Logos (pronounced /ˈloʊɡɒs/, /ˈlɒɡɒs/ (UK), or /ˈloʊɡoʊs/ (US); Greek λόγος logos) is an important term in philosophy, psychology, rhetoric and religion. Originally a word meaning "word," "speech," "account," or "reason,"[1][2] it became a technical term in philosophy, beginning with Heraclitus (ca. 535–475 BC), who used the term for the principle of order and knowledge.[3]
Ancient philosophers used the term in different ways however. The sophists used the term to mean discourse, and Aristotle applied the term to "reasoned discourse"[4] in the field of rhetoric. The Stoic philosophers identified the term with the divine animating principle pervading the Universe.
After Judaism came under Hellenistic influence, Philo (ca. 20 BC–AD 40) adopted the term into Jewish philosophy.[5] The Gospel of John identifies the Logos, through which all things are made, as divine (theos),[6] and further identifies Jesus as the incarnation of the Logos.
Although the term "Logos" is widely used in this Christian sense, in academic circles it often refers to the various ancient Greek uses, or to post-Christian uses within contemporary philosophy, Sufism, and the analytical psychology of Carl Jung.
Etymology and linguistic issues
In ordinary, non-technical Greek, logos had a semantic field extending beyond "word" to notions such as, on the one hand, language, talk, statement, speech, conversation, tale, story, prose, proposition, and principle; and on the other hand, thought, reason, account, consideration, esteem, due relation, proportion, and analogy.[1]
Despite the conventional translation as "word", it is not used for a word in the grammatical sense; instead, the term lexis (λέξις) was used.[7] However, both logos and lexis derive from the same verb legō (λέγω), meaning "to count, tell, say, speak".[1][7]
The Greeks distinguished between logos prophorikos (the uttered word) and the logos endiathetos (the word remaining within).[8] The Stoics also spoke of the logos spermatikos (the generative principle of the Universe), which is not important in the Biblical tradition, but is relevant in Neoplatonism.[9] Early translators from Greek, like Jerome in the 4th century, were frustrated by the inadequacy of any single Latin word to convey the Logos expressed in the Gospel of John. The Vulgate Bible usage of in principium erat verbum was thus constrained to use the perhaps inadequate noun verbum for word, but later romance languagetranslations had the advantage of nouns such as le mot in French. Reformation translators took another approach. Martin Luther rejected Zeitword (verb) in favor of Wort (word), for instance, although later commentators repeatedly turned to a more dynamic use involving the living word as felt by Jerome and Augustine.[10]
In English, logos is the root of "logic," and of the "-logy" suffix (e.g., geology).[11]
