense advantage.I began with a tabula rasa, implying three requirements:

(a) maximum knowledge o the relevant ancient andmodern literature;

(b) a prioritrust towards the ancient sources in so ar as they do not contradicteach other, and

(c) a prioridistrust towards the modern interpretations o these sources, owingto their permanent state o mutual disagreement and their dependence rom

the uctuating to-and-roes o academic ashion.A prerequisite to points (a) and (b) was: assembling the ullest possible

corpus o ancient sources about Heraclitus. Thus began the Heracliteaproject.26 I published various exploratory articles in Russian, French and Eng-lish on a variety o sources. A collection o Testimonia de Vita et Libro Heraclitiwith Russian translation. I even began publishing by piecemeal Traditio, the ulledition o the sources, and went as ar as Aristotle. And then ell the Berlin Walland I returned to France. In 1996 I obtained at the Sorbonne a doctorate with adissertation on H. language and in 1998 I was approached by Heinz Richarz, thepublisher o Academia Verlag, who proposed printing the Heraclitea as a separateseries o books. (For a complete list o published and planned volumes, see p. 199.)

This took years and led, frst, to the publication in 19992003 o TraditioHeraclitea.

So much or the prehistory.

2. The History

When completed, the Heraclitea will be divided into fve main blocks: Parts Iand V are reserved or the Prolegomena and the Indexes. The others are Part II,Traditio; Part III, Recensio; and Part IV, Reectio, each o them subdivided into asection oering an edition o the texts and a section containing the commentary.(See synopsis, page 199.)


5/24


HERACLITEAdition critique complte des tmoignages sur la vie et luvre

dHraclite dphseet des vestiges de son livre et de sa pense

I.PROLEGOMENA:loutillage[Structure, Mthode, hiStorique, concordance, BiBliographie]

II. TRADITIO: latraditionantiqueetMdivale[corpuScoMpletdeSSourceSancienneSSur hraclitepriSeSdanSleurcontexte.

dition par auteurs et coles, dans lordre chronologique](A) Textes. Tmoignages et citations

II.A.1Dpicharme Philon dAlexandrie. 1999. XXVI + 270 pp.II.A.2De Snque Diogne Larce. 2000. XXXIV + 367 pp.II.A.3De Plotin tienne dAlexandrie. 2002. xv + 196 pp.II.A.4De Maxime le Conesseur Ptrarque. 2003. xxii + 166 + xlii pp.

(B) Textes. Allusions et imitations(C) Commentaire(D) Supplment: La Tradition orientale et renaissante (textes et commentaires)

III. RECENSIO: leSveStigeS[texteSrelatifSlavie, ladoctrineetaulivredhraclite.dition systmatique avec commentaire, en quatre parties]

(III.1)MeMoriaHeraclitea.III.1La vie, la mort et le livre dHraclite. (A) Textes et (B) Commentaire. 2003.

xxxviii + 232 pp.(III.2) Placita Heraclitea.

III.2Thses et doctrines attribues Hraclite par les Anciens. (A) Textes et (B)Notes critiques. 2007. XXII + 195 pp. + 1 tabl. h.-t.

(III.3) FragMentaHeraclitea. Les ragments du livre dHracliteIII.3.ALe langage de lObscur. Introduction la potique des ragments. 2002.

XXVI + 438 pp. [avec CD-R, Heraclitea.Suppl.Electr. 1.]

III.3.B/iiiiLes textes pertinents. 2006. (i) Textes, traductions et apparatsIIII.xxviii + 375 pp.; (ii) Langue et orme. xxviii + 178 pp.;(iii) Notes critiques. xxxiv + 211 pp.

(III.3.C)Les dossiers des ragments(III.4) FontesHeracliti. Sources utilises par Hraclite

Textes, traductions et commentaires

IV. REFECTIO: lelivreetladoctrine[reconStructionpartirdeSfragMentSettMoignageS]

IV.ALe livre LES MUSES ou DE LA NATURE. Texte et traduction,Commentaire. 2011. XXXI + 209 p. (dont 130 doubles)

(IV.B)La doctrine

V. INDICES


6/24

200 Serge Mouraviev

Traditio collects, edits chronologically and comments in contextu all thesources o our knowledge on Heraclitus; Recensio collects, edits and comments allthe

specifcally Heracliteaninormation which can be extracted rom those sources;

and Reectio is meant to reconstruct, out o the texts oRecensio, the closest pos-sible approximation to what the book written by Heraclitus must have been like,at least in my opinion, beore it was lostand to argue this reconstruction anduse it as a basis or restoring the doctrine. (Or, i the reconstruction o the textails, to address directly the restoration o the system.)

Traditio is subdivided into A. Established Sources (testimonia) and B. NonEstablished Sources (reminiscences, allusions and imitations); Recensio is subdi-vided into: 1.Memoria, 2.Placita and 3.Fragmenta. The main material or Reectio

obviously comes rom Fragmenta and to a lesser degree rom Placita.When I devised this plan I naively thought I would publish it in that order. But

I soon ound out that you need to have edited the ragments to be able to identiythe reminiscences and to have edited all the sources beore you can commenton them. Similarly, even thoughMemoria and Placita lend themselves easily toseparate commenting, this is not the case or Fragmenta which badly need thecommentary to the sources and have much to gain rom the commentary to Re-

ectio. Hence the apparently hectic order in which the Heraclitea volumes appear.

