ヘラクレイトスの自己探求

Heraclitus' Fr. 101 (DK) is regarded as one of the fragments referring to the basis of his philosophical thoughts. But there is little reference to it in most of the studies of Heraclitus' philosophy. This is, I suppose, because of some difficulty in the interpretation of Fr. 101. For instance, the fragment is given different interpretations from the two different sources and it is isolated from any of his other fragments. The purpose of this essay is to approach the problem of its interpretation with the help of his other fragments, especially Fr. 22 which is something like a proverb. The author examines the meaning of each word of Fr. 22 in which there is the participle form of the same verb as used in Fr. 101. In Fr. 22, where are found at least four terms of his philosophy, i. e., 'much', 'little', 'earth' and 'gold', the verb 'search' is paraphrased in his analytical way into two other verbs, 'dig' and 'find'. Then my work is to make clear the meaning of the whole passage. Fr. 22 is a kind of proverb saying that whoever seeks for something valuable will. take much pains and get small profits. Now there rises some doubt whether he was talking by metaphor about his own philosophical method. The preferable way to get the true meaning of this metaphor is, I believe, to refer to the following fragments one after another: Frr. 29, 104, 41, 32, 90, 118; 10, 40, 35; 55, 107, 56. The conclusion is as follows: (1) Fr. 22 suggests his philosophical method of recognition and so its metaphor proves to be a formula of recognition. "The subject that searches 'digs' (se. perceives or inquires) the medium and 'finds' (sc. understands and recognizes) the object." (2) The object is called by many different names, but in fact it is 'one'. (3) On the other hand the medium is a sensible object whose structure is of many forms. The medium is significant for the investigator only when it is related to the object. (4) The subject is the soul, ψυχη. Now self-search is one way of philosophical research. To this, therefore, must be applied the formula. If not applied, it is obvious by reference to Fr. 45, that self-search does not take any means i. e., the medium. But the same fragment seems to say that to "discover" is needed for the soul to know everything. So to "find" or "discover" is to research without digging or perceiving. Self-search is research in absence of the medium. It is self-discovery. I think self-search may be proposed to be a major premise of Heraclitus' philosophical thoughts of ψυχη.