Stoic Logos, Heraclitus, Dialogue, & Pursuing Truth

Logos is a very abstract and difficult idea to understand. It’s present in many ancient philosophies as well as Christianity. One of the confusing aspects is the fact that the definition changes to some degree depending on which philosophy you are talking about. Despite its complexity (or perhaps because of it), I think an understanding of what Logos is is crucial for the practicing of Stoicism, as it is the spirit of the entire philosophy. So what is Logos, and why should we trust in it?

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The History of Logos

The word Logos dates back to classical Greece. It translates to something like “word, thought, principle, or speech”. I’ll get into this more later, but I think that this translation is perhaps the simplest way of understanding the concept.

Broadly speaking, there are two main ideas associated with Logos. One is the very Stoic-like one – dealing with human rationality and reason which seeks a harmonic existence and an understanding of the universe (or Cosmos). The second one is also very Stoic-like – dealing with a universal intelligence. Perhaps we could call this second one “god” or, at the very least, “the Divine”.

Heraclitus was the first to speak about it in terms of the second idea, the “Divine” Logos. For those who don’t know, Heraclitus was pre-Socratic, meaning he was before the age of Socrates. Socrates was such an influential philosopher that the term “pre-Socratic” exists. That’s quite the compliment, there Soc.

Anyways, the point is that Heraclitus was around before Socrates and also the Stoics. Hence, he wasn’t by definition a Stoic – Zeno wouldn’t find Stoicism until a couple of hundred years later – but he was incredibly influential to Stoic philosophy. And as I always say, we really have no idea how old some of these philosophical ideas are so it’s an odd thing to call them “Christian” or “Stoic” or “Buddhist” or anything really.