What is Logos

Definition

The term of ancient Greek philosophy – “Logos” – simultaneously means “word” and “meaning”.

This term was introduced into the language of philosophy by Heraclitus and was used to designate universal laws to which everything in nature obeys. The external consonance of the term with the everyday designation of the human “word” was used by Heraclitus in order, as an ironic paradox, to show the gap between Logos as the law of being and the speeches of people, completely inadequate to it. The philosopher says that, as befits the Word, the Cosmic Logos “calls out” to people, but even if they hear it, they are not able to grasp and comprehend it.

Heraclitus testifies with regret that the majority of people turn out to be deaf to common truths and are unable to join the Logos.

The term “Logos” in ancient philosophy is very ambiguous and has deep meaning. Let us remind you once again that on the one hand it means “thought”, “word”, and on the other hand – the “meaning” of a thing or event. It turns out to be two-valued: thought and meaning.

Similar ambiguity is found in Slavic languages. In Old Russian, “wisdom” means a thing; it turns out that a prophetic person is one who knows the wisdom of things, for example, Oleg the Prophet. Thing, speech, wisdom are organically interconnected concepts and realities, and Logos is the Universal, the Universal, the One in nature, society, and thinking.

If the concept of Logos is introduced as a universal connection of things, as a cosmic law, then complete internal freedom means a state in which a person’s consciousness is completely determined by the Logos. K. Marx also wrote that the essence of man is not an abstraction of one individual, but is the totality of all social relations.

If we accept the existence of a single essence of all things, as the unity of all cosmic interactions, then the Logos will be this essence and the internal law of each thing. In this case, for a person, following the Logos will mean following his internal law.

Points of view of different thinkers

The teachings of Heraclitus also reflect the physical aspect of the Logos by the definition of “Word-Thought-Law”, which has the features of universality. Heraclitus is trying to reflect what he put into the concept of Logos as a process, the objective ordering of reality through the Thought-Word, which found its expression in the laws of nature.

Heraclitus, therefore, uses the concept of Logos to describe reality as a single organism, which has its center in the form of fire, filled with consciousness and intelligence. Logos flows from this fire, creates and orders everything.

Heraclitus identifies being and consciousness within his limits, so the logical and physical parts of the Logos easily coexist with him. He considers Logos to be the point at which being and thinking are identical. Through contact with the Logos, the philosopher identifies his own thinking with being, thereby cognizing the truth.

Thus, the Logos finds its own truth in the teachings of Heraclitus, who introduced a qualitative characteristic into his theory, discovering the category of quality necessary when describing phenomena at their essential level.

The vision of the Cosmos for philosophers of that time is characterized by the idea of ​​it as an ordered, single living organism. This can be expressed in the words “All is one”, where multiplicity is manifested as real unity, and sensory experience is only an illusion or manifestation of the divine.

The Logos, or at least traces of it, has been showing itself since the Milesian school. Thales also expressed the idea that “Everything is water.” There is no Logos as a criterion here, but there is an attempt by the philosopher to connect unity with plurality. Thales explains the construction of the Cosmos with his “water” theory through evaporation. According to Thales, water is the concentration of information, as well as mechanical and mental principles, the source of the origin of life.

Anaximander has his own variation of the Logos, who claims that the birth of the qualitative and plural occurs from a qualityless, limitless, indefinite mixture. Anaximenes, another representative of the Milesian school, believed that the role of the origin was played by air.

The influence of Logos begins to play a more definite role in the era of Pythagoreanism. At this time, in order to understand how the measure of all things occurs, it was decided to strictly tie the solution to this problem to identification with numbers. Logos in this matter begins to manifest itself as an explicit information program for the unfolding of the Universe in numerical terms.

The monad (unit) was taken as the fundamental principle of the world, reflecting the principle of all-encompassing absolute unity. Through the Logos, in accordance with the numbers, the Cosmos begins to unfold outward. The Pythagoreans used numbers to record the stages of birth and ordering of existence.

Another worldview concept belongs to Empedocles. For him, the role of “one” is played by Sfairos, and “many” is performed by a real set of elements: water, air, earth, fire.

Empedocles' main task was to eliminate the difference between abstract logical thinking and physical phenomena that are perceived by the senses. In his worldview there is the idea of ​​Logos, which acquires its own colorful character. The difference between the idea and the sensible thing must be reduced, so he resorts to the traditional elements. They emerge from Sfairos through isolation, and as a result multiplicity and qualitative certainty are born.

But there was one innovation here, which, in the opinion of the author of the theory himself, was that multiplicity and qualitative certainty cannot transform into each other, because depriving the quality of certainty deprives certainty itself. The elements from Sfairos were a kind of “roots” from which everything else “sprouted” under the influence of the forces of Love and Hate.

The power of hatred was attributed to creativity and generation, as a dividing and ordering multiplicity. The power of Love united everything into a single qualityless substance. Empedocles considered all things to be mixtures of four elements in different proportions, so high-quality things were obtained from high-quality elements.

And in Empedocles, Logos links the “one” with a thread to sensory things through the basis of all things in the form of four qualitative elements. Sensibly perceived things also turned out to be the appearance of a complex mixture of primary causes. Due to the emphasis on the category of chance, his Logos turns out to be very blurred. Randomly mixing, the elements form concrete things, where the role of Logos is noticeably reduced. The concept of “Logos” entered the sphere of Jewish and Christian teachings a long time ago and was reinterpreted as the word of a personal and “living” God, who called out things with this word and called them out of oblivion.

For example, Philo of Alexandria considered the Logos “the image of God.” The Christian meaning of this term is determined by the opening words of the Gospel of John - “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The earthly life of Jesus Christ is interpreted as the incarnation and “incarnation” of the Logos. He brought revelation to people, and He Himself was this revelation.

Thanks to the concept of “Logos,” the Heraclitean picture of the world maintains stability and harmony despite all its dynamism and catastrophism.

The problem of philosophers: how to unite the world and man, and in man to unite his body and spirit? How can we combine the human and the natural in the concept of origin? What was needed was a principle that would unite any body, including the human body, and that which is not connected with the body, and was already called the soul by ancient thinkers. In the future, the search for the universal unity of the world and man throughout culture will acquire clearer outlines and will result in the problem of being.

Reflections that later became inseparable from philosophy - thoughts, paradoxes, riddles, contradictions - were formulated by Heraclitus.

The philosopher Heraclitus depicts logos as something that requires very special efforts to understand and involves a change in everyday attitudes of consciousness. Logos is the “word”, “speech” of the most eternal nature. This is the most important fragment of Heraclitus, transmitted by Sextus Empiricus: “People do not understand this Speech (Logos) that exists forever, both before listening to [it] and after listening once, For although all [people] are faced directly with this Speech (Logos), they are like those who do not know [it], for the gift that they recognize from experience [exactly] such words and things as I describe, dividing [them] as they are. As for other people, they are not aware of what they are doing in reality, just as those who are asleep do not remember it" (1; 189). What is revealed about the logos first of all from the fragments of Heraclitus? The Logos is hidden from most people. Most often they have never heard of logos. But if you tell them about it, tell them, they are unlikely to immediately understand what it is. The paradox, however, is that people constantly come into contact with the logos that governs all things, but " with which they are in the most constant communication... with that they are at odds" (testimony of Marcus Aurelius - 4; 191).

Logos in the understanding of Heraclitus is that which is inherent in everyone and everything, that which controls everything and through everything. Apparently, this is one of the first formulations where the idea of ​​origin merges with the idea of ​​a universal law governing existence, which has barely dawned on the philosophical horizon. Both ideas, still merged, undivided, but tending to be dismembered, constitute the meaning of the concept “logos”. From the point of view of perspective, it is very important and interesting as “Heraclitean’s separation of logos, distinguishing it from nature as everything that exists and from fire as a certain “primary” material element. The tendency here contains the possibility of isolating the activity of describing and studying nature, the possibility of distinguishing philosophy from physics, from physical explanation. But for now, of course, Heraclitus himself has all three elements as one. And they are all united by the idea of ​​origin, although they are already distinguished in it.

The experience of previous philosophy proved that the first principle cannot be identified either with each individual thing or with any specific material element. Subsequently, it was necessary to establish that the first principle cannot be combined with matter in general. Why? Yes, because, the further, the more philosophers will ask the question: how to unite the world and man, and in man - his body and his spirit? How to combine human and natural in the concept of origin? It was necessary to find a principle that unites any body, including the human body, and that which is connected with the body, but is in no way identical to it, that which ancient thinkers already called the soul. Then the difficult search for the universal unity of the world and man will acquire clearer outlines in philosophy, and throughout culture. They will result in the formulation of the problem of being. But the origins of these reflections, which will subsequently become inseparable from philosophy as such, are thoughts, paradoxes, riddles, contradictions formulated by Heraclitus and the Eleatics.

Heraclitus is interested in what the human soul is, and in other words, what human thoughts, passions, and emotions are. And by the way, fire as a first principle is also acceptable for Heraclitus because it seems to him that the soul can be likened to fire. The human soul, Heraclitus believes, is some kind of invisible dynamic fire. The likening of the soul to fire pushes Heraclitus towards the animation of nature. He says: “We don’t see this soul (i.e. fire) in things.” But in all things there is fire, it is the universal principle, and at the same time the soul of the world, the soul of things. In the human body the soul takes the form passions, reflections, thoughts, suffering, etc. Here, first of all, the idea of ​​the first principle finds a consistent development. After all, indeed, the Greek philosophers conceived the first principle for themselves: it governs everything through everything. This is the universal, all-encompassing thing that everything needs - nature and to man, body and soul, things and thoughts. How to find such a truly universal first principle?

