Who is Heraclitus and what is his "logos?"
In his great painting "The School of Athens" which hangs in the
Vatican, Raphael portrays the great thinkers and teachers of the
ages talking and listening to one another. His Heraclitus, however,
is a lone thinker staring downward and inward, seated apart from
the other philosophers. According to Eva Brann, Heraclitus looks
"within" "There he finds the Logos, the order that is the cosmos,
the world without, whose mouthpiece and scribe he means to be."
So the "Logos" of Heraclitus is the order of the universe, the
ruling idea which holds all together. Logos, in its multiform
usage, can mean collection, reason, account, argument, and
ratio.
The collected work of Heraclitus comprises 131 passages. Some
scholars consider these fragments or even paraphrases of or
additions to what Heraclitus originally wrote. Rather than focus on
these puzzles of historical scholarship, Eva Brann sets herself the
task to understand the thought of Heraclitus as it is found in the
passages themselves. Read her account to see why she thinks
"Heraclitus was the first Westerner to ponder how thought and world
come to jibe: A Logos that we can hear must be the designer--and
the design--of the world."
Eva Brann has taught at St. John's College in Annapolis for more
than fifty years. She is a 2005 recipient of the National
Humanities Medal. Paul Dry Books has published her books "Homage to
Americans," "Feeling Our Feelings," "Open Secrets / Inward
Prospects," "The Music of the Republic," and "Homeric Moments."
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