I will now expose these meanings by way of anticipation, since again and again within the Platonic dialogues they occur entirely intermingled and unclarified.
c) The meanings of the expression "λόγος" in Plato.
Plato speaks of 'λόγος in quite different senses, not arbitrarily, but with an indeterminateness which has a certain foundation in the matters themselves. Λόγος means:
1.) λέγειν,
2.) λεγόμενον, and specifically this meaning of λεγόμενον, "the said," has a double sense: it can mean what is spoken about, hence the content, but also
3.) its being said, its being expressed-so and so has said it-a mode of Being of λόγος which precisely predominates in everyday Dasein, such that, as Aristotle remarks, often simply being said suffices to evoke a πίστις, a conviction, about what is said, without an explicit appropriation of the expressed content or the way of saying it.
These three different meanings display the first variations of the term λόγος. Then
4.) λόγος means the same as εἶδος. This sense is connected to the fact that λόγος can mean λεγόμενον, "the said," and specifically-insofar as λέγειν means ἀποφαίνεσθαι, to let be seen-it can mean that about beings which speech lets be seen, i.e., beings in their outward look, as they show themselves in λόγος as ἀποφαίνεσθαι. Therefore λόγος can often be identified with εἶδος, i.e., Idea. As a further meaning we find
5.) an identification of λόγος with νοῦς, νοεῖν. From what preceded, we know that λόγος is the phenomenon which is taken to be the basic determination of the constitution of the Being of man: man is the living being that speaks. Insofar as this speaking, however, is the mode of carrying out seeing and perceiving, i.e., the mode of carrying out αἴσθησις as well as νοεῖν, λόγος as the basic character of the Being of man becomes at the same time representative for the other determination Of the ζωή of man, νοῦς.10 The circuitous path of this intermingling of phenomena leads eventually to the translation of λόγος, as "reason."
10. AH: λόγος—ratio.