RODRIGO FABRICIO ROSSI SQUARCINI

The purpose of this research is to identify statements by Heraclitus that seem contradictory at first and contextualize them with other statements from such thinker in order to confirm if such statements could not have worked for Heraclitus as a means to identify a deeper substratum common to them (the Logos referred by Heraclitus). In such case, such statements could be construed as an instrument to reveal the referred Logos and not as mere contradictions to be dialectically synthesized, partially considered or even discarded as obscure ideas. If the hypothesis is confirmed, such “contradictions” could then be taken, in a new reading, as dualities (dual aspects) that, in tension, could have been used by Heraclitus as a means to access something deeper about reality. Therefore, tension could be to him a sort of intellectual tool to deal with aspects of reality which are revealed to the mind as opposites in a way that would allow one to extract from them a deeper nature of what one wants to know. Thus, the opposites would not be a problem to be eliminated, but rather a the means itself to an effective intellectual path to the Logos.