IV - Three Demonstrations Based on the First Principles: 275.1–339.2

Summary

Organizing the rest of the treatise

We should, therefore, first examine concerning it what it is laid down that we must examine concerning every [thing] at the outset.(28b4–5)

General explanation of the text: 275.3–20

After the prayer and the exhortation to the listeners and the presentation of the hypotheses, there is nothing else remaining than, following on the basic principles (hupotheseis) themselves, to organize the entire treatise. It leads off with that well-known heading (kephalaion) ‘whether the cosmos has come into being or whether it is ungenerated, having no startingpoint of generation’ (cf. 28b6–7). Indeed in the account preceding the basic principles he said ‘thatwewho are about to speak about the universe whether it has come into being or even if it is ungenerated’ (see 27c4– 5), must ‘invoke gods and goddesses’ (see 27d6), because he is about to start the investigation from this point. Moreover among the basic principles these were the first to be assumed: ‘what is that which always is and has no becoming, and what is that which is becoming but never is being?’ (27d6–28a1). This, then, we must first examine, just as it is laid down first among the principles (archai).

We must also, as Socrates has stated in the Phaedrus (237b7), ‘concerning every subject’ at the outset investigate the [question of] what it is. This is the specific kind (eidos) of the subject under investigation. The [terms] ‘generated’ and ‘ungenerated’ delimit the specific kind of the cosmos. So it is quite reasonable that this should first be required of the appropriate investigation, which indeed he will immediately carry out after this.

Explanation of a point of detail: 275.21–276.7

Among the Platonists many [interpreters] have understood the phrase concerning every thing as meaning ‘on every subject’ in accordance with what is said in the Phaedrus. But Porphyry (fr. 33) and Iamblichus (fr. 31) take it to refer to the actual universe (to pan), namely that it is necessary to speak first ‘concerning the universe’, asking of which kind of nature it is, whether it is found to be ungenerated or generated. We should recognize that the former interpretation is the more natural, for to convert ‘concerning every thing’ into ‘concerning the universe’ is a somewhat inarticulate move.