Heraclitus, interpretation, methodology, politics, ethics, Skinner

The focus of this paper is twofold: First, it focuses on the ongoing debates concerning the methodology of the history of philosophy. Second, it demonstrates its findings on a specific case ? philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus. The author maintains that the history of philosophy is a member of a broader set of disciplines and sciences ? the historical disciplines. As such, the history of philosophy shares some obstacles and methods with those disciplines. The paper follows proposals from philosophy of historiography and tries to show how those proposals are manifested in the work of Quentin Skinner. His approach is summarized with respect to recent development and then applied to the fragments of Heraclitus of Ephesus. It is argued that politics and ethics had an important place in Heraclitus? philosophy and that it is worthwhile to try to recognize the situation in Ephesus, which is referenced by Heraclitus many times. Conclusions from this endeavor may provide some non-trivial interpretations of Heraclitus