ABSTRACT
Questions of ground are often introduced by example. Perhaps the most common, as well as venerable, example is from Plato’s Euthyphro. In that dialogue, Socrates and Euthyphro muse about the nature of piety. Socrates acknowledges that an act is pious just in case it is loved by the gods. But he still wonders whether the pious is loved by the gods because it is pious or whether it is pious because it is loved by the gods. It is nowadays common for Socrates’s question to be interpreted as a question of ground. Aristotle’s notions of demonstration, the four causes, and their explanatory roles in the science of being qua being can be fruitfully interpreted in terms of ground. In the literature, one can find authors who sometimes write as if ground was a more recent innovation whose emergence had to wait for the anti-metaphysical sentiments trending in much of the 20th century to fade. This portrayal acknowledges ground’s historical roots.