One should not assume that Heraclitus was the first to think about the soul, about the spiritual. The Milesian sages also talked about the soul. But Heraclitus, apparently, was critical of their reasoning. Addressing every person who would smugly declare that he has known the soul, Heraclitus says: “You will not find the boundaries of the soul, no matter what path [= in what direction] you sweat: so deep is its measure [= “volume”, ( p.33) Khouod]" (67 (a); 231) (In this fragment, the soul is air (in another case called prester-blower); here Heraclitus reflects the idea of ​​\u200b\u200b"infinite" air, correlated with the "infinite" earth in Xenophanes . There was not yet a stable term for air.) When Heraclitus talks about the “dry” and “moistened” soul, his philosophical definitions are interspersed with moral and everyday maxims. Souls, according to Heraclitus, are born from moisture: “they evaporate from moisture” ( 40(a); 209). But it is not appropriate for them to remain wet. “A dry soul is the wisest and best” (68 (0); 231). But an always damp soul is a real disaster, which is obvious in the case of such a vice as drunkenness. “When an adult husband gets drunk and drunk, a mustacheless fellow leads him [home], and he loses his way and does not understand where he is going, then his soul is wet” (69 (a); 233).

The category Logos can be defined as something revealed, formalized and, to that extent, “verbal”, as an end-to-end semantic order of being and consciousness, opposite to everything meaningless, wordless, formless in the world and man.
If you look at this category from the point of view of hermeneutics, then logos here can be defined as an essential or essential image of being that mediates its integrity. In this capacity, logos is, as it were, evidence of the existence itself; is the essence of a thing, that image in which it declares its unity as essential. This essential unity is “grasped” by the intuition of consciousness, but is not, however, the fruit of individual consciousness. Logos is known in “speech,” the dialogue of people with existence and among themselves.
Let us briefly outline the paths of the Logos in the history of thought. So, initially logos meant the universal law, the basis of the world, its order and harmony (from Greek Logos - word, thought, reason, law). Logos is one of the basic concepts of Greek philosophy. Heraclitus spoke about the Logos as about law and order: everything happens according to the Logos, which is eternal, universal and necessary. Further, Plato and Aristotle understood Logos as the law of being and as a logical principle. Then, among the Stoics, the term “Logos” denotes the law of the physical and spiritual worlds, since they merge in pantheistic unity. In the 1st century, Philo, a representative of the Judeo-Alexandrian school, developed the doctrine of the Logos as a set of Platonic ideas, as well as a creative divine force (mind) - a mediator between God, the created world and man. We find a similar interpretation in Neoplatonism, which interpreted the Logos as an emanation of the intelligible world, as well as among the Gnostics, and later in Christianity, in which the Logos was identified with Christ. In modern times, Hegel called the absolute concept Logos in his philosophy. Representatives of Russian religious-idealistic philosophy (P. Florensky, S.N. Trubetskoy, V. Ern, etc.) tried to revive the idea of ​​the divine Logos, understanding it differently.
Thus, the Logos is a kind of universal reason immanent in the world; in accordance with the principles of which the world is structured, i.e. It makes sense to talk about the reasonableness and logic of its structure. Further, the basis of the human mind is also this universal mind. Thus, logos is a kind of guarantor of the knowability of the world, since the basis of both the knowable and the knower is the same principle. Logos gives the purpose of existence to the world and the meaning of life to man.
There may be several manifestations of the Logos in the world. Firstly, in a direct way, i.e. revelation, self-revelation of the Divine Logos to the world through the prophets, which then results in a series of so-called revealed religions. This is how Christianity understands it, for example. Secondly, so to speak, indirectly, i.e. the intelligence of the universe, creation. Here the leading significance is the sign, the symbol through which the Logos can be discovered and cognized.
Thirdly, through speech, rational word, language. Speaking about the transfer of information from one generation to another, about the role of the word through which an individual becomes involved in the accumulated human culture, Soloviev wrote that the word is nothing more than an expression of the relationship that arises between the “superfactual” (universal) and individual, single “psychic facts.” That is, the word is born from a connection and itself expresses this connection that exists in material and spiritual activity. “The process of speech,” writes P. Florensky, “is the joining of the speaker to a supra-individual conciliar unity, the mutual germination of the energy of the individual spirit and the energy of the national, universal human mind. And therefore, in a word, as a meeting of two energies, there must be a form of both. The outer form serves the general mind, and the inner form serves the individual.”

1. Genesis of the idea of ​​Logos in ancient philosophy and theology
1.1 Formation of the doctrine of Logos in early Greek philosophy

The very concept of Logos arose in the depths of ancient Greek culture. But, like any other phenomenon, it did not arise immediately or suddenly, but was determined by previous development, in this case the development in the Greek language itself, where the word;;;;; has undergone quite significant changes. ;;;;; means a word or speech, and could denote both the content of speech, its meaning, and the speech form in which this thought is clothed; then logos means the thought itself expressed in speech. In epic tales;;;;; often replaced with the same meaning by the terms;;;;; (myth) or;;;; (epic). However, over time, this state of affairs changes and “logos” takes precedence over “myth”, “epic”, and the true word, logos, is opposed to myth. It is well known that the very emergence of ancient Greek philosophy is defined as “the transition from myth to logos.” And early Greek philosophy expresses its “reasonable word” about the nature of things, about the structure of the universe, its causes and laws, again contrasting it with myth as fiction and the changeable world of sensuality.
For the first time we encounter “logos” as a unique philosophical category in Heraclitus of Ephesus, who came to the idea that the true nature of things is not abstract being, but is an ever-living process of creative genesis, unity realized in multitude; a principle whose rational word is the word about the unity of all things. In his work (proposed title “On Nature”), Heraclitus thinks about the foundations of existence and believes fire to be the source of all things. The uniform pulsation of the primordial fire, its periodic ignition and extinction indicates the dominance of order in the world, its subordination to the universal law - the Logos. The Heraclitean logos represents the structure of everything that exists, the order of everything that happens. Aspects, types, logos are harmony, struggle, measure, law, justice. Also, there is not only the logos of the world as a whole, but also manifestations of this logos in reality. It must be added here that the objective logos can be heard, explained and expressed with the help of the subjective logos of man, his language and thinking. In the field of speech, words, the Heraclitean “logos” determines the meaning of all our sayings through words; in the sphere of the external world he rules all things through things (fr. 41). Logos differs from the world of individual objects and phenomena, words and speeches about them, however, which does not mean its complete isolation from things, existence outside and independently of the variety of objects and phenomena. “Logos” is the principle of the contradictory unity of things and the cosmos itself; it connects all cosmic processes into a single universal flow in which all things are born and perish.
The problem of interpreting the Heraclitian Logos in the history of philosophy has given rise to numerous debates and interpretations. The reason for this was given by Heraclitus himself due to the ambiguity of his style, for which he was called “Dark”. Christian thinkers tended to see in Heraclitus the forerunner of the Judeo-Christian teaching about God the Word. Here his Logos was interpreted as “God”, “fate”, “necessity”, “eternity”, “wisdom”, “law”. New European historians and philosophers interpreted it as “world reason”, “the law of formation”. Then, subjectivist-minded researchers who denied the substantial and divine nature of the Heraclitian logos began to interpret logos as “speech,” “teaching,” and “language.”
If Heraclitus identifies the rational word with the internal law of existence, then with Parmenides, in the Eleatic school, we are faced with the fact that such a “word about existence” is opposed to reality. The latter said that only a reliable word or thought about a single being is true. The true word, or thought corresponding to the truth, is identified with its subject: “the thought and what it thinks about are one and the same thing.” There is nothing except what exists and, therefore, a true word, a thought, cannot have any content in itself except as a thought about what exists. Parmenides' students Zeno and Melissus subsequently came to the conclusion that phenomena are inconceivable as something absolutely existing, and the entire visible world is non-existence.

