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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

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HERMENEUTICS OF HERACLITUS
Allowing Concept Flux

GABRIEL BICKERSTAFF

Conjoinings: wholes and not wholes, converging and diverging, harmonious 
dissonant; and out of all things one, and out of one all things.1 

–Heraclitus

A thought exercise by which to consider the meaning of the above fragment 
might leave one feeling that there is more unsaid than said, or wondering 

what Heraclitus is speaking in reference to. A reader might try to !ll in the blanks, 
considering what Heraclitus’s words would mean in the context of their own 
experience. But Heraclitus is best known for leaving the reader hanging. A forgotten 
poet said that Heraclitus “is called ‘Obscure’ because he wrote very obscurely on 
nature,” and Aristotle complained that Heraclitus omitted punctuation so that the 
same fragment could be read as meaning two di"erent things.2 While his di#cult 
style was a cause for criticism by his early readers, it remains a de!ning characteristic 
of Heraclitus’s fragments. And whether it is despite or because of their ambiguity, 
the valuable philosophical potential of his words is evident in his profound in$uence 
on Philo of Alexandria and Plato and his presence in historical and contemporary 
philosophy.3 Heraclitus and his troublesome words continue to feature in philosophy 

1  Laks, André, and Glen W. Most, Early Greek Philosophy: Early Ionian %inkers Part 2 (Cambridge: Harvard 
University Press, 2016), 161 (D47).

2  Laks and Most, 209.
3  A. V. Halapsis, “Man and Logos: Heraclitus’s Secret,” Anthropological Measurements of Philosophical Research 

0, no. 17 (2020): 127.; Charles H. Kahn, %e Art and %ought of Heraclitus: An Edition of the Fragments with 
Translation and Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 88.



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Hermeneutics of Heraclitus

published today. 

%is essay leans into Heraclitus’s enigmatic style while exploring the space between 
philosophy as critical interpretive scholarship and doing philosophy or engaging 
authentically with concepts about the nature of things. To read Heraclitus, in the 
sense of trying to understand what he means by what he says, presents di#culty. 
Most philosophical literature about Heraclitus tries to add some insight or perspective 
about what he means – to explicate more clearly what his original idea or intended 
meaning could be.4 Such literature is good philosophical scholarship, and authors 
concerned with Heraclitus give compelling reasons for their interpretations. However, 
no amount of incisive scholarship will ever allow us to fully determine Heraclitus’s 
intended meaning.5 Reasons for this include !rst, Heraclitus’s own riddlesome 
style of expression,6 and second, the space between Heraclitus and ourselves – the 
double barrier of having to read Heraclitus through all his past exegetes as well 
as our own historical, philosophical, cultural and linguistic conditioning, which 
inevitably and inadvertently color our interpretive e"orts.7 On the worst end of 
this problem, interpretations are sometimes regarded as more or less authoritative 
based on philosophical attitudes that are preferred at a given time.8 Yet, Heraclitus’s 
historical and philosophical signi!cance makes the project of interpreting his riddles 
worthwhile despite these hermeneutical barriers.9 Moreover, I think the philosophical 
value of Heraclitus’s expressions inspires new philosophical development. One 
case of this is an essay by William Desmond, in which he utilizes what he calls a 
“companioning approach” as a hermeneutical tool to explore Heraclitus’s expressions 
of $ux and whether $ux is intelligible.10 Desmond’s companioning seems to be a 
good tool both for interpreting Heraclitus, and for moving beyond interpretation to 
doing philosophy and developing Heraclitean concepts. 

In this essay, I support and show the merit of Desmond’s companioning approach 
both as a hermeneutical tool, and as a means for Desmond to go beyond interpretation 
and to philosophize with Heraclitus. 

To support Desmond’s companioning approach, I !rst depend on Charles Kahn, a 
prominent Heraclitus scholar, to de!ne the hermeneutical problem. Second, I explain 

4  Halapsis, 119-129.; C. D. C. Reeve, “Ekpur&sis and the Priority of Fire in Heraclitus,” Phronesis 27, no. 3 
(1982): 299-305.; Laura Rosella Schluderer, “Speaking and Acting the Truth: %e Ethics of Heraclitus,” Méthexis 
29, no. 1 (2017): 1-19.; Magdalena Wdowiak, “Heraclitus’s Sense of Logos in the Context of Greek Root ‘Leg-’ 
in Epic Poets,” Classica Cracoviensia 18, (2015): 459-73.; Robin Reames, “%e Logos Paradox: Heraclitus, 
Material Language, and Rhetoric,” Philosophy & Rhetoric 46, no. 3 (2013): 328-50.

