Sorry if this is a strange ask, but I've recently been on a Disco Elysium kick and have been scratching my head at the Greek stuff wrt the Cop of the Apocalypse dialogue and was wondering if you might be willing to shed some light on it. All I've been able to gather is that it quotes the philosopher Heraclitus, who I've been told was an inspiration to Engels, but besides that I'm still not sure I understand it completely, and would love to hear your thoughts on it, Thank you!

Dear anon, I must, before all else, confess that your ask vexed me. I am a great lover of Disco Elysium, but my acquaintance with the game is quite recent, and I have only played it the once. When I did, I played as a sorry cop, along the communist route, and I wasn’t familiar with the Cop of the Apocalypse and so had no idea that he might have been influenced by Heraclitus. And despite the fact that I have read a number of things written by Engels, I wasn’t aware of the fact that he might have been inspired by Heraclitus -- but I can’t say that I was surprised, considering the fact that uhhhh basically every philosopher since Heraclitus has been at least partially inspired by Heraclitus. I don’t know how familiar you are with him but in case you’re not, and if anybody else is interested to know, I thought I might start this comparison between him and Harry the Herald of the Planetary Slaughterhouse off with a bit of an introduction. 

Heraclitus is essential to western philosphy and western schools of thought, but some sailors upon the vast ocean of history have flown the colours of Heraclitus more prominently than others… one of them being Hegel, who to me and other dialectic materialists will always be known as “the guy who inspired Marx and Engels”. So if Heraclitus was directly influential to Engels, or if Engels got that love from Hegel, I really couldn’t say, but I wouldn’t be surprised either way. 

Then again, to say that anyone is directly influenced by Heraclitus is an oxymoron. No one can be, because what he wrote doesn’t survive as anything but fragments recorded by other ancient writers and thinkers who did have access to his work. So the writings of Heraclitus is fragmented, a collection of direct and indirect quotes, the result of a whole host of ancient writers all putting their own interpretations of the man onto papyrus or parchment. This means that you can’t read Heraclitus, and that the best way to approximate a reading of Heraclitus would be to read all of the writings about him and his work penned down during ancient times, by people who had access to his work. 

… I obviously haven’t done that. But this means that reading his fragments really feel like you’re reading a poetry book, or a web weave. There are a few longer lines, but most of his writings are short and direct quotes. In my opinion, this means that it’s open season on interpreting these fragments and adjusting them to fit your own world view. A lot of what he says reads as incredibly universal and familiar, both because he’s been so very influential on our philosophy and way of thinking and because of the way he’s been quoted (and the way the translator’s interpret the quotes, which I sadly have no opinion on because I can’t read greek :c ). Not to credit his influence to him being somehow universal though, at least not entirely! There are tendencies in his fragments that I can absolutely understand might have been some sort of influence for the Cop of the Apocalypse. Definitely the english prose of the translations that I have read, read a lot like Harry’s more, shall we say, flowery statements. I looked over a pdf of Fragments online to grab some direct quotes, but I’ve prepared a few screenshots here with quotes from Fragments and from Harry’s apocalypse cop dialogue (and the thought Cop of the Apocalypse that I found on the fandom wiki). Go ahead and peruse them and see what you think! 

Personally, I put in a lot of quotes that I thought sounded similar to each other, at least in spirit if not entirely in sentiment. Heraclitus isn’t an augur of the apocalypse, he doesn’t talk much about a death of the universe — on the contrary, he talks more about the continuous nature of existence, how everything is in a constant state of change. Everything changes eventually, nothing can ever be the same or return to what it was (this is what I would say probably had the most influence on thinkers like Engels — dialectical materialism says hiiiiiii). 

I think it’s interesting that Heraclitus can never be read in his right context, he is always contextualised by whoever quotes him. I think it’s interesting that Harry doesn’t know who he is, and is continuously forced into various contexts where people misunderstand him or dismiss him or ignore him because what he says is so removed from what they all know. He doesn’t know this world and so doesn’t always sound like he’s part of it, especially when saying things like “I’m the cop of the apocalypse”. It makes him sound mad and we the player is really the only one who knows he isn’t mad. Heraclitus was a person, once, but we don’t know what he was like, only what a dozen others wrote of him. Harry was a person, once, but we don’t know what he was like, only what the people who met him Before say of him. Harry and Heraclitus are very similar in how they are written to speak (when more prosaic) but Harry sounds much like Heraclitus’ philosophical opposite. He denies Heraclitus’ Fire, he portents great powers of destruction, and most different of all, his whole thing is THE END OF THE WORLLLLLD AND EVERYTHING, whereas Heraclitus posits that nothing “ends”, because nothing is permanent except change. Heraclitus also talks about humans as different from beasts, whereas Harry is a self-described animal; man IS a beast. And, despite all that, they sound similar. In that way, I can absolutely understand that Heraclitus could be a source of influence. Side by side, their sayings sound eerily similar. 

I’ll end the post here, but I’d like to thank you for the very interesting question, anon! It was fun to read through the Apocalypse Cop writings, and to revisit Heraclitus’ fragments in detail. I hope this reply is to your satisfaction!! If not, I love constructive criticism <3