1.2 The idea of ​​Logos as a problem of the classical and Hellenistic periods of ancient philosophy

We have seen that in the period of early Greek philosophy the term logos had a contradictory meaning. On the one hand, the nature of things is understood in reasoning, opposed to the changing world of sensuality, where abstract thought contains truth. On the other hand, reasoning is also a product of the human mind, expressed in speech.
However, in the further history of ancient philosophy up to the Stoics, logos is not burdened with any metaphysical load. But its meaning as reasoning, argument, discursive knowledge is fixed. As part of Plato's dialectical method (see Rep.534b; Soph.253d-e; Politic.262b-e), logos plays the role of an instrument for distinguishing and defining species through the dichotomous dissection of the genus. Plato is also characterized by a comparison of logos and myth as two ways of expressing truth. Aristotle most often always uses the term logos in the sense of “definition” or “reasonableness in general.” Sometimes this means moral reasonableness (m. Eth.Nich.II, 1103b; VI, 1144b); sometimes - mathematical proportion (Met.991b); sometimes - a syllogism (Anal.pr.124b18) or a proof (Met.990b12-18).
Subsequently, in the so-called anthropological period of ancient Greek philosophy, the cognitive situation changes and the angle of view shifts from the contemplation of space to the study of man. Due to the fact that the specificity of the ancient Greek way of managing public affairs was that each individual became a political figure, which required certain knowledge, oratory and rhetoric came to the fore. The sophists began to prepare for this kind of activity. “The entire philosophy of the Sophists, which arose from the ruins of the ancient worldview, their eclecticism, and partly their very skepticism, are philological in nature.” The cognizing subject becomes the criterion of truth and, subjecting the acquired knowledge to verification, it is now correlated not with some objective substance, for example Logos, but precisely with the subject. This is the famous “man is the measure of all things: those that exist, that they exist, and those that do not exist, that they do not exist.”
If we turn our attention to the work of Socrates, it will become obvious that, unlike the art of speech of the Sophists, Socrates’ teaching is the philosophy of words - the doctrine of thought, of the concept as the content of the word. Socrates was the first to lay the foundation for logic, the science of the mental word, the concept in which lies the law of true, rational human speech, which must have a rational, logical beginning in the concept, to which in subsequent philosophy the term logos is adopted. However, this word is not just a subjective principle of human reasoning - it is recognized as a universal principle. Reason turns out to be a universal principle, according to which everything that exists is arranged. “Knowing it (mind) in its internal universality, we understand it as an objective metaphysical principle. The philosophy of concept came to the philosophy of mind." And Plato took an important step on this path.
The Socratic doctrine of the concept was a direct prerequisite for Platonism. Let's try to trace the logic that leads us from the concepts of Socrates to Plato's theory of ideas. A concept is subjective in nature. Each concept corresponds to something objective, a certain supersensible level of existence, the knowledge of which is the given concept. This supersensible reality, comprehended by concepts, discovered by Socrates, becomes the subject of Plato’s study. He believed that the definitions of the general do not refer to the sensory perceived due to its constant change, but refer to something else, which Plato called ideas. The sense-perceptible itself exists through participation in these ideas. Thus, as a result of the transformation of Socratic general definitions (concepts) into objective existence, Plato came to his theory of ideas. So, what is subject to concept is not an external, material thing, but an idea, that is, something conceivable that presupposes reason, thinking as a certain subject that thinks them (ideas). For Plato, the “ideal” world is an object of knowledge, it is objective thought as an immaterial reality. Nature itself is conceivable, knowable only because it reflects thought. We find a similar view, according to which thought and its subject are identical, in the Eleatic school, and in Plato, and then in Aristotle.
According to S.N. Trubetskoy in the teachings of Aristotle “logos”, as a philosophical term, “is definitely fixed in the meaning of the concept.” Like Plato, Aristotle recognizes the objective nature of concepts as metaphysical forms that are understood by the “form of all forms” - reason. This eternal universal mind is the beginning, free from all matter, is pure energy. The world is the embodiment of thought. Comprehensive reason is a universal divine principle in which thinking and being, knowledge and reality, logical and real principles coincide.
The Stoics were the first to talk about logos as universal reason. Their Logos acts as a world principle, as a principle of true knowledge and behavior, as an internal divine-reasonable law that is revealed in human consciousness. Reasonable law reigns in the world, and everything in it is arranged in accordance with the principles of reason. The idea of ​​logos among the Stoics is associated with the doctrine of Providence. Human logos, reason, is the outflow of divine reason, and constitutes our “inner word” as opposed to the “spoken word.” The doctrine of logos of the Stoics is inextricably linked with their ethical views. Logos is a universal law not only of the physical world, but also of the moral world. Here he not only provides a craft, but, as it were, educates a person from within. The moral preaching of the Stoics is the preaching of the Word that lives in us and rules the world. It is not difficult to trace the parallels between Stoic teaching and the views of medieval theologians. All the Fathers of the Church, in one way or another, were influenced by Stoic ideals. And here it is not so much the moral aspect of their views that is important, but the doctrine of the Logos as a rational Word, which organized the world in accordance with its principles.
If we try to summarize some results, we can say the following. Early Greek philosophers searched for words, reason in nature, without distinguishing between nature as an object of knowledge and reason as its knowing subject. Stoicism, relying on Heraclitus, restores the ontological meaning of logos, which is understood as the world's rational-creative ethereal-fiery substance, Zeus and fate. Characteristic is the fundamental indistinction in the Stoic fiery logos of the semantic principle and the material substratum. To the extent that logos permeates every part of nature with its organizing force, it is described by the Stoics as a multitude of seeds of meaning sprouting in the world. In logic, the Stoics distinguish between internal logos (thinking) and external, spoken (speech). But then the sophists contrast the subjective logos with reality and discover the objective logos, thought in the very mind of man. Solving the problem of the relationship between thought and objects of knowledge, Plato recognizes as truly existing only the intelligible world of eides or ideas. Aristotle came to the idea that true being does not belong to abstract concepts or ideas, but to the thought that thinks them, and the nature that this thought cognizes. Trying to connect thought and reality, to explain their interaction as the interaction of subject and object, the Stoics put forward the idea of ​​the substantial unity of object and subject in the form of Logos. The very concept of logos here means both thought, and what it thinks, and the relationship between the form and content of thought.
Later, in the Middle Ages, Christian theology will also talk about Logos. During this period, this category will be understood as the Divine Word that organizes the world. The Gospel of John gives the doctrine of the Logos as the Only Begotten Son of God the Father, expressed in the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (1:1). In the Apocalypse (19:13) the name “Word of God” is borne by Jesus in the form of the Messiah. In contrast to the logos of Hellenistic philosophy, which was an emanation of the absolute and a transformed form of its presence in the lower worlds, the logos of Christian philosophy, identified in the Gospel with the second person of the Trinity, Jesus Christ, is, firstly, the direct presence of God in the world and, secondly, secondly, inseparable (albeit unmerged) unity with human nature (“And the Word became flesh”, John 1:14). The exegesis of these texts is the basis of the patristic doctrine of logos.
One of the defining features of the philosophy of late antiquity was its rapprochement with religious and mythological teachings. The intensive development of religious and mythological teachings, religious syncretism gave rise to a desire for their understanding, which proceeded from religious and mythological positions as certain truths. Such “immutable” truths were recorded in one or another “Holy Scripture”, which strengthened the certainty of their authority. At the same time, these provisions also needed a certain justification in the face of reason - hence the desire to attract certain philosophical concepts to their understanding.
Alexandria became the main center of religious philosophy. “Like an incredible fermentation vat of the World Spirit, ancient Alexandria absorbed Hellenic speculation and Jewish monotheism, the science of walking before the Living God and the Egyptian religion of the dead, Iranian Mithraism and Zoroastrianism, the surviving remnants of the cruel Assyro-Babylonian archaic... - and mysteriously they fermented in it in new spiritual worlds: gnosis - Neoplatonism - Christianity - which then determined the life of European culture for many centuries, shaped its mental style and appearance, and set its eternal, cross-cutting themes.”
Philo (c. 25 BC – c. 50 AD) became the most important representative of religious philosophy here. Philo edited his philosophical works in the form of a commentary on the Pentateuch of Moses. And for the first time in the history of philosophy, he subjected religious myths to allegorical interpretation. Philo's philosophy is the philosophy of revelation, and Philo tried to comprehend the Old Testament creation of the world by God philosophically. At the same time, he widely used the concept of Logos, drawn from Stoicism. (It is necessary to note the fact that Philo’s entire philosophy was predominantly eclectic). The concept of Logos was subjected to a theological rethinking and was completely deprived of the naturalistic meaning that was inherent in it in the teachings of Stoicism (fiery pneuma). Philo believed that both Greek philosophy and biblical wisdom had the same source - divine reason, the Logos. However, biblical wisdom has the advantage that it is simply the word (Logos) of God, while the philosophy of the Greeks is a human reproduction of the reflected word - the image of the divine Logos. In Philo’s interpretation, the Logos became a person and at the same time the main force through which God creates the world. The Logos of Philo is the “son of God,” the mediator between God and the world, God and man. The Logos is not primordial like God, not born, but he is in the middle of these extremes, coinciding with both.
Philo's interpretation of the Logos merged the Stoic idea of ​​the Logos as power and the Jewish religion's idea of ​​angels as messengers of Yahweh. No less significant is the Platonic element, expressed in the thought of Logos as a set of ideas that, penetrating the darkness of chaotic matter, enlighten it and form all things in accordance with measure and number. Unlike Plato and the Stoics, Philo does not see in his Logos an absolute and original principle: Logos is, first of all, the ability of the Divine, His energy, strength or intelligence, while it itself is above all energy, strength, intelligence or ability. It is in his Logos, as the universal place or universal potency of all ideas, that the Divinity rises above them all. Logos is both the ability of God, his reason or wisdom, and his idea or prototype of Being, which contains the entirety of ideas or possible images of Being. For Philo, both of these aspects coincide: he either distinguishes Logos as an idea from Wisdom and sees in him the son of Wisdom from God, or identifies them. But most often Philo does not distinguish between them.
The pinnacle of the physical world is man. In the rational part of his soul, the Logos manifests itself most adequately. But since the Logos appears in Philo as an extra-natural force, born of God, the human spirit is removed from material nature and opposed to it.
Thus providing a philosophical basis for Jewish messianism, Philo at the same time laid the foundation for the Christian doctrine of the God-man, the divine redeemer and savior.

