Permanence or Change: What Makes the World Tick?

Journal of Human Values 21 (1):37-47 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Permanence has been the dominant cosmological and social model throughout European history. This value model is founded on centralized control of power and truth, and potential success and prosperity for the individual human being is dependent upon acceptance and subordination. New development is strictly controlled and regulated. Successions of civilizations and empires have been based on this construction of being and the world. An almost diametrically opposite understanding of being was always present, however. In Heraclitus’ model of the world as Change, humans are no longer passive and subordinate receivers but active change- and future-makers. Change is no longer seen as dangerous, but rather as the prime mover of the world and therefore, also the fountain of knowledge and insight. Change is the only eternal truth and value, Heraclitus argues. Thus, strategies for meaningful and productive action must also be eternally changing. This article discusses the views of Change propagated by Heraclitus and his most famous follower, Friedrich Nietzsche. It shows how a radical change of perspective and aim, a change from models aiming for Permanence to models with a much greater allowance for and appreciation of Change, can lead to explosions of human creativity and innovation.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 103,343

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Permanence and change.Kenneth Burke - 1935 - New York,: New Republic.
Time for a change : a polemic against the presentism/eternalism debate.Lawrence B. Lombard - 2010 - In Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke & Harry S. Silverstein (eds.), Time and Identity. Bradford.
Parmenides and the Question of the One.Damian Ilodigwe - 2016 - WAJOPS West African Journal of Philosophical Studies 18:114-138.
Kenneth Burke's permanence and change: a critical companion.Ann George - 2018 - Columbia, South Carolina: The University of South Carolina Press.
Permanence and change.Karl Löwith - 1969 - Cape Town,: Haum.
The Metaphysical Dimension of Language.Kwok Yeung - 2006 - Philosophy and Culture 33 (6):5-28.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-09-02

Downloads
30 (#787,710)

6 months
13 (#197,488)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Postmodern ethics.Zygmunt Bauman - 1993 - Cambridge: Blackwell.
Philosophy and social hope.Richard Rorty - 1999 - New York: Penguin Books.
The will to power.Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - 1967 - New York,: Random House. Edited by Walter Arnold Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale.
The gay science.Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche - 1910 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Thomas Common, Paul V. Cohn & Maude Dominica Petre.
Philosophy and Social Hope.Richard Rorty - 1999 - Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 58 (3):714-716.

View all 14 references / Add more references