The Included Middle: Logos in Aristotle's Philosophy
Open Access
- Author:
- Aygün, Ömer
- Graduate Program:
- Philosophy
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- November 10, 2006
- Committee Members:
- John Russon, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Daniel Joseph Conway, Committee Chair/Co-Chair
Veronique Marion Foti, Committee Member
Christopher P Long, Committee Member
Mark Munn, Committee Member - Keywords:
- reason
language
aristotle
logos - Abstract:
- This dissertation is a research of the various meanings of logos in Aristotle’s philosophy and the conceptual relation between them. Our method is dialectic, bringing a survey of Aristotle’s philosophy together the argumentation of our thesis. We started from the very beginning of the Aristotelian corpus, we devoted our first two chapters to Aristotle’s logic, chapters III and IV to his philosophy of nature, and our last chapters V and VI to his ethical political philosophy. Thus, we have worked on four fundamental meanings of logos respectively: “standard”, “proportion”, “reason” and “discourse”. Our thesis is the following. In its four fundamental meanings in Aristotle’s philosophy, logos each time refers back to a focal meaning: a relation between terms that preserves them together in their difference instead of collapsing one term to the other or holding them in indifference. Thus “standard”, “proportion”, “reason” and “discourse” as well as their synonyms and derivatives all refer back to a relation between formerly contrary or mutually exclusive terms. Thus the term logos in Aristotle provides the inclusive counterpart to what could appear as a simply exclusive principle of non-contradiction or of the excluded middle. Most significantly, the sense of logos which defines human beings refers to their ability to understand and express both experiences made first hand and experiences they have not had and may or will never have first hand. It is this sense of logos that sheds light on the specifically human character of education, science, historiography, politics, psychology, sophistry and philosophy.