2. The formation of the doctrine of Logos in the early Christian philosophical and theological tradition
2.1 The idea of ​​Logos in Christian Neoplatonism

If Philo of Alexandria, paying tribute to the roots of his speculation going back to antiquity, thought of the Logos as a certain mental, theoretical “construction,” then in Christianity we find an understanding of the Logos “in the living individuality of a historical person” and “they (Christians) recognized the Divine Logos in their the crucified and risen Savior, and the Spirit - in the living, directly tangible beginning of their spiritual rebirth."
The problem of the continuity of the ancient Logos and Christian doctrine, in particular the problem of the relationship between late ancient wisdom in the person of the Neoplatonists and early Christian theological thought, is quite complex and little studied. This issue was hardly considered by domestic thinkers. It is partially touched upon in the works of S.N. Trubetskoy, A.F. Loseva, V.N. Lossky, G.G. Mayorova, S.S. Averintseva, P.P. Gaidenko, R.V. Svetlov and some others. Trying to resolve the question of the relationship between Hellenistic philosophy and Christianity, S.N. Trubetskoy comes to the conclusion that faith is not opposed to reason, and Greek philosophy is by no means an opponent of Christianity, but its ally, despite a number of differences. If we try to determine A.F.’s view of this problem. Losev, it turns out that his position here is ambiguous. In one case, he speaks quite categorically, asserting that “Christianity did not accept Platonism and even made it anathema.” On the other hand, we come across such a statement of his as: “There were pagan Neoplatonists, and there were Christian Neoplatonists. There were Neoplatonists among the Arabs, and then in Islam. There were Byzantine Neoplatonists, that is, Orthodox, and there were Catholic and Protestant Neoplatonists. And this is not surprising. After all, such a finely developed philosophy, such as Neoplatonic philosophy, could be used for the logical formulation of any worldview, especially a religious one.” A similar view echoes the opinion of S.S. Averintsev that the boundaries of philosophical trends do not coincide with the boundaries of religions.
The contact of Christianity with Neoplatonism and their mutual influence begins in the 3rd century. The very appeal of the Church Fathers to Platonic thought was to a large extent due to the reaction against the Gnostics.
Christianity gradually entered the intellectual life of Roman society. The emerging church doctrine, seeking rational-dogmatic self-determination, was often forced to borrow the culture of speculation of the Platonists, since many aspects of Christian theocentrism were discerned in Neoplatonism. Attempts to rely on the Neoplatonic experience of thought led to the need to compare the principles of Plotinus’ philosophy with Christian theology. The Neoplatonic triad - the One, the Mind, the Soul - was correlated with the Christian Trinity, and the other parts of the Neoplatonic doctrine were compared with church teaching.
Christian theologians found in the Platonists a convincing argument in favor of the biblical view of the world as a good creation of a good Creator, although now lying in evil. Augustine speaks of the teachings of Neoplatonism in the following way: “I read [from the Platonists] not in the same words, but the same with many different proofs convincing of the same thing, namely: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1, 1-5) [7, p.311]. The human soul, although it testifies to light, is not itself light... I also read there that the Word, God, was born “not of flesh, not of blood”... but from God, but that “the Word became flesh and dwelt with us" (John 1:13-14), I didn’t read that there."
Plotinus's One, Mind and Soul are the main levels, hypostases of the supersensible world. The First Principle must be inexpressible, super-conceivable, it is alien to any plurality, it is the One. The One emanates, radiates from itself the Mind, which has timeless, perfect thinking. The mind generates from itself the third principle - the Soul. These three hypostases form a ladder of diminishing perfection, which ends with space and matter, which Plotinus calls non-existence - an indefinite, qualityless substrate of change, a passive “receiver” of eternal ideas - forms (eidos). However, this doctrine is not a doctrine of deity, but rather an explanation of how the cosmos occurs. And because of this, it is unlawful to equate the “Trinitarianism” of Neoplatonism with the Christian doctrine of the Trinity.
In the Soul one can single out that aspect of it which, transmitting creative ideas, organizes and rules the visible world - logos. The term logos is understood by Plotinus as a certain aspect of the Soul, associated not with its origin from the Mind, but with the connection between the Soul and the material world. Logos is engaged in the creation and arrangement of the visible world. Plotinus uses this term when talking about the transmission of the ideas of the Mind into the sensory world. Without ever calling logos the fourth hypostasis, Plotinus understands it rather as the “active” part of the soul, associated with the activity that gives life and maintains the existing cosmos. The soul is more turned to the higher world, to the Mind, and participates in contemplation. The creation and control of the sensory world is carried out by the Logos, which has the nature of the Soul. Logos carries ideas into matter, thereby transforming it in accordance with the “eternal plan.” Thus, the Soul creates things guided by logos, the latter, as a result of contemplation of the Soul, are very different from their essence. Every body is more beautiful the more accurately it reflects the idea of ​​Mind, which has passed in the World Soul to the level of logos.
The Plotinian logos has one more sphere: it not only produces things, but also returns the generated things to their source, back to the world of ideas. If we try to compare this teaching with the philosophy of Origen, in whom the Logos also organizes the world and is a mediator, then the difference becomes obvious: For Plotinus, the logos is not a hypostasis or an independent level of being, but only an aspect of the Soul that connects the intelligible world and material things.
However, Origen was quite inconsistent in his interpretation of his Logos, which does not prevent, nevertheless, from distinguishing two “ways” of his interpretation of the Logos: Stoic and Neoplatonic. We can talk about the Neoplatonic interpretation of Origen's Logos by the fact that Origen attributed to the latter the same properties as Plotinus to the Mind. Here Origen interprets the Logos as being, reason, distinguishing truth from the First One, which is higher than being, life, reason and is the source of the Logos. The Logos, like Plotinus’s Mind, is as eternal as God the Father (the One), but “lower” than it, since it is only its generation, energy. One can also trace a certain Stoic tendency - in the interpretation of the Logos as the world soul immanent to the world. Origen often interprets the Divine Logos as Divine Wisdom: “The designation of Wisdom as the Word of God should also be understood in the same way, namely in the sense that Wisdom reveals to all other beings... the knowledge of the mysteries and everything hidden contained within the Divine Wisdom: it is called the Word because , which serves as an interpreter of the secrets of the spirit."

2.2 Systematization of the idea of ​​Logos in early patristics

It must be said that the topic of the Wisdom of God occupied the minds of many Church Fathers. The term “wisdom” has a very broad meaning in the Bible. It can also refer to people, indicating their intelligence, abilities and knowledge. Or it can also mean the eternal Word - Christ, God's power and God's Wisdom. The latter meaning takes place in the following passage of Holy Scripture: “The Lord made me the beginning of His way, before His creatures, from time immemorial; I have been anointed from everlasting, from the beginning, before the existence of the earth” (Proverbs 8:22-30). The problem of interpreting the Wisdom of God caused heated debate in the so-called Russian religious philosophy: some philosophers were inclined to identify Sophia, the Wisdom of God with the Logos, others took the position of completely distinguishing them (S. Bulgakov).
The famous Byzantine theologian of the 6th-7th centuries paid great attention to the Logos in his thoughts. - Rev. Maxim the Confessor. Maximus the Confessor said that below the mysterious and ineffable (apophatic) knowledge of the Divine is the knowledge of it by its various manifestations or energies. This knowledge is accessible to our mind and is given in positive divine revelation, in which the Divine Logos is revealed to us. In nature and in Scripture, the Logos is embodied in its energies or ideas. The immediate and direct subject of cataphatic theology is the Divine Logos, the manifestations of which provide the basis for this theology. Contemplating the world as a set of ideas of the Logos that mysteriously form each thing and raising them from the lowest (partial) to the highest (general) and, finally, to the most general Logos of everything, the mind achieves comprehension of the Divinity of the Logos. God the Word becomes the subject of his contemplation and is contemplated in a twofold relationship: in the hidden image of his being and in his relation to the world. In the first case, the mystery of the Trinity is meant, in the second - the mystery of creation. In both, the Logos embraces everything Divine and everything created and all conceivable relationships between them.
The properties of the Divine and their manifestation in the world are directly related to the Divine Logos as a creative principle. It was the Logos that manifested itself in the world, and in the Logos all being participates in God. These relations of the Logos to the world are expressed through mediation and in the form of energies, or small logoi, ideas into which the One Divine Logos is creatively divided, and which are again united in it. According to the threefold activity of the Logos - creative, providential and judgmental, and his ideas are manifested in three ways: as the basic principles or laws of nature and as the goals or paths of providence and judgment. Based on these same ideas, the Logos himself cognizes the world. The Logos contains all ideas from eternity. Thus, uniting all ideas, the Divine Logos is the center of all created existence. Commenting on the ideas of Maximus the Confessor, we can say that in Christian thought the Platonic world of ideas can be found in the doctrine of Divine energies that permeate the created world and are the reasons for its existence. God creates with thoughts and Maxim the Confessor himself calls ideas the thoughts of God.
The school of Plotinus undoubtedly had a certain influence on the formation of the patristic tradition; many achievements of ancient philosophy firmly became part of Christian speculation through Neoplatonic teaching. However, the influence of the ancient heritage was not overwhelming and did not affect the fundamental intentions of patristic thought, in which it always retained its internal unity and self-sufficiency. The widespread involvement and assimilation of various aspects of Neoplatonic teaching served to more successfully establish and reveal the internal logic of Christian doctrine. And the main provisions of the Christian doctrine cannot be reduced to ancient premises and sources, despite all the similarities and mutual dependence of mentalities.
Thus, we see that the formation of Christian theology went parallel to the development of late antique culture. Christianity brought the world a fundamentally new view of the world, but in the first steps of its existence it did not have a developed categorical basis, which is why it was forced to use the achievements of ancient speculation. But, having incorporated various aspects of the philosophical ideas of the ancient world, Christianity, nevertheless, rethought them, and already in this form they organically entered Christian theology. “Thus, they (the holy fathers) expanded the horizon of European culture, introduced new realities into it, defining the prospects for the subsequent development of thought.”
It should be noted that in the context of our topic we are interested in a more Eastern Christian “direction”. Although both channels of Christian thought, Eastern and Western, have their common source in the patristics of the 4th century, in the very first stages they become very different.
Already at the turn of the 4th-5th centuries, a special Western “interpretation” of patristics was taking shape, which acquired its characteristic features already in Augustine. One of the largest representatives of Christian non-Platonism (the Platonists are “closest to us” - De Civ.D. VIII 5), Augustine, with his hitherto unprecedented interest in human personality and human history, is the founder of the European “subject-centric” and historical consciousness. Far from strict systematism, he unites in the idea of ​​the Christian individual four main groups of problems: onto-theology, psychological anthropo-epistemology, moral psychology and, finally, their mystical-eschatological projection - the historical theo-anthropology of the “City”; their external framework is exegesis and hermeneutics. Augustine’s onto-theology pays tribute to the primacy of being before consciousness, traditional for Christian Neoplatonism: unchangeable, self-identical and eternal good, the existence of God is the original highest reality (vere summeque est - De lib. arb. II 15.39) for individual consciousness, exceeding the concept of substance and other categories (De trin. V 1.2; VII 5.8). But the mind is forced to resort to them in order to conceive of God either as a transcendental light, or as a higher substance, the focus of eternal ideas-paradigms (De div.qu. 83, 46.2) - although complete knowledge of God is impossible. Absolute Individuality (Persona Dei - De Trin. III 10.19) - the substantial unity of “persons”-hypostases (una essentia vel substantia, tres autem personae - ib. V 9.10). The substantiality of changeable things is determined by participation in a higher being and is characterized by form as a set of essential qualities (Ep. 11.3; De Civ. D. XII 25). Matter is a low-quality substrate capable of acquiring form (Conf. XII 28; XIII 2).
Then, in the era of scholasticism, Christian theological constructions begin not only to be supplemented, but also to be based on ancient speculation, in particular on the metaphysics of Aristotle. And it becomes natural what is happening in modern times, namely, secularization, i.e., the “liberation” of reason from the shackles of theology, to which Descartes said a decisive “yes.” In this era, all the subsequent development of Western European thought becomes obvious, its focus on the dry constructions of “pure reason”, “the discourse of pure and sovereign thought, which only in itself draws all its foundations and all the laws of its advancement and growth.” This idea reaches its apogee in classical German philosophy, which said that at the basis of the human mind lies the universal, universal mind as the beginning of both thinking and being, the guarantee of the truth of knowledge and the rationality of the universe. “And at the same time, the supreme principle of this philosophy was consistent, apparently, with the beginning of Christian revelation: “in the beginning was the Logos.” However, all of the above does not mean that it is legitimate to equate the Western European and Christian understanding of the Logos. And all Russian philosophy is an example of this. Realizing herself as the heir of true Orthodoxy, she tried with all her might to revive the Eastern Christian view of the world, which is characterized by integrity, for which any one-sided discourse is unacceptable. The latter took place in Western European thought, for which it was criticized so “passionately” by Russian thinkers, starting from I. Kireyevsky, ending with V. Ern and some modern researchers.
So, Western European thought followed the path of ancient speculation in this matter, namely, understanding this category as a rational, abstract concept opposed to the sensory world, passing through German classical philosophy, then to phenomenology and hermeneutics, to the analysis of language in the neopositivism of the Vienna Circle, and to analysis of words used in the philosophy of linguistic analysis, when the subject of philosophy was declared to be the analysis of linguistic structures through which thinking occurs. While Russian philosophy tried to revive the “patristic” interpretation of the Logos as a living force underlying the entire universe. While Russian philosophical thought did not, in its opinion, oppose abstract speculation to concrete reality, but stood on the position of “concrete idealism,” avoiding panlogism, when the entire wealth of its definitions is generated from abstract thought. While Russian philosophers hypostatized the Logos as the basis as a rational and loving principle that makes the existing world knowable, which is the guarantee of the rationality and goodness of the latter, giving meaning and purpose to everything that exists.

