Domains of Intellectual Speculation and Experiment between Delphi and Heraclitus

Since antiquity Heraclitus’ enigmatic style has attracted attention. Aristotle refers to him as obscure (skoteinos) and characterizes one of his sentences as unclear (adelos). Timon of Phlius called him riddler (ainiktes) (Arist. de mundo 5,397b7, Rhet. 1407b13, DL ix.6). Because of Heraclitus’ comment on Apollo’s oracles, “The lord whose oracle is in Delphi neither speaks out nor conceals, but gives a sign,” modern critics have been more specific about Heraclitus’ style: “because Heraclitus himself uses language precisely the way he describes the oracle in fragment 93, we may infer that he was deliberately adopting a Delphic mode of discourse” (Nightingale 2007, 183). “Is the Delphic mode a paradigm for Heraclitus’ own riddling style, as readers since antiquity have supposed?...One can scarcely miss the Delphic elements in Heraclitus’ own style” (Kahn 1979, 123). Although it is a scholarly commonplace, then, that Heraclitus speaks in a Delphic manner, two areas of inquiry have been overlooked. The first is, what ‘Delphic elements’ as Kahn calls them does Heraclitus deploy, and the second is, did Heraclitus borrow ideas and modes of inquiry from Delphi in addition to stylistic elements. While the first question has received some though by no means systematic attention (Hölscher 1974, Kahn 1979 and Robb 1983), the second question has never been broached. Yet, many critics have argued that Heraclitus’ style is motivated by his worldview: “by writing in a riddling discourse, Heraclitus wants to signal the gap between appearance and deep structure” (Long in Nightingale 2007, 183). Did Delphi’s style also imply a worldview, and did Heraclitus borrow both style and content from Delphi? I first demonstrate that the “Delphic elements” in Heraclitus are linguistic and aural tropes, i.e. homonyms, metaphors, and parallelism. I then argue that these shared riddling elements generate similar sorts of intellectual and experimental speculation in ancient and modern audiences. I conclude that Heraclitus’ adoption of such Delphic elements suggests a greater affinity between Heraclitus and Delphi than style and furthermore illuminates a neglected aspect of Delphic oracles, namely their intellectual and theological content. I contrast the scholarly fate of Heraclitus’ statements with that of Delphic oracles in order to suggest why the connections I draw here have thus far escaped notice. Hölscher, Uvo. 1974. "Paradox, Simile, and Gnomic Utterance in Heraclitus." The Pre-Socratic Philosophers. Edited by A. P. D. Mourelatos. Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor Press, 219-238. Kahn, Charles H. 1979. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge University Press. Nightingale, A. W. 2007. "The Philosophers in Archaic Greek Culture" in H.A.Shapiro (ed.) Cambridge Companion to Archaic Greece. Cambridge University Press, 169-200. Robb, K. (Editor). 1983. Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. La Salle, Illinois, Monist Library of Philosophy.