Philosophy and The Logos

Cassirer's project is based on the thesis that what is common to Language, Myth, and Knowledge is the use by each, in differing ways, of Symbols. However, he also very briefly alludes to another shared factor, one which, despite its significance to not only his own study, but to Philosophy, in general, he does not further investigate. That factor, which is arguably the common root of all three realms, is the 'Logos', the earliest evidence of which conceives it as the superhuman source of both order and Language. Later, as Aristotle de-mythologizes it, Logos becomes formal 'Logic', in separation from less orderly modes of Language, and, with the Theological appropriation of it in the Medieval Era, 'Logos' seems to disappear completely from the Philosophical lexicon. Nevertheless, its continues to reappear in other guises. Kant's Pure Practical Reason, no mere subjective faculty, but a trans-personal, super-sensible expressive power, is evocative of the original Logos. Hegel's, and possibly Marx's, 'Dialectical Reason', as the inner dynamic of not only all thought, but all reality, also exhibits the family resemblance. Even the staunch anti-Hegelian, Russell, seems to share the ambition of recovering the Logos, i. e. his effort to reduce all Language to impersonal, universally necessary, 'Logic'. Given the diversity of such manifestations, perhaps the essence of Philosophy is not "Logic", as Russell has it, but the Logos.