Will and wish

Use in the book

Socrates asks whether a wish could wish for itself and the other wishes while wishing for no good (167e). The expected negative answer parallels desire without pleasure and love without beauty. The structure of the analogy matters more than a modern distinction between voluntary intention and passive longing.

The phrasing does not say that all actual wishes succeed, nor that whatever someone wishes must in fact be good. Its immediate work is to identify the object toward which a wish is directed under the speakers' agreed description. Whether “good” here means genuinely good or apparently good is not separately worked out.

For that reason the line should not be cited as a complete theory of the will or as a denial that one can wish to have different wishes. It challenges the more austere proposal of an attitude whose entire object consists in attitudes, while excluding anything good. The later knowledge of good and bad is a different epistemic proposal, not simply boulēsis elevated into a science.

Places to read

1. 167eWish of wishes excluding any good offered as an impossible-looking analogy

Translation in this edition

“Wish” separates boulēsis from nearby epithymia. Boulē, counsel or deliberation, and bouleuesthai, to deliberate, belong to a related verbal field but must not be substituted for the attitude tested here.

βούλησις

Attested: βούλησις / βουλήσεις (boulēsis / boulēseis). A wish or act of wishing; the example asks whether a wish could be directed only at itself and other wishes, with no good as its object. References: 167e. Lexical identification: lemma: βούλησις. See Wish.

Use in the book

The early companion wants to identify a discreditable orientation toward gain. His second and third attempts add excessive craving and earnest commitment. Socrates progressively reduces the issue to whether people want good things. At 227d he says the speakers agreed that everyone wishes for good things always. The prior passage had explicitly agreed that all people love good things, not this newly worded and temporally strengthened proposition. The universal “always” therefore belongs to the retrospective restatement, not to a quoted earlier premise.

The next sentence is conditional: good people wish to have all gains, if they are indeed good things. The companion resists gains from which they will be harmed. This is not a denial that people generally seek advantage; it challenges the identification of every gain with a genuinely desirable outcome. The scope of “all” and the standard of goodness are doing more work than any fine distinction between wish and desire.

When Socrates offers to take back a move at 229e, he first asks whether he should retract that all men desire good things. The verb is now epithymein. The companion refuses that retraction and chooses instead the universal goodness of gaining. The exchange confirms that the shared orientation toward good remains a retained premise even after the complaint of deception. It does not establish that the two verbs have precisely identical connotations in every context.

Socrates’ willingness, expressed with ethelein, has a different object: he will reopen the argument as a courtesy. At 232b–c, willing all good things supplies the good person’s side of the final universalisation, while loving gains supplies the base person’s. The conclusion slides across related attitudes in order to apply one label. A careful reader can accept their family resemblance while still asking whether every wish for a benefit makes someone gain-loving in the reproachful everyday sense.

Places to read

1. 226dβούλομαι λέγειν — Wishing here concerns what the companion intends to mean.
2. 227dβούλεσθαι — The infinitive appears in Socrates’ strengthened summary of the earlier agreement.
3. 229eἐθέλω σοι — Socrates expresses willingness to take back an argumentative move.
4. 229eτῶν ἀγαθῶν πάντες ἐπιθυμοῦσιν ἄνθρωποι — Desire for good things is retained when retraction is offered.

Translation in this edition

The English distinguishes “wish”, “desire” and “am willing” where the contexts call for them. Note 8 identifies the change of wording at 227d; it should not be erased by paraphrasing the entire sequence as one already established desire principle. Nothing in the supplied text licenses assigning these occurrences to a fully articulated tripartite psychology.

Use in the book

The verb links parental intention and the boy’s proposed freedom. His parents want him happy, but do not allow him to do whatever he wants with horses, himself, or his mother’s tools. In the areas he knows, he can choose the sequence of letters or the treatment of strings.

The repeated “whatever one wants” tests the scope of permission. In these exchanges βούλομαι overlaps ordinary wanting without being explicitly opposed to ἐπιθυμέω as rational versus irrational desire. Such a technical distinction would exceed this passage.

Places to read

1. 207eἃ βούλει ποιεῖν — to do what you want.
2. 207d
3. 208a–e2
4. 209b
5. 210b

Use in the book

The report of Platonists around Taurus presents divine willing as the purpose that gods become manifest through the pure lives of souls. This is one explanation of descent, distinguished from another concerning completion of the cosmos. Will here is directed toward a specified manifestation, not an unspecified power to choose anything.

Places to read

1. I.49.39.7The gods’ will is expressed through the manifestation of divine life.
2. I.1.35Divine will coexists with the soul’s self-determination in Iamblichus’s account.

Translation in this edition

“Will” suits the purposive divine use; “wish” may suit other contexts without the same emphasis.