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2. Reason / A. Nature of Reason / 2. Logos

[broad Greek concept of understanding or giving reasons]

20 ideas
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]
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]
The Stoics distinguished spoken logos from logos within the mind [Stoic school, by Plotinus]
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]