From the book
Hipparchus
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordPhilein means to love, like or be attached to; misein means to hate or dislike.
- In HipparchusAfter the second definition, Socrates asks whether lovers of gain love gain.
- In this editionThe edition keeps “love” even where English “like” might sound less elevated.
- A place to readφιλοῦσι τὸ κέρδος — Loving gain unpacks the defining compound.
Meaning
Philein means to love, like or be attached to; misein means to hate or dislike. Philein forms the first element of the word for lover of gain, and Socrates explicitly exploits that relation. These verbs describe attitudes toward objects, not automatically a settled hierarchy among them or a measure of how intensely they are pursued.
The pair in this argument is love of good things and hatred of bad ones. Erotic love in the historical story uses a different Greek family, although attachment and competition there raise related issues. A lexical account should not silently make every kind of love one technical psychological state.
Use in the book
After the second definition, Socrates asks whether lovers of gain love gain. The answer is effectively secured by the compound’s transparent formation. Gain is then classed as good, and lovers of gain become lovers of a good thing. The next question involves the companion personally: does he love what is good? Socrates offers his own parallel admission and then includes everyone. This sequence turns an accusation against a separate group into a shared human orientation.
The movement from loving some good thing to loving all good things is explicit in the questions at 227b–c. The companion denies that there is a good thing he does not love rather than a bad one. Socrates then asks about all other people loving good things and hating bad ones. The argument gives no extended account of apparent goods, competing goods or the practical impossibility of securing every good together. Its immediate function is to remove the lover of gain’s distinctiveness under the accepted definition.
The crucial suppressed question is degree and arrangement. An ordinary lover-of-something label may identify a marked disposition rather than any instance of approval: liking a profitable outcome need not be a life organised around profit. The companion’s insatiability and prodigious craving had supplied just such a marked disposition. The simple verb “love” used in the universalisation does not retain those qualifications automatically.
The final proof places two descriptions beside each other. Decent people wish for all good things; base people love gains small and great. If every gain is good, Socrates concludes, both groups are lovers of gain. Here love and wishing are allowed to support the same designation. That may express a reasonable common orientation toward benefit, but it does not establish identical motives or practices. The closing rebuke works by exposing the accuser’s participation in the broadly construed attitude.
Places to read
- 226eφιλοῦσι τὸ κέρδος — Loving gain unpacks the defining compound.
- 227bπάντα τὰ ἀγαθὰ ἴσως φιλεῖς — Socrates moves to loving all good things.
- 227cτἀγαθὰ φιλεῖν, τὰ δὲ κακὰ μισεῖν — Good and bad things receive the explicitly opposed attitudes of love and hatred.
- 232cκέρδη φιλοῦσιν — Love of gains is recalled as the companion’s account of base people.
Translation in this edition
The edition keeps “love” even where English “like” might sound less elevated. The consistency is necessary to see how philokerdēs is analysed. “Hate” preserves the explicit opposed attitude without implying that the speakers have demonstrated every person’s actual emotional response to every harm. The article uses the infinitive lemmas, while the dialogue commonly has finite personal or plural forms.