5  Halapsis, “Man and Logos: Heraclitus’s Secret,” 120.
6  Halapsis, 119-20.; Laks and Most, Early Greek Philosophy, 205-15 (R5-R15).
7  Kahn, %e Art and %ought of Heraclitus, 87. 
8  Kahn, 88.; Ed. L. Miller, “%e Logos of Heraclitus: Updating the Report,” %e Harvard %eological Review 74, 

no. 2 (1981): 167-68. Miller gives an instance of this problem where presocratic philosophers are characterized as 
modern positivists of scientism/empiricism. 

9  Kahn, %e Art and %ought of Heraclitus, 88.
10  Desmond, William, “Flux-Gibberish: For and Against Heraclitus,” %e Review of Metaphysics, 70, no. 3 

(2017): 473-75.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

what is useful about Desmond’s companioning approach and position it relative to 
the hermeneutical problem. %ird, I draw on Pierre Hadot’s insights about perennial 
hermeneutical problems in the history of philosophy to argue that there is a need to 
go beyond interpretation to engage concepts themselves, as we best understand them. 
Fourth, I argue for the legitimacy of companioning with or thinking philosophically 
with Heraclitus, given that this could be the kind of activity he hoped to e"ect in 
others. To support this view, I engage Alex Halapsis’ thesis that Heraclitus’s obscure 
style was essential to his philosophical commitments and was intended to allow active 
philosophical thinking. %e third and fourth sections which bring in Hadot and 
Halapsis su#ce as context to show the merit of companioning as a viable approach 
to the problem of reading Heraclitus and as a worthy philosophical activity for itself. 

THE PROBLEM WITH INTERPRETING  
HERACLITUS 
Charles Kahn saw critical interpretation of Heraclitus as a worthy and limited 
endeavor. %rough his book he sought to better consider what the “literary artistry” 
of Heraclitus’s fragments could lend to our interpretation of them, speci!cally 
qualities of expression which he called “linguistic density” and “resonance.” His 
resulting analysis remained open to plural meanings or “readings” existing together in 
Heraclitus’s statements – an approach which di"ered from the precedent of limiting 
Heraclitus to one explicitly intended meaning.11 However, Kahn was realistic 
about the limitations and potential pitfalls of any interpretive e"ort. He notes how 
Heraclitus’s vague quality of expression makes his ideas especially susceptible to 
rash misappropriation or “the free play of interpretation,” so that “every age and 
philosophical perspective… projected its own meaning and preoccupations onto 
the text of Heraclitus.”12 Kahn explained that any interpretation will inevitably be 
conditioned by the unique and unchosen perspective of the interpreter, but that 
there is no perfect way of engaging with Heraclitus. Kahn presents the problem as the 
di"erence between the “object-language” of the extant Greek text and commentary 
or explications of it as “hermeneutical metalanguage,” which is our means of trying 
to access the object-language. %ere is no alternative way of receiving Heraclitus than 
to make or choose a metalanguage for ourselves – a metalanguage which will more 
or less closely approximate what Heraclitus really meant. Kahn calls this problem 
“the hermeneutical circle.” %e best referee that we have for the metalanguage we 
develop is the text itself. To read Heraclitus at all, we must risk some degree of 
misunderstanding, but we ought to be as responsible as we can.13 For Kahn this is 
to consider how the qualities of linguistic density and resonance bear on Heraclitus’s 
meaning. 

11  Kahn, %e Art and %ought of Heraclitus, 89, 91-92.
12  Kahn, 87. 
13  Kahn, 87-88.



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Hermeneutics of Heraclitus

COMPANIONING AS A HERMENEUTICAL TOOL
%is problem of interpretation was also acknowledged by William Desmond in 
his paper about Heraclitus’s idea of $ux and implications for the intelligibility of 
nature that is in $ux.14 Desmond’s paper is an instance of creative philosophical 
thinking. He presented this interpretive problem in terms of a “ventriloquizing” vs. 
a “companioning approach.” For Desmond, ventriloquizing is what happens when 
someone misappropriates Heraclitus so that one would “!nd in Heraclitus what one 
brings to him.” Desmond explains that in ventriloquizing, “the words we have of 
Heraclitus function like… rorschach blobs or indeterminate pictures onto which 
we project ourselves.” Much like a more sophisticated philosophical plagiarism, the 
problem with ventriloquizing isn’t the way that concepts are used per se, but the lack 
of de!nition around the creative philosophical exchange that is happening in the 
hermeneutical circle. Desmond doesn’t exempt Heidegger, Hegel, or Nietzsche from 
the charge of ventriloquizing to some extent with Heraclitus.15