2.3 West and East: “Logos” and “Tao”

Logos, as a unique principle of the Western world, can be regarded with some reservations as the leading principle of ancient Chinese philosophy, namely Tao.
Two global Ideas, points of view on the world, two paradigms: what the world strives for (Logos), and how it does it (Tao). It is difficult to imagine the world outside of Reason (logos) and outside of the Path (Tao). If the world follows the Logos, Western philosophers said after the ancient Greeks, then Chaos recedes and harmony and cosmos are created; If the world follows Tao, the sages of the East said after the ancient Chinese, then the Celestial Empire lives in peace.
The interpretation of the Logos changed from Heraclitus to the Stoics, from medieval Christians to the sophiologists of the 19th century, but rather in shades, but the understanding of the essence of the Logos as the world mind embodied in the word was preserved. Tao is not the Mind of the world, but its Path. If the Logos is “something revealed,” then, according to Lao Tzu, “the revealed Tao is not the true (permanent) Tao.” If logos is something “formulated... end-to-end semantic ordering of being and consciousness,” the opposite of everything elemental, then Tao naturally follows its nature: “Man follows the earth, the earth follows the sky, the sky follows the Tao, and the Tao follows itself.” If Logos is fire, then Tao is water. The property of fire is irreversibility and logos-fire, creating existence from opposing aspirations, pushes to action, to struggle, to overcome, to ascend. Hence the oblivion of the foundation, the desire to break out of the boundaries of the universe. Tao is realized not through the collision of opposites, but through their unity. Everything goes on as usual, everything is born from oblivion and returns to oblivion for a new cycle, but not by breaking ties, but by increasing strength. Tao personifies memory, loyalty to the original, the basis.
Tao can be interpreted as the road, the path, the path that people take, the path of nature, and, ultimately, the Path of absolute reality. Chinese mystics used this concept to designate not only the path of development of the entire world, nature, but also the initial undifferentiation of reality from which the universe emerged.
To understand the shades of meaning gradually acquired by this originally simple Chinese word, it may be useful to compare it with the absolute reality deduced by Plato in the image of the Good. This is what is said about this in his “State”: “It’s better to look at his image this way... The sun gives everything that we see not only the opportunity to be visible, but also birth, growth, and also nutrition, although it itself is not formation... Consider, that knowable things can not only be known thanks to the Good, but it itself gives them both being and existence, although the Good itself is not existence, it is beyond existence, exceeding it in dignity and power.”
The path fits into the medieval concept of Divinity and divinity, corresponding to the “entrance to God”: “God delights in himself in things.” All creatures talk about God. Why don't they talk about the Divine? Everything that is in the Divine is one, and it is impossible to talk about it. God works one way or another. The deity does not act. There is no action for him, and he never looked back at this. It never seeks an object for activity. God and Divinity are distinguished as doing and not doing.”
We find another parallel in the “logos” or Word of John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The Word (Way) is revealed even more clearly and more specifically in the Gospel further: “Jesus said to him: I am the way...” (John 14:6).
“Logos is the goal of being, its realization is being in truth: ideal order, cosmos. Tao is the path to this goal... But the Goal and the Means are united, together, together they fulfill the world plan, that is, they are consistent, complement each other: if Logos is life according to Reason, then Tao is the means to achieve it.”

3. The doctrine of Logos in New and Contemporary times

3.1. "Logos" in German transcendentalism

The philosophy of modern times is losing interest in the problems of logos, replaced by problems of logic. But already in German transcendentalism, with its interest in the problems of concreteness and historicity of the spirit, the otherness of logic, the connection between the personal and the absolute, a return to the philosophy of logos is revealed. Thus, in Kant we find a Christological text interpreting the logos of John in the sense of its compatibility with the principle of reason and in close connection with the purely Kantian problem of the demarcation of practical reason and religion (“Religion within the limits of reason alone,” section “The Personified Idea of ​​the Good Principle.” In the book .: Kant. Treatises and letters. M., 1980, pp. 128-130). Fichte not only emphasizes the consistency of his “scientific teaching” with the Gospel of John, but also contrasts the Christianity of John, the “eternal” religion of logos and knowledge, with the Christianity of Paul, which “distorted” Revelation (see “Main Features of the Modern Age”). For Hegel, logos is identical to one of the basic elements of his logic, the Concept. Since the Concept in Hegel’s system is the maximum disclosure of the Absolute as an Idea in itself and for itself, i.e., an Idea that has overcome the split between the subjective and objective and reached the form of freedom, then the entire further evolution of the Idea through natural otherness to the concreteness of the Absolute Spirit can be considered as a super-empirical history logos. Schelling pays special attention to the theme of logos in his later philosophy, finding in the teaching of the Gospel about logos confirmation of his theory of world eras, depicting the pre-world, intra-world and post-world modes of existence of the divine Absolute.
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3.2. “Logos” in Russian religious philosophy and philosophy of the 20th century.

The concept of “logos” is included in the active dictionary of Russian religious philosophy of the late 19th - 1st half. 20th centuries The tone of the theme is set by the early Vl. Soloviev with his characteristic “Alexandrian” context of the Gospel logos (see “Readings on God-manhood” and “Philosophical principles of integral knowledge”). Philosophers of “all-unity” (Florensky, Bulgakov, Frank, Karsavin) often resort to one interpretation or another of logos. Ern, in the introduction to his collection “The Struggle for Logos,” puts forward the neo-Slavophile ideology of logism (“logos is a slogan”), contrasting the Hellenic-Christian logos with Western rationalism. For the early Losev, logos is one of the main system categories (see especially “Philosophy of the Name”).
In philosophy of the 20th century. Religious philosophers of both the non-Thomistic tradition (K. Rahner with his concept of man as a “listener of the Word”) and Protestant “dialectical theology” (K. Barth) pay special attention to the topic of logos. The problem of logos (especially in the aspect of the Hellenic heritage) turns out to be significant for hermeneutics (see, for example, Gadamer “Truth and Method.” Part 3, section 2). Heidegger in his later works repeatedly returns to the attempt to reinterpret the lost meaning of the Greek logos as a “gathering-revealing” force. In poststructuralism, logos is often identified with the rationalist mythology of the West. Thus, for the method of deconstruction formulated by J. Derrida, the main goal is the “neutralization” of logocentrism (almost synonymous with metaphysics).

