Logos in Martin Moors' Mythos and Logos course

summarization of Moors' ideas, by Corry Shores

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[Metaphysicians discuss and explain reality through linguistically-expressed conceptions. There is a certain logic to this explanatory discourse, namely, a discursive logic. For example, contradictions are not permitted (unless paradox is for some reason to be permitted.) This logic is used to describe reality according to various theoretical systems. Hence]

Logos is the power of redescribing reality in rational discourse.

[Also, metaphysicians are not just concerned with reality. They are also concerned with their means of discussing reality. In other words, metaphysicians are interesting in understanding that very logic they use when discussing reality. But what grounds this logic must be something higher than that logic. It must transcend it. So metaphysicians use their explanatory logic to understand that very same logic. In this way,]

Logos is the search for an understanding of understanding.

[This way, metaphysicians become aware of the way they think. That is to say, they develop a consciousness of the way they think. Thus logos is this sort of higher consciousness. Hence]

Logos is consciousness of consciousness. It seeks what is most logically prior, the 'a priority.'

[An element of the discursive logic that metaphysicians use is criticism, namely, self-criticism, which allows metaphysicians to see shortcomings in their methodological logic so to improve it. Hence,]

Logos is the internal criticism that establishes its own organic self-renewal.

In this way, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason is a rational critique on reason. [We may use our rational faculties to judge our manner of reasoning. And when we judge our rational faculties using our reason, we do not do so from an anti-rational perspective.] However, Dostoyevsky and Nietzsche, for example, give a genuine critique of pure reason, because they examine rationality critically from a non-rational point-of-view. [But when we use our rational faculties to criticize our manners of reasoning, we look at rationality from a rational critical standpoint.]

[Taken from the first lecture of Professor Martin Moors Philosophy of Being 2008 course: From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos," at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. Professor Moors is not just a remarkably gifted instructor, he is as well a renowned metaphysician and Kant scholar. His publication list is available here.

The ideas I here present are not my property, but belong to Prof. Moors. A suggested citation:

Moors, Martin. "From Mythos to Logos - From Logos to Mythos: Class 1." Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium. 25-Sept-2008.

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