Heraclitus B111 · B111

Value comes from the opposite. νόσος, disease, is what makes ὑγίεια — health — feel sweet and good; hunger (λιμός) is what makes fullness (κόρος) welcome; toil (κάματος) is what makes rest (ἀνάπαυσις) rest at all. Each good is invisible until its lack has been felt; the pairs are not merely contrasted but bound, so that one member gives the other its worth. It is the same architecture as B23, where without injustice men would never have learned the name of Justice, and B60, where the road up and the road down are one.

The word to watch is κόρος, 'satiety.' Here it is simply the good that hunger reveals — but κόρος is a loaded term in Heraclitus. In B65 fire itself is χρησμοσύνη καὶ κόρος, need and surfeit, want and its own overfilling; and satiety shades easily into the excess he elsewhere says must be quenched like a fire (B43, on ὕβρις). So the very fullness that hunger makes sweet is, one step further on, the surfeit that turns dangerous. The same word carries both, which is exactly his point: the goods are not stable possessions but moments on a swing between opposites.

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