In conclusion, we can say that in this work an analysis was carried out of the religious and historical-philosophical premises of the doctrine of Logos in Christian Trinitarian theology, including the genesis and formation of the doctrine of Logos in the Trinitarian concept of early Eastern theological thought and in Western patristics.
In this work, it was considered that the Logos became incarnate, “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth” (John 1: 14). And it was the incarnate Logos - the Savior Jesus Christ - who revealed to his disciples, and through them to all of us, the mystery of the existence of God - the mystery of the internal unity and personal difference of the Holy Trinity.
And it is impossible to separate the Trinitarian concept from Christology, from soteriology. If the relationship between the persons of the Holy Trinity gives us knowledge about the principles of existence in general and the existence of the human “I” in particular, then the knowledge that “God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but had eternal life” (John 3:16), gives us the way and method of unity with Him.
Let us remember the words of St. Athanasius the Great: “God became man so that man could become deified,” which became an ideal and practical guide to salvation for many thousands of ascetics and theologians.
But in order to understand the need for accurate knowledge about the Incarnation, and the harm of errors in this area, we can give the example of Arius, who, having sinned and not understanding the meaning of eternity in the Trinitarian concept, subsequently made false judgments about Christ, which led naturally to the denial of communion with God (since ... according to the teachings of Arius, Christ is not God, then we are again in this abyss between the Creator and his creation, having no hope for complete communion with God).
During the early Ecumenical Councils, the conciliar mind of the Ecclesia identified and crystallized the doctrine of the Trinity (I - II Councils) and of the Logos, His incarnation (III - IV Councils) and as the terminology of theological science developed, increasingly honing the verbal meaning, it led to the V century to that beauty and perfection of apophatic theological thought, which has not been surpassed to this day, namely: “one and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only Begotten, cognizable in two natures, unmerged, unchangeable, inseparable, inseparable; the difference of His natures never disappears from their union, but the properties of each of the two natures are united in one person and one hypostasis, so that He is not divided or divided into two persons, but He is one and the same Only Begotten Son, God the Word, Lord Jesus Christ."
But it is also necessary to remember that the East and the West had some fundamental differences, which later became tragic in the understanding of the Trinitarian concept. According to the teachings of Eastern theologians, God's essence is concentrated in the Father and from Him is transmitted to the Son and the Holy Spirit, since the Father is the reason for their existence and, in a sense, is superior to other persons. Augustine in his theology says that the source of the existence of hypostases is not concentrated in the Father. By their being, the persons of the Holy Trinity mutually determine each other, by this he eliminates any subordinationism, but for the theologians of the following centuries he prepares the ground for the “filioque”.
In Christology, Augustine introduces a previously unknown distinction between “forma Dei” and “forma servi” for Jesus Christ, which became fundamental and important in all relatively contradictory passages of Scripture.
The idea of ​​man as the image of God, which was extremely important for Augustine, becomes the main idea of ​​his entire theology, developed by him on a psychological basis, and the central idea of ​​his cathophatic theology. It completely defines the psychological method of his theology, Augustine’s rational elucidation and justification of the church dogma of the Holy Trinity.

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Russian Christian Humanitarian Academy

Essay

in philosophy

on the topic:Teaching of Logos in ancient philosophy

Completed: Samu th fishing Andrey

Department of Psycho logy 1 well

Introduction

Logos- “word”, “speech” of the most eternal nature.

Logos is a term of ancient Greek philosophy, meaning both “word” and “meaning”, while the “word” is taken not in a sensory-sound, but exclusively in a semantic sense, but “meaning” is understood as something revealed, formed and therefore “verbal” . From the everyday sphere, the concept of Logos also included the moment of a clear numerical relationship - “counting”, and therefore “report” (????? ???????? - to give an account).

Logos is an immediately and objectively given content in which the mind must “give an account.” Likewise, this “reporting” activity of the mind itself, and, finally, the end-to-end semantic orderliness of being and consciousness is the opposite of everything unaccountable and wordless, unresponsive and irresponsible, meaningless and formless in the world and man.

The Logos is hidden from most people. People who listened to him once encounter him directly all the time. Most often people o log O We've never heard of anything. But if you tell them about it, tell them, they are unlikely to immediately understand what it is. The paradox, however, is that people are constantly in contact with the logos that governs all things. A they say, but “with what they are in constant communication... with that they are at odds.”

Not to me, but to the Logos, listening...

The term Logos was introduced into the philosophical language by Heraclitus, and became one of the leading categories of ancient Greek philosophy. Logos has many meanings. Logos is both “word” and “sentence”, “statement”, “meaning”, “judgment”, also “ground” and “count”. Logos is also thought, soul, and concept. Later - and the human word in general, conversation, fantastic fairy tale and realistic narration, dialogue between characters in drama. This word has survived to this day, denoting a reasonable word, a decision based on a realistic assessment.

But it was Heraclitus who gave the logos philosophical meaning and sound: for him, logos is a category that gives the world conformity, integrity, and unity.

It is logos that transforms the universe into a system of things, phenomena, processes; it introduces the principle of order into the world, i.e. gives it a certain structure. That is why Heraclitus advises: “Those who wish to speak intelligently should strengthen themselves with this general (logos), just as a city (is strengthened by law), and much stronger. For all human laws are nourished by one divine one, which extends its power as far as it wishes, prevails over everything and prevails over everything. Therefore, it is necessary to follow the general..."

This means that logos is inherent in everything, it governs the world, giving everything measure. By introducing measure into the world, logos makes it stable, although the world is fluid and constantly subject to change.

Logos is that which is inherent in everyone and everything, just as the Logos of Heraclitus is the universal “proportion of mixing,” the law or principle of measure and simple order that acts on the harmony of opposing tensions. But the Logos is the law, because he is God, the living mind that controls everything, which, apparently, can in some way be identified with the Eternally Living Fire, which is the matter of the universe, as suggested by the famous phrase of Heraclitus “Perun rules all this,” if “Perun” here really means Fire. Fire is not identical to the visible, simple fire that we know, but is “eternally living,” but not immortal, since it, in turn, turns into all things, and all things into it. This transformation into each other according to the living divine law, which somehow continues to exist when the Logos-Fire itself transforms, is a cyclical, eternally occurring process, “the path up and down.”

Fire is also something that affects the senses, is perceived tangibly, it is a specific manifestation of logos - “fire logos”. That is why fire is intelligent and divine. But unlike the Milesians, logos stands out from fire and from nature in general, i.e. logos appears as a purely philosophical reflection. That is, Heraclitus outlines a tendency to separate the activity of describing nature in philosophical, speculative categories from its physical description.

And the law, formulated mentally - in the form of philosophical reflection, differs from its material existence, from its concrete, natural manifestation, i.e. it (the law) is not completely identical to things, processes, phenomena. It is this difficulty of cognition (in conjunction: law - thing) that gives rise to difficulties of cognition, which are one of the sources of idealism.

Logos, as a rationally comprehended pattern, not only permeates the entire universe, but also turns it into a real cosmos, i.e. into a lawful world order. The world order, born from the struggle of opposites, ultimately means harmony, which governs the universal fiery word - Logos. Therefore, the world only seems to be chaos, but behind this chaos there is an order and harmony that have not yet been clarified (undefined in categories), which are constantly violated, but inevitably born.

Heraclitus has gone far from the Milesians: the cosmos not only consists of first principles, but now, thanks to the Logos, it acquires expediency, a meaning that is in no way connected with the gods and mythology. As well as integrity and direction in its movement and development (from chaos to harmony and back).

In Heraclitus, logos is also present in the soul. Heraclitus also left us one of the beautiful sayings about the soul: You can never find the boundaries of the soul, no matter how many ways you trace it, since its depth is logos

The human soul has a fiery nature. She is “dry radiance”. The “dry soul” is the wisest and best, i.e. the best soul is the purest, free from gross, material impurities, and madness is moisture and dampness. But in the life of mortal people such an admixture is inevitable, and the gross material principle constrains the soul and darkens it periodically. While a person exists, his life is accomplished at the expense of the soul and, in turn, spiritual life at the expense of the bodily one, or, as Heraclitus says: “We live by their death (the death of our souls) and they live by our death.” Hence, the philosopher recognizes not only the relativity of all human judgments about good and evil, but also their falsity: philosophy leads to a revaluation of all values.

If pleasure is death to the soul, then isn’t suffering a cure? Are not the desires and lusts of our heart directed towards what is destructive for our soul? In order not to follow these unreasonable desires, in order to rise above the pursuit of pleasures, which are all relative and determined by previous suffering, one must live according to reason.

According to the true nature of things or “to act according to nature” is a rule consistent with the basic tenet of Stoic morality. "Those who reason rationally must be affirmed by this common reason, like a state by law and even stronger. Either all human laws are nourished by a single divine. Or he dominates over everything, controls everything. "We must follow the general... but although this word is universal, people they live as if they had their own understanding." Therefore, they are likened to sleepers who dream dreams instead of reality, and who themselves are not aware of what they are doing. The goal of the philosopher is to succeed in the knowledge of "wisdom", "the real (true) Word" "To think is the highest virtue, and wisdom is to speak the truth and act according to nature, listening to it." "Thinking is common to everyone," and in our soul there is a "word that multiplies itself" - there is reason capable of growing in knowledge and wisdom.

