The Interaction of Eidos and Logos in the History of Philosophy and Science

Abstract

This paper considers the interaction between the concepts of logos and eidos and the possibility of their use in contemporary philosophy. Logos is a true word or thought exactly corresponding to the truth and identifed with its object. Eidos is the living being of an object, permeated with semantic energies coming from its depth and developing into a complete living picture of the revealed image of the object’s essence. Many of the imbalances existing in philosophy are caused by the fact that as early as in Late Antiquity and then in the Middle Ages, there began a process of moving the concept of eidos and other closely related concepts to the background. In this process, many achievements of the ancient Greeks were lost: their understanding of the cosmos as equilibrium and humans as an intrinsic part of nature on an equal level with other natural processes and phenomena. The science of the modern times, including philosophy, shifted resolutely from the study of entities to the study of phenomena, from “what” to “how”. In addition, the philosophy and science in the modern era turned their spotlight on personality, consciousness, and the self. Meanwhile, the view in which the eidos is revealed in its entirety (eidetic view) can be formed from the point of view of three interrelated limits of dynamic equilibria: identifcation, communication, and rhythmization. Identifcation of an object under study can be described as a transition from phenomenon to phenomenon; communication as a transition from horizon to horizon; and rhythmization as identifying the fundamental time interval between the transition from one level of the “phenomenon, horizon, rhythm” to another level of similar nature. As a result, a cell is formed consisting of three fundamental limits of dynamic equilibria, which can serve as the basis for the object’s development.