Here is an overview o their content. I begin with Part II, Traditio.Volume 1 oTraditio contains 350 sources on H. belonging to authors rangingrom Epicharmus to Philo o Alexandria.

Volume 2 contains 375 sources belonging to authors ranging rom Seneca toDiogenes Laertius.

Volume 3 contains 305 sources belonging to authors ranging rom Plotinusto Stephen o Alexandria.

Volume 4 contains 260 sources belonging to authors ranging rom Maximusthe Conessor to Petrarch.

Traditio is thus a collection o over 1230 excerpts naming Heraclitus andcontaining inormation about him rom texts by over 250 ancient authors, withull relevant contexts, ull translation and three apparatuses.27

The next step was Part III, Recensio: extracting rom these sources the ullestpossible corpus o (1) inormations about the man, his lie and his work, (2) oaccounts concerning the tenets o his doctrine, and (3) o quotations rom hislost book.

This led (a) to the publication, in 2003, oMemoria Heraclitea, and in 2008,

oPlacita Heraclitea.The frst is a collection o over 300 testimonia (including 22 tables o efgies)on Heraclituss lie, his portraits and his book, with translations and a detailedcommentary.


7/24


The second assembles 250 clusters o doxographic opinions attributed to himby over 900 sources, ollowed by a commentary.

And this led, (b) to the publication, in 20022006, oFragmenta Heraclitea, aull-scale edition o the more or less literal remnants o the book.Volume A o these Fragmenta Heraclitea is a monograph, an enlarged ver-

sion (over 450 p.) o the doctoral dissertation I deended in Paris in 1996, on thelanguage and poetics o H. ragments.

The three books o volume B oFragmenta Heraclitea are a critical edition o206 H.s ragments. Book B/i contains the ragments themselves with translationsand three apparatuses. Book B/iitwo apparatuses devoted to the language andpoetical orm o the ragments. And Book B/iiiconsists o short commentaries

on each ragment, plus an Index uerborum Heraclitiand a bibliography.For comparison with predecessors, here is table showing the approximate

numbers o edited items:

Diels & Kranz 1935

and Mondolfo &

Tarn 1972

Marcovich, Heraclitus Mouraviev, Heraclitea

Traditio (Sources) 226 itemsca. 650 items

by ca. 200 authors1230 items by 250 authors

Memoria (Lie and book) 12 items 0 item

over 300 items and

22 iconographical tables

Placita(Opinions)

69 items =

110 opinions/sources4 items

250 items

from over 900 sources

Fragmenta 145 items 125 items 206 items

This makes ten volumes oHeraclitea containing the corpus o all the estab-lished (warranted) sources, testimonies and quotations.

Last but not least came (c) the plus one volume, IV.A, Reectio, containing thelatest version o my reconstruction o the book, integrating not only the ragments

but all the relevant doxographical inormation as well and ollowed by a detailedcommentary on the restoration procedures I used.Thus, still lacking are: vol. II.B and II.C (Traditio, Imitations and allusions [=

non established texts] and Traditio, Commentary), vol. II.D (Traditio, Orientaliaand Renaissance), vol. III.C Les dossiers des ragments (Fragmenta, Commentary toindividual ragments), vol. III.D Fontes Heracliti, vol. IV.B La doctrine reconstitue,not to speak o the Prolegomena and Indices.

So much or the scale o the edition and its statistics. We shall have a look atits intrinsic value in a ew minutes. But lets make frst an intermezzo on Hera-

clituss poetics.


8/24

202 Serge Mouraviev

3. Poetical Intermezzo

This dimension o H.s prose was known very superfcially. Nobody ever studied

it. I did not intend to spend much time on it either, but its magnitude came as asurprise. And its philosophical role soon became so obvious that I couldnt ignoreit. Ill show you just a ew tiny parts o this iceberg, centered on sound and order.

All Heraclituss literal ragments have one or more sound patterns: a syllabo-tonic rhythm, chimes, alliterations, rhymes.

Some o them are both audible and visible, as are the syllabotonic rhythm andother phonic eatures in the fve ragments I shall now read in Greek.

() .

,

( )

,

. [F 1a]

[?]

. [F 129]

.

.


9/24


. [F 5]

,

. [F 30]

You certainly heard the rhythm, and some o the chimes and rhymes.Here are examples o a more sophisticated type o sound eects, which areinaudible to us even when read aloud: palindromic consonances.

ta mystria aniersti myewntaj

thntn de polloj kekorntaj hoksper ktnea

onoj syrmat' an helojnto mllon khryson

F14

F29

F9

F 14 reads ta mysteria aniersti myeyntai. Did you notice that all the phonemeson the let side (or a majority o them in the other ragments) recur on the right

side in reverse order? F 29 and F 9 are two other examples o the same pattern.Read them and check the repetitions.

And I can adduce a dozen o other similar examples, which, though inaudible,are still visible. The ollowing one is literally gigantic.


10/24


11/24


Though they look like innocent riddles, these anagrams in F 22 are in acta paradigm used by H. not only to tell us plainly that fnding a grain o truth

requires a lot o earth, a lot o digging, but also to show us the very object andthe method o this work: the thing one must dig is the textH.s text or the texto realityand the things to be dug out and decipheredare the hidden patternso this reality. In short what we have here is a model o the hidden harmony. Amodel which nobody had noticed beore I published it (1991)and very ew ater.

Here is another example which will also show how helpul is poetics to textcriticism: F 26, which a Dutch scholar called Crux philosophorum.

