Proper and one's own

Use in the book

At 210c–d2 the word ranges from familial nearness, even something closer than one’s parents, to the claim that everyone will be a friend and akin to the wise, useful Lysis. At 221e–222a it becomes a proposed explanation of attachment: desire is directed toward what belongs or is akin to the desirer.

The inference passes through lack and deprivation. It does not establish that every desire literally recovers a former possession. Nor must “akin” mean blood relationship: the possible natural affinity concerns soul, a character of soul, ways, or visible figure. The qualifying πῃ, “in some way”, makes the relation less definite than a full account of its nature would be.

At 222b–d, its distinction from likeness remains unstable. If it means like, the earlier uselessness argument returns. If each kind is akin to its own kind, bad persons can be friends of bad persons; if the akin is identified with the good, the earlier problem about good persons returns. The word is a promising candidate, not the dialogue’s final doctrine.

Places to read

1. 221eφύσει πῃ οἰκεῖοί — by nature akin in some way.
2. 210b–d2
3. 221e–222d2

Use in the book

Porphyry’s interpretation of Homer calls the region around the moon the fitting place for reverent souls after death. The adjective links a destination to the condition of the souls assigned there. It does not, by itself, establish ownership of a physical locality or name a separate faculty of soul.

Places to read

1. I.49.61.1The lunar region is interpreted as the appropriate home of reverent souls.
2. I.14.1a.2A foreign place is contrasted with a body’s proper place.

Translation in this edition

“Fitting” or “proper” suits the relation between nature and destination; “one’s own” suits possession or belonging.

What belongs elsewhere

Allotrios means belonging to another or foreign to the thing concerned. In I.14.1a.2, the report about Plato contrasts a body’s own place with a place foreign to it: in the latter it acquires an inclination and a tendency toward heaviness or lightness. The opposition is relational, not a moral judgment that foreign things are bad.