Faction and hatred · Lexicon

From the book

Alcibiades I

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordΜισεῖν is to hate; στασιάζειν is to engage in faction or be divided by civic conflict.
In Alcibiades IAsked what must be present or absent for the city to be better ordered and tended, Alcibiades names friendship as the desirable presence and hatred and faction as the absences (126c).
In this edition“Faction” translates a verbal expression, “to be factious,” while “discord” answers ὁμόνοια in the next question.
A place to readFriendship’s presence and hatred and faction’s absence are proposed as conditions of a better city.

Meaning

Μισεῖν is to hate; στασιάζειν is to engage in faction or be divided by civic conflict. The attested verb, rather than the unattested abstract headword στάσις, carries the meaning at 126c. Διχόνοια, discord, is a related but distinct contrary to concord.

Use in the book

Asked what must be present or absent for the city to be better ordered and tended, Alcibiades names friendship as the desirable presence and hatred and faction as the absences (126c). The pairing distinguishes an antagonistic disposition from its political expression in divided collective life. The city-improving result he seeks is relational, like the earlier contrast of health with disease, not merely the accumulation of resources.

Socrates does not dispute the desirability of removing these conditions. He asks whether friendship is concord or discord and then subjects concord to the test of determinate expertise. The analysis fails to identify what knowledge produces the required civic unity. Thus the text provides a clear diagnosis of the conditions opposed to civic well-being but no completed account of a technique for eliminating faction.

The entry should not convert every disagreement in the dialogue into faction. The many's disagreement about justice can cause war (112a–d2), but the verb here names conflict within the desired ordering of civic relationships.

Places to read

126b–126c2Friendship’s presence and hatred and faction’s absence are proposed as conditions of a better city

Translation in this edition

“Faction” translates a verbal expression, “to be factious,” while “discord” answers ὁμόνοια in the next question. Registering στάσις as a lemma may help lookup, but the actual form in this passage is στασιάζειν.

μισέω

Attested: μισεῖν (misein; 126c). At 126c: Hating one another, a condition to be removed for civic improvement. Lexical identification: lemma: μισέω. See Faction and hatred.

στασιάζω

Attested: στασιάζειν (stasiazein; 126c). At 126c: Engaging in faction, opposed to the friendship that should improve the city. Lexical identification: lemma: στασιάζω. See Faction and hatred.