Arché (ἀρχή): The Originary Principle in Pre-Socratic Philosophy
There is a moment in the history of thought when human beings stopped asking who made the world and began asking what the world is made of. This shift — from myth to rational inquiry — finds its most concentrated expression in a single Greek word: ἀρχή (arché). Principle, origin, foundation, command: the arché is, at once, the first thing that exists and the reason why everything else exists. To understand this concept is to understand the founding gesture of Western philosophy. ...