Desire

Use in the book

Demodocus describes the current desire as frightening and unsafe but not ignoble (121c–d2). The report already separates the worth of the aspiration from the risk of acting on it. Theages has been impressed by peers and presses for access to someone who will make him wise. His father is not yet sure what kind of achievement or association is involved.

Socrates insists that they must begin from the boy himself rather than assume the content of his desire (122c–d2). “Wisdom” proves too general. Piloting and charioteering show that an intelligible desire can be specified by a named competence. The next series narrows the desired ruling from human beings to the population of the city as a whole, and then apparently identifies its object as tyranny (123b–124e234).

Theages' qualified assent is crucial: this seems to follow from what he has said. When the joke becomes pointed, he distinguishes an extravagant prayer to rule the greatest possible number, even to become a god, from what he meant by his present educational desire (125e–126a). He wants the standing of leaders whose subjects are willing. The distinction does not establish that his ambition is modest or wholly innocent; it does establish that the initial description left out an important condition.

Desire then moves from the kind of achievement to the person with whom he wants to associate. Theages selects Socrates and rejects further searching (127a). At 128c he believes he can become like Socrates' successful companions if Socrates wishes. This relocates the apparent obstacle from the father's refusal to the proposed companion's willingness. Socrates' daimonic account shows that such willingness is insufficient.

The dialogue's last proposal is therefore a trial rather than immediate satisfaction of a fully controllable desire. This conclusion does not condemn wanting wisdom. It changes the account of how the desire can responsibly be pursued: its content must be clarified, the competence of a prospective teacher tested, and the conditions of benefit acknowledged. The repeated vocabulary carries that inquiry across the father's anxiety, the boy's political aspiration, and the choice of Socrates.

Places to read

1. 121c–d2ἐπιθυμία; σοφὸς γενέσθαι — The desire initially has becoming wise as its stated object
2. 122dὅτι καὶ ἔστιν οὗ ἐπιθυμεῖ — Inquiry is redirected to what the boy actually desires
3. 123bτίς ἐστιν αὕτη ἡ σοφία ἧς ἐπιθυμεῖς — The general aspiration requires specification
4. 124eτῆς αὐτῆς ἀρχῆς … ἐπιθυμεῖ — Socrates infers desire for the same rule as the tyrants
5. 125e–126aἀλλ’ οὐ τούτου ἔλεγον ἐπιθυμεῖν — Theages distinguishes the present desire from the extravagant wish he admits

Translation in this edition

“Desire” consistently renders this family. “Wish” is reserved for boulesthai and “be willing” for ethelein; those families overlap in ordinary motivation but are not interchangeable lexical records. At 123b Burnet prints the imperfect ἐπεθύμεις in the hypothetical pilot example, following a manuscript correction; its hypothetical force should not be replaced by the reported present reading.

Desire — ἐπιθυμία (epithymia)

ἐπιθυμία (epithymia)

Desire. The son's current ambition, whose object and risks require examination. Attested: ἐπιθυμία (121c). Desire and its changing object.

Desires — ἐπιθυμεῖν (epithymein)

ἐπιθυμεῖν (epithymein)

Desires. The son is reported as wanting to become wise; the content remains to be clarified. Attested: ἐπιθυμεῖ (121c). Desire and its changing object.

You desired — ἐπιθυμεῖν (epithymein)

ἐπιθυμεῖν (epithymein)

You desired. Burnet's printed imperfect introduces the hypothetical wish for piloting. Attested: ἐπεθύμεις (123b). Desire and its changing object.

Hurries — σπεύδειν (speudein)

σπεύδειν (speudein)

Hurries. The urgency of the son's movement toward the desired education. Attested: σπεύδει (122a). Desire and its changing object.

Ignoble — ἀγεννής (agennēs)

ἀγεννής (agennēs)

Ignoble. Negated of the desire: the father does not dismiss wanting wisdom as inherently base. Attested: ἀγεννής (121c). Desire and its changing object.

Present — παρεῖναι (pareinai)

παρεῖναι (pareinai)

Present. The desire now confronting the father is singled out from other troubles. Attested: παροῦσα (121c). Desire and its changing object.

Thinking his father ought to act (contextual phrase)

121d: ἀξιῶν ἐπιμεληθῆναί με ἑαυτοῦ. Theages thinks fit that his father should take care of him. The participle axiōn reports the boy's expectation or demand; it does not independently adjudicate what Demodocus owes. Socrates repeats the formulation to the boy at 122e. The inquiry will ask what kind of care the demand actually specifies. See Demodocus and Desire.

Would pray but did not mean that desire (contextual phrase)

126a: ἀλλ’ οὐ τούτου ἔλεγον ἐπιθυμεῖν. Theages distinguishes what he had meant to say he desired from the expansive prayer he has just admitted. The imperfect elegon concerns his earlier statement, not an assertion that limitless ambition never attracts him. A translation or paraphrase should retain both the admission and the clarification. See Voluntary rule and Desire.

