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.
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