Book Review: Casting Light on the Obscure Philosopher

Heraclitus of Ephesus (480-550 B. C.) has been called the Obscure Philosopher since long time ago. At first, it was Timone of Philionte, the satirist of the 3rd century B. C., who called the expression style of Heraclitus enigmatique. The name of the style, then, was given to the author, himself. At last, Heraclitus was known as the Obscure Philosopher. So, the title of the book has had an ancient history. Regarding the Pre-Socratics, we do not have any sources available except the Early Greek Philosophy by Sharaf (Sharafeddin Khorasani), and the Cosmology of Heraclitus of Ephesus: Texts and Some Remaining Translations by Mehdi Kohandani. Therefore, the Obscure Philosopher is appreciated. The book is written by Dariyush Darvishi Published by Nashre Porsesh in 2012. It is a research on the ideas of the Heraclitus, the pre-Socratic philosopher, and it is a translation of his words into Persian. Here, we consider the discussions of the book, and only we point out to some notes on the ideologies of Heraclitus and the author’s review on them. It is concluded that this book has a duplicate advantage for the Persian readers; first, it is the compilation of the present popular translations such as the Persian translations from the Heraclitus words with their Greek original texts; second, it is the studying of the fundamental bases of his ideas.