Logos

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LOGOS

The Greek term logos is multiply ambiguous. The unabridged Greek dictionary gives five and a half long columns of definitions and examples. Logos is a noun corresponding to the verb legein (say), signifying, among other things, speech, statement, sentence, account, definition, formula, calculation, ratio, explanation, reasoning, and faculty of reason. Early studies of the term tended to talk about a concept of logos, as if there were some single concept or theory associated with it. In fact, the term was employed in different ways by different thinkers. Yet, there is a kind of interplay in concepts associated with the term that makes a single study worthwhile.

Scholars sometimes speak of a change from mythos to logos ; roughly, a transition in expression from storytelling in myths, usually expressed in poetry, to scientific, philosophical, or historical accounts, usually expressed in prose. Philosophers of the sixth century BCE were among the first Western writers to compose treatises in prose. The new medium of expression permitted a more analytic and detached view of things, and it embodied a revolution in thinking about the world. Although logos (plural: logoi ) could signify a story, increasingly logoi were taken to be scientific accounts in contrast to mythoi "stories" and epea "verses" (see Plato Timaeus 26e). But for the sophists, a mythos can be used to express a logos (Plato Protagoras 320c)—but only insofar as logos is seen as a more basic kind of explanation.

The Presocratics

Logos soon came to signify something of the content of rational discourse as well as the medium, and it is this sense, or set of senses, that this entry will focus on. Heraclitus (c. 500 BCE) was the first philosopher to raise logos to the level of a principle. He opens his book by saying, "Of this Logos 's being forever do men prove to be uncomprehending, both before they hear and once they have heard it. For although all things happen according to this Logos they are like the unexperienced experiencing words and deeds such as I explain when I distinguish each thing according to its nature and show how it is" (fr. 1). Heraclitus's logos can be shared with people, and indeed he explicates it in his own treatise; but he anticipates that most people will fail to understand the message. "Although this Logos is common," Heraclitus writes, "the many live as if they had a private understanding" (fr. 2). Somehow the logos is publicly available but ignored by the many, who lack philosophical insight. The logos has a particular message, or implication: "Listening not to me but to the Logos it is wise to agree that all things are one" (fr. 50). Heraclitus regards the logos as transcending his own personal communication, and teaching the unity of things.

Heraclitus's logos is a kind of structural principle as well as a message, a reciprocal law of exchange. It has a kind of syntax like language that orders the changes of the world. Heraclitus plays with statements that are syntactically ambiguous, as if to show that the same words can make different statements, which at another level complement each other. So the world is based on a single structure that manifests itself in contraries. Language provides a model for the world.

In the early fifth century BCE, Parmenides presented an argument against change, in the form of a revelation from a goddess. Yet the goddess tells the narrator, "Judge by logos the contentious refutation spoken by me" (fr. 7). Here logos seems to mean something like reasoning, which clearly becomes the key to philosophical truth. For, despite the religious imagery and associations of his poem, Parmenides's message is above all an argument addressed to the reason.

In the latter half of the fifth century BCE the sophists traveled about Greece teaching practical skills to help young men succeed in politics and, above all, the art of public speaking. They saw a knowledge of logos —and especially, for them, the spoken word—as the key to controlling emotions and hence the reactions of audiences to a message. As Gorgias observed, "Logos is a great potentate, who by means of the tiniest and most invisible body is able to achieve the most godlike results" (fr. 11, section 8). Sophists composed contradictory arguments (antilogikoi logoi ) on a single topic to teach skill in argumentation, and sometimes studied elements of language and argumentation.

Plato and Aristotle

By the fourth century BCE logos is established not only as speech and the like, but as the faculty of reason. Speech becomes the manifestation of reason, and reason the source of speech. According to Plato an understanding of rhetoric presupposes a knowledge of souls—what would later be called psychology—and the use of dialectic to implant truth in souls (Phaedrus ). In fact, thinking (dianoia ) is just internal speech (Sophist 263e, Theaetetus 189e). Thus speech becomes a model for thought, and ultimately a representation for the world; for a sentence (logos ), such as "Theaetetus is sitting," is true just in case it correctly describes an action or condition of Theaetetus (Sophist 263a–b). In another context, Plato suggests that one can more safely study the world in logoi than by means of sensations, and he consequently adopts a method of hypothesis (Phaedo 99d–100a).

The sign that one has knowledge is one's ability to give an account (logos ) or explanation (Phaedo 76b), and one who can give an adequate account is a dialectician (Republic 534b). At one point Plato considers as a definition of knowledge "true judgment accompanied by an account [logos ]," but rejects this in part because a satisfactory explanation of logos cannot be given independently of knowledge (Theaetetus 201c ff.). While the ability to give a rational account provides evidence of knowledge, the account is no mere component of knowledge.

Aristotle accepts Plato's view of the relation between language and the world along with some of Plato's terminology (Categories 2–4; On Interpretation 1–7). He recognizes, if somewhat obscurely, the two relationships that allow language to connect to reality: reference (semainein ) and predication (katêgoria )—the latter primarily a link between a substance and its attributes, but mirrored in the link between grammatical subject and predicate. The basic unit of communication is the sentence (logos ), which when it makes an assertion (apophantikos ) is the bearer of truth or falsity. Whereas reference connects words with things, (grammatical) predication asserts that the things are connected in a certain way; if the assertion corresponds to the way things are, it is true; otherwise it is false. Building on this basic theory of language, Aristotle developed the first system of logic, showing how certain propositions follow logically from certain other propositions (Prior Analytics ). Moreover, he conceived of a science as a set of propositions arranged in a logical order with axioms and definitions as starting points, and theorems as conclusions (Posterior Analytics I)—laying out this ideal structure that would be realized by the axiomatization of geometry a generation or two after his death. Thus in a certain sense Aristotle saw the world as possessing a thoroughgoing logical structure that could be captured in language. Indeed, whereas contemporary logicians often think of logical systems as arbitrary human constructs, some of which are useful for capturing certain linguistic relationships, Aristotle thinks of his logic as having its basis in the nature of things (Prior Analytics I 27).

