From the book
Hipparchus
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordΠᾶς means all or every; ἅπας is an inclusive or emphatic all, frequently “every one” in this edition.
- In HipparchusThe first account appears to eliminate all instances of the lover of gain: no knowledgeable person expects advantage from resources known to be worthless, so no one fits the description (226d).
- In this editionThe edition’s “every one” preserves the doubled universality of 232b10.
- A place to readοὐκ ἔστ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐδεὶς — The first proposed account leaves no instance.
Meaning
Πᾶς means all or every; ἅπας is an inclusive or emphatic all, frequently “every one” in this edition. Τις is an indefinite someone or some, with neuter τι used of a thing. Οὐδείς and μηδείς mean no one or nothing, distributed according to their constructions. Their inflected forms must be read with the noun or action over which they range.
“All people wish for good things” and “all people wish for every good thing” are not identical claims. Nor is denying that all gain is good the same as denying that any gain is good. Much of the dialogue’s movement depends on these small differences of scope rather than on the introduction of new large concepts.
Use in the book
The first account appears to eliminate all instances of the lover of gain: no knowledgeable person expects advantage from resources known to be worthless, so no one fits the description (226d). The second account yields the reverse: all people love good things, gain is good, therefore everyone appears to love gain (227b–c). Socrates explicitly sets the all-result beside the none-result and asks which account can be used without error.
The companion’s request to take back a move is a carefully limited denial. At 230a he says “Not all of it, at any rate.” Socrates restates the position as some gain good and some gain bad. The indefinite τι appears on both sides. This is a division within the category gain, not a proposal that every gain is bad. The analogies of food, drink and persons then explore whether such a division is coherent.
The proposed acquisition definition is again universal: “every possession” satisfying either condition counts as gain. A single disease acquisition suffices to defeat that unrestricted description. Socrates subsequently denies that acquiring “any possession whatever” is gain. The force of the counterexample depends on the universality of the proposal; it does not require showing that most free acquisitions are bad.
At the close, the language intensifies. All gains, small and great, are agreed good, and decent persons “every one” wish for good things “every one” (232b). This moves beyond saying that each person has some good as an object of desire. Alongside the companion’s account of the base, it yields all humans as lovers of gain. Readers should retain that maximal scope rather than paraphrase the premise as merely “good people want what is good.”
Yet scope does not settle sense. Even a formally universal conclusion can change its significance if “gain” shifts from financial profit to genuine benefit or if “love” names both ordinary desire and grasping attachment. Quantifier precision and lexical precision must therefore be kept together.
Places to read
- 226dοὐκ ἔστ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐδεὶς — The first proposed account leaves no instance.
- 230aΟὔτι πᾶν γε — The retraction denies all, not every possible instance.
- 230aτὸ μέν τι — Some gain is provisionally assigned to the good side.
- 231aπᾶν κτῆμα — The proposed definition has unrestricted scope over acquisitions meeting its conditions.
- 232bἅπαντα ἅπαντας — The final wish-premise is universal over both goods and decent persons.
Translation in this edition
The edition’s “every one” preserves the doubled universality of 232b10. The apparatus records πάντες in B against ἅπαντες in T at 232c4; Burnet prints πάντες. The lexical distinction can be explained without claiming that the variant changes the extension of the final universal class.