{"id":4870,"date":"2012-09-19T22:20:26","date_gmt":"2012-09-20T02:20:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gornahoor.net\/?p=4870"},"modified":"2021-09-19T12:54:41","modified_gmt":"2021-09-19T16:54:41","slug":"logos-and-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/?p=4870","title":{"rendered":"Logos and Chaos"},"content":{"rendered":"

The idea of Chaos was known to the early Greeks. The poet Hesiod<\/strong> wrote:<\/p>\n

\nFirst of all, Chaos came into being; then Earth with her broad breast, for all things a seat secure forever.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

F. M. Cornford<\/strong> explains that Chaos is not \u2018formless disorder\u2019, as we conceive it today, but rather the \u2018yawning gap\u2019 between earth and heaven. Euripides<\/strong> wrote: \u2018Heaven and Earth were once one form.\u2019 In the Rig Veda<\/cite>, Varuna \u2018held asunder spacious Earth and Heaven.\u2019 For the ancient Egyptians, Shu<\/em> separates Nut<\/em> (sky) from Seb<\/em> (earth). Of course, in China it was taught that from the Tao came the duality of Yin and Yang, Earth and Heaven.<\/p>\n

In the ancient sense, Chaos does not represent the destruction of the ordered physical world, but rather the unmanifested Void that is the principle of heaven and earth, male and female. So behind the physical world, there is a principle that represents the unity of Being. For Heraclitus<\/strong>, there is one Logos, one reason for everything, throughout “the one cosmos which is the same for all.”<\/p>\n

Rene Guenon<\/strong>\u2019s criticism of Western theology is that it stops at the consideration of Being alone, and does not penetrate beyond Being. This is true to the extent that God is understood as Being, which is true from the point of view of manifestation. Nevertheless, some figures such as Meister Eckhart<\/strong> and Jacob Boehme<\/strong> have recognized the \u201cGod beyond God\u201d or the Urgrund (Void) ontologically prior to Being. In the East, there is the understanding of the difference between the essence and energies of God. In a metaphysical sense, the West can perhaps be accused of a forgetfulness of Non-being rather than the forgetfulness of Being.<\/p>\n

Guenon identifies the Divine Intellect as the \u2018location\u2019 of the eternal ideas. In his conception, the theologian only recognizes the possibilities of manifestation, whereas the metaphysician also recognizes the possibilities of non-manifestation. Guenon identifies the Divine Intellect as the Logos (or Word), which is the principle of manifestation since all things are created from it. Hence, at the metaphysical level Logos is the same as Chaos, as the unifying principle of manifestation. The Logos can also be identified with the Tao, as Tao is used in Chinese translations of the Bible for the Logos.<\/p>\n

In Mathematics, Chaoas Theory<\/a> demonstrates that there can be a hidden order behind seemingly chaotic systems.<\/p>\n

\nChaos theory states that within the apparent randomness of chaotic complex systems, there are underlying patterns, interconnectedness, constant feedback loops, repetition, self-similarity, fractals, and self-organization.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thus, there is no opposition — and there cannot be — between Logos and Chaos at the metaphysical or transcendental level. There the battle has already been won. Hence, the battle is fought on the psychic<\/em> and hylic<\/em> levels, that is, between cosmos<\/em> and chaos<\/em>, which can be understood as \u2018formless disorder\u2019 only at this level.<\/p>\n

This will be explored in the \u201cConditions of Corporeal Manifestation\u201d.<\/p>\n

\n

\nReferences:
\n[1] From Religion to Philosophy<\/cite>, F. M. Cornford
\n[2] Miscellanea<\/cite>, Rene Guenon<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the ancient sense, Chaos does not represent the destruction of the ordered physical world, but rather the unmanifested Void that is the principle of heaven and earth, male and female. So behind the physical world, there is a principle that represents the unity of Being. For Heraclitus<\/strong>, there is one Logos, one reason for everything, throughout “the one cosmos which is the same for all.” Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14879,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[738,739,737,331,330],"class_list":["post-4870","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-metaphysics","tag-cornford","tag-heraclitus","tag-hesiod","tag-jacob-boehme","tag-meister-eckhart"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4870","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4870"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4870\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14882,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4870\/revisions\/14882"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4870"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4870"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gornahoor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4870"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}