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5 On Beginning after the Beginning John Sallis Almost always, it seems, one begins after the beginning. So it is with Socrates when, in the Phaedo, he tells of launching a second sailing, as sailors, in the absence of wind to fill their sails, take to the oars. What prompted Socrates was the recurrent failure of his efforts to grasp things directly and the consequent entanglement in intractable aporias. ἀ us finally, as he explains, he turned away from things, forsook immediate vision of them, and, instead, had recourse to λόγοι, seeking to discover therein the truth of things. Today, too, it is difficult to begin otherwise than after the beginning and in such a way that this posteriority is decisive. For, despite all efforts and claims to the contrary, we continue—we cannot but continue—to draw on linguistic and conceptual resources that originated in the Platonic texts. Even when what is sought is another beginning that would divert thinking from the first beginning , there is no escaping the necessity of reanimating and interrogating the Platonic beginning. Even in the present instance, in which a discourse focused otherwise than on the beginning of a dialogue is inserted into a sequence of discourses , the beginning—in whatever way it is launched—will be made after the beginning. ἀ e discourse will not only take as its theme beginning after the beginning but also will enact beginning in such a manner. Yet I will begin even farther afield from the beginning, turning first not to the Laws but rather to a dialogue that is even more permeated by the question of beginning. In this dialogue, the Timaeus, the orientation to the beginning is even more explicit. Near the beginning of the first of his three long discourses, Timaeus declares: “With regard to everything it is most important to begin at the natural beginning” (29b). And yet, one of the most remarkable and decisive features of the Timaeus is that it itself violates this prescription about beginning . ἀ ough, to be sure, Timaeus’s first discourse proceeds as if—that is, under the pretense that—it begins at the beginning in tracing the god’s fabrication of the cosmos, there are dissonances to be heard in the course of this discourse, 76 John Sallis disorders within this cosmology. Eventually it is revealed that, not having begun at the beginning, the discourse must be interrupted and a new beginning launched, a beginning after the beginning that is, on the other hand, more attuned to the most archaic beginning. ἀ is figure of interruption and new beginning in which the discourse turns back to a more archaic beginning is repeated at various levels and stages of the Timaeus. ἀ is palintropic figure attests that it is perhaps even imperative to begin after the beginning, especially when it is the beginning as such that is under interrogation. In these formulations it is evident that with the word beginning, as with its near-synonym origin, my intention is to translate ἀρχή in such a way as to keep in play both the substantive sense and the verbal sense sustained by its affiliation with the corresponding verb ἄρχω. ἀ is differentiation as well as the interplay it opens up is one that subsequently proves extremely persistent and consequential ; indeed it is still echoed when in the Science of Logic Hegel responds to the question “With what must the science begin?” by distinguishing between objective and subjective beginning, while also insisting on their essential connection . In its classical signification, ἀρχή designates the whence, that from which something comes to be or simply is. Aristotle defines it repeatedly with the word ὅθεν. Yet it is important also to keep in mind that, for the most part, an ἀρχή is not just a starting point that would subsequently be left behind; rather, it is such that it continues, beyond the mere point of origin, to sustain or determine what it originates. ἀ e wonder that Socrates discerns in the face of the young ἀ eaetetus and identifies as the ἀρχή of philosophy is no momentary occurrence but rather is an openness, an attunement, to questioning that remains in force throughout the extended conversation with Socrates. ἀ e Laws is also, like the Timaeus, an interrogation of beginnings. ἀ ough it may seem less persistently, less exclusively, oriented to beginnings than the Timaeus , one should bear in mind that even the extensive legislative program that commences in Book 4 is linked directly to a beginning, namely, to the task of founding a colony in Crete, a task entrusted...

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