Clem. Strom. IV, 141,2 .

Wilamowitz 1906 [] , [], .

Leuze 1915

, , .

Somigliana 1961 . , . , .

On the top is the text as transmitted by the single MS o Clements Stromata.Follows the still most popular reading where three words have been deleted (dele-tion is signaled by square brackets). I have collected fty-two dierent modernreadings o this ragment, a majority o which also suppress parts o the trans-mitted text. Below that are two not very popular readings, which have at least themerit o keeping the text (almost) as transmitted. This is not the place to enterinto details. But the three frst readings (including the MS one) have in commonthe idea that one should punctuate beore zn de and egrgors. Somiglianas in-novation28 is to puncuate beore the second haptetai. But all these conjectures aredictated by the resulting sense (which everyone, moreover, agrees is not clear).

This is a typical petitio principii: begging the question. And no one has had thecuriosity to look at the orm o the ragment. Here it is:


12/24

206 Serge Mouraviev

Mouraviev 1973

, , ,

, , , .

Man in the night a light kindles-or-himsel by means o himsel.

He is dead: eyes extinguished, but alive, he touches29 the dead;

Hes asleep: eyes extinguished, awake, he touches the sleeping.

C. F 61:

,

Sea (is) water the-purest and the-oulest:

or fsh yea drinkable and salubrious

or men though undrinkable and disastrous

And here is one last example o the philosophical weight o poetics: F 32,

whose phonetic wealth we already saw above.

The one only wise does not want and wants to be called by the name o ZeusThe only wise does not want to be called one, and wants the name o Zeus

The one wise does not want to be called alone, and the name o Zeus wants it

The Greek text is ollowed by three translations. All o them are dierent and all othem are correct. And there are at leastfteen other possible translations, because:

1. Subject and predicate (or complement) are interchangeable;

2.Mounon can go either with to sophon or with legesthai;3.Mounon can be an adjective or an adverb. It can even be a noun (a name);

and4. The frst three or our words can orm an independent proposition with

an elided copula.It goes without saying that this plurivocity is absolutely deliberate and that

all the complementary or conicting meanings must be accepted simultaneouslyand understood as expressing together the philosophers real thought.

4. Difficulties and Principles

What ollows this brie visit into an unexpected dimension o Heraclituss text isa short overview o the real difculties encountered by the students o Heraclitus


13/24


and o the rules Ive been trying all these years to devise or mysel and to ol-lowoten in contradistinction with the tacit practice o our disciplinein order

to cope with them. Three difculties are particularly obvious.The frst and main difculty is the one caused by the ragmentary state othe Heraclitean heritage; the second difculty is due to Heraclituss idiosyncraticlanguage and logic; a third one has no other cause than the defciencies o ourown ways o dealing with these aspects o the material we are working on.

The difculty due to the gap between the original Thought and the remainingtits and bits o the lost Text and Doctrine which we managed to collectcan beremedied to a certain degree by philological means:

rom:1) evaluating the amount o documentation lost (my latest conclusion is:we possess in various guises ca. 4/5 o the original);

through:2) collecting a complete corpus o the sources;

to:3) reconstructingi possible the lost book, with all the intermediate stagesimplied; i not, then reconstructing the doctrine.

The goal is to do the ullest possible stocktaking o what we have, keep it alland see to using it in the best possible ashion. This is the rule oCompletessor Fullness o the sources or the principle o putting to maximum use atleast those sources which we do have. It requires no urther elaboration.

Difculties o the second kinddue to the distance separating the poeticalForm (o the literal ragments) rom the philosophical Content we need to extractout o itcan be alleviated by using the analytical means oered by Linguisticsand the Theory o the literary language (or Poetics), the problem being to un-derstand how literary (poetical, rhetorical) means based on plurivocity are usedby the philosopherin the absence o any logico-deductive method based onunivocityto create not simply an artistic eect, but trulyphilosophical mean-ing. This is the task o the systematic Poetic analysis o the literal ragments.

Difculties o the third kindcreated by the Traditional ways o interpretingHeraclitus and our modern Failure to reach any kind o certainty and consen-susimply (Im sorry to have to say so) a ull Revision o the methods weuse. I have three particular targets in mind: hypercriticism (hyperscepticism)towards the sources, the (vicious) hermeneutical circle, and the (just as vicious)

preliminaryQuellenorschungsupposed to ascertain the reliability o the sources.I shall now dwell a little more on these three.

I begin with Hyperscepticism, the name I give to the suspicion towards thesources which prevails almost everywhere. The eect is the same as that o theloss o the book, but the reason is quite dierent: it is due to the gap between the


14/24

208 Serge Mouraviev

available sources and the sources really used. Some available sources are otensimply ignored, others are rejected as untrustworthy. Nobody can help ignoring

unknown sources. Neglecting known sources must remain on the conscience owhoever neglects them. But rejecting them means throwing away the baby withthe dirty water. This led me to suggest our very important working principles:the principle o precaution, the presumption o innocence, the rule othe non-identity o almost similar texts, and last but not least the danger-ousness o excessive confdence in the preliminary results o modernQuellenforschung.

The principle o precaution is akin to the old traditional principle ogenerosity (or charity), but its justifcation is dierent. It consists in abolishing

the death penalty in order not to run the risk o killing innocent people whocan still be o some use to society. It springs rom the ollowing indisputableact: without the sources we have, we would be completely ignorant ofwho was Heraclitus and of what he said. This simple act amply justifesthe conclusion that anyexclusion, rejection, drastic modifcation o any sourceconsidered to be alse, corrupted or redundant, in case such an opinion is errone-ous, would deprive us o a possibly important part o the inormation on whichall our knowledge is to be built.

