Two Perspectives on Heraclitus: Hegel and Nietzsche

Abstract

Unlike the Ionians, Heraclitus did not try to include becoming in Being, nor did he try to remove becoming from being the subject of Being, like the Eleans; his philosophical strategy is to present becoming itself as the only Being, to create a third and new line in the problem of Being and becoming. My primary purpose in this article will be to present how Heraclitus's thought, which resists categorization and has an ambiguous place in the canon, was handled by two different philosophers who, like Hegel, embraced the entire canon of the history of philosophy, or, like Nietzsche, who wanted to create his canon by destroying the previous one. In this direction, I will discuss the nature of the concept of becoming in Heraclitus and whether this becoming implies a Hegelian history that claims to cover everything and every moment and finds its goal in universality; or, as Nietzsche argues, it will be tried to show the superiority of Nietzsche's existentially inclusive interpretation over Hegel's speculative interpretation by comparing whether the time is an immoral and aesthetic phenomenon that finds its strength in contingency and aimlessness and while making this comparison, it will be tried to show how the differences between Hegel and Nietzsche open a door to contemporary discussions.