The Lysis is on the face of it difficult to the point of perversity. It asks a question – ‘What is friendship?’ – which is in all conscience hard enough, but does so in such a way as to generate confusion. Why? Was Plato simply muddled, or did he have some deep purpose?
But first, a word on the key terminology. The theme of the Lysis is philia. ‘Friendship’ is the customary, but inadequate, translation of the Greek. ‘Liking’ hardly covers the range of connotations of the concept any better:1 parents cannot be said to feel mere ‘friendship’ or ‘liking’ for their children. Consequently ‘love’ is in many cases a preferable rendering, so long as it is remembered that in general fond affection is the major component of the love that is philia, whereas the love which is characterized
by passionate sexual desire is, in Greek, erōs; and erōs constitutes the subject of two of Plato’s later and more elaborate dialogues, the Phaedrus and the Symposium.2 It is, however, impossible to put philia in one semantic compartment and erōs in another: some instances of erōs may manifest elements of philia and vice versa.3
In the introductory section of the dialogue, which deals with the youth Hippothales and his love for the boy Lysis, the terms used are without exception4 ‘erotic’: Hippothales is referred to as the erastēs, the older, sexually active partner (erōn) in a male homosexual relationship; Lysis is the paidika, the younger, sexually passive partner (erōmenos)5 – though Hippothales has not as yet managed to consummate his love (erōs). His erōs for Lysis stands in relation to and in contrast with the simple philia (friendship) which the two boys, Lysis and Menexenus, when they are subsequently introduced into the dialogue, are seen to feel for each other, and with the higher sort of philia which Socrates will exhibit in his treatment of the two boys and Hippothales. That is to say, Hippothales embodies the one-sided sexual love (erōs) felt by the lover (erastēs)1; in Lysis and Menexenus we have an instance of natural, reciprocal friendship (philia); while Socrates gradually reveals a higher philia, educative philia.2 On a practical level Hippothales is taught how a lover (erastēs) should treat his boy (paidika);on an intellectual and moral level Lysis, Menexenus and Hippothales (and of course all the others present) are given a lesson in philosophy.3
In this way the dramatic framework4 of the dialogue provides arresting illustrations of philia and erōs before the actual philosophical inquiry into the nature of philia is begun.5 Next, the preliminary inquiry (207d-211a), which Plato uses to smooth the transition from the obvious charms of his scene-painting to the greater demands of the philosophical problems of the dialogue proper, offers in the choice of its theme yet another example of philia, parental love; this is simple natural love (which, however, is shown later on (212e-213a) sometimes to be unreciprocated by the child, when very young). Here too the connection between philia and education (paideia) is implicit in the argument. For philia is the wish to make someone as happy as possible.6 Happiness consists in possessing the freedom to do what one likes.7 One is granted the freedom to do what one likes in those spheres of action in which one possesses greater knowledge. This is, of course, because it is to everyone’s advantage to entrust the power to act in a given sphere to those with greater knowledge of that sphere. But according to Socratic doctrine, knowledge is knowledge of the good, whether in morals or any other sphere of conduct, and if one knows the good, one will do only good, since no one deliberately does wrong. That is to say, knowledge brings one the freedom to do what one likes, which in turn brings happiness. Happiness is therefore dependent on knowledge; and if one wants someone to be as happy as possible, one must give that person as much knowledge as possible: one must educate him.1
It is while the dialogue is still in its preliminary stages that what is perhaps the most striking feature of the Socratic conception of philia is brought out: the view that the basis of friendship is utility or, as it is seen later in the dialogue (215b, 221d–e), need or deficiency: one man is useful to another because he meets a need which that man has. What makes a man useful is knowledge, which, according to Socratic belief, is to be identified with the good: one man feels philia for another because that other possesses relevant knowledge which makes him useful to the first man.2 But the utilitarian motive is not so utterly selfish as it might at first glance seem: what is useful is what produces good for one, so to love what is useful is to love what is good, albeit what is good for oneself. The utilitarian view of philia leads to the general conclusion that everyone will feel philia for the man who is wise (i.e. who possesses knowledge), because he will be useful and good (210d).3
With the dramatic and philosophical background now set, one would have expected Socrates to start the philosophical inquiry proper with the question ‘What is philia?’ The other early ‘definition’ dialogues all ask their respective questions in this form. Before dealing with the primary question of the dialogue, however, Plato toys with the problem of the ambiguity inherent in the terms to be discussed, by having Socrates ask,4 ‘When one man loves (philei) another, which is the friend of which?’ Like the English ‘friend’, the Greek philos may be active, passive, or both: it may mean ‘a man who loves another’, ‘a man who is loved by another’, or ‘a man who both loves another and is loved by that other’. Is the friend the man who loves (but is not necessarily loved in return by the man he loves), or the man who is loved (but does not necessarily love in return the man by whom he is loved), or the man who both loves a man and is loved by him in return? At first sight the third alternative would seem the obvious answer, but it is correct only so far as it goes. It is incomplete in that it fails to account for unreciprocated philia. Conventional usage allows us to talk of philia when only one of the parties involved actually loves. In such a case one may call either the man who loves or the man who is loved the friend, according to one’s point of view. If A loves B but B hates A, A can be called the friend because he loves B (who hates him), or B can be called the friend because he is loved by A (whom he hates).
