Logos

(B) The Concept of Logos

Heidegger begins with the Greek sense of Logos. He discusses four senses of the term -- which in turn leads to an explanation of the traditional translation of Logos in the threefold sense of ratio (reason, ground and relation)

I want to discuss the four senses of logos that Heidegger discusses and how they relate back to the primary sense.

(1) The basic sense of Logos is Rede

Now, we can translate this as discourse if we constantly keep in mind the formal structure involved: to make manifest what one is talking about, that is to say, logos is a kind of making manifest.

This is seen more precisely in the Aristotelian sense of apophainesthai: "to let something be seen."

Logos has the character of letting what is talked about become manifest from the very matters talked about.

Notice that in this formal, primary sense we have more a kind of seeing involved (e.g., Sehenlassen) than a kind of 'hearing' (thus silence can be a mode of Rede, a way of 'making manifest').

Logos , in its primary sense, denotes a kind of making manifest, a letting something be seen from that which is at issue, that which the discourse is about.

(2) Logos as language (Sprache)

Now when Logos as Rede is 'brought to voice', is expressed phonetically, it becomes language in the sense of a 'vocal pronunciation in words'.

Note that this single description involves a derivation from the more fundamental sense of Logos as a 'making manifest.'

(3) Logos as synthesis

Because Logos has the fundamental meaning of a 'making manifest', of a 'letting something be seen', that is to say, because Logos involves what the Greeks called "synthesis" -- it can have the structural form of synthesis.

(a) not in the sense of a 'tying together' of discreet sense data i.e. a binding together of representations (ex. the perceptual 'synthesis' involved in walking around a table) [this involves a mental (psychical) manipulation which itself is questionable] but rather,

(b) in the "apophantical" sense of letting something be seen in its togetherness with something (as when we say 'the table is in the corner of the room': "synthesizing" 'the table' with 'the corner' or 'the picture on the wall is crooked.' Here we let the table be seen in its togetherness with the corner -- this is the sense of the "synthesis."

Synthesis 'makes something manifest' in its togetherness.

(4) Logos as Being-true or Being-false

Truth, as Heidegger will try to understand it in Sec. 44, has its primordial meaning in the Greek sense of aletheia i.e., uncoveredness or unconcealment.

With this in mind, he writes: the 'Being-true' of Logos means that in Logos as making manifest the beings (Seiende) of which one is talking are somehow taken out of hiddeness. They are let seen as unhidden i.e., they are uncovered.

Thus the being-true of Logos involves the notion of uncoveredness and from this it follows that being-false involves some kind of covering up or concealment.

Note that the primordial 'locus' of truth will be, for Heidegger, in the notion of alhqeia (uncoveredness) and not in the sense of Logos as 'letting something be seen.'

Only through a modification in this structure can it come about that 'truth' will have its 'locus' in a kind Logos.

Such a modification comes about when Logos acquires a synthesis structure and becomes spoken about in terms of judgment (Urteil).

Then and only then will we have truth or falsity spoken about in terms of judgments and statements. As when the 'synthesis' of 'table' and 'corner' become expressed in the statement (logos) 'the table is in the corner of the room' If the table is there, the statement (logos) 'is true', if not, the statement 'is false.'

For Heidegger, this whole attempt to locate truth in judgment misses the primordial sense of both Logos and aletheia (We will see precisely how this is so in Section 44)

Summing up--the discussion of Logos indicates, in a preliminary way, the primary sense of the term for Heidegger--Logos means: a letting something be seen (Schenlassen), a 'kind of making manifest.'

Return to HomePage