The Wise Man Points At The Moon - Heraclitus and the Delphic Oracle

The wise man points at the moon is a great insight that Heraclitus of Ephesus, one of the greats of Ancient Greek Presocratic Philosophy, formulates in his own independently originating form of in one of the fragments. In this one of Herclitus fragments he says that the Oracle at Delphi speaks neither directly nor indirectly but merely gives a sign. The meaning of this fragment points to one of the great problems of epistemology - how do we speak of that which we cannot point to? It is when we are talking to someone who does not share the same experience of the world as we do that we run into the limits of language and how everything we say is merely a shadow of reality. This is the Western formulation of the old saying that the wise man points to the moon but the fool sees only the finger.

Media and clips:
Delphi image https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d5/Delphi%2C_Greece_-_panoramio.jpg (CC BY-SA 3.0) https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/deed.en

Видео The Wise Man Points At The Moon - Heraclitus and the Delphic Oracle канала The Living Philosophy