There is another term that I liken to metaphysics and that islogos. Or we might think of logos as part metaphysical and part epistemological. Logos was mentioned in the Wikipedia definition on epistemology referenced in the last section. Let’s follow this same defining pattern with the word logos.
1. Logos: Logosis an important term inphilosophy,psychology,rhetoric, andreligion. Originally a word meaning “a ground,” “a plea,” “an opinion,” “an expectation,” “word,” “speech,” “account,” “reason”; it became a technical term in philosophy, beginning withHeraclitus (ca. 535–475 BC), who used the term for a principle of order and knowledge.
Ancient philosophers used the term in different ways. Thesophists used the term to meandiscourse, andAristotle applied the term to refer to “reasoned discourse” or “the argument” in the field of rhetoric. TheStoic philosophers identified the term with thedivine animating principle pervading the Universe.
UnderHellenistic Judaism,Philo (ca. 20 BC–AD 50) adopted the term intoJewish philosophy. TheGospel of John identifies the Logos, through which all things are made, as divine (theos), and further identifiesJesus as theincarnate 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 topost-Christian uses within contemporary philosophy,Sufism, and the analytical psychology ofCarl Jung.
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