reason. ‘Logic’ is the metaphysics of λόγος. As metaphysics, logic has decided in what way and how λόγος should be a topic and object of thinking for itself: in other words, it has made a decision regarding the essence of λόγος itself. However, is it ultimately self-evident that ‘logic,’ although it gets its name from λόγος, also primordially and sufficiently experiences, captures, and grasps the essence of λόγος? Or is what is entitled ‘logic’ only given that name because λόγος is here being understood in a very particular way: namely, one giving rise to the idea that through ‘logic’ λόγος is truly understood? Could it not be the case that it is precisely ‘logic’ that makes an error regarding the essence of λόγος? Could this error not have led to it being precisely ‘logic,’ already with its name announcing itself to be the knowledge of λόγος, which nevertheless enacts a misapprehension of λόγος? And could it not be the dominance of ‘logic’ that keeps every originary consideration of λόγος at bay, since surely any other consideration of λόγος other than the ‘logical’ one must doubtlessly appear as unfitting? Not one reason can be marshaled that could guarantee ‘logic’ as being the single fitting and originary consideration of λόγος. On the contrary, we have reason to believe that ‘logic’ has not only inhibited the unfolding of the essence of λόγος, but has also prevented it and continues to do so.


[233] REVIEW

The dominance of the discipline over the matter, and logic as the grounding essence of Occidental philosophy as metaphysics

The term ‘logic,’ and with it logic itself, both appear in the trinity of ‘physics,’ ‘ethics,’ and ‘logic.’ This trinity is neither an arbitrary listing of a certain established ἐπιστήμη in connection with others, nor did it rise to power at an arbitrary time in the history of thinking. The trinity points to a three-fold division. Fundamental to classification is an orientation toward a totality. That is why the concept of classification arose at a time when thinking began to think the to-be-thought in accordance with a single, all-dominant perspective. This happened when Plato, while reflecting on beings as a whole, began to think what one now calls the theory of ‘the ideas.’ Here is certainly not the place to elucidate what this expression means. It is presently only important to grasp that Plato is the thinker who thinks beings as a whole from the perspective of ‘ideas,’ and that it was in his ‘Academy’ that, according to the report by Sextus Empiricus, the three-fold classification was established.

176    Logic: Heraclitus’s Doctrine of the Logos


Heraclitus (GA 55) by Martin Heidegger