Joint Annual Conference of the Society for European Philosophy (SEP)

and the Forum for European Philosophy (FEP)

25 - 25 August 2016
Regent’s University
(London)

Heidegger and λόγος: re-interpreting logic

Abstract
Starting from Heidegger’s works, my paper wants to propose a reflection focused on
the Greek term λόγος as primary dynamical relationship within the displaying of human
being and of being deploy themselves. The attempt is to demonstrate the chance to reread
surrounding reality recognizing its complexity, its original aspects and those apparently
contradictory - like we are going to examine thanks to Claudia Baracchi’s studies. For this
reason in the present text, λόγος is interpreted and analyzed in its prior acceptation regard
to the predicative one.
From the philosophical point of view, the deriving consequences following these
considerations are various and relevant, capable to redefine the terms through which
human being, truth, logic and language are intended as well as to produce a new
perspective on the connections that exist between them. In this precise context, we will
pause on the definition of λόγος as formal relationship and we will discuss only marginally
the other correlated issues.

Paper
During all his lifetime studies, Heidegger devoted many pages to the definition and
to reflections about the ancient Greek term λόγος trying to delineate a (re)thinking of it
and also attempting to understand the connection with what we call logic. We can trace the
elements of this research about λόγος starting from the Twenties until the period after the
Second World War; witnesses of it are the transcriptions of the courses held by Heidegger
in these years. According to what just claimed, it is possible to hypothesize that the
considerations he made about λόγος had gone with him in the formulation of the concept
of Dasein as in-the-world being able to (un)conceal himself within temporality, to proceed
then also in his consecutive studies about being itself. The definition of λόγος, as we are

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going to see in detail, has deep bonds with the new proposal made by Heidegger of truth as
αλήθεια, but also with the developments of his thought after the so-called Turn.
As he usually proceeds, the German philosopher begins from the analysis of the
cultural context contemporary to him, firstly questioning about logic and on the historical
path that led to how this discipline was considered in the 20th century. Secondly he leads
back the problem to its etymological and philosophical root. After the cartesian res
cogitans and following the idealistic consequences after the kantian revolution, Philosophy
was arrived to be identified with logic itself, generating theories - like for example the
Psychologism - according to which in order to identify the foundation of thought it was
necessary an accurate investigation about the logical ways underneath the reasoning that
make possible the formulation of syllogism1 . These kind of perspectives bring with them
inevitably different preconditions, among the others the idea that the elaboration of
human thought is a logical-rational proceeding exclusively within the subjectivity of
human being, hence investigating these ways of reasoning it would be possible a scientific
study of the thought itself. Starting from the concepts inherited from the phenomenology
formulated by Husserl, Heidegger goes beyond, showing how intentionality towards things
results from the previous presence of things, or rather, from the prior relationship already
existent between who formulates the intentional thought and the object of this thought.
After centuries of dualistic ontology between subject and object, where the first one was
intended as something present in the world and objectively knowable at the same way from

1 Heidegger, M., Logica. Il problema della verità, ed. U. M. Ugazio, Mursia, Milano 1986, pp. 23 - 84 (GA 21).
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each rational subject2, Heidegger broadens this view focusing the attention to the
relational context and to the situation in which Dasein interacts with the worldly entities3:

“Da-sein is in itself by nature open to the world, open for the world, which from its side is willing to
establish relationships [aufgeschlossen]. This willingness (openness) shows itself firstly in the
relationship [Aufschluß] with what is initially questioned. Each questioning as attunement of Da-
sein is grounded in being there already open to the world, it does mean that it is addressed every
time to something which is somehow already willing to establish relationships [etwas
Aufgeschlossenes].
In the indicating questioning: here the blackboard, there the window, chalk, door, with all
of this there is already relationship”.

In the context of this course, Heidegger comes back to the Greek concept of ἐπιστήµε
λογι𝜘ή, trying to delineate which was the area of interest of this specific kind of knowledge.