What is Plato’s purpose in devoting so much attention to the ambiguities of the word philos? Perhaps, conscious of the difficulties inherent in the word under consideration and unable to offer a solution to a question which, in the terms in which it is couched, must remain insoluble, he wished to bring the difficulty out into the open and to do so in as entertaining a manner as possible, in a passage of dazzling eristics, even if it meant perplexing his readers as deeply as Socrates bewildered the two boys.
Plato now turns to the dialogue’s main question: ‘Who are friends?’,1 or rather, as it is put later in the dialogue, when the emphasis has shifted from philia as an interpersonal relationship to philia as the pursuit of a loved object,2 ‘What is a “friend”?’, that is to say, ‘What is “that which is a friend” (neuter)?’3 But the dialogue ends (223b) with Socrates’ assertion that they have been unable to discover what a ‘friend’ (masculine) is. In fact it is not the masculine ho philos, ‘the friend’, but the neuter to philon, ‘that which is a friend’, which has been the term under investigation throughout the main part of the dialogue. This shift from the masculine plural (‘Who are friends?’) is not difficult in Greek, where the use of the neuter singular imports a greater degree of universality or abstractness into the term. The neuter singular of the adjective is in general in Greek virtually synonymous with its cognate abstract noun. In the Euthyphro, for example, the term to be defined shifts between to hosion (‘that which is pious’) and hosiotēs (‘piety’). But the substitution of to philon for philia brings with it a complication peculiar to the concept. Philia may be, indeed in general usage properly is, reciprocal, whereas to philon is naturally passive, meaning ‘that which is loved’. Philia too usually refers to human relationships, while to philon is a non-human object, or an abstraction. In substituting to philon for philia Plato is in fact narrowing the scope of the investigation. We move from considering friendship as a relationship between two persons to investigating an impersonal object which receives love, and thence indeed to investigating the primary object of love (prōton philon).
Indeed, it is only at the end of the dialogue that, by an abrupt change, Plato returns to the concept of mutual friendship.1 The basic problem of the dialogue lies in Plato’s failure to distinguish between philia as a loving human relationship and philia as the pursuit of a loved object. These are essentially separate questions, but Plato treats them as if they were the same. He starts off by investigating the former, moves without warning at 216c to considering the second, and then abruptly embraces the first again at 221e. He can hardly have been unaware that he was attempting to investigate two complex questions in the same dialogue. Why, then, did he choose to do this? Was it because he wished to stress the intimate connections between the two? Or has he allowed himself to be diverted from his original aim of explaining mutual friendship by his desire to show that the ‘first loved object’ (prōton philon) was the good, because the latter was for him philosophically more important?
It is interesting to see how in his analysis of philia in the Nicomackean Ethics2 Aristotle avoided the pitfalls in which Plato let himself be caught in the Lysis. He first of all limits his discussion to philia as a relationship between human beings, explicitly excluding any excursion into the realm of the abstract; he then introduces the terms philētos and philēton, which are exclusively passive in meaning (‘who is loved’ and ‘which is loved’), thereby avoiding the confusion of active and passive meanings of philos and philon. And he dismisses the notion of philia for inanimate objects: they are incapable of reciprocating the philia and one feels no wish for their good. He divides friendship into three kinds: first, that based on utility (or benefit); second, that based on pleasure; and third, that based on goodness. The first and second kinds are merely ‘accidental’, in that the person who is loved is not loved for what he is but for the benefit or pleasure he can provide, and are easily dissolved; the third, perfect friendship, is of those who are good, and alike in their goodness. Each loves the other for his goodness, and their friendship lasts as long as their goodness (which is a long time, since goodness is an enduring quality). Further, such friendship entails mutual benefit and pleasure (the first two kinds). For Aristotle, therefore, mutuality is an essential component of any friendship: his definition of friendship is mutual goodwill (eunoia) and a wish for each other’s good that is recognized by both parties. Without reciprocation and without recognition of the friendly disposition, there is only goodwill, not friendship.
