Children and parenthood · Lexicon

From the book

Alcibiades II

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordTekna are children; the opposed descriptions mochthēra and chrēsta are rendered worthless and worthy.
In Alcibiades IIParenthood broadens the evidence beyond tyranny and public command.
In this editionThe edition keeps worthy and worthless for chrēstos and mochthēros rather than using good and bad indiscriminately.
A place to readParents pray for children and encounter misfortune and grief.

Meaning

Tekna are children; the opposed descriptions mochthēra and chrēsta are rendered worthless and worthy. The example concerns parents who asked for children and later experienced grief. Agenēta, unborn or not having come to be, names the retrospective reversal of that desire.

Use in the book

Parenthood broadens the evidence beyond tyranny and public command. A wish can be familiar and affectionate, not politically excessive, and still lack adequate foresight. Socrates gives two distinct routes to grief: children remain worthless throughout, or they become worthy but suffer misfortunes that deprive the parents of them. The second possibility prevents the inference that sufficiently virtuous children would remove every risk from the prayer.

The argument attends to the parents’ experience of the requested outcome. Some spend their entire lives grieving; the bereaved are said to be no less unfortunate. The severity of the comparison supports the claim that even a deeply desired possession cannot be judged solely at the moment of wishing. It does not amount to a universal claim that childlessness is better or that all parental love is mistaken.

The imagined wish that children had never been born resembles the generals’ wish never to have held office. Both try to negate an accomplished history. These examples prepare the account of unpraying while exposing its insufficiency as a practical cure. The philosophical demand is for a more discriminating relation between desire and the good, not an instruction to bereaved people to renounce their attachment.

Places to read

142bParents pray for children and encounter misfortune and grief.
142b–142cWorthlessness and bereavement are distinct paths to disappointment.
142c–142d2Retrospective wishes feed the general account of revising prayers.

Translation in this edition

The edition keeps worthy and worthless for chrēstos and mochthēros rather than using good and bad indiscriminately. Its Glossary distinguishes misfortune, symphora, from ill fortune, dystychia. The children in this example are not identified with Oedipus’ sons, although the opening family tragedy may give the later passage added resonance.