Arché (ἀρχή) is the Greek word for the principle of all things: the object of quest of early Western philosophers, and a word richer than any single translation can capture.
The three senses that the Greeks heard together
Ancient Greek heard three simultaneous meanings in arché, without separating them as Portuguese tends to separate them. The first is the beginning: where everything starts from, the starting point from which things come out. The second is the principle itself, in the sense of the foundation that sustains and governs: not just what started something, but what keeps it functioning while it exists. The third is the origin to which everything returns, the final destination as much as the starting point. Arché is not just "where things once came from", it is the permanent background that lies beneath everything, all the time, beneath the change.
The bet behind the question
Asking about Arché is making a bold bet: that, behind the immense variety of things that exist, stone, water, fire, people, stars, there is a single fundamental reality, and that this reality is achievable by human reason. Aristotle called the men who made this bet physiológoi (φυσιολόγοι), "those who give reason for physis" (φύσις), of nature. They were the first to bet that the world is intelligible, that it carries an internal logic, and that this logic fits in the mind of whoever is willing to look for it.
Why the question matters more than any answer
Thales replied that Arché was water. Anaximander, who was the ápeiron, the unlimited. Anaximenes, who was the air. All three answers are wrong, but the question they try to answer is still alive, because it is not a question about a specific fact, it is a question about the structure of reality itself. Centuries later, this same word reappears in the first line of the Gospel of John, "In the beginning [en archêi, ἐν ἀρχῇ] was the Word" (John 1,1), now no longer pointing to a substance, but to a Person, in a reunion that the Greeks of Miletus could never imagine.
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What does Arché mean?
Arché (ἀρχή) is the Greek word for the beginning of all things. It brings together three meanings at the same time: the beginning from which everything starts, the principle that sustains and governs while things exist, and the origin to which everything returns.
Who invented the search for Arché?
The pre-Socratic philosophers of Miletus, starting from Thales, in the 6th century BC. Aristotle called these thinkers physiológoi (φυσιολόγοι), those who give reason for physis, for nature, by seeking the principle of everything in the physical world.
Is Arché just about the past, the origin of things?
No. The richest meaning of Arché is not "where things once came from", but the permanent background that sustains everything all the time, under change. It is a present principle, not just a past event.
Continue: Who were the pre-Socratics · From myth to logos: what changed · What is Logos · Why is Macbeth "the Scottish play"?
Source class (NousCast Community): Quem foram os Pré-Socráticos? O momento em que o mundo deixou de ser explicado por deuses