The Men of Flux
Socrates says that the men of flux, like Homer and Heraclitus, are really hard to talk to because you can't pin them down. When you ask them a question, he says, they pluck from their quiver a little aphorism to let fly at you, and as you try to figure that one out, they wing another one at you. They leave nothing settled either in discourse, or in their own minds. Socrates adds that the opposite school of thought, that teaches of the "immovable whole" is just as hard to talk to (181a,b). Socrates says he met the father of the idea, Parmenides, when he was quite young, but does not want to get into another digression over it.
Read more about this topic: Theaetetus (dialogue)
Famous quotes containing the words men and/or flux:
“The terrifying message of gay liberation is that men are capable of loving their brothers. It should be sweet news to every woman in the world, for, if the capacity of men to love whom they have been taught to treat as competitors and enemies can transcend their education, the world can begin to heal.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“Sense is a line, the mind is a circle. Sense is like a line which is the flux of a point running out from itself, but intellect like a circle that keeps within itself.”
—Ralph J. Cudworth (1617–1688)