The Sword

On mythological conflict through Heraclitean philosophy

(As it appears to me) –

The mythological “war of gods and anti-gods”, of one group of divine beings against another, a younger and ascendant against a falling older reign, cannot be as human wars are. Rather, the allegory appeals to the understanding we have of change, struggle, pain, joy and deeper responses which are not easily fixed into words, but involve what is usually defined as the ‘spiritual’. Although in many myths, including the traditional Indo-European variants, the gods may be depicted as subject to injury and death, their living and dying is of a different order to our own. They live and die eternally, which is to say that their “life and death” preserves them as they are, while ours changes us, from one to the other.

To interpret these myths with reference to Heraclitus’ philosophy, neither grouping of gods is by itself sufficient to embody fully the mysterious principle of reality. This principle, or ever-present source, holds together as opposition, unifies as diversity, and is eternally the same as temporal change. Heraclitus calls this One, God, or Logos. This Heraclitean God, named as Zeus among other names, is most immediately manifested as and in the gods of mythology. This one god, beyond personality in essence, but manifesting in all personalities, is that principle which preserves in opposition, rather than resolution or sublation.

For the human being, resolution of conflicts is a natural desire, dependent as human life is upon the compound of the body as a living unit. When the body dissolves, it indicates death. Therefore the desire to maintain or impose a similar unity on the conditions and the phenomena of existence is perfectly natural. Unlike the gods, the human being cannot be preserved in opposition. However, despite our natural desire, bodily unity inevitably dissolves. That is why Heraclitus says that the ‘order’ which belongs to the true wisdom, to Zeus who’s manifestation is the gods and the forces of the universe in ceaseless opposition, seems disordered to the human, and that human order, when viewed against the ultimate and eternal, is a poor imitation.

Furthermore, as human wars do not preserve but destroy, rather than mirror the mythological wars of the gods by which the world ceaselessly unfolds, they, as contrary to mortal desire for preservation, represent a failing, and a tragedy. Failure and tragedy belong to the human condition or realm, but they do not cease to be themselves lamentable for that. Death is natural to the human by human nature, murder and war are natural to the human by human failure.

It absolute terms, there is only one being; the cosmic Logos, which word as Heidegger says is extremely difficult to translate, much as the word “Dao”. This logos is personified as Zeus, or Zeus’s mind-reason, expressed through the activities of the gods, and manifested as the world, including humans. Relatively, however, there is the human condition, and with regards to this, bound to inevitable death though we may be, there are respective and relative failures and tragedies, offensive war, murder, cruelty, and intemperance being among them.