Human-Relative Values as Epistemic Challenge in Heraclitus

Heraclitus’ human-animal juxtapositions, which oppose the needs and preferences of humans against those of nonhuman animals, are typically read in one of two ways. The ‘unity reading’ affirms that each preference or need yields a degree of insight into a given object; brought together in the unity of opposites, these convey some truth about that object. The ‘values reading,’ on the other hand, presents both preferences or needs as manifesting an absence of insight. This article argues for a version of the values reading structured and mediated by the unity reading. By examining the interplay between the two readings, it shows how the challenge to human-relative needs and preferences generates an even more fundamental challenge to basic categories or distinctions. These distinctions are pervaded by human-relative needs and preferences in ways that seem to prevent us from grasping the true natures of things.