Thirst

Use in the book

Thirst is paired with hunger in the examination of whether desire depends on badness. The noun δίψα denotes the condition, while participial διψῶντα describes the person experiencing it.

The argument distinguishes desiring beneficially, harmfully, or neither way. Thirst therefore supplies a familiar bodily example whose value cannot simply be read from the fact that it is a desire. Its role is argumentative, not a medical recommendation about drinking or deprivation.

Places to read

1. 221aκαὶ δίψα δὴ καὶ αἱ ἄλλαι ἐπιθυμίαι — And thirst too, and the other desires.
2. 220e–221b

Use in the book

The Republic isolates thirst as an impulse to drink, then distinguishes a resisting power in the soul. The underworld catalogue gives Tantalus’s unending thirst as a punishment. One passage analyzes the structure of desire; the other makes frustrated desire part of an afterlife narrative.

Places to read

1. I.49.30.2Thirst supplies the example of an impulse resisted by another psychic power.
2. I.49.47.8Tantalus’s thirst appears among perpetual punishments.

Translation in this edition

“Thirst” is direct; preserve whether the focus is desire, deprivation, or its frustration.

Use in the book

Wine quenches bodily thirst whether or not its drinker understands it, but contemplated as a gift of love it answers a spiritual thirst too. Desire becomes more comprehensive as the reader learns to delight in the good a gift does to everyone. The ordinary act of drinking becomes a model for intelligent participation.

The autobiographical thirst for happiness likewise refuses substitute satisfactions. News, discoveries, and disciplines are examined for the good they promise, until the speaker deliberately gives his time to the search. Scriptural thirst directs the same appetite toward God’s manifested power and goodness. Its eventual satisfaction is not the abolition of desire, but desire meeting its adequate object.

Places to read

1. I.27Bodily and spiritual drinking disclose two levels of satisfaction.
2. III.25The thirst for news expresses an expectation of hidden happiness.
3. III.46The burning thirst for happiness governs the speaker’s choice of life.
4. III.86The psalmic thirst for God is connected to the apprehension of his works.

In this edition

Thirst is often affirmative in these passages, unlike inordinate appetite. Do not assume that an intense desire is a fault before considering its object and direction.