Meaning and explanation of logos. The thought of the sophists and the logos in the philosophy of Heraclitus of Ephesus
LOGOS IN PHILOSOPHY
At the origins of philosophy , everything was still to be experimented, every idea was continually changed and improved, as the very definition of philosophy admits, every type of reality that the philosopher found himself in front of was analyzed and problematized. The greatest problem of the ancient philosophers was to find that principle capable of keeping all things true and united, that is, to identify their true nature and associate it with a principle: the “ archè” , that is, the law that supports everything, from which everything derives and to which everything returns.
The first philosophers introduced the “ logos ”, that is, reason as the substance or cause of the world; they had a unitary vision of reality as a principle that serves to undertake it; theirs was a monist position.
The concept of logos appears for the first time in a fragment of Heraclitus of Ephesus , in which it takes on a triple meaning that is not comprehensible at first reading: “ Men have no understanding of this logos which is always, either before having heard it or immediately after having heard it; for although all things happen according to the same logos, they are like unskilled people, even though they prove themselves in words and deeds such as are those which I explain, distinguishing each thing according to its nature and saying how it is. But to other men what they do while awake remains hidden, just as they are not aware of what they do while asleep.
LOGOS: MEANING
What is the meaning of logos that emerges from this fragment? The interpretation is that of the triple meaning: ontological, linguistic and epistemological.
- Logos, in the ontological sense , is defined in relation to the being of things, the reason that explains and questions the nature of the various realities that form the world.
- In a linguistic sense, logos is defined as the expression of the contents of thought with which we question ourselves about things, about the manifestation of our way of knowing the order of things within reality.
- In the epistemological sense, logos identifies it as connected to our knowledge and expression to others of the reality and truth that we have known.
That said, Heraclitus admits his reason on the logos expressing in the definition also its uniqueness, in fact, says Heraclitus, it was expressed by a person as reason in search of order and truth on things; the same reason must be true and equal for all. The philosopher names things as if they imposed themselves within the discourse, being unique the truth of the things that form reality, their manifestation is only one for each of those who question themselves on the reality of the logos.
The problem at that time, however, was precisely that of questioning reality, the philosopher had to be the one who, faced with reality, was able to explore all the places that it touched until arriving at the definitive reality, at the final manifestation, at the logos.
The wise men, however, although the logos was common, lived as if they had their own private wisdom, that of myth. Not following this, the logos, however, creates in turn, a multiple nature of myths or groups of people, opposed to each other, which establish a tradition of tests on dialectics and rhetoric between the various groups to prove the more or less adequacy of the truth discussed.
The logos and the order of everything are therefore an everlasting reality, a word that can be heard by everyone, many hear it and do not know how to listen to it, therefore they do not understand it. They do not understand that the elimination of the struggles on the meaning and the right truth of life, would make the idea of the logos comprehensible to everyone, leaving alive however the contrasts on how to arrive at the ultimate truth, questioning oneself to arrive at the logos .
THE LOGOS AND THE STOICS
In this definition of unique matter and substance that governs everything, the philosophers who followed “ Stoicism ” also placed their idea of logos : a philosophical movement founded around 300 BC in Athens by Zeno of Citium. The Stoic philosophers saw in reason the principle that can contribute to creating the world, that animates and orders matter; it is eternal and through matter it is capable of governing everything.
The logos is eternal and identifiable with the destiny of every man, as it is capable, through matter, of governing everything that forms the reality of our life. It is the origin of what happens and therefore also the order of events that characterize the existence of each person. According to the Stoics, the logos is the principle but, unlike Heraclitus, they were convinced that it had nothing to do with thought and the vision of things through knowledge; they interpreted it as a power capable of reuniting, creating and supporting matter (archè). A power that does not know but acts, like a generative soul founded in everything; it is the same divine intellect as creator and organizer of the world, as long as the intellect is present and unique in all men.
God: revelation and incarnation of the logos . Philo of Alexandria exposed his idea by stating that the logos is an intermediate entity between God and the world, the intermediary of divine creation, the shadow of God is the logos using which as an instrument, he created the world. As God is the model of the logos, then the logos is the model of the other things that create reality.
The Stoic philosophers placed as a central idea of their doctrine the living always following the logos, therefore the divine principle enters into the whole universe. If everything is visited by the logos, or better by the divine spirit, then all events and all things that happen are linked to each other. In particular, there is no case for the Stoics, everything is governed by the logos.
The universe is seen by the Stoics as an ordered cosmos, the cosmos or chaos is governed by the logos or order. A universe in which events follow one another during periods in which birth and death, order and destruction alternate. In other words, the eternity of the logos, and therefore of true reality, includes in itself the alternation of things.
We can thus connect the idea of a logos as a reality that includes, on the idea of the Stoics, the alternation of things to a logos seen as a unity of opposites or a struggle between opposites, by Heraclitus. Heraclitus reflects very explicitly on the unity of opposites, creating a sort of circular effect, connecting the various natures of opposites to the fact that they, in their continuous becoming, become one with the logos.
“ All things are one ,” says Heraclitus: however different and opposite they may be, they are identical when gathered into a unity. This continuous becoming of reality, which expresses the transformation of each thing into its opposite, does nothing but bring different realities together and create a continuous completion of the meaning of a reality with its complement. Thus, it gives life to a ring that, however slow it may be in creating itself, makes each pair of opposite realities a homologous unity of meaning, equal to the logos in eternity and truth that governs the changing of things.
The becoming of things has a particular importance for Heraclitus, because in the logos it is what unites opposites: peace is born from war, war from peace, cold things heat up and hot things cool down. In becoming, everything becomes its opposite and in this lies the harmony that creates the logos, in which God consists as the original unity of opposites; the only law that can never change is the concept that care for truth is the fundamental law that must guide man throughout his life.
Following Heraclitus is the period of the sophists in which these powerful masters of the art of properties and use of language manage to break the concept of logos into each of the meanings attributed to it. Dividing it mainly into two distinct traits ( physis and nomos ), they affirm that it is not the same and unique, for everyone and at every moment, but the search and maneuver of the truth that is attributed to it changes according to the reality in which one finds oneself. The ability to use a language to decide and persuade man in seeking a different truth for each question according to the situation in which one may find oneself, destroys everything that Heraclitus, and those like him who believed in the uniqueness of the logos, build over time.
LOGOS: ARISTOTLE AND PLATO
That of the sophists , however, is not an eternal reality. When figures such as Socrates and then Plato take to the streets to give their teachings , the theory of the uniqueness of the logos will be reaffirmed, using ideas and arguments that are also new compared to the first philosophical age.