With his insistence on mutuality, his theory of goodwill and his distinguishing of an object or recipient of love (philētos, philēton), Aristotle provides an answer to the problem which Plato raises at the beginning of the discussion of philia, in his question, ‘Which is friend of which?’: how is it that the man who both loves and is loved can be called a friend, when neither the man who only loves (but is not also loved), nor the man who is only loved (but does not also love), can be called a friend? For Aristotle, only the first can be called a friend or philos; the second is only well disposed (eunous); the third is only an object of love (philētos). Aristotle answers the question by limiting the meaning of philos; Plato, by confronting the term as it is actually used in Greek, makes himself a prisoner of its ambiguities.
The whole discussion of reciprocity at the beginning of the main part of the dialogue is quite mercilessly sophistic in nature, in its bewildering examination of the problem of ‘Which is friend of which?’ And when Socrates goes on to examine the two most prevalent traditional explanations of the phenomenon of friendship – the attraction of likes and the attraction of opposites or unlikes – his general treatment is again sophistic, especially in his championing first one hypothesis and then its opposite. He achieves refutation of these hypotheses by forcing ‘like’ and ‘unlike’ to mean ‘absolutely identical’ and ‘absolutely opposite’,1 rather than merely ‘similar’ and ‘dissimilar’. Such absolutes are, of course, unattainable in the human sphere.
Why does Socrates argue in this way in the Lysis? It is hard to believe that Plato was unaware of the eristic nature of the argumentation.2 The most plausible explanation3 is that he intends to satirize the methods of the sophists. But why, then, are there no sophists present in the dialogue, to act as dramatic and philosophical foils? Why adopt such an approach with two young boys? One would have expected such arguments as Socrates puts forward to have come from a sophist, whom he would have proceeded to refute, as in the Euthydemus, or to have been used by Socrates against a sophist, as in the Protagoras.4 Perhaps Menexenus is meant to represent the sophists in our dialogue. He is explicitly characterized as ‘eristic’ or ‘argumentative’ and as a ‘formidable opponent in debate’ (211b–c); yet he hardly lives up to either description. Indeed, in this dialogue, all the theses which are proposed for consideration are proposed by Socrates himself, just as all the refutations of them are Socrates’ own. Menexenus, like Lysis, is permitted little more than to say ‘Yes’ or ‘No’, as Socrates requires.1
There is, however, much that is both positive and valuable to be gleaned from the Lysis, even from the more eristic passages. The recognition of an intermediate state between good and bad2 is a major step forward from the primitive dichotomies of the Presocratic philosophers and of the sophists, who made such unscrupulous use in their eristic of the ‘either-or’ split.3 This recognition assumes greater importance later in Plato, when he develops the notion of doxa, opinion, as a state intermediate between knowledge (of the forms) and ignorance.4 The distinction is in a sense prefigured in the Lysis itself, where Socrates speaks of an intermediate state for philosophers between wisdom (i.e. knowledge) and ignorance,5 though here there is no mention of doxa or hint of the theory of forms.
In drawing, in the course of the argument, the important distinction between property and accident, Socrates introduces the concept of parousia or ‘presence’ (of the property or accident to the object). This concept is used later in the theory of forms, where the relation of forms to particulars is frequently termed ‘presence’: the form is ‘present to’ the particulars (and the particulars ‘share in’ or ‘partake of’ (metechein) the form). But there is no need to import subsequent Platonic doctrine into this relatively simple context.6 Nor should one try to see the theory of forms in the prōton philon, ‘the first object of love’, though here the temptation is greater. For it is spoken of in the language which Plato later uses of the forms, and indeed does prefigure the form of the good in the Republic?7 since it is ‘what every soul pursues and that for the sake of which everything is done’. But the relation of the prōton, philon to the other phila or objects of love is not the same as that of the form to the particulars: the prōton philon is not the form which is present to all phila and by which they are phila8.
