The term ‘First Principle’ in the depth-psychology corpus occupies a peculiar crossroads between metaphysical cosmology and psychological ontology. Plotinus is unquestionably the dominant voice: across the Enneads he elaborates the First as that which utterly transcends Intellectual-Principle and Being, a simplex prior to all multiplicity, all form, all motion, generating the Divine Mind not through deliberate act but through the inexhaustible overflow of its self-sufficiency. The First is not a being among beings but the condition of their possibility — formless, unlocatable, needing nothing, causing everything. Descartes approaches the same problematic from the opposite direction: the First Principle is God as self-caused, causa sui in the positive sense of an inexhaustible essence that requires no external efficient cause. Von Franz, reading Descartes through a depth-psychological lens, ties this to the Trinitarian exclusion of a fourth principle and the resulting fate of the world-soul. Plato’s Timaeus rehearses an older ambiguity, asking whether fire, water, air, and earth can genuinely serve as first principles, or whether they are themselves derivative. Aurobindo repositions the discussion entirely: the First Principle is Supermind or Truth-consciousness, the real creative agency behind Mind and Matter. What unites these disparate voices is the shared recognition that the First Principle must be simpler, prior to, and generative of all derivative structure — a recognition with direct consequences for how depth psychology conceives the ground of psychic life.
the offspring is always minor: what then are we to think of the All-Perfect but that it can produce nothing less than the very greatest that is later than itself. The greatest, later than the divine unity, must be the Divine Mind
Plotinus articulates the fundamental emanationist logic whereby the First Principle, as All-Perfect, necessarily generates the Divine Mind as the highest secondary reality, itself requiring nothing from that offspring.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
The Unity, then, is not Intellectual-Principle but something higher still: Intellectual-Principle is still a being but that First is no being but precedent to all Being; it cannot be a being, for a being has what we may call the shape of its reality but The Unity is without shape
Plotinus defines the First Principle as categorically prior to Being itself — without shape, motion, rest, place, or time — thereby marking it as absolutely transcendent to every ontological category.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
it must of necessity derive from some other Being, from one that does not emanate but is the Principle of Emanation, of Life, of Intellect and of the Universe. For the Universe is not a Principle and Source: it springs from a source, and that source cannot be the All
Plotinus establishes the logical necessity of a First Principle by demonstrating that the Intellectual-Principle, as a compound and emanating entity, cannot itself be ultimate — it must derive from something simpler.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
since the First has never come to be, we cannot speak of it either as coming by chance into being or as not master of its being… The Good is no other than itself, is self-complete and has no higher.
Plotinus identifies the First Principle with the Good as self-complete and eternally self-mastering, immune to chance and external causation, the ultimate ground of all freedom.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
given the existence of something higher, this Intellectual-Principle must possess a life directed towards that Transcendent, dependent upon it, deriving its being from it, living towards it as towards its source. The First, then, must transcend this principle of life and intellect
Plotinus demonstrates that the Intellectual-Principle’s own directed life and dependency reveals the First as that which transcends both life and intellect, serving as their ultimate source.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
if there is a first activity in that principle, then it too contains the manifold: if, on the contrary, they are the very earliest activities and the source and cause of any multiple product… it is an integral and so includes the excellence bound up with the cause.
Plotinus argues that any principle giving rise to multiplicity through activity must itself be prior to that activity, pointing toward a First that is beyond all active self-differentiation.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
the inexhaustible power of God is the cause or reason why he requires no cause… this inexhaustible power, or the immensity of his essence, is as positive as anything could be, this is why I said that there is a positive reason or cause why God does not need a cause.
Descartes reconceives the First Principle as God whose inexhaustible essence constitutes a positive formal cause of self-existence, distinguishing it categorically from any finite being’s contingent nature.
, Meditations on First Philosophy, 2008thesis
The First, the Principle whose beauty is self-springing: this attained, there is an end to the pain inassuageable before.
Plotinus frames the First Principle as the source of all beauty and the terminal point of the soul’s ascent, the attainment of which resolves the fundamental eros that drives philosophical and mystical striving.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
that brilliance (The First) which does not need light can have no need of intellection, will not add this to its nature. What could it do with intellection? What could even intellection need and add to itself for the purpose
Plotinus argues that the First Principle, identified with the primordial light that is self-subsistent, has no need of intellection — establishing its radical self-sufficiency beyond all cognitive act.
, The Six Enneads, 270thesis
In his Principia (2.37) Descartes says that this is first law of nature: Each thing, insofar as it is simple and undivided, always remains as much as possible in the same state and never changes but by external causes.
Von Franz cites Descartes’ first law of nature to trace how the immutability of God as First Principle underwrites the regularity of physical laws, linking theological grounding to natural-scientific order.
, Dreams: A Study of the Dreams of Jung, Descartes, Socrates, and Other Historical Figures, 1998supporting
The Source of all this cannot be an Intellect; nor can it be an abundant power: it must have been before Intellect and abundance were; these are later and things of lack; abundance had to be made abundant and Intellection needed to know.
Plotinus establishes the First Principle’s priority over both intellect and abundance by demonstrating that these qualities presuppose a need that the First, as self-sufficient, cannot possess.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
The Good is that on which all else depends, towards which all Existences aspire as to their source and their need, while Its
Plotinus identifies the First Principle with the Good as that absolute point of dependency toward which all existences orient themselves as toward their ultimate source and ground.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
if there is a Necessity, bringing about human wickedness either by force of the celestial movement or by a rigorous sequence set up by the First Cause, is not the evil a thing rooted in Nature?
Plotinus raises the ethical problem of whether a First Cause establishing necessity absolves human agents of moral responsibility, ultimately arguing that the First does not compel evil but that derivative choices do.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
This Wisdom is a first [within the All-Soul] while Nature is a last: for Nature is an image of that Wisdom, and, as a last in the soul, possesses
Plotinus distinguishes the Wisdom that is first in the All-Soul from Nature as its last and most attenuated image, mapping a hierarchical procession from the First Principle through successive degrees of diminishing power.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
how can Matter be a first-principle, seeing that it is body? Body must necessarily be a plurality, since all bodies are composite of Matter and Quality.
Plotinus refutes materialist candidates for the First Principle by demonstrating that Matter, as composite and plural, cannot occupy the role of an irreducible, simplex source.
, The Six Enneads, 270supporting
Supermind or the Truth-consciousness is the real creative agency of the universal Existence. Even when Mind is in its own darkened consciousness separated from its source, yet is that larger movement always there in the workings of Mind
Aurobindo repositions the First Principle as Supermind or Truth-consciousness, arguing that it remains the operative creative ground even within the apparent darkness of separated mental functioning.
, The Life Divine, 1939supporting
we maintain them to be the first principles and letters or elements of the whole, when they cannot reasonably be compared by a man of any sense even to syllables
Plato’s Timaeus interrogates the common assumption that fire, water, air, and earth function as genuine first principles, implying they are themselves derivative and thus inadequate candidates for ultimate originative status.
, Timaeus, -360supporting
the agent the principle (arkhé) of his actions, but in a sense of arkhé that authorizes us to say that the actions depend on (preposition ep7) the agent himself (auto)
Ricoeur, following Aristotle, traces how the concept of arkhé as first principle migrates into the theory of action, locating a structural parallel between cosmological origination and the self as source of voluntary conduct.
, Oneself as Another, 1992supporting
The very name of the Alcoholics Anonymous publishing venture was a reminder of the program’s first principle and sole claim: ‘It works.’
Kurtz uses ‘first principle’ in the pragmatic, experiential register of Alcoholics Anonymous, where the originating and governing claim is efficacy rather than metaphysical priority.
, Not God A History of Alcoholics Anonymous, 2010aside