Use in the book

Lysis desires to approach the conversation (207a), and his parents restrict things he desires to do (207e–209a2). Socrates desires to acquire friends (211d–e). These personal and practical uses precede desire’s role in explaining friendship.

The desired object commonly stands in the genitive: at 221d–e, the thing desired is what the desirer lacks. The participle τὸ ἐπιθυμοῦν means what desires, not desire as an abstract noun. Keeping subject and object distinct matters to the proposal that the desirer is a friend to what it desires.

At 215e the verb explains the supposed attraction of opposites; at 217b–e2 it describes reaching toward the good; at 221a–b it includes hunger and thirst whose effects may be beneficial, harmful, or neither. At 221e–222a the language returns to one person’s attraction to another. No one of these uses by itself makes desire either virtuous or vicious.

Places to read

1. 221dτό γε ἐπιθυμοῦν — what desires.
2. 207a
3. 207e–209a2
4. 211d–e
5. 215e
6. 217b–e2
7. 221a–222a2

Use in the book

The word can name bodily appetites without declaring them bad. At 217e, badness that has not yet made its subject bad stimulates desire for the good; badness that does transform the subject deprives it of that desire. At 220e–221b, hunger and thirst help separate desire itself from its beneficial or harmful effects.

That distinction overturns the proposal that badness must be the sole cause of attachment. Desires that are neither good nor bad could remain even if bad things disappeared. At 221d Socrates consequently asks whether desire is the cause of friendship: the desirer would be a friend to what is desired at the time of desiring.

At 221e, ἔρως, φιλία, and ἐπιθυμία are named together as directed toward what is akin. The coordination relates the words without making them interchangeable in every context. This proposed explanation is exposed to the difficulties about affinity and likeness at 222b–d.

Places to read

1. 221dἡ ἐπιθυμία τῆς φιλίας αἰτία — desire [as] the cause of friendship.
2. 217e
3. 220e–221e2
4. 222b–d

Use in the book

The Republic excerpt groups loving, hunger, thirst, and other desires under the appetitive element, associated with satisfactions and pleasures. The Hermetic account places desire beside spirit and makes their balanced adherence to reasoning the condition of justice. In the Timaeus physiology, desire for outflow and generation arises through the ensouled marrow. These psychological and bodily explanations should remain distinct.

Places to read

1. I.49.30.4Appetite is distinguished from the reasoning element.
2. I.49.4.2Desire and spirit are balanced under reasoning.
3. I.47.1.3A vital desire is linked with generation.
4. I.49.31.1Appetite is distinguished from reasoning and spirit.
5. I.47.1.4The adjective characterizes desire for childbearing in an ancient bodily account.

Translation in this edition

“Appetite” is useful for the defined psychic power; “desire” preserves the broader range of particular inclinations.

The appetitive element

Epithumētikon names what is capable of desire, including the appetitive element of soul. I.49.31.1 contrasts it with the reasoning element and spirit. I.47.1.4 uses the adjective in the image of a creature desirous of childbearing. That ancient physiological description illustrates the range of the adjective; it should not be substituted for the Republic’s psychological classification.

Use in the book

In the account of Malebranche’s educational advice, bodily pleasure used as a reward makes desire ardent and threatens the teaching of duty. The parenthetic bodily limitation is essential. Another note allows pleasure in pleasing while condemning domination. Yet the tiny phrase “faith of desire” introduces longing within religious life without explaining a doctrine. The shared word should not make all three desires morally identical. The related forms require similar care: envier names the act of envying distinctions, whereas avoir l’envie de détruire means having the desire to destroy.

Places to read

1. I, p. 436, entry 2, ¶1Bodily desire is contrasted with restraint in an account of education.
2. II, p. 488, entry 6, ¶1Pleasure in pleasing and desire to dominate receive opposite judgments.
3. II, p. 854, entry 10, ¶1The bare phrase joins faith to desire.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps “desire,” the unusual “antivirtuous,” and the fragmentary “faith of desire.” It does not supply a theological expansion or turn Joubert’s report of an educational prescription into present-day advice.

Use in the book

Desire begins before clear knowledge: the opening argument finds an attraction to an unnamed greatness already working within the reader. Its uncertainty is educable, not proof of its worthlessness. Childhood and later experience gradually disclose that dead magnificence cannot satisfy a need for persons and affection. Traherne also attributes desire to God, where it expresses living generosity and the wish for a creature’s wise response. Human desire consequently needs direction rather than extinction. Its danger lies in mistaken objects and self-defeating refusal, while its breadth is one sign of the ends for which the soul was made.

Places to read

1. I.2An obscure attraction to some great thing challenges the claim that the unknown cannot be loved.
2. I.23The thirst for riches and dominion becomes virtuous when rightly guided.
3. III.22The lifeless dining room and its later company distinguish magnificence from satisfying affection.
4. IV.48God desires a free and grateful response to his gifts.

In this edition

The word is not automatically blameworthy. Even “covet” and “insatiable” may describe the rightly directed amplitude of desire; the object and manner of pursuit decide the sense.

