I largely agree, but I wonder about this:
This doesn't seem to correspond to how Heraclitus understood logos:Most cultures believed that there were two recognized ways of arriving at truth. The Greeks called them mythos and logos. Both were essential and neither was superior to the other; they were not in conflict but complementary, each with its own sphere of competence. Logos ("reason") was the pragmatic mode of thought that enabled us to function effectively in the world and had, therefore, to correspond accurately to external reality. But it could not assuage human grief or find ultimate meaning in life's struggle. For that people turned to mythos ...
This Logos holds always but humans always prove unable to understand it, both before hearing it and when they have first heard it. For though all things come to be in accordance with this Logos, humans are like the inexperienced when they experience such words and deeds as I set out, distinguishing each in accordance with its nature and saying how it is. But other people fail to notice what they do when awake, just as they forget what they do while asleep.
It's my understanding that "logos" is one of those words that means many, many different things in different places at different times.
ReplyDeleteTrue, and such may be said of many words. Words live and, living, change. But: Heraclitus wasn't using it any old sense, and he wasn't using it in the sense in which Karen Armstrong is using it. Heraclitus was born in the sixth century B.C., which is when Chinese tradition says Lao-tse flourished (of course, many scholars argue that he was a mythical figure, but even if that is so, there must be some basis for the myth). At any rate, that the concepts of logos and tao are contemporaneous is worth considering.
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