At the same time he demonstrates, presenting a clear argumentation, how philosophers

contemporary to him and working on logic4 keep formulating theories without well
thinking on ontological foundations, accepting assumptions deriving from the
philosophical tradition and used excluding an adequate research on them. The expression
usually adopted to translate this phrase reminds to the discursive sphere and also the
aristotelean definition of human being as ζῷον λόγον ἔχον consequently considers him as

2 Heidegger, M., Being and Time, Joan Stambaugh (ed), State University of New York Press, Albany 1996, p.
43: “Historiographically, the intention of the existential analytic can be clarified by considering Descartes, to
whom one attributes the discovery of the cogito sum as the point of departure for all modern philosophical
questioning. He investigates the cogitare of the ego - within certain limits. But the sum he leaves completely
undiscussed, even though it is just as primordial as the cogito. Our analytic raises the ontological question of
the being of the sum. Only when the sum is defined does the manner of the cogitationes become
comprehensible.
At the same time, it is of course misleading to exemplify the intention of the analytic historiographically in this
way. One of our first tasks will be to show that the point of departure from an initially given ego and subject
totally fails to see the phenomenal content of Da-sein. Every idea of a «subject» - unless refined by a
previous ontological determination of its basic character - still posits the subjectum (hupokeimenon)
ontologically along with it, no matter how energetic one's ontic protestations against the «substantial soul» or
the «reification of consciousness»; p. 45: “But what obstructs or misleads the basic question of the being of
Da-sein is the orientation thoroughly colored by the anthropology of Christianity and the ancient world,
whose inadequate ontological foundations personal- ism and the philosophy of life also ignore. Traditional
anthropology contains the following:
1. The definition of human being: zoon logon echon in the interpretation: animal rationale, rational life. The
kind of being of the zoon, however, is understood here in the sense of occurring and being objectively
present. The logos is a higher endowment whose kind of being remainsjust as obscure as that of the being
so pieced together”.
3 Heidegger, M., Logica. Il problema della verità, p. 96 (my translation).
4 Cfr. Heidegger, M., Logica. Il problema della verità, cit., pp. 37 - 70.
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“the creature able to discourse and to define in this discourse his being”5, or more
commonly as rational animal. Even though this translation could be misleading, it has the
merit to underline the essential co-belonging of λόγος to the ambit of human being.
Heidegger claims:

“Hence we could observe how conversing is not a casual and strange fact, but an indicative and
universal fact, an attunement according to which man names the lead to his being (and a behavior
in which the world is been discussed). Therefore «conversing» is a fundamental attunement of
human being, universal and indicative, toward his world and himself.
Λογος is something in which is announced (disclosed) a connection of being between the two
universal settings previously mentioned: man (ἦϑος) - world (φύσις)6 ”.

There is no more space for interpretations according to the categories of modern

philosophy such as subject and object. The event that happens, the dynamic that expresses
itself, the relationships which are in between co-involve suddenly all the elements present
in the here and now, letting emerge something new, unpredicted and unexpected. The
propositional logic could take beginning only starting from this experience that is
phenomenologically lived.
The problems about interpretation emerge when the discourse is identified with the
original and esclusive place where truth is located7. A similar perspective focuses only on
one of the elements necessary to the formulation of the discourse, the thinking subject.
Heidegger instead brings attention to what phenomenologically and ontologically happens
and is before any elaboration of any colloquial apparatus: the worldly happening, the
relationship between the entities that can be priorly lived, experienced, caught by human
being to be consequently brought into language. What before everything else is, it is the
relationship8. If we forget to underline this original relationship, man is lost:

5 Ibi, p. 4 (my translation).

6 Ibi, p. 4.
7Ibi, p. 85: “[…] With this expression is intended to say: the place where truth originally and properly
belongs, what makes possible truth as such, is the proposition”.
Con questa espressione si intende dire: l’ambito cui la verità originariamente e propriamente appartiene,
quel che rende possibile la verità come tale, è la proposizione”.
8 Heidegger, M, Essere e tempo, ed. Franco Volpi, Longanesi, Milano 1971, p. 203: “The following
interpretation of this definition of the human being as animal rationale is certainly not «false»; however it
hides the phenomenal field from which this definition of the existence (being-there) has been deduced.
Human being presents itself as the entity who speaks. This does not mean that he has the possibility of the
oral communication, but that this entity exists in the way of unveiling the world and the Being-there itself” (my
translation).
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“Exiled from the truth of being, anywhere the human turns around himself as rational animal”9.

This primary disclosure from which logic takes its existence is the Ereignis
throughout being (un)conceals itself and at the same time it hides concealing, it’s a
revealing in which the involved elements in this dynamical relationship display
themselves. Logic shows its deep roots in the worldly experience, which cannot be
considered merely subjective but contextualized in a relational (un)concealment.
Consequently truth is intended as the (un)concealment that happens in the encounter, in
the dynamical (un)concealment concerning the entities.
How could we therefore intend λόγος? According to its etymology, the root lg of the
word λόγος refers to connection, tie, relationship, bond. Usually in traditional logic this
connection is interpreted as the inner coherence among the elements of an argument in
order to guarantee its value of truthfulness. What instead remains unobserved is the
original, effective and preliminary relationship which subsists between this discourse and
the worldly (un)concealment that permits its formulation. Its first meaning refers to the
connection and it is not identifiable with a prescriptive knowledge about the right ways in
which one has to build a right or truly reasoning; λόγος refers to the relationship, the bond,
which is among the entities in a determined hic et nunc, in a specific spatial-temporal
context10. It refers to the (un)concealment which happens11 in the relational dynamic
among the entities in the world12.
Even if the original etymology and meaning of λόγος does not refer to the only lingual
expression, already by the Greeks it was used to indicate also the syntactic context. The
peculiarity of λόγος in its colloquial aspect13 is that in it “words connect themselves in a