Companioning, on the other hand, happens when “the thinker who occasions the 
re$ection is less an object of scholarly research and more one who brings forth 
connatural thinking in us, as we try to understand him and the matters that engage 
him.”16 Companioning as a hermeneutical approach would free one from making a 
claim regarding Heraclitus’s intended philosophical meaning – allowing there to be 
a distance between what Heraclitus may have meant and what his fragments bring 
to mind for the contemporary reader. Desmond regards Heraclitus as an exemplary 
philosophical companion. “Heraclitus o"ers us striking thoughts that strike one into 
thought - thought that opens up philosophical porosity to the deepest perplexities.”17 
What Desmond seems to describe here is a more receptive, cooperative, and 
uninhibited disposition for engaging with a thinker. Desmond’s companioning 
approach is his articulation of the practice of letting a piece of text move us into 
philosophizing. As a hermeneutical tool, companioning has the bene!t of de!ning 
this activity and distinguishing it from critical interpretive scholarship.

HISTORY OF HERMENEUTICAL PROBLEMS
To communicate ideas or concepts across language, space, time, culture and between 
persons with incongruent life experience is an inhibited project. As Kahn put it, 
“there is the more fundamental problem that we, good classical scholars that we 
are, are also historical beings with a certain perspective, who can only see what is 
visible from where we happen to be standing.”18 It seems impossible that an idea or 
concept could exist the same way for me, when I read a translation of Heraclitus, 

14  William Desmond, “Flux-Gibberish: For and Against Heraclitus,” Review of Metaphysics 70, no. 3 (2017): 474. 
15  Desmond, 473-74. 
16  Desmond, 473 (emphasis added).
17  See note 12 above.
18  Kahn, %e Art and %ought of Heraclitus, 87. 



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

as it did for him when he wrote it in his own language. I might think about the 
words I am reading and reference my experiences of things to lead me to a concept 
approximating what Heraclitus intended to communicate.

We may do our best, through reading critical interpretive studies, to understand 
Heraclitus’s intended meaning, but what then? Ought one to preserve these concepts 
as perfectly Heraclitean as possible? %is seems impractical when we consider that 
ideas, however Heraclitean they may be, relate to a very di"erent collection of 
conceptual data for someone in the 21st century than they did for Heraclitus. For 
example, Desmond’s work with Heraclitus’s $ux doctrine was a unique philosophical 
project because Desmond was also relating Heraclitus’s $ux (or Desmond’s version of 
Heraclitus’s $ux) to Nietzsche, Hegel, and Heidegger who came long after Heraclitus. 
It would seem that concepts are not static, especially when they are shared between 
persons. We could use Play-Doh to think about this process of receiving, playing 
with and understanding concepts: My friend Rachel gave me a Play-Doh sculpture of 
a bird. To understand the shape of the bird, I had to squish the Play-Doh and make 
my own bird. My bird was a bit di"erent because I have seen di"erent birds than 
Rachel, but I had a more real concept of the shape of a bird after I made my own bird 
with the Play-Doh. %is is like the give and take of ideas or concepts.

To show the merit of Desmond’s companioning in this context I look to Pierre Hadot 
who understood this problem of the $ux of ideas in ancient Greek philosophy and 
the history of philosophy. His nuanced writings are a great source for learning the 
subtleties of ancient thought. Hadot achieved depth and breadth through steeping 
himself in original texts.19 Hence he can provide insight into the way philosophy was 
done, as well as what philosophy was thought to be. In both of these ways, ancient 
Greek philosophy facilitated philosophical freedom or innovation much more than 
contemporary historical study. We will look at the method or mode of ancient Greek 
thought !rst, and then what philosophy was thought to be.

