The generally accepted fact is that philosophy arose in ancient Greece in the VI century BC. e.
The term itself is composed of Greek words such as “fileo” (love) and “sophia” (wisdom). So the literal translation is "love of wisdom." Philosophy can be interpreted as a doctrine of the world, about the general laws and principles of being, cognition. It is a kind of spiritual-rationalistic development of reality. In philosophy, the term “logos” plays an important role.
Interpretation of the concept
The ancient Greek term “logos” was first used by the philosopher and politician Heraclitus. He applied it in his teaching as one of the main concepts. The term “logos” in the philosophy of antiquity subsequently becomes very popular and acquires many variations of interpretations.
Most often it is interpreted as “thought” or “meaning” (concept). Also common is the translation of the word (meaningful, meaningful, information about an object or phenomenon). In another way, the logo is in philosophy a word that carries an inseparable thought.
In a different context, this concept had different meanings.
The ambiguity of the concept of "logo"
Numerous interpretations of the term in question are found mainly in Heraclitus, in particular:
- The Logos in philosophy is a universal law to which everything in the world obeys (“the all-governing Logos”).
- It acts as an expression of certainty and constancy, and also establishes a kind of boundary within which all changes and transformations take place. The logo in philosophy is (briefly) a law that makes the world harmonious, orderly and proportionate. That is, all changes take place inside it (provided that this concept is regarded as a measure).
- This term expresses the identity of such opposite concepts as good and evil, day and night, cold and warmth, forms one thing from them: “the whole and the whole, converging and diverging, agreement and disagreement, one thing from all, one thing from all” (The philosophy of Heraclitus - "The Doctrine of the Logos").
- The concept under consideration is not used in relation to individual things. Logos in the philosophy of Heraclitus is a designation of totality.
He expressed to them his idea of the unity, harmony and integrity of the world. Heraclitus identified the concept of "logos" with the Cosmos. The sensual component was generated by the Cosmos that appeared from the fire, and the mental component - by the Logos, due to the fact that the most important thing, which is fixed in worldly life and is reflected in the ideas about the cosmos, is organization and world order, which turns separately existing things into a single whole.
Thus, summing up everything that includes the “doctrine of the Logos” of Heraclitus, we can say that this concept is a law that gives the world substance, systematicity and the possibility of evolution.
Significance of the term in question
Logos in philosophy is just as necessary a concept as the laws of the polis expressing the universality and totality of the mind. It consists of a fundamental ontological content, which denotes the essence of the world order, and it can be comprehended exclusively by mental means, and by no means sensory perception.
The movement from myth to logo is a movement from the totality of an object and a subject, from a fuzzy demarcation of the human “I” and “not I” to a clear understanding of this opposition, as well as the difference between the subject and the image. That is, this movement from perception to contemplation.
From myth to logo
There are a wide variety of concepts for this transition, from an outdated type of worldview to a fundamentally new one. However, the following are distinguished as fundamental:
Mythogenic Theory
The essence of this concept is the assertion that the philosophy of antiquity is a consequence of the ancient Greek mythologists of the second generation, acting as their so-called rationalistic interpretation.
The myth here is seen as an allegory, which hid genuine historical facts, real events, but strongly distorted and misinterpreted. The metaphor bore a generalizing function by which a person through certain signs denoted abstract concepts. Over time, it was necessary to rationalize the myth (translate the existing system of epithets and allegories into the language of categories and concepts).
So, we can say that philosophy is a mythology adapted to the corresponding era.
One of the variants of the concept under consideration is a symbolic theory that interprets myth as a single sensory meaning and image, supported by tradition and ritual.
Gnoseogenic theory
At first glance, you might think that it is a counterbalance to the above. The essence of this concept is the assertion that philosophy has nothing in common with mythology, because it has a different source. Worldview views on the world were formed on the basis of scientific and theoretical knowledge and generalizations of real events. Philosophical thought has evolved through knowledge, fundamentally opposed to fantastic ideas and faith. In this connection, conclusions were drawn that mythology cannot act as the prehistory of philosophy (Volume I, “History of Philosophy”).
Gnoseogenic and mythogenic theory
As the name implies, this concept crosses the first two radical theories. She claims that within the myth there are components of common sense, many years of experience, and beyond it there are elements of science from different fields (medicine, mathematics, etc.), borrowed in the East.
Socioanthropomorphic (historical-psychological) theory
Its representative is a French anthropologist, historian and researcher Jean-Pierre Vernant (“The Origin of Ancient Greek Thought”). He explains the processes of being from the point of view of rationality by projecting them on everyday situations, that is, the transformation of the way of thinking is carried out: all cosmic phenomena began to be understood through routine events, and not pagan actions of the gods.
Thus, at the heart of each concept are two concepts - myth and logo. Philosophy, so to speak, has evolved from the first term to the second. As has already become clear, there are many points of view regarding this transition.
The Doctrine of the Logos of Heraclitus
This is a model not only of ancient Greek materialism in the early period, but also of ancient Greek dialectics.
According to Heraclitus, the logo means that which is characteristic of everything and everyone around, and also by which everything is controlled by everyone. Apparently, this is one of his very first formulations, where the idea of the beginning is intertwined with the barely emerging idea of a total law governing everything.
It contains the possibility of distinguishing between philosophy and physics, as well as isolating activities with regard to the study and description of nature. Of course, at that moment Heraclitus perceived all three elements as one, united by the idea of the beginning.