Whence the necessity: (1) not to exclude anything even i it looks patentlyalse or erroneous, so that other researchers might, i needed, reconsider andrevise your verdict.

Whence the necessity (2) to thoroughly argueparticularly by explainingits causes, motives or mobilesany accusation o allacy, error or corruption, sothat other scholars have the means they need to appreciate how well ounded it is.

Whence the necessity (3) to abstain rom any peremptory categorical excom-munication even when the case against authenticity or trustworthiness seemsabsolutely indisputable, and the more so when it is open to objections. The

goalI repeat itis to avoid any risk o killing innocent people, o throwing awaypotentially useul inormation.

The presumption o innocence is also a barrier against miscarriages ojustice or errors o judgment. It springs rom the same indisputable act I alreadymentioned (without the sources we have we would be completely ignorant o whowas Heraclitus and o what he said), but it goes much arther and concerns anytext, not only suspect ones. This is the dominant principle o any justice (juris-prudence). It does notmeanI insist on thisthat the suspect or the deendant

is really innocent. But il promulgates his innocence and rejects a priori, prior toany examination o the case and without requiring proos, any condemnation ohim or any presumption o his guilt. And it proclaims him innocent a posterioriindeault o any tangible proo that he is guilty (it grants him the beneft o doubt).


15/24


But it is more than that. It is also a much saer way, as compared to the oppo-site presumption, to establish the truth. Why? Because presumption o innocence

is a blank page implying truth without excluding the possibility o guilt, and itkeeps its environment unchanged. Since truth is always coherent, coherence isa good, even i not sufcient, guarantee o truth. Fallacy on the contrary canappear coherent only at the cost o deorming its environment, o adapting, con-orming this environment to its own image. Presumption oguiltis thus quitethe opposite o a blank page, it is a page ull o suspicions (allowing moreoverhundreds o dierent confgurations o guilt), it introduces in the trial elementso incoherence, uncertainty and disorder (arbitrariness) which, even when basedon serious suspicions, may distract our attention rom, or even obuscate, the real

challenges and the real problems. Presumption o guilt has a blinding eect andavorsalse simplistic solutions.

The second principle consists thereore not only in granting the beneft odoubt to anything which may look alse, incorrect or biased, but in addition inaccepting in advance, as an axiom requiring no proo, the opposite presumption:that o the innocence, exactness, intelligence, competence, aithulness to the originaland honesty o the citator and o all the ancient authors and scribes to whom weowe all our knowledge on Heraclitus. It consists in other words in giving up the

principle o generalized suspicion, the automaticpresumption o guilt, incompetenceand stupidity which prevails almost unchallenged in certain quarters o thatmodern philology which deals with ancient philosophical texts.

Whenever a problem o interpretation or understanding arises, the frst suspectmust thereore be the modern interpreter. The next suspects (to be suspected oincomprehension and involuntary errors) will be (and in this decreasing order ounreliability): other modern interpreters and editors o Heraclitus; the moderneditors o the source; some Renaissance or Medieval corrector o the manuscript;some Medieval scribe; some Ancient scribe; the author o the ultimate source;

the source he used himsel. To my mind deliberate distortion and dishonestyshould never be considered, except in very special cases (such as fction, satire,and obvious slander), while lack o discernment is always possible, though it ismuch less likely coming rom people who hadaccess to uller and better sourcesthan those we have and who bathed in an atmosphere much more akin to Hera-clituss own world than the sources and environment we shall ever have a chanceto painstakingly reconstruct or ourselves.

The third principle I should like to advocate and recommend is the non

identifcation (and [non] suppression) o similar texts whenever their re-semblance is not confrmed by identity omeaningand sometimes even oorm.It is directed against a rather new trend in hyperscepticism.

Thus Marcovich30 labeled as reminiscences o F 1 such ragments as F 19, F73, F 75 and a part o F 112. But nowhere in F 1 do we fnd the assertion that men


16/24

210 Serge Mouraviev

are incapable ospeaking(F 19), that we must not speak like sleepers (F 73), thatsleepers take part in whatever happens in the cosmos (F 75) or that we must speak

and act according to nature (F 112). These assertions may belong to the samecontext as F 1, but instead o repeating what is said there, each o them adds anew trait, a new content which is worth keeping and putting to test.

The negative results o preliminary source-criticism (Quellenorschung)are another very common argument o hyperscepticism or discarding testimoniaor casting doubts on the reliability o our sources. I shall not develop it here. Ishall only remind some truths which in their turn will hopeully cast doubts onits own reliability and which in my opinion nobody either can reute or has theright to ignore.

a.Even the worst author o the most inaccurate work can make a correct quota-tion rom a book he knows.

b.Even the latest doxographical report using a heavily modernizing languagecan accurately reect an archaic conception its author ound in some earlier work,lest in the philosophers original.

c.Even the most erroneous or dishonest(highly prejudiced or biased wouldbe more correct and charitable) later presentation o an archaic philosophers viewsmust needs be based on some knowledge o his doctrine and thereore contains

valuable inormation.But the most obvious truth, and the most ignored o all, is the ollowing. Toorm a correct opinion on the reliability o the inormation o a given source youneed to compare it with the original, an original which either you have alreadyrom (an)other source(s)or an original you lack. In the ormer case, the sourceis redundant, in the latter, unverifable. Indirect judgments are allible (c. a, b,and cabove). They will, thereore, suggest exactly what you had expected, giveyou the very answer you had begged or in ull agreement with the eects o

petitio principii.