Hadot highlighted an incongruence between how we engage with philosophical 
ideas and how ancient Greek philosophers did. Hadot notes that the mode of 
philosophical activity in the “pre-Cartesian period”20 was exegesis – a process which 
involved elaborating or explicating latent meaning in texts. %is process resulted in a 
plethora of what, from our contemporary philosophical attitude, would be considered 
inexcusable conceptual errors – ventriloquizing, to use Desmond’s word. Hadot was 
no more a fan of ventriloquizing than Desmond; however, he acknowledged how 
exegesis allowed ideas to develop:

19  Michael Chase, Translator’s Note to Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, 
ed. Arnold I. Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), vi.; Arnold I. Davidson, Introduction to Philosophy as a Way 
of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 1-2. 

20  Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Michael Chase, 
ed. Arnold I. Davidson (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), 73. 



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Hermeneutics of Heraclitus

%e fact that authentic texts raise questions is not due to any inherent 
defect. On the contrary: their obscurity, it was thought, was only the 
result of a technique used by a master, who wished to hint at a great many 
things at once, and therefore enclosed the “truth” in his formulations. Any 
potential meaning, as long as it was coherent with what was considered to 
be the master’s doctrine, was consequently held to be true.21

It isn’t di#cult to see how this activity could result in a plethora of meanings and 
conceptual sca"olding not conceived of by the author of the text in question. 
Hadot explained that those engaged in exegetical analysis would formalize texts 
into new conceptual systems. Other times, con$icting or unrelated concepts would 
be awkwardly stuck together, resulting in a philosophical Frankenstein of sorts.22 
However rash this might have been, Hadot acknowledged the opportunity for 
philosophical creativity that this practice a"orded. 

%e modern historian may be somewhat disconcerted on coming 
across such modes of thought, so far removed from his usual manner of 
reasoning. He is, however, forced to admit one fact: very often, mistakes 
and misunderstandings have brought about important evolutions in the 
history of philosophy. In particular, they have caused new ideas to appear.23

Less concern with interpretive accuracy and more interest in engaging with 
the concepts for themselves created the conditions of what was simultaneously 
philosophical innovation and philosophical distortion. Hadot seems to favor 
the conceptual freedom of exegesis, but not the ventriloquizing it involved. %e 
philosophical creativity that was a"orded by exegesis helped to blaze new conceptual 
territory, however it came at the expense of interpretive clarity. 

Hadot makes a couple of odd notes about this problem that are important. One 
is that this exegetical phenomenon has happened especially with notions of being. 
%e other is that he faults a strange philosophical fetish with systematizing ideas for 
causing exegetical distortion. Hadot explained that one exegetic o"ense against the 
philosopher being explicated was to impose a system onto their ideas. He stated: 
“systematization amalgamates the most disparate notions which had originated in 
di"erent or even contradictory doctrines.” And “philosophical thought utilized a 
methodology which condemned it to accept incoherences and far-fetched association, 
precisely to the extent that it wanted to be systematic.”24 However Hadot clari!es that 
this exegetical systematization is di"erent from modern notions of system and that 

21  See note 18 above.
22  Hadot, 74-75.
23  Hadot, 75.
24  Hadot, 75-76.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

modern idealist e"orts to replace exegesis with pure reason also failed and relapsed 
back into exegesis.25 

Hadot is correct when he says that now, “historians seem to consider all exegetical 
thought as the result of mistakes or misunderstandings.”26 %is complaint has been 
made by and about interpreters of Heraclitus. For scholars like Kahn, concerned 
only with discerning Heraclitus’s original intended meaning, “the various levels of 
exegesis and distortion,” has made this task more di#cult.27 %ough Hadot values 
the free engagement with ideas a"orded by exegesis, he does not see interpretive 
mistakes as a good thing. Rather, he faults contemporary exegesis for “the same 
violence used by ancient practitioners of allegory.”28 %is, shall we call it a curate’s 
egg phenomenon, I think speaks to the need for allowing old philosophical texts to 
catalyze new philosophical developments. However, there should perhaps be a way 
for this to be done without ascribing new variants of an idea to the author of its 
original form. Blame for conceptual innovation need not always be thrown back to 
whoever’s work inspired it – an exegete can take philosophical responsibility. I think 
this is what companioning allows.