What positive conclusions can be drawn from the aporia with which the dialogue ends? Plato leaves one hypothesis of the final piece of argumentation unexamined and consequently unrefuted. ‘What is good is akin to everything, whereas what is bad is alien to everything’ would have meant that the good is akin to the good, to the bad and to what is neither good nor bad, and that the bad is not akin to the good, or to the bad, or to what is neither good nor bad. Since nothing is friend to bad and bad is friend to nothing (214b-d, cf. 216b), the formulation leaves: the good is akin to the good; the good is akin to what is neither good nor bad; and, correspondingly, since kinship has been shown to be reciprocal (221e-222d), what is neither good nor bad is akin to the good. The good, however, inbeing self-sufficient, is friend to nothing (214e-215c), so that only the correspondent statement can remain: what is neither good nor bad is akin to d- and so a friend to – the good. This is in accord with the good’s being the first object of love (prōton philon), but cannot easily be reconciled with philia as a reciprocal, loving, human relationship, unless one is to assume that a man, who, qua man, is neither good nor bad (since no human being can be absolutely good or absolutely bad), loves the good in another man, who, qua man, is neither good nor bad, and is loved by that other for the good in himself.
This promising train of thought brings us to the good’s being a friend of the good, a doctrine which Plato elsewhere accepts much more readily. In the Phaedrus (255b; cf. Laws 837a ff.), Socrates explicitly states that fate has decreed that good man be friend to good man (and that bad man not be friend to bad man). In Republic 387d-e Plato links the self-sufficiency of good men (in the non-absolute sense, i.e. men who are good but not absolutely or completely good) and their friendship for each other: one good (epieikēs) man will not think death a terrible thing for another good man who is his friend (hetairos), or mourn him as having suffered something terrible; and he is himself most self-sufficient in regard to living a good life, and, of all men, least needs another. And Aristotle who, of course, makes the friendship of good men the highest kind of friendship (Nicomachean Ethics 11567 ff.), is at pains to show that good men do need each other as friends; their self-sufficiency is not absolute (1169b3–1170b19). In the Lysis Plato is, in effect, a victim of his own terminology and of his attempt to explore the two questions of the primary object of love and reciprocal friendship simultaneously. He has accounted for the former satisfactorily, but lost sight, to some extent, of the latter in the process.1
Is the dialogue a success? Opinions differ,2 but the Lysis has too many splendid features for us to count it a failure. The scene-setting and characterization (especially of the besotted Hippothales) are first-rate; the eristic fireworks are as instructive as they are dazzling. With its discussion of the problems of reciprocity and ‘viewpoint’ in considering the question ‘Which is friend of which?’, in its examination of the utilitarian motive for friendship and the possibility that its cause lies in a feeling of lack or deficiency, in its investigation of traditional theories of philia, such as the attraction of likes or opposites, and in hinting at a new one in oikeiotēs or kinship, the Lysis raises fundamental issues about the nature of personal friendship, in addition to answering the essential question of what the primary object of philia is: the good.
A. Depiction of Simple Erōs (Sexual Love) and Philia (Friendship)
B. Knowledge is the Source of Happiness
C. Reciprocal and Non-reciprocal Friendship
D. Like is Friend to Like
E. Unlike is Friend to Unlike
F. The Presence of Bad is the Cause of Love (Philia)
G. The Possession of Good is the Goal of Love (Philia)
H. The First Thing That is Loved
I. Desire is the Cause of Love
J. What is Akin is Friend to What is Akin: Aporia
SOCRATES
CTESIPPUS: From the deme of paeania, the cousin of Menexenus, with whom he was present at the death of socrates (phaedo 59b). also appears in the euthydemus. At the time of this dialogue, he is in his midteens.
HIPPOTHALES: Of approximately the same age as Ctesippus. Does not appear elsewhere in Plato, but is mentioned as a follower of his by Diogenes Laertius(III.46).
LYSIS: Eldest son of Democrates, from the deme Aexone, in his early teens. Unknown apart from this dialogue.1
MENEXENUS: Son of Demophon; of the same age as Lysis. in all likelihood, he is the menexenus who gave his name to another Platonic dialogue.
The first section sets the scene, introduces the characters and provides two contrasting pictures of love and friendship. The first is the unreciprocated sexual love (erōs of the lover (etastes) for the boy with whom he is in love (erōmenos) in the romantic infatuation of Hippothales with Lysis; the second, the simple reciprocal friendship (philia) of the two boys, Lysis and Menexenus.