So much about Hyperscepticism. All this explains, I hope, the large numbero texts usually considered to be dubious I included in my edition o the ragmentsand used in my reconstruction o the Book.

To wind up I should like to mention shortly a fth and a sixth principles omine. The frst concerns reconstruction, the second interpretation.

The fth principle, that o the necessary completeness o any recon-struction, says that any reconstruction o the book (or, in deault o ragments,o the doctrine) should be a reconstruction o the whole book (or doctrine), not

o parts o it; it should include all the genuine ragments and comply with all therelevant doxography; otherwise it is doomed to ailure. The book has been nowreconstructed to the best o my ability out o all the sources that seemed relevant.It is not my task to decide how successul I was. But, unless new texts are ound,any improvement will require only relocations o already located elements.


17/24


The sixth principle, on which I shall dwell a bit longer, is that o the dangeros-ity o the (very popular) hermeneutical circle.

I will soon be beginning the philological preparatory work prior to the inter-pretation proper o the reconstructed book. I underscore the word begin. All theseyears I have systematically avoided adopting defnite hermeneutical positions onmost o the controversial issues (except in cases o overwhelming evidence). Ireconstructed the text and, in doing so, I based mysel on its linguistically mostsuperfcial meaning. And this I did because my sixth principle says preciselythis: In the case o such ragmented sources as those o Heraclituss book, onecannot build any valid and appropriate interpretation ramework, and thereorethere can be no legitimate single hermeneutical circle, beore the whole philologi-

cal preparatory work, including the reconstruction o the Book or at least o abook, is over. Why?

Charles Kahn wrote in his amous edition31 (and I ully agree with him): Thehermeneutical circle is constituted by the act that it is only within the presupposi-tions o a meaningul ramework that we can make sense o a given text; and itis only by its applicability to the text in question that we can justiy the choice oa particular ramework.Quite right. But the snag is that we have no given text,we have 1230 separate ancient pieces o inormation out o which we can build

hundreds o seemingly meaningul rameworks, and particularly so i we areree to arbitrarily reject some o the sources as alse or unreliable, to dispenseusing some others, to correct third ones, to interpret dierently those we do notcorrect etc., a phenomenon we have been witnessing or over two centuries now.

In other words: i we are ree to use our sources as building blocks not o the lostbook but o some meaningul ramework o our own making, then we can just aswell use the stone blocks o the Samos temple o Hera to reconstruct a church or amosque and interpret it as the architectural achievement o Theodoros o Samos.

This does not imply that the hermeneutical circle is o no use, but only that

it must wait until all the preliminary work has been properly conducted withoutthe intererence o any general all-embracing interpretative ramework which canonly distort this mainly philological work. Separate independent hermeneuticalcircles can be useul at the preliminary stage when examining separate sourcesor separate authors o sources. But there can be no single meaningul rameworko Heraclituss text beore we have this text, or o his doctrine beore we havecombined all o its elements. A collection o ragments and testimonies is notsuch a text, it is only a catalogue o building blocks the places and the orms o

which are still to be established or reconstructed.Trying to extract directly their combined meaning is like trying to reconstructa sentence out o an alphabetical list o a part o the words it was made o withoutpaying any attention to our complete ignorance o its syntax. I understand howdangerous it is to deend such views beore people eager to get at the core o a


18/24

212 Serge Mouraviev

philosophers doctrine despite the ragmentary state o his legacy. But this is mydeep conviction and it would have been dishonest had I tried to hide it rom you.

Maybe all this reasoning o mine is sheer nonsense. I you think so, please,do not hesitate to explain to me rankly what is wrong with it. But the proo othe pudding is in the eating. You will fnd a part o this pudding in the articlesI published, another in the apparatuses oTraditio (A), a third one in the com-mentary toMemoria and the introduction to the language o Heraclitus. Threeother big lumps have now become available: the edition o the ragments, o theopinions and o the frst ever complete reconstruction o the Book. A large parto the pudding is still in the process o cooking: the assessment o all this in thecommentaries to the sources, in the commentary to the ragments and opinions

and in the overall interpretation o the reconstructed book.


19/24


A Selection of Addenda and Corrigenda to vols. III.3.B/iiii

(June 2011)

I have already published in Mouraviev (2008) 208217, reerences to over 80 morelate sources o Traditio I had overlooked, and in (2003) xxxviii xlii and (2008)226228 a body o corrections to the frst nine books o the edition presentedabove. Most o the latter are just ordinary typos, errors o ont substitution, cut olines, incorrect text styles or line numbers, misspellings, unsatisactory transla-tions, and the like; a ew are more serious blunders o mine that I have discoveredin the meantime, or improvements and additions I have ound necessary to make.Since then, another three years have elapsed with their new harvest o points to be

corrected. In the ollowing list, which deals mainly with (2006/iiii), I have omittedall those that the reader is able to notice and correct or himsel and I concentratedon those which should have a real impact on our perception o Heraclituss textand doctrine. I shall present them here in an order o decreasing importance.

