Logos

“From universal mind (logos), man’s mind (logos) can reason (logos) to bring forth speech (logos).”[1] “For as long as rhetoric has been a formal object of study, logos has been one of its central terms.”[2] To say that logos has dual connotations would be an extreme understatement because it has so many usages. In its most basic form, logos means speech both as verbalization and the act we teach; other usages include reason, mind and “creatrix of culture and human society”.[3] Considering that the “double meaning of the verbal form ‘legein,’ means both to say, to speak, and to lay in the sense of bringing things to lie together,”[4] it makes complete sense that the sophists employed the method of dissoi logoi. Logos was a foundational aspect of Isocrates’ paideia, which he refers to as hē tōn logōn paideia, culture of discourse.[5] This makes sense because for Isocrates logos was both a maker and a guide.[6] “The word logos and its derivatives have long had a suggestion of divinity about them. For the ancient Greeks, it was often an expression for ‘universal mind’; and it retains something of this sense in Plato. Man could know because he was identified with the substance of God, that is, the universal mind.”[7] Through this philosophic foundation, the Christian theology of Christ as Logos flourished.[8] Essentially, logos leads to the Logos. “In this sense the Fathers did not associate Christianity primarily with the realm of religion and did not regard it as one of many religions; rather they associated it with the process of reasoning and discernment.... There is no way of approaching the uniqueness of the Christian faith and of its specific position in the intellectual history of humanity if one skips over this fact. Reason is critical of religion in its search for the truth; yet at its very origins, Christianity sides with reason and considers this ally to be its principal forerunner."[9]
Logos is still a central aspect of rhetorical studies. Specifically, reason is central to postmodernism in its abandonment of reason in favor of “plurality of values and techniques.”[10] Kenneth Burke wrote a book that develops the study of logology, which is primarily concerned with words about the Word.[11] In our studies of rhetoric, we should be mindful of the divine dimension of logos related to key concepts within our whole discipline i.e., speech, discourse, dissoi logoi, and reason.

Works Cited
Burke, Kenneth. The Rhetoric of Religion: Studies in Logology. Berkeley: University of California Press. 1970.
Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Ed. Thomas O. Sloane. New York: Oxford University Press,2001.
Isocrates I. David C. Mirhady & Yun Lee Too, Trans. Austin: U of Texas P, 2000.
Jaeger, Werner. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. 3 vols. Trans. Gilbert Highet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971.
Oxford English Dictionary
Poulakos, Takis. Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates’ Rhetorical Education. Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina Press, 1997.
Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. On the Way to Jesus Christ. Trans. Miller, Michael J. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004.
Sallis, John. Being and Logos: The Way of Platonic Dialogue. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1975.
Scott, Robert L. “On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic.” Central States Speech Journal.(February,1967): 9-17.

[1] Scott, Robert L. “On Viewing Rhetoric as Epistemic.” Central States Speech Journal.(February, 1967): 14.
[2]“Logos.” Encyclopedia of Rhetoric. Ed. Thomas O. Sloane. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.
[3] Jaeger, Werner. Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. 3 vols. Trans. Gilbert Highet. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971, p. 90.
[4]Sallis, John. Being and Logos: The Way of Platonic Dialogue. Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1975, p. 7.
[5]Isocrates I. David C. Mirhady & Yun Lee Too, Trans. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2000, p. 239.
[6]Poulakos, Takis. Speaking for the Polis: Isocrates’ Rhetorical Education. Columbia, S.C.:University of South Carolina Press, 1997, p 10.
[7]Scott, 14.
[8]“The Church Fathers found the seeds of the Word, not in the religions of the world, but rather in philosophy, that is, in the process of critical reason directed against the [pagan] religions,the history of progressive reason, and not in the history of religion. The fathers saw therein the real pre-history of Christianity—in those speculations whereby man broke through customs and traditions to arrive at the Logos, that is, to an understanding of the world and of the divine through the power of reason” (Ratzinger, 72-73).
[9]Ratzinger, Joseph Cardinal. On the Way to Jesus Christ. Trans. Miller, Michael J. San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004, p. 73.
[10]“Postmodernism.” Oxford English Dictionary.
[11]Interestingly, Burke argues that words referring to the supernatural are adapted from words that reference natural phenomena and then sometimes become resecularized. He begins his book arguing: “‘Words’ in the first sense have a wholly naturalistic, empirical reference. But they may be used analogically, to designate a further dimension, the ‘supernatural.’ Whether or not there is a realm of the ‘supernatural,’ there are words for it. And in this state of linguistic affairs there is a paradox. For whereas the words for the ‘supernatural’ realm are necessarily borrowed from the realm of our everyday experiences, out of which familiarity with language arises, once a terminology has been developed for specific theological purposes the order can become reversed. We can borrow back the terms from the borrower, again secularizing to varying degrees the originally secular terms that had been given ‘supernatural’ connotations” (Burke, 7).