Logismoi

The logismoi — Evagrius Ponticus’s “thoughts” or “suggestions” — are the involuntary movements of the mind that, before any act of will, present themselves to the soul. Evagrius enumerates eight: “first, the thought of gluttony, and after it that of fornication, third that of avarice, fourth that of distress, fifth that of anger, sixth that of listless depression (akēdia), seventh that of vanity, eighth” — pride (Evagrius, Practical Treatise, in Sorabji 2000). Cassian transmits this list to the West, where Gregory the Great will redact it into the seven cardinal sins.

Sorabji has shown that the logismoi are the Christianization of the Stoic prōta kinēmata, the “first movements” — the involuntary somatic shocks that, on the Stoic analysis, precede emotion proper and become emotion only upon the rational faculty’s assent (Sorabji 2000). The desert hermit, like the Stoic sage, exercises authority not over the arising of the thought but over its lingering. “It is not up to us whether these thoughts disturb the soul, but it is up to us whether they linger” (in Sorabji 2000).

What Evagrius adds to the Stoic apparatus is a different cosmology. The logismoi are “injected (emballein) … by demons” (in Sorabji 2000) — they are not random somatic noise but solicitations from beings with intent. The discrimination of thoughts becomes, accordingly, a disciplined practice of recognizing whose voice is speaking — a practice the depth tradition would later recover as the discrimination of complexes, each speaking with its own mythological intent.

Relationships

• nepsis
• evagrius-ponticus
• apatheia
• prosoche-stoic
• complex-as-classical-daimon

Primary sources

• sorabji-emotion-peace-of-mind (Sorabji 2000)