1. The most important are o course the new readings I advocate. There arethree o them, all as yet unpublished.

I now read F 80 [i, 195; c. iii, 92] . That War which is universal (c. Il. XVIII 309 and Archil. r. 110West) and Justice must be well in love and united by Eris (not by Eros). With an

obvious allusion to the love story o Ares and Aphrodite, the parents o Harmonia(c. F 8 () ).

I now correct F 120 [i, 302] into q (= ) the sureit o brilliant Zeus, i.e., the excess o sunlight during theday which blocks o the stars o the Bear and o the whole Arctic circle (Strabo wasquite right) and is the sole cause o all the dierences between day and night. C.F 99 and F 57. For a similar idea in Parmenides, c. 28 B 10,3 DK and Mourelatos(2008) xxviii ., 237240.

And I decipher now PDerv. col. IV, lines 5 . thus: [ ] / [ ] [] , [] / [ ] . . . , whence F 394 [i, 9] should begin: , . . . Even i the size o the sun himsel is by nature that o a human oot,he will not transgress his proper boundaries. . . .

2. I would now split F 83A [i, 214] into two variants: (a) [as printed] and (b)() . See T 924C [Addendaad Traditionem: III.2, 210] = Damascius in Phaed. (uersio 2) 128,6 Westerink,

without committing mysel as to the literality or possible misreadings either oF 30 (T 942?), or o F 123A, or o F 106A. Formally (b) diers rom these three byits content () and rom F 83A(a) by its wording.


20/24

214 Serge Mouraviev

3. Next comes a more defnite interpretation o the meaning (translation)o F 101 [i, 252, c. iii, 121]. I resolutely opt now or I sought by mysel (i.e.,

independently, without recourse to other peoples help, except or divine help).C. F 16A in the context o F 93 and F 92. The same interpretation also applies toF 116 (i, 295) .

4. Less important are some previously overlooked restorations o Ioniandialectal orms (in accordance with the results o III.3.A [2002] 174184): F 24(i, 71) ; F 31 (i, 87, 89) RP25 Byw; F 63 (i, 156, 157) Byw;F 6465 (i, 160, 161) ? (c. Herodotus I, 171, 4); F 72 (I, 176) ?;F 132 (i, 333) .

5. Typos, omissions and blunders in text and translation. Read

Text: D 125 (p. 59)Text accentuation: F 107D (i, 276) Tagging: F 37 (i, 99) the brace bracket } should be one line lower.First edition: F 80B already in Schleiermacher [1808] 421.Sources: F 83A (and F 123A?) add (b) Damasc. In Phaed. 128,6 ; F 95109

add to 1, 4 Apostolii Centuria II, 70 CD ; F 107C, c. Philop. Phys. P. 41 (T 975); F114 add 12 Apostolii Centuria XII, 26a

Translation: F 154 (i, 353) Read L de Dionysos a t construit en

Thrace . . .6. I leave out apparatuses IIII (i) and IVV (ii)they require a serious revi-sion and a thorough updatingand come to the Notes (iii)

7. It is obvious that the Notes o the newly amended F 80 (24), F 101, F120 (1 and 2) and F 394 will require some changes or which there is no roomhere. Here are some other corrections.

F 45, 1 (iii, 54) Betegh 2009 has convincingly shown that, contrarily to whatI thought and wrote, the reading inuenies in Tertullian is a modern emendationtriggered by the version o Diogenes. This is a good point. Yet it does neither dis-

qualiy the reading , nor necessarily imply his other suggestions (thesuperuity o, his interpretation o logos, or the ambiguity o the subject oas a matter o act the latter is a side eect o the reading ). The conclusion is thus a non liquet with three possible solutions: (a), (b) or (c) the deliberate ambiguous combination o both.The solution must be looked or in the textual or doctrinal context.

F 85A, line 10. Read: c. T 512.F 90, 3, line 2: I am now inclining in avour o gold coins, though not o

money as such (in the economical sense). Coins and other golden objects aremade o gold and can be melted or pulverized back into native gold or gold dustand then reused to make other coins and other objects.

F 118, 1, line 2. Replace Traversari by Trincavelli.Line 7. Add: Et idem chez Porphyre (T 735,10) et Synesius (T 894).


21/24


Notes

1. My presentation on April 15, 2011, in Sundance, Utah, which owes much to an un-

published paper presented at the 2005 Symposium on Pythagoras and Heraclitusheld in Samos (Greece) and Kuadas (Turkey), was originally a slide show, but theimportant part, except or some slogans and Greek quotations, was what I said, notthe images on the screen. The text o my perormance is reproduced here with onlysmall corrections and adaptations, taking into account some recent developments.

2. I became something o a heretic whose approaches and results very ew colleaguesdared either to criticize or to approve o. Even true riends who supported me andhelped me did not always manage to understand my ways and wises, so dierent didthey appear to them rom what they had so long been used to.

3. My Heraclitean bibliography consists presently o about a hundred titles, includingourteen books.

4. Georgopoulos 1989: 13641.

5. Curd 2002: 11537.

6. Kirk 1954: 7.

7. Diels 1901: VIII; Kirk 1954: 7; Granger 2002; Kahn 1983; Barnes 1983.

8. Already the Ancients did not agree: Sextus Empiricus suggested adding ethics tophysics (AMvii, 7), an unknown Diodotus believed it was all politics (ap. Diog. Laert.IX, 15). Kirk (1954) and a majority o critics were/are convinced o the predominance

o physics (cosmology); Capizzi (1979) and Garca Quintela (1992) avored politics;there is presently a tendency to treat Heraclitus as having been mainly a religiousthinker (see, e.g., the contributions o Granger and Finkelberg to the Proceedings othe 2005 Symposium [see n. 1], ed. D. Sider and D. Obbink [De Gruyter, orthcoming]).

