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Single Idea 15574

[filed under theme 2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 2. Logos ]

Full Idea

Heidegger concludes that 'logos' essentially means 'making something manifest'.

Gist of Idea

'Logos' really means 'making something manifest'

Source

report of Martin Heidegger (Being and Time [1927], 56/33) by Richard Polt - Heidegger: an introduction 3.§7

Book Ref

Polt,Richard: 'Heidegger: an introduction' [Routledge 2003], p.39


A Reaction

It would at least seem to involve revealing the truth of something, though truth doesn't seem to be central to Heidegger's thought. 'Logos' is often translated as 'an account', as well as a 'reason', so Heidegger may be right.


The 20 ideas with the same theme [broad Greek concept of understanding or giving reasons]:

Logos is common to all, but most people live as if they have a private understanding [Heraclitus]
An account is either a definition or a demonstration [Aristotle]
Human beings, alone of the animals, have logos [Aristotle]
For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle]
The Stoics distinguished spoken logos from logos within the mind [Stoic school, by Plotinus]
Stoics study canons, criteria and definitions, in order to find the truth [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius]
Stoics believed that rational capacity in man (logos) is embodied in the universe [Stoic school, by Long]
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God [John]
Descartes impoverished the classical idea of logos, and it no longer covered human experience [Roochnik on Descartes]
'Logos' really means 'making something manifest' [Heidegger, by Polt]
The logos represents a demand for universal rationality [Hadot]
When logos controls our desires, we have actually become the logos [Foucault]
The logos enables us to track one particular among a network of objects [Nehamas]
A logos may be short, but it contains reference to the whole domain of the object [Nehamas]
'Logos' ranges from thought/reasoning, to words, to rational structures outside thought [Roochnik]
In the seventeenth century the only acceptable form of logos was technical knowledge [Roochnik]
The hallmark of a person with logos is that they give reasons why one opinion is superior to another [Roochnik]
Logos cannot refute the relativist, and so must admit that it too is a matter of desire (for truth and agreement) [Roochnik]
Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle [Roochnik]
Logos is not unconditionally good, but good if there is another person willing to engage with it [Roochnik]