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This chapter deals with the philosophical school that influenced Clement most, Middle Platonism. Middle Platonist philosophy is represented by three of its main exponents: Alcinous, Atticus, and Numenius. The main focus is on how they describe the first principles.

Sidgwick argues that common sense morality is not a repository of intuitively evident moral principles, as some of his contemporaries thought. Common sense rules cannot provide conclusive reasons for actions, because they all have exceptions and leave some issues unresolved. A first principle is needed to supplement them. It must be more than intuitively evident. It must, first, give deductively warranted assurance that a particular judgment is valid. So common sense judgements depend for their own validity on some exceptionless and completely universal principle. Second, the principle or principles providing this assurance must enable us to systematize and complete our moral beliefs. The dependence and systematization arguments, Sidgwick holds, taken together, lead to a utilitarian principle. Unfortunately they also warrant egoism. Practical reason thus seems to be at odds with itself.

This chapter mulls over the justificatory apparatus of the preceding chapter. A secondary literature critical of that apparatus has developed, and the main arguments of that literature are considered. These include charges of circularity, lack of deductive strength, failures of explanatory superiority, over- emotionality, and under- and over-breadth directed against my mode of justifying retributivism. None of these are found to be convincing.

The chapter compares two misguided forms of moral reasoning that Mill identifies as threats to moral life. First, it studies the tendency of ethicists to overlook secondary principles in moral reasoning and to rely exclusively on first principles, for example, the principle of utility. chapter refers to this tendency, which Mill saw as an obstacle to utilitarianism, as doing ethics in a deductive spirit. Second, the paper studies the tendency of moral reasoners to give a dull and torpid assent to a belief instead of taking it to heart, truly appropriating it. This is a key theme of On Liberty, and Mill's treatment of it reveals a ghostly form of moral reasoning strikingly similar to doing ethics in a deductive spirit. The comparison of these forms of reasoning helps explain Mill's insistence that ethics is an art that calls for a genuine concern for the values embodied in first principles.

If moral knowledge requires deductively assured conclusions about particular cases, then to block an infinite regress there must be intuitively evident first principles of complete generality to serve as the foundation for particular judgements. But if, with Peirce and Austin, this model of knowledge is rejected, it can be allowed that what is inferential knowledge and what is immediate varies with context. Then it can be explained how to use particular judgements of which are sure to be checked against proposed general principles, and use undoubted general principles, in other situations, to correct or complete knowledge in particular cases. No intuition of any context-independent foundation is needed.

Plato's nephew Speusippus was already over 60 when he assumed the headship of the Academy on his uncle's death, and his reign was short (347–339). Aristotle is our principle source for the Old Academy (i.e. prior to 322), which is problematic, as Aristotle tends to be rather tendentious in the way he treats his contemporaries; but apart from Aristotle's evidence, we have very little to go on regarding Speusippus’ philosophy, as only two of his works, On Pythagorean Numbers and the Letter to Philip survive. The most original and influential aspect of Speusippus’ thought is his discussion of the nature of the first principles, in particular, his development of Plato's notions of the One and the indefinite Dyad (which Speusippus called the ‘One and Multiplicity’), and his attempt to explain how the totality of being came to be from these principles. Speusippus was innovative in his understanding of Platonic cosmology, as presented in the Timaeus, although his innovations, e.g. the notion of World‐Soul, did not make their mark until the Neopythagoreanism of the first two centuries A.D. Speusippus’ ideas on happiness and pleasure were already criticized by Plato in the Philebus, but he may have influenced the stoics on this point; while Aristotle, despite his barbed comments, probably learnt a lot from Speusippus’ logic, which included work on genera and species, and on ambiguity as the source of Sophist fallacies.

Aristotle's view of the interdependency of explanation and definition rests on a metaphysical thesis: essences are what determine the nature of kinds in such a way as (1) to make their causal structure completely intelligible to us and (2) to locate them in their own distinctive niche in a nexus of genera and species. We can rationally base our understanding of the first principles of science (nous) on our understanding of this causally based pattern of kinds. The world, so understood, contains its own intelligible structure, which Aristotle identifies with the Active Intellect.

Sidgwick discusses the dilemma confronting the ethical theorist whose first principles, as first principles, do not require a proof, and yet are rarely accepted without a defence. The solution lies in Aristotle's distinction between logical (or natural) priority and priority in the mind of one person. While a proposition may be self‐evident, that is to say, cognizable without reference to other propositions, some rational process may be required to connect it to propositions already accepted in the mind of one individual.

This chapter discusses Metaphysics A.3, 983a24-4b8, in which Aristotle proposes to examine the first principles [archai] of his Presocratic predecessors in terms of his own theory of the four causes [aitiai]. It argues that Aristotle's account represents a particular kind of constructive dialectic, influenced by Plato's treatment of his predecessors in the Sophist; but that it also should be considered a foundational work in the history of philosophy, continuous with Peripatetic historical investigations in other fields. On more specific points, it argues that Aristotle's presentation of Thales is mostly taken from the sophist Hippias' account of Hippo, and that his account of Presocratic monism is more ambiguous than usually appreciated, and influenced by earlier readings as well.

