The Art and Thought of Heraclitus
An edition of the fragments with translation and commentary
by CHARLES H. KAHN 1979
https://archive.org/details/the-art-and-thought-of-heraclitus-fragments-translation-commentary-kahn/
Page 15
Heraclitus’ political doctrine can be seen as a development of Hesiod’s old insight, that the order allotted by Zeus to mankind is to follow justice and shun violence: ‘for to fish and beasts and winged birds he gave the rule (nomos) that they eat one another, since there is no justice among them; but to human beings he gave justice (dzké)’ (Works and Days 275ff.).
I note that Heraclitus’ restatement of this traditional view marks the birth of political philosophy proper and the beginnings of the theory of natural law, which will receive its classic statement by the Stoics working under his inspiration.
Heraclitus’ own formulation is novel in three respects. He generalizes the notion of Justice to apply to every manifestation of cosmic order, including the rule of the jungle by which birds and beasts eat one another (LXXXII, D. 80). Secondly, human law is conceived as the unifying principle of the political community, and thus as grounded in the rational order of nature which unifies the cosmos. Finally, the unique status of human nomos and the political order is interpreted as a consequence of the common human possession of speech (logos) and understanding (noos), that is, as a consequence of the rational capacity to communicate one’s thoughts and come to an agreement (homologein in XXXVI, D. 50, echoing xyn legontas in XXX, D. 114).
Thus it is the very thought and word play of Heraclitus that Plato will echo when, in defending the natural basis of the moral order against the relativists and nihilists of his own time, he defines law (nomos) as the arrangement disposed by reason (nous).
Heraclitus, like Plato, had seen his city conquered in war and torn by civil strife. He was all the more sensitive to the fundamental requirement, for a minimally decent life, of a human community upon whose legal and moral structure all the citizens can rely.