"In this extraordinary meditation, Eva Brann takes us to the fierce core
of Heraclitus's vision and shows us the music of his language. The
thought and beautiful prose in The Logos of Heraclitus are a
delight."--Barry Mazur, Harvard University
"An engaged solitary, an inward-turned observer of the world, inventor
of the first of philosophical genres, the thought-compacted aphorism,"
"teasingly obscure in reputation, but hard-hittingly clear in fact,"
"now tersely mordant, now generously humane."
Thus Eva Brann introduces Heraclitus--in her view, the West's first
philosopher.
The collected work of Heraclitus comprises 131 passages. Eva Brann sets
out to understand Heraclitus as he is found in these passages and
particularly in his key word, Logos, the order that is the cosmos.
"Whoever is captivated by the revelatory riddlings and brilliant
obscurities of what remains of Heraclitus has to begin anew--accepting
help, to be sure, from previous readings--in a spirit of receptivity and
reserve. But essentially everyone must pester the supposed obscurantist
until he opens up. Heraclitus is no less and no more pregnantly dark
than an oracle...The upshot is that no interpretation has prevailed;
every question is wide open."
Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John's College in
Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for fifty-seven years. She is
a recipient of the National Humanities Medal. Her other books include
Then and Now, Un-Willing, Feeling Our Feelings, Homage to
Americans, Open Secrets / Inward Prospects, The Music of the
Republic, and Homeric Moments (all published by Paul Dry Books).
