Human being

Use in the book

The inquiry moves from the ordinary identity of the speakers to the general question of the human being. Socrates and Alcibiades first agree who is speaking and who is listening. They then distinguish a user from speech, tools, bodily members, and the body as a whole. The term “human being” is introduced at the generalization: the human being uses the whole body and therefore differs from it. Asked what such a being is, Alcibiades cannot say; Socrates offers the functional description “what uses the body.”

This description is strengthened to ruling the body and then identified with soul. The sequence matters. “Human being” does not begin as a stipulated synonym for soul. The identification is obtained by treating use and rule as the person's defining function, accepting three exhaustive candidates, and eliminating two. Its adequacy is then expressly distinguished from precision.

The practical return from the general noun to a named individual comes at 130e. Socrates addresses Alcibiades rather than his face, and that Alcibiades is identified with soul. The move makes the generic account bear upon personal care and affection. It does not provide a theory of how one soul is individuated from every other or a complete definition of human nature. The result is sufficient to challenge the young man's reliance on bodily and inherited advantages.

Places to read

1. 128aThe generic human being appears in the question about care
2. 129e–130c2The user of the body is identified as the human being and then as soul
3. 130d–130e2The account is applied to Socrates addressing Alcibiades

Translation in this edition

The edition uses “man” for ἄνθρωπος, including the generic philosophical question. At 128a2, 128a5, 129e3, and 129e7 it preserves Burnet's ἅνθρωπος, where the apparatus records manuscript ἄνθρωπος. A lexicon should neither lose the article nor multiply these spellings into separate concepts.

ἄνθρωπος

Attested: ἅνθρωπος (hanthrōpos; 129e); ὁ ἄνθρωπος (ho anthrōpos; 129e). At 129e: The human being considered as user of the whole body; the form includes the contracted article. At 129e: The person whose identity is being sought, first specified functionally as what uses the body. Lexical identification: lemma: ἄνθρωπος. See Human being.

Use in the book

The argument repeatedly expands from a described sort of person to everyone. The first account produces the startling result that no human being is a lover of gain (226d). The next produces the opposite: all people love good things, gain is good, therefore all appear lovers of gain (227b–c). At the end, the same universal class is recovered by joining decent and base people under their wish for gains (232b–c).

Between those universals, the human example is used in a narrower analogy (230b–c2). Just as good and bad food remain food, decent and base people remain equally human. Socrates specifically denies that either is more or less human than the other. This is a claim about classification in the argument, not an explicit proclamation of a modern political principle. It also says nothing about equal wealth, capacities or happiness.

Applied to gain, the analogy creates a question rather than a completed proof. If good and bad gains share a name as decent and base humans do, what makes both gains? Socrates nevertheless moves directly from equal kind-membership to the claim that one possessor gains no more than another. The human example highlights the difficulty: equality as human beings does not imply equality in every human action or condition.

The ending’s “all men” must accordingly be read under the argument’s shifting definition of gain. If gain means genuine good, wishing for it can be universal without carrying the original reproach of graspingness. If love of gain means the shameful willingness to profit where decent people would refuse, universality has not been independently demonstrated. The common human noun stays stable while the predicate attached to it changes its apparent moral force.

Places to read

1. 226dοὐκ ἔστ’ ἀνθρώπων οὐδεὶς — The first definition seems to leave no human instance.
2. 230cἄνθρωπός γε οἶμαι οὐδέτερος — Neither decent nor base person differs in being human.
3. 232cπάντες ἄνθρωποι — The closing result is universal.
4. 228bἀνδρὶ ἀγαθῷ καὶ σοφῷ — A particular good and wise man is invoked as an authority.

Translation in this edition

The source’s “all men” preserves its chosen English idiom; glossing ἄνθρωπος as “human being” helps readers distinguish it from ἀνήρ without rewriting the translation. The article does not infer details about citizenship, gender inclusion in Athenian institutions, or the companion’s biography from a universal logical expression.

Use in the book

The Cratylus excerpt links anthrōpos with examining what one has seen. This is the dialogue’s interpretive wordplay, not an established historical derivation. The Hermetic account places the human after the cosmos and first among mortals, then describes the hierarchy of intellect, reason, soul, spirit, and body. Another Hermetic formulation compares earthly humans with heavenly gods.

Places to read

1. I.47.3The name is explained through reflective seeing.
2. I.47.9.1The human is situated within a hierarchy of living beings.
3. I.47.8.7Human and divine life are joined in a reciprocal comparison.

Translation in this edition

“Human being” preserves the general reference where the Greek is not specifying a male. Ancient explanations of the word remain attributed to their source.

Use in the book

Traherne studies humanity through powers, needs, inclinations, and ends. The question is not merely what humans are made of, but what kind of happiness fits such a being. III.42 makes their capacities a route into theology, since their proportions reveal what the giver has prepared for them.

The fourth Century intensifies the distinction between capacity and act: the human vocation must be exercised through divine philosophy. Its long engagement with Pico’s account of dignity explores humanity’s unusual power of transformation. The individual is thus both highly endowed and unfinished in practice. Universal claims of worth do not mean that every person already lives at the height of the powers bestowed.

Places to read

1. III.42Human faculties and inclinations are investigated in relation to their sovereign end.
2. IV.3Being human in act requires the exercise of capacities through divine philosophy.
3. IV.74Traherne introduces Pico’s account of human dignity and extraordinary capacity.

In this edition

In IV.74 much of the argument is explicitly quoted or translated from Pico. Distinguish that received voice from Traherne’s framing and subsequent application.