Logos: Encyclopedia II - Logos - Use in ancient philosophy

Logos - Use in ancient philosophy

In ancient philosophy, Logos was used by Heraclitus, one of the more eminent Pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, to describe human knowledge and the inherent order in The Absolute universe, a background to the essential change which characterizes day-to-day life. Logos as the inherent rationality of the universe is also something of a precursor to the concept of the collective unconscious, described by Carl Jung, as these two fragments from Heraclitus suggest:

One must follow what is common; but, even though the Logos is common, most people live as though they possessed their own private wisdom. (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)

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. 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, which further influenced how this word was understood later on (in 20th century psychology, for instance).

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Use in ancient philosophy", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki