Love of gain · Lexicon

From the book

Hipparchus

Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026

Orientation

At a Glance

The wordPhilokerdēs means gain-loving, a lover of gain.
In HipparchusThe opening definition identifies lovers of gain as people who think fit to gain from things worth nothing.
In this editionNote 1 explains both the abrupt opening gar and the everyday reproach.
A place to readΤί γὰρ τὸ φιλοκερδές; — The abstract disposition is questioned before its bearers are identified.

Meaning

Philokerdēs means gain-loving, a lover of gain. Its first element expresses attachment or liking, its second gain. The neuter substantive to philokerdes names the characteristic or disposition, rendered “the love of gain”; philokerdein means to love gain or act as a lover of gain. These are related formations, not interchangeable grammatical forms. The question moves at once from the characteristic to the people who possess it: what is it, and who are they?

In the ordinary reproach presupposed by the companion, a lover of gain is grasping or greedy. The label picks out a culpable manner of seeking advantage, not everyone who welcomes improvement. The edition keeps the compositional expression “lover of gain” rather than translating it simply “greedy”, because Socrates will exploit the relation between loving gain and loving something good.

Use in the book

The opening definition identifies lovers of gain as people who think fit to gain from things worth nothing. Asked whether they know these things are worthless, the companion rejects stupidity and insists on knowing unscrupulousness. Socrates then interprets worthlessness through expertise: a competent farmer, rider or pilot recognises defective resources as sources of damage. By 226d, no intelligent person satisfies the definition so construed. This does not establish that greed never occurs; it makes the companion’s particular formulation empty.

The second attempt relocates the fault in insatiability: lovers of gain crave even tiny and valueless objects excessively. Socrates first returns to the knowledge dilemma, then separates the compound into its elements. Lovers of gain love gain; gain is good; everyone loves good things. At 227c the extension reverses from nobody to everybody. The derivation suppresses the excess and indiscrimination that made the initial designation a reproach. A person may like gain without making it an overriding commitment, but the dialogue’s argument requires no threshold of attachment.

The third attempt makes the social boundary explicit: a lover of gain pursues sources from which decent men refrain. After the historical interlude and renewed arguments about what counts as gain, the conclusion again includes both decent and base people. The closing rebuke is directed against the reproacher: the person who calls someone else a lover of gain is one himself. Read narrowly, this is a challenge to a badly defined accusation. Read more expansively, it rehabilitates the desire for genuine benefit. Neither reading warrants concluding that exploitation has become morally acceptable, since the argument has repeatedly excluded harmful acquisition from genuine gain.

Places to read

225aΤί γὰρ τὸ φιλοκερδές; — The abstract disposition is questioned before its bearers are identified.
226eοἵ γε φιλοκερδεῖς φιλοῦσι τὸ κέρδος — The compound is unpacked into loving and its object.
227cΠάντες αὖ φιλοκερδεῖς φαίνονται — The universal extension is explicitly an appearance produced by this argument.
232cκαὶ οἱ χρηστοὶ καὶ οἱ πονηροί — The final extension crosses the moral distinction with which the companion began.

Translation in this edition

Note 1 explains both the abrupt opening gar and the everyday reproach. The stable English family makes the semantic manoeuvre visible without endorsing it. The edition’s introduction treats the uncertainty over whether the dialogue exposes or inadvertently commits its argumentative faults as unresolved. A lexical account should retain that uncertainty instead of converting Socrates’ last sentence into an unqualified doctrine about greed.