Overcoming translation First let's try to understand the language, and not have its meaning obscured by translation. Here is a more modern (and in my opinion generally excellent) translation, by Christopher Rowe : Because the unjust person is grasping, his sphere of operation will be goods — not all of them, but those to which good and bad fortune relate, ones which are generally good, but not always for this or that particular person. (Human beings pray for these, and go after them; but they should rather pray that what are goods generally speaking be good for them too, while choosing the things that are good for them.) And Sarah Broadie's commentary on 1129b1-2 (found in the same volume): grasping [*pleonektês, lit. 'one who goes in for having more'] (a) 'Grasping is always perjorative in Ar. as in Plato, hence cannot be used of the laudable character who seeks more and more of the goo