These are the positive foundations of the moral teaching of Heraclitus, which determine his accusatory sermon, directed against the vanity and madness of humanity.

Whether people hear the true word-Logos or not, they equally do not understand it and, like animals, do not know how to distinguish what is truly valuable because it pleases their flesh. Instead of “following the general”, they create their own institutions and laws that are contrary to nature. Instead of speaking the truth and seeking wisdom, they lie and repeat false fables.

The Logos of Heraclitus made a “breakthrough” in philosophy: in its most general form n In a new form, he brought all the phenomena of human and natural life under the concept of universal law - his universal logos. This, at its very best e This meant that the philosopher made a conscious transition from sensual O th view of the world to the conceptual-categorical perception of this world. No wonder the great Hegel, who did not like to praise any of his predecessors, e representatives, said that “there is not a single position of Heraclitus, O I would not accept this into my Logic.

For example, Philo's logos is completely different. He has that doctrine of Log In the same way, the doctrine of forces mutually explains and complements each other. For Philo the Logos is the Divinity.

Like forces, Logos is the energy of the Divine or the sum of His energies, which has no particularity or originality in relation to its original source.

It is the connection of the world, its internal law and together, as it were, its soul, which penetrates all things, distinguishes and separates them and forms specific types of beings, looking at their eternal, ideal prototypes. He fills the world, but is not contained in it and rather contains it within himself.

Finally, the Logos is the created-personal mediator between God and the world, between the unborn and the created. The Logos is the “organ of creation and revelation,” the “firstborn Son of God,” the supreme archangel, the great High Priest.

Thus, the beneficent and ruling or dominating powers of the Divinity, which Philo recognizes in an innumerable multitude, are embraced in the one Logos as their common place. They form an intelligible world, a prototype of the sensory world, consisting of invisible ideas: and this ideal plan of creation, this supersensible, invisible city of God is nothing other than the Logos, the creative Mind of God.

In the Divinity, all forces are inseparable in this one Logos, outside of Him, in their relation to the world, they appear in infinite diversity and are recognized by us as beneficent or punitive, creative or ruling. In the same way, the single Logos is divided, as it were, into many creative thoughts or forces, into many logoi penetrating the world - many “words” of God, which are also “deeds.”

Logos has a dual character, depending on whether it is considered in relation to its internal content, in relation to those ethereal prototypes that are contained in it, or in relation to visible objects - sensory reflections of ideas. Unlike Plato and the Stoics, Philo does not see an absolute and original principle in his “idea of ​​all ideas”, or in his Logos:

The Logos is, first of all, the ability of the Divine, His energy, strength or intelligence, while it itself is above all energy, strength, intelligence or ability. We can say that it is precisely in its Logos, as the universal place or universal potency of all ideas. The Deity rises above them all.

If we were allowed to bring our relative concepts into the realm of the absolute, then we could say that subjectively the Logos is the ability of the Divine. His mind or wisdom and objectively his idea or prototype of the Existing, which contains within itself the entirety of ideas or possible images of the Existing. In fact, however, both of these moments coincide, as Philo himself points out, sometimes he seems to distinguish Logos as an idea from Wisdom and sees in him the son of Wisdom from God, sometimes he identifies them, and most often does not distinguish them at all .

Logos is the direct object of God’s action, the first “deo” of the Creator, Who creates the intelligent world before the sensory one. He is God’s creation, albeit an immediate, purely spiritual creation, or His work—as if His reflection, shadow or image.

Hence the Logos is defined as the “elder” or “primeval Son of God”, as a “god” or “second” god in contrast to the “first” God, although, in order to avoid misunderstanding of these definitions, it should be noted that Philo calls the Logos “elder” The Son of God, in contrast to the “younger” or visible god, i.e., the sensory world created in the image of the first, since the first son is himself the image of the Father. Logos is the “second god”, as the image of the Father, but at the same time he is also the prototype of the world and the “heavenly man” - the prototype of man.

He separates the Creator from the creature, mediating between them: unlike Jehovah, He has origin in His Father, or the original source. Unlike the creature, he has no origin in time. As a set of divine powers, combining “truth” and “mercy”, and “domination” and “deity”. He is a “many-named archangel” who is called a god (????), although he is not God in the proper sense (? ????), he is a god only for the imperfect, for those who cannot see the Divinity without his mediation , the true God, and takes individual rays or reflections of the sun for the sun.

But the world is also the image of God, a visible God, or, more precisely, a visible Logos. Just as individual souls are clothed with bodies, so the universal Logos is clothed with the world, like a robe, he dresses in the elements - earth, water, air and fire and in all those things that consist of these elements. And just as the soul contains all parts of the living body in indissoluble integrity, harmony and unity, so Logos is the connection of the world, connecting all its parts and protecting it from decay and disintegration. The world is a visible shell, the clothing of the Logos. Or the world is the temple of God, and the Logos is the high priest, officiating in this temple with the help of “subdeacons” - ministerial forces, subordinate logoi or angels. Without Logos, without immaterial ideas-forces that connect the world and fill it with themselves, the world turns into nothingness - into empty chaos, into “formless” and “qualityless” matter. Divine prototypes are reflected in the world and are imprinted in its transient phenomena; they form matter like the forms of Aristotle or the logoi of the Stoics, imparting to things their qualities - “properties” - to the inorganic world, living nature - to plants and

soul - animals. Only in one person, created in the “image” of God, who is the most supreme Logos, lives a part of the divine mind - as if its splitting off or radiation. “In his rational soul, man is likened to the Logos,” and in his body, consisting of all the elements, he is likened to the universe, the dwelling of the Logos. He is therefore a microcosm, a small world, just as the entire universe in its entirety is a likeness of a person - a “big man”.

Therefore, everything that is said in Scripture about the creation of the heavens of the earth can be allegorically related to man, and, conversely, everything that we know about the relationship of our ear to our body can be allegorically related to the world. Or the world is a visible shell of the same Logos that man finds in himself, and it is governed by the same rational, divine law. Man, like the world, is the image of the Logos and the likeness of the invisible, ideal heavenly man, who contains within himself heaven and earth, Adam and Eve, reason and sensuality.

We can say that everything was created in him and for him. And how sensuality (Eve) comes from the spirit (Adam) and is unthinkable without it. Likewise, everything sensual (earth) occurs through the supersensible, ideal (sky).

Everything visible, everything earthly is only an image and likeness. From contemplation of these images, from studying the sensory world, a person must come to contemplation and knowledge of the first causes and principles . He learns the harmonious coherence, the natural mathematical necessity of phenomena, the reasonable expediency of the structure of the world - in the school of Greek physics.

He knows the moral law in his own spirit, and little by little his natural reason convinces him of the truth of the revelation of Moses: he finds everywhere one reasonable and universal law, one Logos. But the truly wise do not stop at this stage: Yahweh, Elohim, the Logos itself are only aspects, selfless forms of revelation, the deity of which should be understood only in a figurative sense.

The soul of the wise strives to rise above all images and similarities, above all media, in order to most closely unite with the Existing One - its primary source, which is above all its manifestations. In His very images and reflections, in the conceivable Word and in the sensory temple of the universe, He alone truly exists, and in one completeness

In His existence the soul can find eternal peace and bliss. This is how the highest problem of theoretical philosophy is presented. The world and man, the macrocosm and the microcosm are correlated, correspond to each other, being similarities of the same image, the features of which are most clearly imprinted in our mind.

Hence the possibility of objective knowledge. Sensuality itself is, as it were, an outflow of reason (Eve, descended from Adam), just as everything sensible is only the embodiment of a thought, an idea." The naive realism of the ancient worldview finds its justification in this. The world was created, although outside of time, which itself seems to be a product of world movement , the world is transitory as a phenomenon in all its parts, but it is eternal as the embodiment of the Logos, as the revelation of Existence.

The same mind is revealed in the world and recognized in man; but this very mind, the very Logos, many-part and diverse in its manifestations, is only a “shadow” of the Existing One, and it has its fullness not in the visible

multitude, not in external appearance, but in that Existence, which alone truly is, alone thinks in its ineffable Mind, alone acts in its visible creation.

From here Philo’s philosophical worldview receives a kind of double illumination. It undoubtedly proceeds from the assumptions of naive realism common throughout antiquity - the reality of the external, bodily world and the correspondence of this world to our ideas. And at the same time, these realistic assumptions turn out to be shaky: along with realistic ideas about the nature of our knowledge, formed under the influence of eclectic Stoicism. Philo sometimes approaches extreme idealism.

The world is a dream, it is the image of an image and is, as it were, a ladder of similarities that gradually fade as they move away from their first original. And where we think to see something substantial and original in things, where we want to see in a phenomenon something more than a shadow or a similarity, identifying it with the Existing, we fall into a series of errors.

All these images, similarities, phenomena are revealed in the light of reason, or Logos, who, as a king, rules true Israel, as a prophet reveals to him the divine truth, as a high priest. - redeems, frees him from lies and unreasonable passions. But this very Logos, this mediating angel, turns out to be only a “shadow”, only a cover hiding the dazzling, all-melting rays of the one Existing One.

Philo’s doctrine of the Logos, so important in its historical consequences, was not just a tenet of his theology and metaphysics: it formed an essential part of his moral psychology.

Here the Logos appears to us in its internal, immanent relation to the human soul, as a divine principle, enlightening it inside, fertilizing it with the seeds of truth and goodness and, as it were, incarnating itself in righteous souls.

