Logoi: The Limited Logos.

"Logic is Spirit working upon the world."--Hegel

(∃x)[Lx * (Sx * Wx)]^[1]

I will call λόγοι (logoi) or the plural of λόγος (logos) the limited logos since it is through language--a symbolic universe, or simulacrum--that we connect to being. Heidegger doesn’t always make clear what sense of Logos is being used in a discussion. Our tool of investigation is philosophy, “For philosophy...the object is not present; what is more, philosophy has no object to begin with. It is a process which must at all times achieve being (in its appropriate manifestness) anew”(Introduction to Metaphysics, Heidegger, p.71;referred to as “IM” here on). Philosophy is a permanent critique--a rebellion against appearance at first-- asking the question of Being.

Being is undefined and ambiguous, but “the determinateness with which we understand the indeterminate meaning can be unambiguously delimited, and not after the fact, but as a determinateness which, unbeknownst to us, governs us from out of our very foundations” (IM, p.71). Being reveals itself as un-concealment and appearance in which we also find the possibility of deception, illusion, and error. I will use the Greek word  λόγοι (logoi) , or the plural of λόγος (logos), meaning the limiting of λόγος (logos). The term “logoi” used in this way cannot be found in Heidegger’s writing, but it can assist understanding what he means by the “limited logos.” This is still λόγος understood as a governing paradigm, but rationality as a specific form of logoi that is a cultural pattern, the cultural stock of knowledge, epistemological categorical typifications, ranges of logical possibilities, and reified meanings for interpreting the world for objective content.

Heidegger uses the term logos in two ways: Logos as Being, and as Human Logos, or limited Logos as the humans in Antigone’s poem (lines 368-416). Human beings can apprehend being but in apprehension νοέω (noein “thinking by the subject of the object") and τέχνη (techne) “a knowledge, the ability to plan and organize freely, to master institutions...” does δίκη, (law/order) to φύσις (nature), which is “the realm of being as a whole.” The violence is by thought dividing the whole of being into many parts. “But in thinking we not only place something before ourselves, we not only dismember it for the sake of dismembering, but, reflecting, we pursue the thing represented"(IM, p.100).

The logoi are the interpretive concepts of the excluded, included, valid, invalid, logical, irrational, scripts, frames, truth, falsity, requirements, prohibitions, rules, algorithms, violations, objects, entities, conditions, situations, states, non-states, relations, meaning, meaninglessness, usage, mistakes, expressions, kinships, social arrangement, institutions, history, knowledge, sense, nonsense, context, boundaries, parameters, appearance, real, illusion, reification, and the symbolic.

The logoi is a systematic attempt by thought to make sense of human existence in the world. Culture is logocentric (forming around cultural symbols of meaning). This systemization of experience is expressed as symbolization of life to embody the world, and our apprehension of the world. Symbolization is a strategy for living in a world because it relates everything into a larger context—a cultural context to provide meaning. Symbolization is powerful and over time the whole of life becomes dissected into unrelated moments in experience and the possibility of new experiences is blunted. Life is no longer lived in the moment, but in disconnect paradigmatic micro-worlds. Experience is delimited and censored by uncritical predetermined cultural concepts and notions. When Life and the world of cultural symbols diverge, society loses its power to give meaning to experience. Life becomes ἄλογος, not rational, or irrational.

Heidegger accepts Husserl’s view that all appearance is intentional and from this intentionality all objectivity is given pre-shaped meaning. This creates an ontological (ontos) structuring to the world of entities, or essents, “a fundamental characteristic of the essent is to τέλος which means not aim, or purpose, but end...End is ending in the sense of fulfillment. Limit and end are that wherewith the essent begins to be”(IM, p.50).

All forms of human logoi are distortions of being that give meaning to life. They embody meaning shared by members in a culture and are intersubjective—shared by all as the meaning, or definition of reality. It is an intersubjective reality. Intersubjectivity is characteristic of intentionality.

Heidegger is saying that reducing meaningful thinking to logic has damaged our understanding between being and thought, “Logic relieves us of the need for any troublesome inquiry into the essence of thinking” (IM, p.101). The question of being is τὰ μετὰ τὰ φυσικά: "after"(meta) the φύσις, or "physics" (Nature)--or meta-physics. For Heidegger logic is metaphysics and is itself an object for examination. Heidegger agrees with Wittgenstein about logic and intellectualism (what we have called scientism rooted in logical positivism). Logic arises with the division between being and thought:

“To surpass the traditional logic does not mean elimination of thought and the domination of sheer feeling; it means more radical, stricter thinking, a thinking that is part and parcel of being”(IM,p.103). 

Heidegger’s call is for authentic thinking that goes beyond mere appearance and entities, “If one is to ask the question of being radically, one must understand the task of unfolding the truth of the essence of being; one must come to a decision regarding the powers hidden in these distinctions in order to restore them to their own truth”(IM, p. 50). Some are αχγηετοι,uncomprehending, but the logoi is intersubjective so there is correspondence and mediation between Humans and Being (Logos).

[1] Here are the definitions of symbols for the categorical proposition:
(∃x) = "there exists one x."
* = and
x = constant
L = logic
S = Spirit
W = "working on the world."

Collections of Heidegger’s works in English Translation:

Basic Writings, Edited by David Farrell Krell. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.
Contains the Introduction to Being and Time and nine key essays: “What is Metaphysics?,” “On the Essence of Truth,” “The Origin of the Work of Art,” “Letter on Humanism,” “Modern Science, Metaphysics, and Mathematics,” “The Question Concerning Technology,” “Building Dwelling Thinking,” “What Calls for Thinking?,” and “The End of Philosophy and the Task of Thinking.”

Poetry, Language, Thought. Translated by Albert Hofstadter. New York: Harper & Row, 1971.
Contains “The Thinker as Poet” (a few of Heidegger’s attempts at poetry), and the essays “The Origin of the Work of Art,” “What are Poets For?,” “Building Dwelling Thinking,” “The Thing,” “Language,” and “. . . Poetically Man Dwells . . .”

The Question Concerning Technology and Other Essays. Translated by William Lovitt. New York: Harper & Row, 1977.

Contains “The Question Concerning Technology,” “The Turning,” “The Word of Nietzsche: ‘God is Dead,’” “The Age of the World Picture,” and “Science and Reflection.”