Hellenistic Philosophy

According to the Stoics, the world is ultimately composed of fire, which is identical with God. Fire pervades the world and functions as a world-soul. Reason (logos ) is found in the world-soul, which orders and controls the world; it is the active principle and is identical with God (Diogenes Laertius 7.134). Soul is found in all animals, and in humans there is also a ruling principle that possesses reason. Thus logos in the human mind is like logos in the cosmos. Through the activity of fire, reason controls the creation and the history of the world. The world periodically perishes in a conflagration that turns all the elements back into fire, from which a new world arises, seeded by seminal logos, a structural principle that directs the cosmogony (Diogenes Laertius 136). The events of the world are ultimately under the control of reason, so that the world is governed by providence (Diogenes Laertius 138–9). The Stoics distinguish between uttered discourse (prophorikos logos ) and internal discourse (endiathetos logos ); the former humans have in common with parrots, but the latter is peculiar to humans (Sextus Empiricus Against the Professors 8.275).

Philo of Alexandria (early to mid-first century CE), combining Judaism and Platonism by using Plato's theory to explicate the Bible, recognizes logos as an image of the invisible God, and human beings as created in the image of the logos (On Dreams 239, The Confusion of Tongues 147). God also acts by his word, for "His word is his deed" (The Sacrifices of Able and Cain 65). The world is itself the product of a plan in the mind of God, consisting of the Platonic Forms (On the Creation 17–19), which are thus conceived of as present in the mind of God. From this model of the world the creator makes first an invisible world, then a visible one (29–36).

Christianity and Neoplatonism

The Gospel according to John begins by affirming the central role of the Logos, or Word: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. … All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. … And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us" (John 1.1, 3, 14). It may be that the Logos of John derives from Jewish rather than Greek conceptions, yet the notion was close enough to Greek philosophical conceptions to allow early Christian thinkers to see in it a point of contact between their scriptures and pagan philosophy. They saw Philo as an inspired writer who shared their vision of the Word of God as an intermediary between God and humans. Jesus of Nazareth was the Word of God, who manifested the power of God on earth and prepared the way for his disciples to become sons of God (1.12).

In the mid-second century Justin Martyr identifies Jesus as the Logos that wise men, including philosophers, partake of. He finds references to the Logos in Plato's Timaeus, and more general instances of divine reason in Heraclitus and the Stoics (First Apology 5, 40; Second Apology 8, 10, 13). He explains that Christians "call Him [Jesus] the Word, because He carries tidings from the Father to men: but maintain that this power is indivisible and inseparable from the Father" (Dialogue with Trypho 128). In the most systematic statement of the early church fathers, Origen (third century), commenting on the opening lines of Hebrews, says that Jesus as Word is the invisible image of the invisible God—apparently apprehensible only by reason—who "interpret[s] the secrets of wisdom, and the mysteries of knowledge, making them known to the rational creation" (On Principles 1.2.6–7).

Plotinus borrowed from the Stoics at least the general conception of logos in a seed to account for the influence Soul has on the visible world. The world "was ordered according to a rational principle [kata logon ] of soul potentially having throughout itself power to impose order according to rational principles [kata logous ], just as the principles in seeds shape and form living creatures like little worlds" (Enneads 4.3.10). This also helps one understand how Mind orders things by comparing its operation to that of a seed with a rational principle; in such a way reason (logos ) flows out from Mind to the world (3.2.2). And one can understand how timeless realities have foresight over the world of change by supposing that events unfold according to an archetype, which is effortlessly realized by the imposition on matter of rational principles (4.4.12). Indeed, Plotinus proclaims in a theodicy, "The origin [of events in the world] is logos and all things are logos," even if they seem to be irrational or evil to our limited view (3.2.15).

In the early fifth century Augustine argued that a word in the heart precedes the articulate word of speech. This inner word is a likeness of the Word of God, by whom God carried out the creation of the world, and which came to be embodied in flesh in a way analogous to that in which the inner word becomes articulated in language. Thus the preverbal cognition that humans have in themselves an image of the Word of God (On the Trinity 15.11.20).

Although in Greek philosophy many different versions of how language, reason, and rational principles connect with the world can be found, what is remarkable is the widespread commitment to some view whereby reason is imbedded in the cosmos. Human reason does not simply impose some extraneous order on the world, but it discovers in nature a structure that mind has in common with the world.

Bibliography

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Boeder, Heribert. "Der fr ühgriechische Wortgebrauch von Logos und Aletheia." Archiv f ür Begriffsgeschichte 4 (1959): 82–112.

Frede, Michael, and Gisela Striker, eds. Rationality in Greek Thought. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996.

Kittel, Gerhard, et al. "Lego." In Theologisches Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament, edited by Gerhard Kittel, vol. 4, 69–140. Stuttgart, Germany: W. Kohlhammer, 1942. Abridged in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament. Translated by Geoffrey W. Bromiley, 505–514. Grand Rapids, MI: W. B. Eerdmans, 1985.

Mourelatos, Alexander P. D. "Heraclitus, Parmenides, and the Naive Metaphysics of Things." In Exegesis and Argument, edited by E. N. Lee, A. P. D. Mourelatos, and R. Rorty. Assen, Netherlands: Van Gorcum, 1973.

Robb, Kevin, ed. Language and Thought in Early Greek Philosophy. La Salle, IL: The Hegeler Institute, 1983.

Daniel W. Graham (2005)

Encyclopedia of Philosophy