Logos жк

[Finley Chopin]

Aristotlefirst 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.

The Purdue Online Writing Lab clarifies that logos is the appeal to reason that relies on logic or reason, inductive and deductive reasoning.[4] In the context of Aristotle's Rhetoric, logos is one of the three principles of rhetoric and in that specific use it more closely refers to the structure and content of the text itself.[5]

The Gospel of John identifies the Christian Logos, through which all things are made, as divine (theos),[12] and further identifies Jesus Christ as the incarnate Logos. Early translators of the Greek New Testament, such as Jerome (in the 4th century AD), experienced frustration with the inadequacy of any single Latin word to convey the meaning of the word logos as used to describe Jesus Christ in the Gospel of John. The Vulgate Bible usage of in principio erat verbum was thus constrained to use the (perhaps inadequate) noun verbum for "word"; later Romance language translations had the advantage of nouns such as le Verbe in French. Reformation translators took another approach. Martin Luther rejected Zeitwort (verb) in favor of Wort (word), for instance, although later commentators repeatedly turned to a more dynamic use involving the living word as used by Jerome and Augustine.[13] The term is also used in Sufism, and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung.

This logos holds always but humans always prove unable to ever understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep.

What logos means here is not certain; it may mean "reason" or "explanation" in the sense of an objective cosmic law, or it may signify nothing more than "saying" or "wisdom".[21] Yet, an independent existence of a universal logos was clearly suggested by Heraclitus.[22]

For Aristotle, logos is something more refined than the capacity to make private feelings public: it enables the human being to perform as no other animal can; it makes it possible for him to perceive and make clear to others through reasoned discourse the difference between what is advantageous and what is harmful, between what is just and what is unjust, and between what is good and what is evil.[7]

Of the modes of persuasion furnished by the spoken word there are three kinds.

The first kind depends on the personal character of the speaker;

the second on putting the audience into a certain frame of mind;

the third on the proof, or apparent proof, provided by the words of the speech itself.

The Stoics took all activity to imply a logos or spiritual principle. As the operative principle of the world, the logos was anima mundi to them, a concept which later influenced Philo of Alexandria, although he derived the contents of the term from Plato.[29] In his Introduction to the 1964 edition of Marcus Aurelius' Meditations, the Anglican priest Maxwell Staniforth wrote that "Logos ... had long been one of the leading terms of Stoicism, chosen originally for the purpose of explaining how deity came into relation with the universe".[30]

Public discourse on ancient Greek rhetoric has historically emphasized Aristotle's appeals to logos, pathos, and ethos, while less attention has been directed to Isocrates' teachings about philosophy and logos,[31] and their partnership in generating an ethical, mindful polis. Isocrates does not provide a single definition of logos in his work, but Isocratean logos characteristically focuses on speech, reason, and civic discourse.[31] He was concerned with establishing the "common good" of Athenian citizens, which he believed could be achieved through the pursuit of philosophy and the application of logos.[31]

Plato's Theory of Forms was located within the logos, but the logos also acted on behalf of God in the physical world.[32] In particular, the Angel of the Lord in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) was identified with the logos by Philo, who also said that the logos was God's instrument in the creation of the Universe.[32]

The concept of logos also appears in the Targums (Aramaic translations of the Hebrew Bible dating to the first centuries AD), where the term memra (Aramaic for "word") is often used instead of 'the Lord', especially when referring to a manifestation of God that could be construed as anthropomorphic.[34]

According to the Gnostic scriptures recorded in the Holy Book of the Great Invisible Spirit, the Logos is an emanation of the great spirit that is merged with the spiritual Adam called Adamas.[38][better source needed]

