The use of indirect tradition in Mouraviev'sreconstruction of Heraclitus' book

In his Heraclitean research, more than four decades long, Mouraviev early convinced himself that the studies on Heraclitus lacked scientific method, and that the reconstruction of his book was a fundamental precondition to develop a scientific approach to his thought. Mouraviev issues several challenges; as I see it, the more basic one is his approach to the indirect sources. Mouraviev maintains that the sources provide essentially exact information on Heraclitus’ doctrines. He denies any distorting influence that changing world-views, and the specific doctrines and motivations of the authors could have exerted during the long transmission chain from Heraclitus to our sources. However, the analysis of a few specific cases shows that the sources can be internally inconsistent, to the extent that Mouraviev himself is forced to introduce partial amendments. Sometimes these inconsistencies suggest that our source missed the point of the reported doctrines, as Theophrastus at least once openly admits. In other instances, one feels that the interpretation of the text is far from straightforward: it seems that the source is looking for an antagonist – as sometimes is the case with Aristotle – or a forerunner – as some Stoic readings suggest – rather than for a faithful reconstruction of Heraclitus’ doctrine. Thus, on my opinion, one should not take the sources as neutral evidence, but as interpretations that need decoding. This fact does not detract from the scientific value of the results, but introduces an unavoidable conjectural element in the hermeneutic task.