Heraclitus' Thought of "The Kingly Power is a Child's" and Its Historical Echoes

Heraclitus' thought of "the kingly power is a child's" in his Fragment 52 has an important influence on Nietzsche and Heidegger. Nietzsche's great response to Fragment 52 is that the child is the eternal beginning of the three transformations of the spirit and the axis of the eternal return of the same. At the end of the series of lectures on "Der Satz vom Grund" (Principle of Reason), Heidegger let "the child" to show up by quoting Heraclitus's Fragment 52, so that the world in Heidegger's philosophy was ruled by "the great child" and "the child with king's demeanor"! Nietzsche and Heidegger's childism was born on the basis of history. The history of thoughts and the spirit of the time (zeitgeist) prepared the hotbed for the gestation and birth of the childism of these two great philosophers. The philosophies of Heraclitus, Nietzsche and Heidegger echo each other with childism in China. Childism not only highlights the status of the child, but also highlights the disciplinary value of philosophy of childhood.