The philosophical experience of past years proved that it can not be identified with either a single thing, or with any of the existing material elements. And later it was found that the beginning cannot be correlated with matter in general, since almost all subsequent philosophers have asked about the possibility of combining the human essence and the world as a whole, and in a narrower concept - the spirit and body in the representative of the human race. At that time, it was required to find a principle that combines any body (including a human) with an inner content - the soul. Thus, these difficult searches for the universal unity of man and the world acquired, within the framework of philosophy, and the whole culture as a whole, very clear outlines that gradually developed into the global problem of being.
Heraclitus was mainly interested in human thoughts, excitement and passion. Fire (invisible and dynamic) as a starting point was acceptable in the teachings of this philosopher in view of the fact that he was associated with the human soul. So, Heraclitus characterized animate nature. According to his teachings, in the human body, the soul is represented by passions, thoughts, suffering, etc.
The ancient Greek term under Christianity
In the Hellenistic era, the concept of “logos” was attracted by the religious thought of the Mediterranean, which sought to syncretically combine Greek and Eastern traditions.
A significant result of these experiments is the teaching of the outstanding representative of Jewish Hellenism, Philo of Alexandria.
He believed that the logo in philosophy is the internal purpose and mind of God himself in relation to the world. In addition, he was still perceived by Philo as an intermediary between the “first God” - the creator of all things and the “third god” - nature (the creation of the Lord), which was referred to as the “second god”, “high priest”, “only son of God”.
This teaching of Philo greatly influenced Christian theology: it was reflected in the teaching of the Gospel of John about the Logos (“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1: 1)), as well as in the Apocalypse ( 19:13) the name "Word of God" is called Jesus.
In contrast to this concept, in the framework of Hellenistic philosophy (emanation of the Absolute and the transformed form of his stay in the lower worlds), in Christian philosophy, the logo expressed in the Gospel by the second person of the Trinity (Jesus Christ) means, firstly, the Lord's immediate presence in the world, and in secondly, syncretic unity with human nature (“And the Word became flesh,” John. (1:14)).
German transcendentalism regarding the concept under consideration
In the philosophy of modern times, interest in the problems of logos has been replaced by problems of logic. However, within the framework of German transcendentalism, which was distinguished by its interest, concreteness and historicity of spirit, different logic, the relationship between the absolute and the personal, a return to the previously considered philosophy of the logos was found. In particular, Kant had a Christological text that interpreted John's logo from the point of view of its compatibility with the existing principle of reason and its relationship with the problem of the separation of religion and practical reason.
The German philosopher Fichte, on the one hand, emphasizes the consistency of his teaching with the Gospel of John, and on the other hand, contrasts his Christianity (the “eternal” religion of logos and knowledge) with Paul's Christianity, which “distorted” Revelation to a large extent.
For Hegel, the logo in philosophy is a Concept (one of the main elements of its logic). Due to the fact that it, within the framework of the system of this German philosopher, acts as a kind of maximum disclosure of the Absolute as an Idea within and for itself, more precisely, an Idea that has overcome the split between the objective and subjective and has reached the form of freedom. Thus, its further development through natural otherness to the concreteness of the Absolute Spirit can be considered as a super-empirical history of the logos.
The concept under consideration in the framework of Russian religious philosophy
The term “logo” in the form of its current dictionary appears in the XIX – XX centuries. The generality of the topic is set by the Russian thinker V. S. Soloviev, from the point of view of the “Alexandrian” context of the Gospel doctrine that is characteristic of him (“The Philosophical Principles of Whole Knowledge” and “Reading about God-Manhood”).
To various interpretations of the concept of "logos" quite often resorted to the famous philosophers of "unity" (Bulgakov, Karsavin, Florensky, Frank).
The Russian philosopher V.F. Ern puts forward the non-Slavophile ideology of logism, presented in the introduction of the collection “The Struggle for the Logos” (“the logos is a slogan”), which is opposed to the Hellenic-Christian logos of Western rationalism.
The concept under consideration in the philosophy of the XX century
The theme of the logos is given very significant attention from religious philosophers of the neo-Tomist tradition (K. Rahner's concept, where a person is a “listener of the Word”), and representatives of the Protestant “dialectical theology” (Karl Barth).
The problematic of the concept under consideration, especially with regard to the Hellenic heritage, turns out to be significant for hermeneutics (“Truth and Method” by Garamer).
The German philosopher M. Heidegger repeatedly in his recent works returns to attempts to reinterpret the forgotten meaning of the ancient Greek logo - “collecting-revealing” force.
In the framework of poststructuralism, this term is compared with the rationalistic mythology of the West. So, for the Derrida deconstruction method, the main goal is to "neutralize" logocentrism, a synonymous metaphysics.
Modern philosophy regarding this concept
Many philosophers of both the New and Recent times, such as A. Ivakin, M. Heidegger and others, consider the term “logos” as deeply meaningful and ambiguous. It is interpreted as “word”, “thought” (“word, speech, if they are sincere, are the same“ thought ”, but released outward, to freedom”). Also often used is a translation of the term as “meaning” (principle, foundation, concept, reason) of a thing or event.
Some Russian idealistic philosophers use the logo as a designation of a single organic knowledge, which is characterized by the balance of heart and mind, the presence of intuition and analysis (P. A. Florensky, V.F. Ern).