SOURCE: Charles H. Kahn, in an introduction to The Art and Thought of Heraclitus, Cambridge University Press, 1979, pp. 1-23.
In the following excerpt, Kahn offers a survey of Heraclitus 's historical and intellectual context, paying particular attention to the philosopher's links with Ionian natural philosophy. Kahn maintains that Heraclitus 's "real subject is not the physical world but the human condition, the condition of mortality."
