2013 \"The Logos Paradox: Heraclitus, Material Language, and Rhetoric.\" Philosophy and Rhetoric 46(3): 328–50.

In her 2006 article “The Task of the Bow: Heraclitus’ Rhetorical Critique of Epic Language” Carol Poster shows through an analysis of fragment DK22b48 that for Heraclitus the instability of the material world also infects language, and that investigating the unstable logos—its hidden, double, oblique meanings—discloses this extra-linguistic world-instability. This paper conducts an analysis similar to Poster’s analysis of the wordplay and observations about the critique of language in DK22b48, and suggests that a similar investigation of the wordplay in Heraclitus’ opening lines (DK22b1) challenges the longstanding debate over the meaning of logos in the first fragment. Through reconsidering the context of Aristotle’s references to Heraclitus’ paradoxes, this paper develops a set of hermeneutic criteria that may be applied to contemporary interpretations of DK22b1. Accordingly, understood as a paradox, the hidden meaning of the logos of DK22b1 must be sought through its primary meaning—speech or discourse. Furthermore, as a paradox, its proper interpretation requires an expansion rather than a contraction of its possible signification. By such an interpretation, the logos-as-speech of DK22b1 is concomitant with and implicated in the volatile flux of phusis itself.