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Philosophy
A Greek term, logos has many meanings, referring to everything from words, discussion, and philosophical discourse to the metaphysical source of all things in the universe. The latter sense is found most often in Meditations. Marcus Aurelius uses logos to refer both to the divine that infuses and directs all things in nature and to the “fragment” of God, the rational mind, that is found in every person. It’s one’s logos that gets trained by philosophy and serves as the basis of common ground between human beings. It’s also the animating part of a person that, separated from their substance, gets absorbed into the universal logos upon their death.
Logos Quotes in Meditations
The Meditations quotes below are all either spoken by Logos or refer to Logos. For each quote, you can also see the other terms and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
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Book 5 Quotes
27. "To live with the gods." And to do that is to show them that your soul accepts what it is given and does what the spirit requires—the spirit God gave each of us to lead and guide us, a fragment of himself. Which is our mind, our logos.
Related Characters:
Marcus Aurelius (speaker)
Related Themes:
Page Number and Citation:
62
Explanation and Analysis:
Logos is a notoriously difficult word in ancient philosophy. This Greek word, as Marcus Aurelius explains it here, basically refers to the rational mind within a person. However, this mind also connects to something much bigger—the logos, or rational spirit, which fills the entire universe and suffuses all things. The logos within a person is given by, and in a sense an expression of, the logos that fills and directs everything in nature.
This understanding of the word logos helps make sense of what it means when Marcus talks about the Stoic injunction to live according to nature. When a person’s soul accepts the logos, or the “fragment” of God that exists within him, he is able to reason about the events of his daily life in such a way that he behaves virtuously, not being unduly disturbed by outside events or shaken by desires within. And when he lives this way, according to his nature and the nature of the universe, he can think of himself as truly living “with the gods.”
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Logos Term Timeline in Meditations
The timeline below shows where the term Logos appears in Meditations. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.
Book 1: Debts and Lessons
...train his character and to study rhetoric. Apollonius taught him to pay attention to the logos and to remain steady no matter what happens; Sextus taught him how to live according...
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Book 4
...souls in the air eventually diffuse into fire and are absorbed into the source, the logos.
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Book 5
...the gods means accepting what we’re given and doing what the spirit requires—our mind, or logos, a fragment of God.
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Book 6
1. Nature is governed by the logos, which does no evil and harms nothing.
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36a. Everything derives from the “universal mind” (the logos)—everything from a lion’s jaws to thorns to mud. All of these things come from “the...
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Book 7
...interconnected and harmonious—one world made up of everything, one divinity present in everything, a shared logos.
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...nature is leading. Everything has a role; lower things exist for higher ones (those with logos), and higher things for one another. We were made to work together. We were also...
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Book 9
8. All creatures with the logos share the same rational soul. It’s like how all creatures see by the same light...
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Book 10
31. Life is just training for your logos, and it’s enough to live life well, by observing things accurately.
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