This chapter proposes that the Old Academy after Plato are continuators of the project he had begun. That is, the chapter assumes that they, like Aristotle himself, are adherents of Ur-Platonism (UP) and that the work apparently left undone by Plato at his death was the focus of their efforts. Apparently, this work included the first principles of all, the One and the Indefinite Dyad, and the construction of the intelligible world out of them. Naturally, these are not the only “loose ends” of the Platonic enterprise, as Aristotle would likely have his own contributions to the effort. This chapter, however, will consider Speusippus, Plato's nephew, in particular. He was chosen over Aristotle to succeed Plato as the head of the Academy, and apart from Aristotle, he was the first philosopher we know of to take up the project of explaining the nature of the first principle of all.

The first part of the chapter translates and discusses, section by section, Metaphysics Α 10. The second part rveiews in retrospect Aristotle's intentions in Metaphysics Α as a whole, and the progress of his argument through the 10 chapters of the book. It is Aristotle's intention (presented in chapters 1-2) to search for the first principles and causes of being, by reviewing and examining the opinions of his predecessors on this subject. A distinction must be made between Aristotle's report (chapters 3-6) of his predecessors' opinions and his critical discussion (chapters 8-9) of the difficulties (ἀπορίαι) he thinks their views involve; at the end of the book Aristotle reminds us that we need to mull over these difficulties for ourselves: this is the programme set for Book B.

This chapter continues the discussion of Cambiano's on A 1, since Aristotle's chapters A 1-2 are evidently a continuous introduction. The problem of what exactly it is an introduction to, i.e. the perennial question of the unity and diversity of Aristotle's metaphysical treatises, is considered here, although necessarily only in outline. It is also argued that, contrary to some scholarly opinions, this introduction should not be regarded as a protreptic to philosophy as such, i.e. as belonging to the genre of Aristotle's Protrepticus. Whereas that genre aims to promote the pursuit of sophia as a way of life, hence as ultimately an ethical choice or determination of the highest human good, the present text (it is argued) is meant to establish the nature of the highest or most paradigmatic form of cognition as such, leaving aside the question of ranking this in relation to other possible candidates for the highest good overall.

Natural inclinations are not the ground of the truth or intelligibility of practical reason's first principles, which direct us to the basic aspects of human flourishing. But inclinations are proximate to the nature which is the ontological ground of the truth of those principles, whose epistemological basis, however, is the goods (perfections) which we understand in understanding those principles. For the nature of a dynamic reality is understood by knowing its capacities, which are understood by knowing their actuations, which are understood by knowing their objects — which in the case of humanly willed acts are the intelligible intrinsic basic goods. Along these lines we can then understand why Aquinas insisted on the indemonstrability of practical first principles, that is, on the non-derivability of ought from is. This chapter proceeds by a close study of relevant passages in Aquinas on first principles, and on the transition from these to moral precepts.

This chapter explores utopianism as a prominent facet of English settlement in North America, beginning with the quest for freedom of conscience in New England and Maryland. The later colonies of Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Georgia had more refined utopian plans where political philosophy was integrated with economic planning and urban design. The detailed plan for Carolina set the standard for later urban planning while also creating insipient elements of an American political culture.

This chapter describes Mill's ethical naturalism, critiques a traditional reading of Mill's proof, defends an alternative reading of the proof, and compares Mill's justification of utilitarianism with Sidgwick's. Mill's ethical naturalism should be contrasted with intuitionism's appeal to innate and self-evident moral precepts. A reasonable reading of his proof shows that he is not trying to derive utilitarianism from egoist psychological premises but is rather appealing to morality's impartiality and the assumption that happiness is what matters. Here, as elsewhere, Mill is interested in providing a dialectical justification of the utilitarian first principle that would show how it subsumes and explains our moral convictions, especially our stable moral observations and experience.

The preceding chapters demonstrate the ways in which Origen contextualized interpreters of Scripture within the middle of the Christian drama of salvation. However, this drama stretched both behind and ahead of interpreters laboring over Scripture in this life—it had not simply a middle, but also a beginning and an end. This final chapter demonstrates how Origen located interpreters at the protological and eschatological horizons of the cosmic story of salvation, especially as this story is adumbrated in On First Principles. It argues that scriptural interpretation in this life both reprised what had fleetingly transpired at the very beginning of the mind's existence, as well as anticipated and prepared it for what would be practiced more perfectly in the ages to come.

This chapter closely examines the last and most famous chapter of the Posterior Analytics: 2.19. It argues, against the standard view, that Aristotle’s aim is not to explain the whole route we must traverse in order to reach nous of first principles. His aim is rather to argue, against Plato, that the route begins in perception. Aristotle’s account of our acquisition of nous of first principles is found earlier in Posterior Analytics 2, in his account of definitional inquiry. The chapter also argues that in 2.19 Aristotle does not claim that induction is the way we learn first principles; rather, he claims that induction is the way we learn the preliminary accounts we rely on when we begin searching for them. The chapter also discusses the role of perception, memory, and experience in learning preliminary accounts.