9 Heidegger, M., Lettera sull’«umanismo», cit., p. 73.

10For a better explanation of Heidegger concept of spatial-temporality see Malpas, J, Heidegger’s Topology.
Being, Place, World, The MIT Press, Cambridge 2006 e Malpas, J., «Heidegger’s topology of being» in
Trascendental Heidegger ed. S. Crowell and J. Malpas, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2007.
11My claims reveal my conviction, supported by the bibliography, that sees in the topic of the Event after the
Turn the evolution of elements we could already grasp since the first writings or the German philosopher.
12We won’t specifically develop this topic in the present text, but here we could deepen many considerations
about the concept of Lichtung, another key term in the second Heidegger, with those of λόγος, αλήθεια and
Ereignis.
13 Ibi, p. 95: “The λόγος is the declarative which shows the entity considered in the colloquial (my
translation).
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complex of words”14 starting from a primary “conjunction and disjunction”15 that is showed
in the assertion:

“In the fulfillment of the decisive displaying is already caught the around-about-which of the
discourse […], one should already know the used object he has in front of him, it should be already
approachable in that for what it is used, in that as instrument for which it is needed and it happens
to meet it […]” 16 .

If λόγος is this formal relationship, in other words, if with this term (re)thinking
starting from the Greeks is intended to indicate the relational dynamics that deploys itself
in the worldly temporality, it is necessary to deconstruct the last assumption proper of the
perspectives which are different from the one we are considering here: the logical
fundament of logic. And to continue this examination we need to observe what happens
where logic like we usually intend it begins, with whom is considered the founder of logical
argumentation: Aristotle. Bringing out some passages from some aristotelean texts17,
Claudia Baracchi shows how for the Greek philosopher the fundament of logic, intended as
discursive science, is unlogical - if we identify with this term only rationality - but rather
considerably deeply-rooted in the uncertain and sometimes contradictory expressions of
life. Baracchi points out book Gamma in Metaphysics as the place in which this
confirmation could be located. If the aim of philosophy as science of “being as being in
relation to the whole”18 then it has the necessity to inspect the entities, bringing attention
to their complexity and, differently form other disciplines, “it works in the world
continuing to review beings, not turning elsewhere”19.
Logic follows in the moment when, through the contextualized examination of beings,

14 Heidegger, M., Essere e tempo, cit. p. 195.

15Ibi, p. 196, cfr. Heidegger, M., Being and Time, Joan Stambaugh (ed), cit., p. 149: “Rather, every
statement, whether affirmative or negative, whether false or true, is equiprimordially synthesis and diairesis.
Heidegger here is referring to the aristotelean studies about logic. Cfr. even Heidegger, M., Logica. Il
problema della verità, cit., pp. 92 and following.
16 Heidegger, M., Logica. il problema della verità, cit., p. 96.
17Baracchi, C., «Rizomi greci. Antichi tracciati, sentieri geo-psichici, vie di terra e di cielo tra oriente e
occidente» in Rizomi greci, ed. P. Coppo, S. Consigliere, Edizioni Colibrì, Paderno Dugnano (MI), 2014, pp.
152 - 162. The author refers in particolare to Metaphysics (993 a - 995 a), (1003 a), (1005 a).
18 Ibi, p. 155.
19 Ibidem.
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“the axioms emerge, even in their formality, and they indissolubly intertwine being, difference and
the cognitive approach to them”20 .

The axiomatic apparatus, based on the non-contradiction principle, has a strong spatial-
temporal connotation in the definitions that Aristotle presents in his writings:

“The aristotelean formulations don’t ever avoid this bond. It is only in the elimination of these
spatial-temporal indicators that the principle becomes prescriptive and restrictive: the abstract
assertion of the impossibility of A and not A. Taken in its integral formulation, the principle is
descriptive: as already presented in Plato, it gives reason to the complexity of the spatial-temporal
development”21.

