Contrary

Use in the book

At 138c madness is said to be opposite to being intelligent. At 139b Socrates recalls this admission and asks how two things could be opposite to one thing. Alcibiades’ denial allows unintelligence and madness to be identified. The crucial extra assumption is uniqueness: it is not supplied merely by the claim that one cannot be neither intelligent nor unintelligent. Describing two conditions as opposed to a third does not without further specification establish their identity.

The dialogue itself refuses the resulting extension of “mad” to the unintelligent majority. Its replacement account makes madness a differentiated share of unintelligence. It does not return to provide a formal correction of the earlier rule about opposites, and a reading companion should leave that argumentative gap visible rather than silently rewrite the first argument into a valid demonstration.

Elsewhere the word works without this uniqueness principle. At 141a the opposite condition concerns people who think their prayers good, unlike Oedipus; at 143d it is the opposite assertion about Alcibiades’ willingness to commit matricide. At 145c and 146c the opposite is the unfavourable condition of someone without guiding knowledge or beneficial action. At 148d the gods may give what was requested or its opposite. These uses mark contrasts whose content comes from their immediate context.

Places to read

1. 138cMadness is first described as opposite to intelligence.
2. 139b–dThe uniqueness-of-opposite premise produces an identity subsequently rejected.
3. 141aContrary attitudes to the goodness of a prayer are distinguished.
4. 145c; 146cThe favourable practical condition is contrasted with its opposite.
5. 148dDivine giving is not bound to match the request.

Translation in this edition

The English usually says “opposite” for both hypenantion and enantion. The entry therefore separates the logical role at 139b from later ordinary contrasts without pretending that the translation marks a technical distinction between the Greek expressions.

Use in the book

At 226e the companion grants that gain is opposite to loss. Socrates asks whether suffering loss is good for anyone; it is bad and harms people. He then concludes that gain is good. The bare form “the opposite of something bad is good” is not universally valid. An opposite may be another bad thing, and the relevant contrast may permit an intermediate state. The gain/loss pair might nevertheless be defined evaluatively so that gain means an improvement and loss a worsening. On that interpretation goodness is already built into the chosen sense of gain rather than established by opposition alone.

The issue returns at 227e–228a when the companion allows harm from base gain. Socrates recites the earlier opposition and goodness, then calls the new statement deliberately contrary to what was agreed. Opposition between gain and loss has become opposition between utterances. This changes the burden: the companion is no longer simply invited to explain an ordinary use but charged with violating his conversational commitments.

The companion immediately answers “on the contrary”: Socrates is the deceiver, twisting things up and down in the arguments. The reversal does not provide a technical diagnosis of the inferential failure, but it contests who has broken the conversational norm. The subsequent history of Hipparchus is Socrates’ answer to this personal charge rather than a new proof about opposites.

At 229e–230a the offered retractions separate the components. The companion will not withdraw the badness of loss or the opposition of gaining and suffering loss; he withdraws the claim that all gaining is good. This choice is philosophically important. He wants the lexical opposition to coexist with good and bad specimens of gain. Socrates must therefore pursue the common character of those specimens, eventually returning to worth and benefit. The dialogue itself thus offers more than repeated assertion of the first opposition argument.

Places to read

1. 226eΚέρδος δὲ λέγεις ἐναντίον τῇ ζημίᾳ; — Gain and loss are accepted as an opposed pair.
2. 228aἘναντίον δὲ ὂν κακῷ ἀγαθὸν εἶναι; — The evaluative inference is recapitulated explicitly.
3. 228aἐπίτηδες ἐναντία — Socrates characterises disagreement as deliberate contradiction.
4. 228aἀλλὰ τοὐναντίον σύ με — The companion reverses the accusation of deception.

Translation in this edition

The edition consistently uses “opposite” rather than switching between contradiction, contrariety and opposition in a way that would imply a technical distinction not made in the text. Its introduction identifies the questionable inference directly. A critical article should explain that inference without claiming that every occurrence of enantios has the same logical relation or that the dialogue contains a formal theory of contraries.

Use in the book

At 215e–216a2, the claim that unlike things supply one another’s needs becomes the stronger claim that what is most opposite is most friendly. Dry and wet, cold and hot, bitter and sweet, sharp and blunt supply examples; the empty desires filling, and the full emptying. The explanatory proposal is that each wants its opposite, which nourishes it.

