Concept
Logos
Overview
Logos (UK: , US: ; Ancient Greek: λόγος, romanized: lógos, lit. 'word, discourse, or reason') is a term used in Western philosophy, psychology and rhetoric, as well as religion (notably Christianity), that most broadly means reason, logic, order, or understanding. Among its connotations is that of a rational form of discourse that relies on inductive and deductive reasoning.
Aristotle first systematized the usage of the word, making it one of the three principles of rhetoric alongside ethos and pathos. This original use identifies the word closely to the structure and content of language or text. Both Plato and Aristotle used the term logos (along with rhema) to refer to sentences and propositions.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
And the reasoning (speaking) soul, if it engages itself upon the sciences, its activity is called mind or intellect, and it is accordingly called speculative or theoretical mind: which I have already described. And if it engages itself upon overcoming blameworthy powers, that entice unto wrongdoing through their excess, unto folly through their abandonment, unto impetuosity through their agitation, unto cowardice…
Avicenna, A Compendium on the Soul
States what Logos is; the author is tied to Logos in the knowledge graph.
The nature is not formed from without as men make a table; this is also made with understanding, but through an understanding outside of this wood. This external form, which is called the understanding, immediately occurs to us in speaking of the understanding; but here the universal is meant, that which is the immanent nature of the object itself. The _νοῦς_ is thus not a thinking existence from without which…
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Hegel's Lectures on the History of Philosophy
States what Logos is; the author is tied to Logos in the knowledge graph.
14, AA. 4, 5). Whereas to "speak" means chiefly the habitude to the word conceived; for "to speak" is nothing but to utter a word. But by means of the word it imports a habitude to the thing understood which in the word uttered is manifested to the one who understands. Thus, only the Person who utters the Word is "speaker" in God, although each Person understands and is understood, and consequently is spoken by the…
Aquinas Thomas, Summa Theologica, Part I
States what Logos is.
Philosophers who discussed Logos
- Carneades
- John Scotus Eriugena
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
- Heraclitus
- Cleanthes
- Seyyed Hossein Nasr
- Max Horkheimer
- Ibn Arabi
- Meister Eckhart
- Philo
- Antiochus of Ascalon
- Numenius of Apamea
- Thales of Miletus
- Aristotle
- Zeno of Citium
- Chrysippus
- Plotinus
- Richard McKeon
- Nikos Kazantzakis
- Ernst Cassirer
- Frithjof Schuon
- Iamblichus
- Hippolytus of Rome
- Vladimir Lossky
Related ideas
- Jesus
- God in Christianity
- Monad (Gnosticism)
- Frederick Copleston
- Hellenistic Judaism
- Avicenna
- Gnosticism
- Gospel of John
- Polis
- Hebrew language
- Pyrrhonism
- Classical Athens
- Western philosophy
- Heraclitus
- Meditations
- Word
- Jerome
- Islamic philosophy
- Jewish philosophy
- Isocrates
- Rhetoric (Aristotle)
- Ancient Greek philosophy
- Al-Farabi
- Language
Place in the tradition
Part of American philosophy.