Conclusion

This is the original history of the concept of Logos in Greek philosophy. At first, philosophers looked for words, reason and things in nature itself, without distinguishing between nature, as the object of knowledge, and reason, as its subject.

Then the logos is little by little abstracted from nature: the sophists contrast the subjective logos with reality, denying any objective truth, the great Attic thinkers discover the objective logos, the objective logical thought - in the very mind of man. The question arises about the relationship of thought to objects of knowledge - to existence, to nature.

Since nature is opposed to logical thought, Plato recognizes it as false, illusory. Truth, that which corresponds to reasonable logical concepts, is an idea (i.e., something conceivable in essence); Only the idea, only the ideal belongs to true being.

But on the other hand, isn’t the logos itself false, taken in its abstraction, where it is opposed to real things? logos philosophy spirit sophist

Doesn't an abstract concept decompose into dialectical contradictions? According to Aristotle, true being does not belong to abstract concepts or ideas, but primarily to the thought that thinks them, and to the nature that this thought cognizes and in which it is embodied.

But how can thought and reality, spirit and nature be reconciled? How to explain the interaction between them, the interaction between subject and object? And the Stoics again recognized the substantial unity of thought and nature, subject and object - in the representation of the rational Pneuma (spiritual nature), or Logos.

Logos, as a “concept,” is something mediating between the thinking subject and the thought object: this term denotes both thought itself, and what it thinks, and the very relationship between the form and content of thought.

Therefore "Logos" was a suitable term for the expression of Stoic monism, just as the concept of pneuma at the same time spiritual and corporeal was a suitable concept for it.

The course of Greek thought in the development of the doctrine of Logos seems to us reasonable and logically necessary. The idea of ​​the unity of subject and object was formulated by philosophy in all its meaning only in modern times. But nevertheless, this idea runs through the entire history of philosophy, containing within itself the solution to its most important problems.

Bibliography

1. Arthur H. Armstrong. Introduction to ancient philosophy. St. Petersburg, publishing house "olegaabyshko", 2003.

2. Lewis J. G. Ancient philosophy from Euclid to Proclus. Minsk, publishing house "Galaxias", 1998

3. Prince S.N. Trubetskoy. History course of Ancient philosophy. M.: publishing house "Russian Court", 1997.

4. G.W.F.Hegel. Lectures on the history of philosophy. Volume II, St. Petersburg, Nauka publishing house, 1999

5. S.N.Trubetskoy. The doctrine of Logos in its history. M.: 2000

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Logos (from the Greek λόγος) means word, thought, meaning, concept, i.e. this word and at the same time a statement, hidden and explicit, form and content, or, more precisely, to say what connects two opposite principles. This concept was first introduced by the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus, who was born in the city of Ephesus, in Asia Minor, in 540 BC. e.

He associated Logos with the element of fire. According to him, fire is the primary, creative force, and other elements are only one of its manifestations. He believed that fire could turn into air, air into water, and water into earth. The earth itself was part of the fire, and then cooled and turned into a planet. Changes and balances between earth, fire and water are established by etheric fire, which is the main component and plays a major role.

It is noteworthy that modern scientists believe that the solar system was formed by thermonuclear reactions from gas and dust clouds, i.e. with the help of fire.

Logos in ancient Greek philosophy

Heraclitus argued that God is a kind of unity or a connecting link of two opposing principles and should not be worshiped. In ancient Greek philosophy The Stoics considered the Logos to be the ethereal-fiery soul of the cosmos, capable of creating various forms-potencies. From them things are formed in the material world. Neoplatonists understood Logos as the transformation of the intelligible world into a sensual, tangible world.

For today, the concept of logos is interesting as something practical and contributing to our development of consciousness, and not just a means for beautiful conclusions, so let's look at how this concept was viewed in Christianity.

Religious view of the concept of Logos

• F. Alexandrian on Logos
• concept of Logos in Christianity

An interesting discussion about the Logos can be found in Philo of Alexandria, who was a theologian and religious leader who lived in Alexandria (Ancient Rome) in the 1st century AD. e.

He considers the Logos of God to be the highest mind, a certain Deity, the idea of ​​all ideas. He says that since man was created in the image and likeness of God, that is, a certain image of God, which is a type or example of all things. Logos is only a shadow from God, an outline of God, but not the blinding light of God itself. Logos is a certain being endowed with divine powers. By following the Logos through ecstasy, man must become like God. You can enter a state of ecstasy through prayer addressed to God.

In Christianity, the Logos means the Son of God, who is born as the God-man Jesus Christ to save the world from sin. The Gospel of John says that in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God... Thus, before the appearance of the Word, i.e. Jesus Christ, the Logos is merged with God himself, and after the birth of a rational being, the Word-logos appears, symbolizing some kind of Supreme Reason.

Eastern concept of Logos

• similarities between the teachings of Lao Tzu and the philosophy of Heraclitus
• Tao Te Ching in Chinese philosophy

The teachings of the ancient Chinese philosopher and thinker Lao Tzu are closely intertwined with the concept of Logos in Heraclitus. Heraclitus understood Logos as something connecting and creating opposite things and phenomena (struggle and unity of opposites), and Lao Tzu put forward the theory that Tao is a certain path or movement of two polarities Yin and Yang, which are born from Tao and follow in accordance with it. Thus, as soon as two opposite principles are separated and move separately, they are ultimately subject to decay and death, but as soon as they unite and begin to move along the path, they immediately come to harmony.

As a result of the separation, transition and movement of these principles, the world appears in its diversity. However, the emergence of the world does not and did not have a beginning, as in the Bible or mythology. The world, like the entire universe, has always existed. It is necessary to realize not the time of origin itself, but the very principle of existence and movement, that is, the process of development of something from beginning to end.

In Chinese philosophy, Tao- this is the highest form of existence, cosmic emptiness, which is not empty, but simply its content is invisible to our mind and therefore unrecognizable by it. This may be gravitational, electromagnetic, ultraviolet energy, which we do not see, but they constantly affect us and are the object of study by scientists.

According to the philosophy of Lao Tzu, Tao is zero, circle, emptiness, space, vacuum. Tao generates the unit (the limit). From here the expression appears: “The infinity of the Great Limit.” Limit is the Chinese symbol of a circle with two energies, Yin and Yang. Moving in accordance with and through Tao, these energies give rise to many different forms in the Universe.

If Tao is energy, then we will never be able to define its beginning, end, singularity or multiplicity.

Lao Tzu, the founder of the philosophy of Taoism in his treatise "Tao Te Ching" describes the concept of Tao: “The Tao does not attack, but succeeds,” “The Tao follows naturalness,” “The Tao is eternal and has no name.” So, in the philosophy of Lao Tzu, Dao is the source from which everything originates, and Te is the method or way by which one should strive to merge with the almighty Tao. The principle of Wu-wei, i.e., non-action, is similar to De.

The sage does not say much and does not prove anything. He shows the right path with his actions and does good according to the law of Tao. There is no struggle in his actions, but only a just act.

The concept of Jing in Chinese philosophy is associated with internal potency, the so-called Qi energy. Thus, with the help of Wu Wei, you need to accumulate Qi in yourself in order to later merge with the great Tao. This path of improvement, according to Chinese philosophers, should have been followed by the people of the Celestial Empire.

What does the word Logos mean in the philosophy of our time?

• Logos in the philosophy of Kant and Hegel
• Logos in practical philosophy

In modern society, the concept of logos is losing its original global meaning and replaced by logic and the desire to know all processes of being in a logical, rational way. Thus, knowledge of reality with the help of reason, mathematics and experience is placed in first place. According to I. Kant, the nature of things, i.e. Logos or “things in themselves” is inadmissible to our knowledge. Only the phenomenon (way) through which things are revealed in our experience can be known. Thus, we can only know the effect, and the deepest cause will always be hidden from us.

The crown of philosophical thought was the creation of F. Hegel “Phenomenology of Spirit”, in which he united the most important laws and categories of philosophical knowledge and experience, substantiated the thesis about the unity of logic and theory of knowledge and created on the basis of this a new doctrine of dialectics.

According to Hegel, the basis of all processes in nature and the Universe is the Absolute, the spiritual and rational principle, that is, the world spirit, reason, idea. An idea is born in the mind(thinking), then passes into the form of “other being,” i.e., into nature and ultimately returns to the spirit (development of ideas in thinking and history). Thus, the idea returns to itself, only now enriched by the experience acquired in reality. Thus, according to Hegel, the Supreme Reason or Spirit appears before us as the Logos, from which ideas arise that pass through reality and return to it again.

In modern philosophy, the Roerichs’ treatise “Agni Yoga,” which is based on the Indian Vedas, speaks of the Absolute, i.e., the Logos, as a fire that generates everything and purifies all matter created by it. Fire is called AUM, i.e. the Higher Mind, which is found in the Vedas and is called OM.

In the book “The Secret Doctrine” by Blavatsky, mention is made of the astral plane, astral energies and shells with which all bodies in the Universe are endowed. Astral means having starlight in its composition, and astral is stellar energy.

Let's turn to the idea of ​​modern scientists about the development and emergence of the Universe. Our solar system formed around the sun approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The life of stars is approximately 9 billion years. Under the influence of universal gravity gas and cosmic dust condensed and a gas-dust cloud formed. The density of matter in the Sun's core gradually increased and when the temperature reached 15 billion degrees, hydrogen ignited and began to turn into helium. A thermonuclear reaction occurred, the core caught fire and flared up, and a star appeared - a luminous cosmic body. Planets and other objects of the solar system emerged from the remains of matter.

It turns out that the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus was right when he spoke about fire as the primary source and creation of all objects and everything in the Universe.