Lysis (dialogue)

"Lysis" is a dialogue of Plato which discusses the nature of friendship. It is generally classified as an early dialogue.

The main characters are Socrates, the boys Lysis and Menexenus who are friends, as well as Hippothales, who is in unrequited love with Lysis and therefore, after the initial conversation, hides himself behind the surrounding listeners. Socrates proposes four possible notions regarding the true nature of friendship: 1. Friendship between people who are similar, interpreted by Socrates as friendship between good men. 2. Friendship between people who are dissimilar. 3. Friendship between neither-good-nor-bad men and good men in the presence of evil. 4. Gradually emerging: friendship between those who are relatives (oikeioi - not kindred) by the nature of their souls.

In the end, Socrates seems to discard all these ideas as wrong, although his paralogical refutations have strong hints of irony about them.

Greek Text

* Platonis opera, ed. John Burnet, Tom. III, Oxford 1903

Translations

* Benjamin Jowett, 1892: [http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/webbin/gutbook/lookup?num=1579 full text]
* J. Wright, 1921
* W. R. M. Lamb, 1925: [http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/cgi-bin/ptext?lookup=Plat.+Lysis+203a full text]
* David Bolotin, 1979
* Stanley Lombardo, 1997

Secondary Literature

* David Bolotin, Plato’s dialogue on Friendship. An Interpretation of the Lysis with a new translation, Ithaca/London 1979
* C. P. Seech, Platos’s “Lysis” as Drama and Philosophy, Diss. San Diego 1979
* Michael Bordt: Platon, Lysis. Übersetzung und Kommentar, Göttingen 1998.
* Hans Krämer/Maria Lualdi: Platone.Liside, Milano 1998. (Greek text with an Italien translation, introduction and comment).
* Horst Peters: Platons Dialog Lysis. Ein unlösbares Rätsel? Frankfurt a. Main 2001.