Hadot also provides insight into what philosophy was thought to be in antiquity. He 
helps us understand that philosophy was not a project of de!ned concepts logically 
related in deductive argument. Rather, it was somewhat $uid since it was meant to 
be deeply transformative and relevant to life. Hadot’s presentation of this kind of 
thinking is philosophy as “spiritual exercises.”29

Hadot unpacks spiritual exercises in a descriptive way, highlighting their presence 
as a point of unity in the thought of diverse groups and !gures including Plato, 
Socrates, the Stoics, Epicureans and Neoplatonists.30 Spiritual exercises were activities 
done intentionally to a"ect some inner improvement within the person. %ey were 
spiritual because of the “level” at which they worked in the person. Hadot explained 
that “these exercises are the result, not merely of thought, but of the individual’s entire 
psychism” and “the philosophical act is not situated merely on the cognitive level, but 
on that of the self and of being. It… causes us to be more fully, and makes us better.”31 
Hadot presents ancient thought as operating on more dimensions than merely the 
cognitive – one might say they cause ontological and moral augmentation within 
a person. Further, they are exercises because they are activities done intentionally, 
which in a manner analogous to “physical exercises,” have the power of causing this 
deep spiritual (ontological, moral, cognitive) improvement.32

25  Hadot, 76.
26  Hadot, 74. 
27  Kahn, %e Art and %ought of Heraclitus, 87.
28  Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life, 76. 
29  Hadot, 83, 81.
30  Hadot, 101-02, 81-109.
31  Hadot, 82-83. 
32  Hadot, 102. 



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Hermeneutics of Heraclitus

Understanding philosophy as somewhat of a self-improvement project provides 
another account for why less emphasis had been placed on the integrity of concepts 
as communicated and received. Philosophy was not to be understood for its own 
sake, but for the sake of a"ecting human change to which the constancy of ideas took 
secondary importance. It is as though the concepts had to adopt the $uid quality of 
the ontological change they were meant to a"ect. 

To read Heraclitus in light of Hadot’s insights about the nature and methods of 
antique thought would require us to exchange the relative importance we give to 
getting Heraclitus right for the value of concepts we derive from his riddlesome 
expressions as catalysts for helping us think about the nature of things and of 
ourselves. %is is Desmond’s companioning approach, in which Heraclitus “brings 
forth connatural thinking in us, as we try to understand him and the matters that 
engage him.”33 Some have even gone as far as to claim that Heraclitus intended to 
make us think for ourselves.

HERACLITUS AS A COMPANION
Alex V. Halapsis claimed this as part of his thesis that the center of Heraclitus’s program 
was a philosophical anthropology34 – a theory that the soul’s self-consciousness after 
death depended on its wisdom or how intellectually awake it had made itself during 
life. Halapsis accounted for what Heraclitean notions of being awake and of having 
a dry or !ery vs wet soul mean as expressions of the relative immortality of the soul. 
According to Halapsis, Heraclitus would have understood the soul as immortal by 
nature, but only immortal in the sense of achieving “self-awareness” if it made itself 
so during life. For Heraclitus, this meant to actualize its Logos which is what it meant 
to be awake, dry, !ery, wise etc. And this sort of ontological transformation could 
happen only through “active participation in the cognitive process.”35

Halapsis thought that Heraclitus remained obscure to force us to awaken. Our 
salvation, which is our enlightenment, depends on us to actively and e"ortfully 
inquire for ourselves into the nature of things – a process which stops as soon as 
someone saves us the trouble by telling us explicitly. Hence, Heraclitus refused to be 
explicit. Halapsis contrasts Heraclitus with Pythagoras for whom wisdom consisted 
of a dogmatist program of truths spoon-fed to naïve minds. “But the fact is that 
comprehending other people’s doctrines is certainly the wrong way. Wisdom cannot 
be “borrowed” from others; it cannot be ‘copied’ into one’s head. Knowing ten wise 
doctrines will not make anyone a ‘tenfold’ sage.” In Halapsis’s view, Heraclitus wanted 
rather to inspire the movement to wisdom. Hence, “I searched (for) myself,”36

33  Desmond, “Flux-Gibberish,” 473.
34  Halapsis, “Man and Logos: Heraclitus’s Secret,” 120. 
35  Halapsis, 125, 125-27.
36  Halapsis, 124.; Laks and Most, Early Greek Philosophy, 155.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

%is is the part of Halapsis’s thesis that supports the general disposition behind 
Desmond’s companioning approach – of relaxing e"orts to pin down what 
Heraclitus is saying about the way things are. %is is because, in Halapsis’s account, 
Heraclitus didn’t make explicit statements about things lest someone too quickly 
assent, precluding their own searching and awakening. If Desmond’s companioning 
approach means something like allowing a philosopher’s expression to make us 
think for ourselves, then Halapsis’s account would be that Heraclitus intended to be 
companioned with – accompanied shall we say in his obscurity. 

