On second thoughts, does nature like to hide? Heraclitus B123 reconsidered (original) (raw)

In V. Harte and R. Woolf (eds), Rereading Ancient Philosophy: Old Chestnuts and Sacred Cows. Cambridge, 8-31, 2017

Abstract

This chapter offers a fresh look at one of Heraclitus’ most celebrated pronouncements: physis kryptesthai philei (B123). I examine the fragment in the light both of uses elsewhere of the construction philein + infinitive and of Heraclitus’ other thoughts on god and nature. I defend the traditional construal ‘nature likes to hide’ and advance a new interpretation of the theological and philosophical significance of the vocabulary of philein in B123. For the reader who returns to the fragment again (and again) in the light of Heraclitus’ other reflections, B123 conveys a requirement to align the inquiry into nature with the distinctive intentionality and purposeful intelligence which determine nature’s organisation and appearance. The fragment, I conclude, affords a unique insight into the relation between (the study of) nature and (the study of) god in Heraclitus’ thought. More broadly, I argue that B123 offers us one powerful perspective from which to examine critically the deep-seated and still rife notion that, as they broke with the mythological tradition, the early philosophers precisely refused to see in the inquiry into nature a study of divine persons. Heraclitus frames the inquiry into nature as an inquiry into the inclinations and will of a divine person.

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