Phaedrus 245d · 245d

The Ungenerated Beginning

Socrates — ἀρχὴ δὲ ἀγένητον. ἐξ ἀρχῆς γὰρ ἀνάγκη πᾶν τὸ γιγνόμενον γίγνεσθαι, αὐτὴν δὲ μηδʼ ἐξ ἑνός· εἰ γὰρ ἔκ του ἀρχὴ γίγνοιτο, οὐκ ἂν ἔτι ἀρχὴ γίγνοιτο.

And a beginning is something that never came into being. For everything that comes to be must come to be from a beginning, but the beginning itself from nothing; since if a beginning came from something, it would no longer be a beginning.

Word by word

Socrates

ἀρχὴarchḕbeginning / first principle / ruleδὲdèbut / and / howeverἀγένητονagénētonungenerated / uncreated / without beginning.ἐξexfrom / out ofἀρχῆςarchêsbeginning / first principle / ruleγὰρgàrfor / becauseἀνάγκηanánkēmustπᾶνpâneverythingτὸtòtheγιγνόμενονgignómenoncoming to beγίγνεσθαιgígnesthaicome to be,αὐτὴνautḕnitselfδὲdèbut / and / howeverμηδʼmēd'and not / not even / norἐξexfrom / out ofἑνόςhenósa single thing·εἰeiif / whetherγὰρgàrfor / becauseἔκékfrom / out ofτουtousomethingἀρχὴarchḕbeginning / first principle / ruleγίγνοιτοgígnoitocome to be,οὐκouknotἂνànwould / might (potential)ἔτιétiany longerἀρχὴarchḕbeginning / first principle / ruleγίγνοιτοgígnoitocome to be.

The setting

Midway through proving the soul immortal, Socrates reaches the keystone of the argument — a piece of pure metaphysics about what a first beginning must be.

A note on this passage

This is one of the tightest pieces of pure reasoning in all of Plato, and it is the hinge of the argument that the soul is immortal. The logic is airtight and beautiful: a beginning (archḗ) must be ungenerated (agénēton), because the moment you derive it from something prior, that prior thing is the real beginning and your candidate was not first at all. So a genuine first principle cannot have come to be — and (as the surrounding argument adds) what cannot come to be cannot pass away either, since it has no components to dissolve back into. The self-moving soul, Socrates has just argued, is the archḗ of all motion in the cosmos; therefore it is ungenerated, therefore imperishable, therefore immortal. The word archḗ is carrying the weight of the entire Greek philosophical tradition. It was the question of the first philosophers — what is the archḗ, the underived source of all things? (Water, said Thales; the boundless, said Anaximander; number, said the Pythagoreans.) Plato's move is to locate it not in a stuff but in the soul, as the origin of motion — and the same reasoning, that the ultimate source must itself be unmoved and uncaused, marches straight on into Aristotle's Unmoved Mover and, through the medieval philosophers, into every 'first cause' argument for God. The proof also carries a quiet tension: archḗ means both 'beginning' and 'rule,' origin and sovereignty (the soul both starts motion and governs the body), and Greek never fully separates the two. What is at the source commands. Here, in eleven Greek words arranged like a geometric proof, Plato claims to have shown that the thing at the source of all motion — the soul — simply cannot die.

Read the full commentary — and tap any word for its dictionary entry — in the interlinear reader.

Open Phaedrus 245d in the full reader

Always open passages in the reader

From the Great Library

You are reading a page of the Phaedrus — the whole book is free in our interlinear reader.

The Great Library Project presses the classics in their original languages, glossed word by word — free to read, always. Browse the whole library.

Also on our shelves:

❦

Phaedrus 245d — The Great Library Project interlinear edition · greatlibraryproject.com/book/phaedrus/245d/