Noteworthy is how closely Halapsis’s thesis of Heraclitus’s philosophical anthropology 
aligns with Hadot’s presentation of spiritual exercises. Both are a deep (perhaps 
ontological) growth a"ected within the person through some intentional activity 
– active inquiry in the case of Heraclitus. I would argue that Halapsis’ Heraclitus 
would !t comfortably among Hadot’s examples of the spiritual exercises of antiquity, 
however Hadot had reasons for framing spiritual exercises “from Socrates to 
Foulcault,” and a defense for including Heraclitus would require a separate essay.

DESMOND’S COMPANIONING WITH HERACLITUS
It is worthwhile here to approach Desmond’s thesis about “$ux-gibberish” in as much 
as it helps us get a better sense of his companioning with Heraclitus. In his paper, 
Desmond proposes that Heraclitus’s expressions, despite seeming ambiguous and 
illogical, have metaphysical signi!cance because they indicate a form of being which 
more de!nite or lucid statements fail to capture. He thinks that Heraclitus, in his 
obsession with the constancy of the Logos and the $ux of opposites and becoming, can 
be read as expressing the “overdeterminacy” of being, and that this overdeterminacy is 
spoken through expressions that have a “saturated equivocity.”37 

What does Desmond mean by saturated equivocity? He explains that with both 
Heraclitus’s $ux doctrine and the Logos that is a principle of constancy, he is working 
between “the constancy of form” and “the $uency of $ux” so that expressions of 
the two are “synchronically superposed.”38 %ey are expressed simultaneously 
and together to get at an overdeterminacy of being that doesn’t come through in 
univocal language. “What I am calling the saturated equivocity of Heraclitus’s 
discourse is his entry into the space of the overdeterminate, and out of that space 
his e"ort to speak the superposition of seeming opposites that calls for utterance 
there. %ere is a oneness to it.”39 Desmond explains that the equivocal opposites 
that are saturated and superposed are one in this overdeterminacy. He describes 
overdeterminacy as a “too-muchness,” found in art for example, in which “there is an 
abiding inexhaustibility, a source enabling of in!nite astonishment, an origin out of 

37  Desmond, “Flux-Gibberish,” 480, 496.
38  Desmond, 484, 486.
39  Desmond, 496.



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Hermeneutics of Heraclitus

which !nite articulations emerge but which itself exceeds all !nite articulations.”40 
Desmond thinks that Heraclitus’s expressions capture the overdeterminacy, rather 
than making it determinate, which is why they seem indeterminate and don’t make 
sense. “%ere is an overload of signi!cance that can look idiotic; when (st)uttered the 
overdeterminacy looks idiotic.”41 To use Desmond’s descriptor, there is too much for 
Heraclitus to express, so his expressions are also too much for our univocal minds 
to process without Desmond helping us understand their doubleness or equivocity.

How do we understand this reading of Heraclitus by Desmond as companioning 
rather than the ventriloquizing of which he accuses Heraclitus’s modern readers? 
Believing that Heraclitus’s modern exegetes didn’t sound the full depth of Heraclitus’s 
sense of the overdeterminacy of being as expressed through saturated equivocal 
language, Desmond appears only to be o"ering an alternative interpretation. But 
perhaps Desmond receives this insight through companioning with Heraclitus. He 
explained that a reader who is committed to univocal intelligibility will mistake 
Heraclitus’s equivocity for logical contradictions, thus ventriloquizing with him. 
“We quickly construct more coherent theories, or perhaps ventriloquize a meaning 
through selected sayings of Heraclitus, a meaning less insolent to our more univocal 
measures of determinate argumentation.”42 %is attempt to nail down Heraclitus, 
to massage away the incoherencies or to get rid of the parts that don’t !t as we 
think they should – this seems to be ventriloquizing. We could consider this in light 
of the violent exegetical tendency towards systematization highlighted by Hadot. 
Ventriloquizing seems to be an instance of this phenomenon – also remarkably 
happening with the notion of being. But is even Desmond ventriloquizing? He claims 
to be companioning but admits that “it may be impossible to avoid ventriloquizing 
entirely.”43 

