From: Carl W. Conrad (cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: Thu Jul 09 1998 - 17:16:46 EDT
At 1:13 PM -0500 7/09/98, Will Wagers wrote:
>Mark asks:
>
>>Please give
>>feedback as to whether LOGOS could have a reference to "putting in order"
>>"marshalling" rather than to a spoken word, which is the unquestioning
>>assumption of many.
>
>Yes and no. Yes, the technical, philosophical meaning going back to Heraclitus
>is something like "ordering", which accords nicely with the definition of
>KOSMOS
>--the order of the universe, world-order (organization), order, orderly
> arrangement. No, not necessarily "rather than to a spoken word", because
>the spoken word, or rather the intelligent, metaphysical principle of
>organization behind the spoken word, was a popular and one of the most
>ancient, paradigms for Creation in the ANE and elsewhere.
>
>Heidegger,--who, while very competent in Greek, but uses many questionable
>translation techniques--says the following:
>
> "LOGOS (LEGEIN, to gather and assemble) "
>
> "In the thinking of Heraclitus the Being (presencing) of beings
> appears as hO LOGOS, as the Laying that gathers."
>
> --Martin Heidegger, _Early Greek Thinking_, tr. D.F. Krell
> and F.A. Capuzzi (NY: Harper & Row, 1975)
>
> . . . . . .
>On the contrary, no theology at all is necessary to arrive at the "Marshal"
>translation.
Heidegger does indeed draw heavily on early Greek philosophy; I once heard
him lecture (at the 700th anniversary festival of the University of
Freiburg-i-Br. on a fragment of Parmenides--can't say that I got an awful
lot out of it. His Greek is very weird indeed.
But as for LOGOS and Heraclitus, it seems to me that LOGOS is altogether
impersonal in Heraclitus: a principle of rhythm, a harmony of opposites; at
one point he compares it to the NOMOS of a city which must be obeyed but
oddly, although Greek idiom says, hO NOMOS KELEUEI ..., the Law is not a
personal commander. I still don't much like "marshal"--it does suggest
KOSMOS and the noun KOSMHTHS--and even in Heraclitus the LOGOS is also a
"word"--H. says at one point "OUK EMOU ALLA TOU LOGOU CRH AKOUEIN ..."
So I would still far prefer to leave LOGOS untranslated on grounds that any
one translation fails to express the full range of its possibilities.
Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University
Summer: 1647 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad@artsci.wustl.edu
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/
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