Logos prophorikos and logos endiathetos

Abstract

I return here, for certain points, to the distinction between λόγος ἐνδιάθετος and λόγος προφορικός often rendered by the opposition between inner and outer speech. If, as an important testimony of Sextus Empiricus shows, the λόγος ἐνδιάθετος is, for the Stoics, related to the μετάβασις which allows one to grasp the logical connections pertaining to a given situation, is it appropriate to translate ἐνδιάθετος by ‘inner’ and προφορικός by ‘outer’? I examine Porphyry’s testimony in the De abstinentia, as well as a passage of Galen, in which he passes on to us an extract from Chrysippus’ treatise On the Soul. I depart from Jean-Baptiste Gourinat’s rhetorical interpretation of the ἐνδιάθετος λόγος by stressing that the dominant part of the soul located in the heart is the seat of a fundamental operation that operates the transmutation of thought into language. Finally, I take into account an occurrence, never before examined in this debate, of the adjective ἐνδιάθετος in the grammarian Apollonius Dyscolus.