Plotinus used a trinity concept that consisted of "The One", the "Spirit", and "Soul". The comparison with the Christian Trinity is inescapable, but for Plotinus these were not equal and "The One" was at the highest level, with the "Soul" at the lowest.[44] For Plotinus, the relationship between the three elements of his trinity is conducted by the outpouring of logos from the higher principle, and eros (loving) upward from the lower principle.[45] Plotinus relied heavily on the concept of logos, but no explicit references to Christian thought can be found in his works, although there are significant traces of them in his doctrine.[citation needed] Plotinus specifically avoided using the term logos to refer to the second person of his trinity.[46] However, Plotinus influenced Gaius Marius Victorinus, who then influenced Augustine of Hippo.[47] Centuries later, Carl Jung acknowledged the influence of Plotinus in his writings.[48]

Augustine of Hippo, often seen as the father of medieval philosophy, was also greatly influenced by Plato and is famous for his re-interpretation of Aristotle and Plato in the light of early Christian thought.[50] A young Augustine experimented with, but failed to achieve ecstasy using the meditations of Plotinus.[51] In his Confessions, Augustine described logos as the Divine Eternal Word,[52] by which he, in part, was able to motivate the early Christian thought throughout the Hellenized world (of which the Latin speaking West was a part)[53] Augustine's logos had taken body in Christ, the man in whom the logos (i.e. veritas or sapientia) was present as in no other man.[54]

The concept of logos in Sufism is used to relate the "Uncreated" (God) to the "Created" (humanity). In Sufism, for the Deist, no contact between man and God can be possible without the logos. The logos is everywhere and always the same, but its personification is "unique" within each region. Jesus and Muhammad are seen as the personifications of the logos, and this is what enables them to speak in such absolute terms.[57][58]

One of the boldest and most radical attempts to reformulate the neoplatonic concepts into Sufism arose with the philosopher Ibn Arabi, who traveled widely in Spain and North Africa. His concepts were expressed in two major works The Ringstones of Wisdom (Fusus al-Hikam) and The Meccan Illuminations (Al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya). To Ibn Arabi, every prophet corresponds to a reality which he called a logos (Kalimah), as an aspect of the unique divine being. In his view the divine being would have for ever remained hidden, had it not been for the prophets, with logos providing the link between man and divinity.[59]

Ibn Arabi seems to have adopted his version of the logos concept from neoplatonic and Christian sources,[60] although (writing in Arabic rather than Greek) he used more than twenty different terms when discussing it.[61] For Ibn Arabi, the logos or "Universal Man" was a mediating link between individual human beings and the divine essence.[62]

Other Sufi writers also show the influence of the neoplatonic logos.[63] In the 15th century Abd al-Karīm al-Jīlī introduced the Doctrine of Logos and the Perfect Man. For al-Jīlī, the "perfect man" (associated with the logos or the Prophet) has the power to assume different forms at different times and to appear in different guises.[64]

Carl Jung contrasted the critical and rational faculties of logos with emotional, non-reason oriented and mythical elements.[66] In Jung's approach, logos vs eros can be represented as "science vs mysticism", or "reason vs imagination" or "conscious activity vs the unconscious".[67]

Jung attempted to equate logos and eros, his intuitive conceptions of masculine and feminine consciousness, with the alchemical Sol and Luna. Jung commented that in a man the lunar anima and in a woman the solar animus has the greatest influence on consciousness.[69] Jung often proceeded to analyze situations in terms of "paired opposites", e.g. by using the analogy with the eastern yin and yang[70] and was also influenced by the neoplatonists.[71]

In so far as the spirit is also a kind of "window on eternity"... it conveys to the soul a certain influx divinus... and the knowledge of a higher system of the world, wherein consists precisely its supposed animation of the soul.

Author and professor Jeanne Fahnestock describes logos as a "premise". She states that, to find the reason behind a rhetor's backing of a certain position or stance, one must acknowledge the different "premises" that the rhetor applies via his or her chosen diction.[73] The rhetor's success, she argues, will come down to "certain objects of agreement...between arguer and audience". "Logos is logical appeal, and the term logic is derived from it. It is normally used to describe facts and figures that support the speaker's topic."[74] Furthermore, logos is credited with appealing to the audience's sense of logic, with the definition of "logic" being concerned with the thing as it is known.[74]

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