Dike Eris!
Amongst a certain number of Philosophers - starting with Empedocles, continuing through Heraclitus, and finally reaching out through the work of Marcus Aurelius (who I won’t quote today) - are a string of ideas.
Technically speaking the fragments of Empedocles’ On Nature and Purifications indicate that he first spoke of the Four Roots (the elements). These are (if you’ve missed me ramble about them before) Fire (Zeus), Earth (Hera), Water (Nestis or Persephone), and Aidoneus (Air). These elements are constantly intermixed and parted:
“There is a double becoming of perishable things and a double passing away. The coming together of all things brings one generation into being and destroys it; the other grows up and is scattered as things become divided. And these things never cease continually changing places, at one time all uniting in one through Love, at another each borne in different directions by the repulsion of Strife. Thus, as far as it is their nature to grow into one out of many, and to become many once more, when the one is parted asunder, so far they come into being and their life abides not. But, inasmuch as they never cease changing their places continually, so far they are ever immovable as they go round the circle of existence.”
(Empedocles Fragment 17.)Empedocles characterizes the divine forces which repulse and divide, and enjoin and intermix, as Eris (Strife) and Aphrodite (Love):
“[…] dread Strife, too, apart from these, of equal weight to each, and Love in their midst, equal in length and breadth. Her do thou contemplate with thy mind, nor sit with dazed eyes. It is she that is known as being implanted in the frame of mortals. It is she that makes them have thoughts of love and work the works of peace. They call her by the names of joy and Aphrodite.”
One would expect, perhaps, that Strife would be seen as a taboo force; to be avoided. But Heraclitus characterizes it in another, saying:
“It should be understood that war is the common condition, that strife is justice, and that all things come to pass through the compulsion of strife.”
(Fragment 26.)Here his words are very specific, if a bit obscure: “Dike Eris.”
In next fragment he comments that:
“Homer was wrong in saying, ‘ Would that strife might perish from amongst gods and men.’ For if that were to occur,then all things would cease to exist.”
(Fragment 27.)Finally, Aristotle quotes him as having said:
“The unlike is joined together, and from differences results the most beautiful harmony, and all things take place by strife.”
(Fragment 46, different source located here.)All of this, mind you, is in keeping with Empedocles’ teachings on the roots. The view Heraclitus is that without the constant mixing and parting the elements (through strife and love), nature (as we know it) would cease to exist:
“This (the contest of Love and Strife) is manifest in the mass of mortal limbs. At one time all the limbs that are the body’s portion are brought together by Love in blooming life’s high season; at another, severed by cruel Strife, they wander each alone by the breakers of life’s sea. It is the same with plants and the fish that make their homes in the waters, with the beasts that have their lairs on the hills and the seabirds that sail on wings.”
(Empedocles fragment 20.)Or put another way:
“Fire lives in the death of earth, air lives in the death of fire, water lives in the death of air, and earth in the death of water.”
(Heraclitus Fragment 25.)These opposites do not simply counteract the other; they invigorate the other!