ABSTRACT
Nearly fifty years ago, Cornford’s Principium Sapientiae questioned prevailing views about the origins of Greek philosophy by exploring its affinities to religious speculation and prophecy. His book has won little favor among scholars, not least because he underestimates Presocratic conceptions of natural order. But it continues a venerable tradition, which first flourished in the early Lyceum, of analyzing the nature of philosophy by tracing its origins. In so doing, it also marked out three stages in the evolution of philosophy, inaugurated successively by Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. Evidently, debate about the origins of philosophy first flourished in the fourth century, and principally in the Lyceum. At issue were rival conceptions of philosophy. Major advances in several fields of inquiry intensified discussion of the nature and aims of philosophy, and it is surely no coincidence that methodical treatments of its history also began to appear.
