Implicitness of Logos and Explicitness of Logics in Ancient Philosophy

Abstract

We consider semantic and syntactic transformations of the concept of "the logical" in the ancient philosophy in the form of crypto-logos, para-logismos, dia-logos, and syl-logismos. We interpret Heraclitus' concept of Logos as a cryptologos through which intuitive insight (epístasthai gnóomen) reveals hidden or implicit harmony (harmoníe aphanés) in nature (phýsis) as a conceptual unity of ontic opposites (tà enantía). In Pramenides' paraconsistent concept of the identity of Being and thought, we point to para-logical hypotheses about the One that are carried out through antithetical deductions of thought and which maintain the dynamics of the ontic determinations of being (ón) in the statics of the conceptual determinations of Being (tò eînai). As the beginning of the explicative granulation of ''the logical'' we consider Plato's concept of the dialectical skill (dialektikè tékhne) of dividing concepts of genus into species and sub-species that logically represent ontic opposites in problem-formulated questions. Finally Aristotle's concept of lógos as a statement-making sentence / proposition (lógos apophantikós) made explicit the Being (tò eînai), or the Being as Being (tò ón hê ón), in semantic and syntactic figures and modes of syllogistic inferences in which ontological (eînai), ontic (ón), conceptual (logikôos) and linguistic (légomenon) correspondence is shown. We conclude that with these changes in the concept of lógos, the path has been taken from the hidden or implicit Truth of the phenomena of nature and the world (pân) to explicit truthfulness of propositions as the unhiddeness (alétheia) of Being trough the semantical and syntactical visibility of the logical structures of being, thought and language in scientific knowledge based on demonstration (apoódeiksis).