9. Rossetti 1989, Bollack and Wismann 1972: 49 et alibi.

10. Marcovich 1967: 111, Marcovich 1978: 489.

11. Barnes 1978: 634, Rossetti 1989, Marcovich 1967: 111, Marcovich 1978: 489, Bartling1985, Couloubaritsis 1992, Dilcher 1995, Graham 1998.

12. West 1971: 1249, Barnes 1979: 58., Robinson 1987: ix.

13. Barnes 1979: 659.

14. Gigon 1935: 1067, Kirk 1954: 35780, Marcovich (1967, 1978) r. 40, Graham ap. D.Sider and D. Obbink (still orthcoming in 2012).

15. Bywater 1877: c. r. 41; Guthrie 1962: 489, 4912; Barnes 1979: 7684; Reinhardt1916: 2079n.

16. Mouraviev 2006: F 3A, F 3B, F 12, F 49A, F 81B, F 83, F 84A, F 91ab, F 125, F 126.

17. Reinhardt 1916: 207n., Kirk 1954: 36980, Marcovich 1965: 28991.

18. Graham 1997: 150. C. now Graham 2006: 11337.

19. Kahn 1979: 134. et passim, Robinson 1987: ix, Finkelberg 1998.20. E.g., Dilcher 1995: 53.

21. Marcovich (1967, 1978) ad r. 51; c. Marcovich 1965: 2978.

22. Colli 1980: 177.


22/24

216 Serge Mouraviev

23. I could adduce literature or each o these qualifcations. But this is hardly necessaryto substantiate the point I am making. Heraclituss eleatism is asserted by Carlotti(1922), his post-modernism by J. Waugh (1991), c. OConnell 1996.

24. To name only the most prominent editors o Heraclituss ragments between 1808 and1986. For a uller list and reerences, see Mouraviev H(2006) III.3.B/i p. xxvixxvii;B/iii, p. xiiixxxiii.

25. SM (1970) 139. The two next variants appeared in 1983 (in Russian) and 1991. Theourth in 2009. The fth and last variant came out at the end o 2011, ater this paperhad been read in Sundance.

26. See below, section 2.

27. Some eighty additional sources belonging to over fty authors, over twenty o whomhad been overlooked earlier, are reerenced in vol. III.2 (2008) pp. 20814 (Adden-dorum Synopsis).

28. He was preceded in this by Schwartz (1906), whose ull reading is unknown, andby Diels (1909), who suppressed two words. Wilamowitz owed the popularity o hisreading to Kranz, who adopted it in Diels and Kranz 1935.

29. Heraclitus plays on the two meanings o the verb. I translated it touches or the sakeo brevity, but is in touch with would probably be better.

30. Marcovich (1967, 1978) r. 1(a,g, h1, h2, k).

31. Kahn 1979: 88.

BiBliography

Barnes, Jonathan. 1979. The Presocratic Philosophers, vol. 1 (London: Routledge & KeganPaul).

Barnes, Jonathan. 1983. Aphorism and Argument, in Language and Thought in EarlyGreek Philosophy, ed. K. Robb (La Salle: Hegeler Institute), 91109.

Bartling, H.-M. 1985. Der Logosbegri bei Heraklit und seine Beziehung zur Kosmologie(Gppingen: Kmmerle).

Bollack, Jean, and Heinz Wismann. 1972. Hraclite ou la Sparation (Paris: ditions deMinuit).

Bywater, Ingram. 1877.Heracliti Ephesii Reliquiae (Oxonii: E Typographeo Clarendoniano).

Capizzi, Antonio. 1979.Eraclito e la sua legenda (Roma: Edizioni dellAteneo & Bizzarri).

Carlotti, G. 1922. Leleatismo di Eraclito,Giornale critico della Filosofa Italiana 3: 32957.

Colli, Giorgio. 1980. La sapienza greca, III (Milano: Adelphi).

Couloubaritsis, Lambros. 1992.Aux origines de la philosophie europenne (Bruxelles:Ousia), 509.

Curd, Patricia. 2002. The Presocratics as Philosophers, in Quest-ce que la PhilosophiePrsocratique?, ed. A. Laks and C. Louguet (Lille), 11537.

Diels, Hermann. 1901 (2nd ed., 1909). Herakleitos von Ephesos, griechisch und deutsch(Berlin: Weidmann).


23/24


Diels, Hermann, and Walther Kranz. 1935. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, I (Berlin:Weidmann).

Dilcher, Roman. 1995. Studies in Heraclitus (Hildesheim: Olms), 24.

Finkelberg, Aryeh. 1998. On Cosmogony and Ekpyrosis in Heraclitus,American Journalo Philology 119: 195222.http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/ajp.1998.0025

Garca Quintela, Marco V. 1992.El rey melancolico (Madrid: Taurus Humanidades).

Georgopoulos, N. 1989. Why Heraklitus Is Not a Philosopher, in Ionian Philosophy, ed.K. Boudouris (Athens: International Association or Greek Philosophy), 13641.

Gigon, Olo. 1935. Untersuchungen zu Heraklit(Leipzig: Dieterich).

