Quantity and quality

Use in the book

The sequence of food, drink and human beings separates what a thing is from whether it is good (230a–c2). The separation enables the companion to retain the expression “bad gain” provisionally. Bad food is still food, so one cannot refute the expression merely by observing that gain is a common name. At this stage quality varies within the kind.

Socrates’ next inference from equally being gains to equally gaining is less secure. A difference of quality need not by itself establish a difference of quantity, but neither does common kind establish equal quantity. The analogy warrants no automatic inference in either direction. Reading the qualifications carefully is more useful than treating “quality” and “quantity” as labels that settle the argument.

Once gain is described as acquisition, amount becomes explicit. Receiving something free appears sufficient under the first proposed condition; receiving more for less appears sufficient under the second. Disease acquired at a feast blocks the first simplification: the thing added can be bad for its recipient. A heavier amount of silver received for gold blocks the second: amount needs a common scale of assessment. This is not just a return to the food distinction, because a comparison between metals concerns relative worth in an exchange.

The final inference from worth through worth possessing and benefit to goodness brings evaluation back inside the definition of gain. A plausible account of genuine advantage emerges: more possession does not help unless what is acquired has beneficial worth. Yet the original question concerned a morally reproached disposition. Economic value, benefit to the acquirer and moral decency are not established as identical by the examples. Keeping their differences visible is essential to understanding why the companion can accept individual answers and still resist the conclusion.

Places to read

1. 230eξηρὰ τροφὴ σώματός — Dryness enters the working definition of food.
2. 230eτῇ τοῦ σώματος ὑγρᾷ τροφῇ — Wetness enters the corresponding account of drink.
3. 231bἐὰν κακόν — The badness of an acquisition defeats the unrestricted possession account.
4. 231dτῷ κέρδει τοῦτο προσεῖναι, τὴν ἀξίαν — Worth must be added to the account of gain.

Translation in this edition

The edition preserves “decent” and “base” for χρηστός and πονηρός, even of drink, beside “good” and “bad” for ἀγαθός and κακός. That deliberate stiffness prevents a smooth English paraphrase from hiding changes in evaluative vocabulary. This article’s conceptual labels are aids to reading those changes, not substitutes for them.

Use in the book

Joubert places the mind’s excellence wholly in quality rather than quantity, unfolding the distinction through patience and constancy rather than strength and fire. A question about the brain applies both terms to physical substance but refuses to infer inner dispositions from outward features: operation is the relevant evidence. A more abstract fragment speaks of a subject as an assemblage of qualities and a substance as an assemblage of accidents, asking what binds them. That tentative “Let us say” should remain audible.

Places to read

1. II, p. 658, entry 5, ¶1Mental excellence depends on quality rather than quantity.
2. II, p. 680, entry 2, ¶1Both terms enter a qualified account of brain constitution.
3. I, p. 277, entry 2, ¶1Qualities and accidents are provisionally assembled into subject and substance.

Translation in this edition

The English translation keeps quantity and quality distinct. At II.680 “admitting it as a cause” preserves the qualification on organization; the passage should not be repackaged as a confident method of judging intelligence from bodily dimensions.

Degree

French: degré.

Degré can mark an intensity or extent, as the dancer’s and musician’s bodily memory has an eminent degree at I.43. It need not name a numerical measurement.

Places to read: I, p. 43, entry 1, ¶1.