The test at 216a–b substitutes enmity and friendship, injustice and justice, lack of restraint and self-restraint, bad and good. If opposition as such produces friendship, these pairs too must be friendly. That consequence defeats the unrestricted thesis. The argument does not prove that no unlike or complementary pair can ever be friends. ἐναντιότης, “opposition”, makes the crucial qualification explicit: friendship supposedly occurs in virtue of opposition itself.

Places to read

1. 216bκατὰ τὴν ἐναντιότητα — in virtue of opposition.
2. 215e–216b2
3. 218b

Use in the book

The Hermetic account of the soul’s love of the good says that a soul raised to apprehend the good and true cannot slip toward the contrary. Its context identifies that contrary through evil and departure from the good. The term here expresses a moral direction, not a complete technical account of contradictory propositions.

Places to read

1. I.41.1.3Apprehension of the good prevents the soul’s movement toward its opposite.

Translation in this edition

“Opposite” fits ordinary and directional contrasts; “contrary” is useful when the opposition itself becomes a technical topic.

Use in the book

The Homeric Allegories at A332 explains the nature of the four through opposites, naming dry and wet, while Aëtius’ nearby excerpt mentions heat and cold. Aristotle at A46 speaks of contraries separated out of the one in comparing Empedocles with other thinkers. Plato’s A48 supplies a fuller catalogue of hot/cold, dry/moist and soft/hard in an anonymous naturalist cosmogony.

These passages show how later interpreters could make a root-theory intelligible through opposed qualities. They do not give a complete Empedoclean table assigning two defining qualities to each root. Nor does the juxtaposition of Love and Strife as opposite moving sources establish that every material contrary has a direct moral equivalent.

The technical importance of the word lies in the kind of explanation it makes possible: bodies and worlds can arise as unlike conditions meet, fit or separate. Attribution remains decisive, since the most elaborate chance-and-necessity account is Plato’s polemical representation of unnamed thinkers rather than Empedocles speaking.

Places to read

1. A 33 (testimony)2Homeric Allegories, in Stobaeus; Aëtius I 3,20. Interprets the roots through opposed sensible qualities.
2. A 46 (testimony)Aristotle, Physics A 4, 187a20. Places separation of contraries within a comparison of one-and-many theories.
3. A 48 (polemical)Plato, Laws X 889b. Describes chance fitting and blending of several pairs of opposites.

Translation in this edition

Do not complete the excerpt’s lists by importing a later canonical quality-table. The ellipses and the differing authors make such completion especially unsafe.

Use in the book

Opposition performs more than one job in Book I. Among natural bodies, Ficino places effective opposition in qualities rather than bare matter or quantity: heat and cold provide his recurring examples. A quality may affect another thing through such opposition, yet its own dependence and exposure to material dispersion prevent it from being a sufficient first cause. At a higher explanatory level, living power reconciles conflicting constituents and holds them together in one organism. In the argument from angel to God, the oppositions are conceptual: immobility opposes mobility, and unity opposes multiplicity. Since a mobile multiplicity and an immobile unity differ in both respects, Ficino argues for an intermediary, the immobile multiplicity of angelic mind. The word therefore does more than supply a generic metaphor of conflict. Its meaning depends on whether Ficino is discussing natural qualities, an organism's constituents, or paired distinctions within the hierarchy of being.

Further passage references. I.2.8; I.3.9, I.3.23, I.3.33; I.6.1–I.6.323

Places to read

1. I.2.8Qualitative contraries are located as sources of natural bodily action.
2. I.3.23Life reconciles conflicting constituents within an organism.
3. I.6.1–323Immobile multiplicity mediates between mobile multiplicity and immobile unity.

Translation in this edition

“Opposed” should retain the relevant respect. Heat versus cold differs from unity versus multiplicity and from mobility versus immobility; I.6.1 needs two independent contrasts to motivate an intermediate.

contrarium / oppositio

contrarium / oppositio. Printed forms: contrariorum; oppositio.

Contraries and their opposition. Natural bodily action is located where opposed qualities encounter one another; opposition of quality differs from mere difference in size. References: I.2.8. See Contraries and opposition.

oppositus / contrarius / diversus

oppositus / contrarius / diversus. Printed forms: contrarius; dissimiles; diversa; diversos; opposita.

Opposed, contrary, diverse, or unlike, with degrees of contrast distinguished. Difference can coexist with common being; absolute evil excludes all good; passivity is opposed to act. References: II.2.13, II.2.15, II.4.1, II.7.27. See Contraries and opposition.