Logos
The
Greek word λόγος or
logos is a word with various meanings. It is often translated into
English as "
Word" but can also mean thought, speech,
reason,
proportion, principle, standard, or
logic, among other things. It has varied use in the fields of
philosophy,
analytical psychology,
rhetoric and
religion.
In
ancient philosophy,
Logos was used by
Heraclitus, one of the most eminent
Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, to describe the inherent order in the
universe. Logos means the underlying order of reality of which ordinary people are only unconsciously aware. It is the "Way things are", the totality of the "laws of nature" in the modern sense, and, as such, it is always universal (
xunos, the common): universal across cultures, though understood differently in each culture via the parochialism of people's expression of, and behavior according to, it -- only if peoples can recognize this.:
One must follow what is common; but, even though the Logos is common, most people live as though they possessed their own understanding of it. (Fr.2) The common is what is open to all, what can be seen and heard by all. To see is to let in with open eyes what is open to view, i.e. what is lit up and revealed to all. The dead (the completely private ones) neither see nor hear; they are closed. No light (fire) shines in them; no speech sounds in them. And yet, even they participate in the cosmos. The extinguished ones also belong to the continuum of lighting and extinguishing that is the common cosmos. The dead touch upon the living sleeping, who in turn touch upon the living waking. (Fr. 26)
Heraclitus also used Logos to mean the undifferentiated material substrate from which all things came: "Listening not to me but to the Logos it is wise to agree that all [things] are
one." In this sense Logos is Heraclitus' answer to the Pre-Socratic question of what the
arche is of all things. Logos therefore designates both the material substrate itself and the universal, mechanical, "just" Way in which this substrate manifests itself in and as individual things; that is, it subsumes within itself the later Platonic distinction (in
Timaeus) between "form" and "matter".
By the time of
Socrates,
Plato, and
Aristotle,
logos was the term used to describe the faculty of human
reason and the knowledge men had of the world and of each other. Plato allowed his characters to engage in the conceit of describing
logos as a living being in some of his dialogues. The development of the
Academy with
hypomnemata brought
logos closer to the literal
text. Aristotle, who studied under Plato and who was much more of a practical thinker, first developed the concept of
logic as a depiction of the rules of human rationality.
The
Stoics understood Logos as the animating power of the universe, (as it is also presently understood today in
Theosophical terms and by the
Rosicrucians in their
conception of the cosmos) which further influenced how this word was understood later on (in
20th century psychology, for instance).
In
rhetoric,
logos is one of the three
modes of persuasion (the other two are
pathos, emotional appeal; and
ethos, the qualification of the speaker). Logos refers to logical appeal, and in fact the term
logic evolves from it. Logos normally implies numbers, polls, and other mathematical or scientific data.
Logos has many advantages:
*Data are hard to manipulate, meaning that it is harder to argue against a logos argument.
*For the same reason, it may sway cynical listeners to the speaker's opinion.
*Logos enhances ethos by making the speaker look prepared and knowledgeable to the audience.
Logos also has many disadvantages:
*Numbers may not be obvious to many listeners, so the argument may pass unheeded.
*Logos asks the question, "But why should I care?" because they are not as involving as emotional appeal.
*Logos can be downright confusing in some instances.
The best way to present an argument is to combine logos with the other forms of appeal.
In
Christianity, the
prologue of the
Gospel of John calls
Jesus "the Logos" (usually
translated as "the Word" in English bibles such as the
KJV) and played a central role in establishing the
doctrine of Jesus'
divinity and the
Trinity. (See
Christology.) The opening verse in the KJV reads: "In the beginning was the Word [
Logos], and the Word [
Logos] was with God, and the Word [
Logos] was God."
Some
scholars of the
Bible have suggested that John made creative use of double meaning in the word "Logos" to communicate to both
Jews, who were familiar with the
Wisdom tradition in
Judaism, and
Hellenists, especially followers of
Philo. Each of these two groups had its own history associated with the concept of the Logos, and each could understand John's use of the term from one or both of those contexts. Especially for the Hellenists, however, John turns the concept of the Logos on its head when he claimed "the
Logos became flesh and dwelt among us" (v. 14). Similarly, some translations of the Gospel of John into
Chinese have used the word "
Tao (道)" to translate the "Logos" in a provocative way.
Gordon Clark famously translated
Logos as "Logic" in the opening verses of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the Logic, and the Logic was with God and the Logic was God." He meant to imply by this translation that the
laws of logic were contained in the Bible itself and were therefore not a
secular principle imposed on the Christian
worldview.
On
April 1,
2005, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (who would later become
Pope Benedict XVI) referred to the Christian religion as the religion of the
Logos:
"From the beginning, Christianity has understood itself as the religion of the Logos, as the religion according to reason. ... It has always defined men, all men without distinction, as creatures and images of God, proclaiming for them ... the same dignity. In this connection, the Enlightenment is of Christian origin and it is no accident that it was born precisely and exclusively in the realm of the Christian faith. ... It was and is the merit of the Enlightenment to have again proposed these original values of Christianity and of having given back to reason its own voice ... Today, this should be precisely [Christianity's] philosophical strength, in so far as the problem is whether the world comes from the irrational, and reason is not other than a 'sub-product', on occasion even harmful of its development — or whether the world comes from reason, and is, as a consequence, its criterion and goal. ... In the so necessary dialogue between secularists and Catholics, we Christians must be very careful to remain faithful to this fundamental line: to live a faith that comes from the Logos, from creative reason, and that, because of this, is also open to all that is truly rational." [1]
Within
Eastern religions there are ideas with varying degrees of similarity to the philosophical and Christian uses. Five concepts with some parallels to
Logos are
Tao, the Vedic notion of ita, the Buddhist conception of
dharma,
Aum (from
Hindu cosmology), and the Egyptian Maat. However, it would be a mistake to confuse these as cognates. Rather, these are similar in that they are all iconic terms of various cultures that have had long-term effects upon that culture's collective consciousness.
In
New Age mysticism, the
Odic force is sometimes described as "the physical manifestation of the creative Logos."
In ancient
Egyptian mythology,
Hu was the deification of the word spoken to create existence.
Maàt was the concept, and goddess, of divine order.
In
Surat Shabda Yoga, Shabda is considered to be analogous to the Logos as representative of the supreme being in Christianity.
*
Rhema*
Spirituality*
Nous*
Parmenides*
Gnosticism*
Sophia*
The entry for "logos" in the standard work
A Greek-English Lexicon by Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, and H. Stuart Jones
* D. A. Carson (1991).
The Gospel According to John. ISBN 085111749X
* Leon Morris (1995).
The Gospel According to John (New International Commentary on the New Testament). ISBN 0802825044
*
The Apologist's Bible Commentary* John Robbins (1993).
"An Introduction to Gordon H. Clark" in
The Trinity Review, July/August 1993.
* Chris Leads (1990).
Word Type in Ancient Formats. ISBN 08009382172
