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Single Idea 414

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

Full Idea

Although the universal law (logos) is common to all, the majority live as if they had understanding peculiar to themselves.

Gist of Idea

Logos is common to all, but most people live as if they have a private understanding

Source

Heraclitus (fragments/reports [c.500 BCE], B002), quoted by Sextus Empiricus - Against the Professors (six books) 7.133.4-

Book Ref

'Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers', ed/tr. Freeman,Kathleen [Harvard 1957], p.25

A Reaction

Heraclitus mentions 'logos' in just three fragments - this one, and Idea 15660 and Idea 424.

Related Ideas

Idea 15660 Logos is the source of everything, and my theories separate and explain each nature [Heraclitus]

Idea 424 Reason tells us that all things are one [Heraclitus]

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

414 Logos is common to all, but most people live as if they have a private understanding [Heraclitus]
24047 An account is either a definition or a demonstration [Aristotle]
1570 Human beings, alone of the animals, have logos [Aristotle]
1575 For Aristotle logos is essentially the ability to talk rationally about questions of value [Roochnik on Aristotle]
21810 The Stoics distinguished spoken logos from logos within the mind [Stoic school, by Plotinus]
20775 Stoics study canons, criteria and definitions, in order to find the truth [Stoic school, by Diog. Laertius]
21393 Stoics believed that rational capacity in man (logos) is embodied in the universe [Stoic school, by Long]
6294 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the word was God [John]
1569 Descartes impoverished the classical idea of logos, and it no longer covered human experience [Roochnik on Descartes]
15574 'Logos' really means 'making something manifest' [Heidegger, by Polt]
9197 The logos represents a demand for universal rationality [Hadot]
7420 When logos controls our desires, we have actually become the logos [Foucault]
17950 The logos enables us to track one particular among a network of objects [Nehamas]
17951 A logos may be short, but it contains reference to the whole domain of the object [Nehamas]
1571 'Logos' ranges from thought/reasoning, to words, to rational structures outside thought [Roochnik]
1572 In the seventeenth century the only acceptable form of logos was technical knowledge [Roochnik]
1573 The hallmark of a person with logos is that they give reasons why one opinion is superior to another [Roochnik]
1592 Logos cannot refute the relativist, and so must admit that it too is a matter of desire (for truth and agreement) [Roochnik]
1593 Human desire has an ordered structure, with logos at the pinnacle [Roochnik]
1603 Logos is not unconditionally good, but good if there is another person willing to engage with it [Roochnik]