Desmond is expressing Heraclitus in his metaphysical lexicon. Indeed, he is, with the 
rest of us, condemned to the “hermeneutical circle”.44 But I think that companioning 
is real, and that Desmond is doing it. And I think companioning is slightly more 
helpful as a hermeneutical tool because it is more form-!tting. It requires a more 
receptive and relaxed disposition, allowing the text of the author to distinguish itself. 
We could think back to Desmond’s statement: “Heraclitus o"ers us striking thoughts 
that strike us into thought.” In this expression of companioning, Heraclitus’s 
fragments take the position of agency, a"ecting the reader. %is arrangement allows 
the words of Heraclitus to cause us to think and re$ect with Heraclitus, perhaps even 
allowing our thought to pattern Heraclitus’s more closely. At the same time, it relieves 

40  Desmond, 498.
41  Desmond, 502.
42  Desmond, 488.
43  Desmond, 474. 
44  Kahn, %e Art and %ought of Heraclitus, 88.



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Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

us of having to make sense of Heraclitus or risk pro"ering a de!nitive account of 
what Heraclitus himself meant.

CONCLUSIONS
Some remarks can be made about Desmond’s place among our three reference points, 
Kahn, Hadot and Halapsis: Kahn thought that attending to qualities of Heraclitus’s 
expressions such as resonance and density could add to our understanding of what 
his words mean. While Kahn’s work has its merits, Desmond’s project also attends 
to the poetic quality of Heraclitus’s fragments. And because Desmond companions 
with Heraclitus and is doing philosophy rather than mere interpretive scholarship, 
he can suggest that Heraclitus’s words have a saturated equivocity which expresses 
an overdeterminacy, with the result that their meaning comes by means of apparent 
contradictions.

Hadot shows that not only has something like Desmond’s ventriloquizing been 
happening for the entire history of philosophy through systematization and creative 
misinterpretation, but that there is an extent to which this is inevitable and necessary. 
Scholars’ honesty about the hermeneutical problems and pitfalls is already a huge 
step forward, but companioning could be the next step by legitimizing the tendency 
for a philosophical companion to “strike one into thought,” – into doing philosophy, 
and distinguishing this project from strict interpretive scholarship.

What Desmond is doing in trying to identify the metaphysics behind Heraclitus’s 
saturated expressions is, I would argue, something like what Halapsis claims that 
Heraclitus hoped others would do to awaken their logos and “connect” with the 
logos to make themselves immortal.45 If Halapsis is correct that Heraclitus intended 
to be obscure for this reason, then companioning, or the general attitude of letting 
ourselves be struck into thought, would be an appropriate way of engaging with 
Heraclitus’s fragments.

Companioning is an important hermeneutical activity, distinct from the critical 
interpretive work of Charles Kahn, yet equally important, especially for those who 
are perhaps more concerned than Kahn with the rich philosophical potential in 
Heraclitus’s expressions. Kahn stresses that our being trapped in the hermeneutical 
circle does not mean “that interpretation is a game with no rules, which anyone can 
play and in which no mistakes are possible.”46 Kahn is right. However, companioning 
allows us to step outside the game of interpretation and to do philosophy; we are 
free from “rules,” free to make mistakes and engage Heraclitus on philosophical 
rather than interpretive grounds. Companioning is a part of “the formulation of 
the thoughts that are dearest to one’s own intellectual and spiritual concerns. [...] 

45  Halapsis, “Man and Logos: Heraclitus’s Secret,” 125-26. 
46  See note 46 above.



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Hermeneutics of Heraclitus

One may be !nding one’s own voice, but into that voice the heard voice of the 
companion may have entered intimately.”47 A worthy activity might be to read 
Heraclitus fragments slowly and re$ectively while letting the ideas, however they are 
received, react with one’s internal milieu of other philosophical voices and personal 
experiences, considering possible implications for how to perceive the world and 
oneself.48

47  William Desmond, “Despoiling the Egyptians - Gently: Merold Westphal and Hegel,” Gazing %rough a Prism 
Darkly: Re$ections on Merold Westphal’s Hermeneutical Epistemology, ed. B. Keith Putt (New York: Fordham 
University Press, 2009), 23.

48 Grateful recognition goes to professors Christopher Bobier, Patricia Calton and Joseph Tadie, as well as to the 
editorial board at Dianoia for critical reviews and helpful feedback during the writing process. 



26

Dianoia: The Undergraduate Philosophy Journal of Boston College

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