Being so rooted in the dynamical expression of worldly existence, λόγος results to be

its leading thread, traceable - or rather hearable - only in the attentive presence, in an
intuitive disposition that human has the privilege to guard22.
Heraclitus refers exactly to hearing the λόγος in the famous fragment 50. In the
transcription of the 1944 summer course dedicated to this author, Heidegger proposes his
own translation of this fragment:

“If you haven’t heard me, but you paid attention to logos (disposed towards it, attentive to it),
sapience (is equivalent to this), saying - saying the same thing that logos says - that everything is
one”23 .

Heraclitus’ λόγος invites us to hear the bond that structures the dynamics of the world we
belong to24. Human being is part of this relational expression which connects the different
ways to display of reality in its entirety. Only starting from this experience
phenomenologically lived, propositional logic could proceed.

20 Ibi, p. 156.
21 Ibidem (italic by the author).
22Baracchi, C., L’architettura dell’umano. Aristotele e l’etica come filosofia prima,Vita e Pensiero, Milano
2014, pp. 332 - 335.
23Heidegger, M., «Logica. La dottrina eraclitea del λόγος», in Eraclito, ed. M. S. Frings, Mursia, Milano
1993, p.160.
24Baracchi, C., The syntax of life: Gregory Bateson and the “Platonic view” in ≪Research in
Phenomenology≫, 43 (2013), p. 212.
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“Everything is one” because the elements involved in λόγος are connected one to another
and they influence one another in their (un)concealment occurring in a precise spatial-
temporal context, here and now.
Following the reasoning of this interpretation, we cannot speak anymore of a dualism such
as the one proposed by modern logic as we mentioned before, where is present a subject
whose intellect meets and must understand an object defining its truth through reasonings
expressed by propositional means25. Consequently to the definition of logos previously
presented, truth is something which shows itself between these elements. Truth expresses
itself in the (un)concealment that happens in the meeting, in the dynamics of revealing
that concerns the worldly elements. Hence human belongs to truth, not viceversa.
This is the reason why we should keep hearing what comes to us throughout displaying
and revealing of entities26.
Thanks to the reflection about λόγος presented by Heidegger, we can deduce a new way to
intend logic itself: we shouldn’t pay attention anymore only to rigorous procedures in
order to define the truth of a proposition, rather we are called to a rigorous and attentive
listening to what happens in the encounter with the surrounding world, in the revealing
that is present in this meeting, in the way in which the elements co-involved in the
occurring relate one another.
Attentive to the novelty that always appears, to the new that emerges from the constant
dynamics which modifies itself in the change of space and time.
We should recognize that logic has and must maintain deep roots in our experience, which
is not anymore to consider as a subjective experience, but rather a contextualized one, in a
relational (un)concealment.

Bibliography
I. Heidegger, M., Logica. Il problema della verità, ed. U. M. Ugazio, Mursia;
II. Heidegger, M., Being and Time, Joan Stambaugh (ed), State University of New York
Press, Albany 1996;
III. Heidegger, M., Lettera sull’«umanismo», ed. F. Volpi, Adelphi, Milano 1995;

25 Ibi, p. 209: “However inseparable, or precisely because seen in their inseparability, mind and body,
intelligence and matter, reality and things [...] cannot be resolved either into each other or (which amounts to
the same) into an undifferentiated unity. Nor can they be reduced to the simplicity of opposites, their
difference simplified into a dichotomy. The arduousness of their union is a cipher of life - self-differing,
compound, and unrelentingly dynamic”.
26 Heidegger, M., «Logica. La dottrina eraclitea del λόγος», cit., p.164.
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IV. Malpas, J, Heidegger’s Topology. Being, Place, World, The MIT Press, Cambridge
2006;
V. Malpas, J., «Heidegger’s topology of being» in Trascendental Heidegger ed. S. Crowell
e J. Malpas, Stanford University Press, Stanford 2007;
VI. Baracchi, C., «Rizomi greci. Antichi tracciati, sentieri geo-psichici, vie di terra e di cielo
tra oriente e occidente» in Rizomi greci, ed. P. Coppo, S. Consigliere, Edizioni Colibrì,
Paderno Dugnano (MI);
VII. Baracchi, C., L’architettura dell’umano. Aristotele e l’etica come filosofia prima, Vita e
Pensiero, Milano 2014;
VIII. Heidegger, M., «Logica. La dottrina eraclitea del λόγος» in Eraclito, ed. M. S. Frings,
Mursia, Milano 1993;
IX. Baracchi, C., The syntax of life: Gregory Bateson and the “Platonic view” in ≪Research
in Phenomenology≫.

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