Graham, Daniel. 1997. Heraclitus Criticism o Ionian Philosophy, Oxord Studies in

Ancient Philosophy 15: 150.Graham, Daniel. 2004. Review o Marcovich 2001:Aestimatio 1: 805.

Graham, Daniel. 2006.Explaining the Cosmos (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press).

Granger, Herbert. 2002. On the Nature o Heraclitus Book, Society or Ancient GreekPhilosophy, newsletter 2001/2.4 (April): 122.

Hlsz Piccone, Enrique, ed. 2009.Nuevos ensayos sobre Herclito. Actas del Segundo Sym-posium Heracliteum (Mxico-ciudad, Junio 2006) (Mxico: UNAM).

Kahn, Charles H. 1979. The Art and Thought o Heraclitus (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-versity Press).

Kahn, Charles H. 1983. Philosophy and the Written Word, in Language and Thought inEarly Greek Philosophy, ed. K. Robb (La Salle: Hegeler Institute), 11024.

Kirk, Georey. 1954.Heraclitus: The Cosmic Fragments (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress).

Leuze, Oskar. 1915. Zu Heraklit Fragm. 26 (Diels), Hermes 50: 60425.

Marcovich, Miroslav. 1965. Herakleitos, in Pauly-Wissowas Realencyclopdie der clas-sischen Altertumswissenschat, Suppl. Bd. 10: 246320.

Marcovich, Miroslav. 1967. Heraclitus, Editio Maior(Merida: Los Andes University Press;reprinted St. Augustin: Academia, 2001).

Marcovich, Miroslav. 1978.Eraclito, Frammenti(Italian translation o Marcovich 1967, withcorrections and additions) (Firenze: Nuova Italia [reprinted Milano: Bompiani, 2007]).

Mondolo, R., and L. Tarn. 1972.Eraclito: Testimoniaze e imitazioni(Firenze: Nuova Italia).Mouraviev, Serge. 1970. What Was the Beginning o the Book o Heraclitus (in Russian),

Vestnik drevney istorii113: 13558.

Mouraviev, Serge. 1973. New Readings o Three Heraclitean Fragments, Hermes 101:1225.

Mouraviev, Serge. 19761977. Clment, Protrptique 34,2 ss.= Hraclite, r. B 15,Revuedes tudes anciennes: 789, 429.

Mouraviev, Serge. 1991. Heraclitea, IV.A, Reectio: Hraclite dphse, Les Muses ou Dela nature(Moscou-Paris: Myrmekia).

Mouraviev, Serge. 19992003. Heraclitea, II.A, Traditio(A), Tmoignages et citations, texteset traductions, vols. 14 (St. Augustin: Academia).


24/24

218 Serge Mouraviev

Mouraviev, Serge. 2002.Heraclitea, III.3.A, Recensio: Fragmenta (A), Le langage de lObscur(St. Augustin: Academia).

Mouraviev, Serge. 2003. Heraclitea, III.1, Recensio: Memoria. Textes, traductions et com-mentaires (St. Augustin: Academia).

Mouraviev, Serge. 2006. Heraclitea, III.3.B, Recensio: Fragmenta (B), Textes, traductions etcommentaires, vols. 13 (St. Augustin: Academia).

Mouraviev, Serge. 2008.Heraclitea, III.2, Recensio: Placita, Textes, traduction et commentaire(St. Augustin: Academia).

Mouraviev, Serge. 2009. Le livre dHraclite 2500 ans aprs. Ltat actuel de sa reconstruc-tion, in Hlsz Piccone 2009: 1173.

Mouraviev, Serge. 2011. Heraclitea, IV.A, Reectio: Liber, Texte reconstruit, traduction etcommentaire (St. Augustin: Academia).

Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. 2008.The Route o Parmenides, 2nd ed. (Las Vegas: Parmenides).

OConnell, E. A. 1996. Herakleitos and Derrida: Presocratic Deconstruction, diss. (SantaCruz).

Osborne, Catherine. 1987. Rethinking Early Greek Philosophy (London: Duckworth).

Reinhardt, Karl. 1916. Parmenides und die Geschichte der griechischen Philosophie (Bonn:Cohen).

Robinson, Thomas More. 1987. Heraclitus: Fragments (Toronto: University o TorontoPress).

Rossetti, Livio. 1989. About the Disunity o Heraclitus Thought, in Ionian Philosophy,ed. K. Boudouris (Athens: International Association or Greek Philosophy), 35362.

Schwartz, Eduard. 1906. Name o article missing, cited in O. Sthlin, Clemens Alexandrinus,Werke, II, 1. Au., p. 310; c. Diels 1909: 22, 23n.

Somigliana, A. 1961.Monismo indiano e monismo greco nei rammenti di Eraclito (Padova:Cedam).

Waugh, J. 1991. Heraclitus: The Post-Modernist Presocratic?,Monist74: 60523.http://dx.doi.org/10.5840/monist199174436

West, Martin L. 1971.Early Greek Philosophy and the Orient(Oxord: Clarendon).

von Wilamowitz-Moellendor, U. 1906. Name o article missing, cited in O. Sthlin,ClemensAlexandrinus, Werke, II, 1. Au. p. 310.

Mouraviev, Serge_Editing Heraclitus (1999-2012). Ten Volumes Plus One_2013_Epoché, 17, 2, pp....

Documents

Transcript of Mouraviev, Serge_Editing Heraclitus (1999-2012). Ten Volumes Plus One_2013_Epoché, 17, 2, pp....