On the ethical meaning of ἀρχή

Abstract

The concept of ἀρχή is usually seen within ontological and epistemological context which prevents it from getting a theoretical conceptual status in ethics, particularly while reading Aristotle’s ethical works. But it is the very notion that should be considered the most fundamental for the originating ethics: it forms the concept of an action and a special philosophical visual direction on the world. The article is not aimed at any exact historico-philosophical reconstruction of the term, but at consideration of ἀρχή as a fundamental ethical concept. It was formed by the search of yourself, of the possibility to act in one’s own name, which is breaking the chain of causes and effects and cogitating the world from within it as totality, completeness and the One. Aristotle defines an act as done by the man who deliberately chooses, and choses it for its own sake, so that the ἀρχή of action is carried back to himself to the extent that and an acting man could be defined only as the ἀρχή of his action. The immanent character of the end and being in acting as its ἀρχή creates the space of morality out of any cause-effect relations and logic. A man being the ἀρχή of his act is in the dominating, ruling and responsible relation to the world in its totality and entirety. This is one of the first essential discoveries of ethics, given by philosophical vision from within the action.