Use in the book

Guérin wants shelter, knowledge, beauty, useful work, love, and sometimes release from earthly life. These wants are not arranged in a stable hierarchy. His longing to unite with spring carries perception toward an imagined participation in all its forms at once. Intellectual desire can instead make partial understanding painful: a newly opened field of knowledge enlarges appetite faster than competence. The difficulty is not merely that he wants impossible things; it is that each glimpse awakens another capacity to want.

Desire can also become an agent of moral development. In July 1834 vague, lukewarm wishes for liberty become ardent thirsts and active thought. After Marie’s death, the same vocabulary of avidity turns toward knowledge of her final hours and the invisible world. That turn does not abolish bereavement; it shows how love reorganizes attention around what cannot be recovered directly. The notebook thus distinguishes sterile pursuit from potentially formative attraction while never finding a permanent rule for telling them apart.

Places to read

1. 24 April 1833 · ¶1Botanical reading brings delight and enlarges the pain of not understanding familiar phenomena.
2. 25 April 1833 · ¶3The wish to identify with spring imagines receiving its entire life and love.
3. 16 July 1834 · ¶1Desires become thirsts as liberty passes from vague reverie toward passion.
4. 2 February 1835 · ¶5Avidity for sorrow and final knowledge expresses bereavement’s reorientation toward the invisible.

Translation in this edition

The English recasts the French plural contrast of désirs and soifs into the distributive singular “desire” and “burning thirst.” The strengthening of appetite remains clear. At 2 February 1835 · ¶5 “avid” retains the intensity of avide, stronger than ordinary curiosity.

Use in the book

The small line is unusually rich in relations. Desire comes upon someone rather than simply being chosen; sight mediates its arrival; and the verb of reminding makes the response depend on something beyond the immediate bare visual event. What is remembered, however, is not stated. The passage cannot by itself certify a particular memory of a former life, a theory of prenatal wholeness, or an elaborate psychology of erotic recognition.

Its place among the reproductive fragments makes erotic attraction an appropriate context. The nearby material concerns divided generative contributions, sexual differentiation, and Aphrodite’s cloven meadows. Yet the B-number order does not reproduce a guaranteed continuous account. The line’s own referent, introduced only as “him,” remains unidentified.

Desire should also be distinguished from the cosmic power of Love without treating them as unrelated. Both can draw separated things toward one another, but B64 describes a sight-mediated experience of a recipient, whereas the great Love passages explain conjunction at much larger scales. The specific perceptual wording gives this entry its independent value. It is not merely another interchangeable name to substitute into every occurrence of Philotēs.

Places to read

1. B 64Desire arrives and reminds through sight; the recipient and object of reminder remain unstated.
2. B 66Aphrodite’s cloven meadows give a neighbouring erotic image.
3. B 63The nearby generation fragment describes division in the formation of limbs.
4. B 17.20–262Love operates in mortal bodily association and in the larger physical process.

Translation in this edition

The verb of reminding is preserved, but its missing object should not be supplied from a preferred reconstruction. The capitalized name follows the Greek presentation without proving a separate narrative about a deity of Desire.

Use in the book

Travel and homecoming fail to calm an ardour that follows him everywhere (p. 156). Social life offers objects, but he thinks he gives more than he receives and must diminish himself to participate. When he asks what he desires, he admits that he does not know; the immediate conviction that the woods will delight him substitutes a new setting for an answer (p. 159). His change of circumstances repeats the same structure rather than solving it.

At the cottage, desire occupies all nature with a projected beloved: winds, river, stars, and life’s principle become an imaginary phantom (p. 160). The language is cosmic, but the wished-for companion remains affectively and erotically charged. The wish for infinity stands beside a surprising concession that happiness, if possible, would be found in habit. A patient, recurrent life is thus imagined as valuable even by the speaker who declares the finite worthless.

After Amélie’s revelation, indeterminate passions rush upon a ‘first prey’ (p. 182). The object is no longer imagined, but the predatory metaphor and pleasure in full grief show that finding an object does not by itself constitute recovery. Amélie’s recommendation of occupation, and Souël’s demand to employ strength for others, introduce a different test: whether desire can become sustained action responsive to another’s good. The narrative asks more than whether the inward void can be filled.

Places to read

1. p. 156cette ardeur de désir qui me suit partout — The present tense extends restless desire from remembered travel into the act of telling.
2. p. 159Je ne le savois pas — René answers his own question about what he desired with admitted ignorance.
3. p. 159je cherche seulement un bien inconnu — His defence recasts inconstancy as pursuit of something not yet named or found.
4. p. 160l'idéal objet d'une flamme future — The imagined object is attached to a future love; the phrase does not establish a Platonic doctrine.
5. p. 182cette première proie avec fureur — A real misfortune supplies direction while exposing the violence of previously undetermined feeling.

Translation in this edition

The 1802 reading at p. 15923456 includes ‘le vague instinct’; 1826 omits vague. The editorial introduction usefully notices this withdrawal of the programmatic word, but the continuing indeterminacy must be demonstrated from the surviving language, not assumed to vanish with an adjective.