I was on my way from the Academy,1 making straight for the Lyceum,2[203a] along the road which runs outside the city wall, close under the wall itself. At the little gate by the spring of Panops3 I came across Hippothales, Hieronymus’ son, Ctesippus from Paeania4 and a number of other young men standing in a group with them. As I approached them, Hippothales spotted me and said, ‘Socrates, where are you off to? Where are you coming from?’ [b]
‘I’m on my way from the Academy and going straight to the Lyceum,’ I replied.
‘You should come here,’ he said, ‘straight to us. Aren’t you going to join us? It’ll be worth it, you know.’
‘Where do you mean?’ I asked. ‘And to whom? Who’s “us”?’
‘Here,’ he replied, showing me a sort of enclosure and an opened door directly opposite the wall. ‘We spend our time there,’ he went on, ‘and we’re not the only ones. Lots and lots of other young men do too, handsome young men.’
‘What is this place? What do you do here?’ [204a]
‘It’s a wrestling-school,’ he said, ‘built not long ago. We spend most of our time there having discussions. We’d be glad to have you join us in them.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ I said. ‘Who’s the teacher there?’
‘A crony and admirer of yours,’ he replied, ‘Miccus.’5
‘Heavens!’ I exclaimed. ‘He’s no lightweight, but an able master of his craft.’1
‘Will you follow us in, then,’ he asked, ‘to see for yourself who’s there?’
‘First I wouldn’t mind hearing what my going in will entail, and which [b] handsome young man is the favourite amongst you.’
‘Each of us has his own opinion about that, Socrates,’ he said.
‘And what’s yours, Hippothales? Tell me that.’
He blushed at the question, so I said, ‘Hippothales, you don’t need to tell me whether or not you’re in love with someone. I can see that you’re not just in love, but that you’re already far gone in it. I may not know much else, I may be useless at other things, but somehow God’s given me [c] the power to recognize in an instant a man in love and the boy he’s in love with.’
Hearing this made him blush more than ever. Ctesippus then said, ‘How sweet of you to blush, Hippothales, and to be too shy to tell Socrates his name! Still, if Socrates spends even a short time with you he’ll become a nervous wreck hearing you go on and on about him. He’s certainly made us quite deaf, Socrates, dinning the name “Lysis” into our ears. He only [d] has to have a little to drink, and we’re pretty sure to wake up thinking we’re hearing that name. And while what he says of him in conversation is awful, it’s not absolutely awful; but when he tries to drown us in a flood of poetry and prose he’s composed…! What’s even more awful is that he actually sings of his boy in an amazing voice which we have to put up with hearing. And now when you ask him the boy’s name he blushes!’
‘I should think Lysis must be someone young,’ I said. ‘I’m only guessing, [e] though, because I didn’t recognize the name when I heard it.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘people don’t use his own name very much. He’s still identified by means of his father’s who is very well known. And yet I’m positive you must know what the boy looks like. His looks alone are enough to get him recognized.’
‘Tell me whose son he is,’ I said.
‘He’s the eldest son of Democrates from Aexone,’2 he replied.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘what an absolutely noble and splendid love it is you’ve found, Hippothales! Come on, give me a demonstration of what you’ve been giving these fellows here. I want to find out whether you know what [205a] a lover ought to say about his boy, to his face or to others.’
‘Surely you’re not taking seriously anything Ctesippus has been saying, Socrates?’ he asked.
‘Do you deny being in love with the boy he says you’re in love with?’I asked.
‘No, I don’t,’ he replied, ‘but I do deny writing poems or prose piecesabout my boy.’
‘He’s insane,’ said Ctesippus. ‘Raving mad.’
So I said, ‘Hippothales, I don’t want to hear any of your verses or anysong you’ve written about the young man, but rather their general tenor, [b] so that I’ll know how you behave towards your boy.’
‘No doubt Ctesippus will tell you,’ he replied. ‘His knowledge andrecollection of it all must be quite perfect if, as he says, he’s bored to deathhearing me ranting all the time.’
‘Right then,’ said Ctesippus, ‘I certainly shall. The fact is, Socrates, it’s a ridiculous business. How isn’t it ridiculous that a man who is a lover and thinks of virtually nothing but the boy he’s in love with should have nothing original to say that even a boy himself might not come up with? [c] He just puts into his poems and prose pieces things that the whole city sings of about Democrates and the boy’s grandfather, Lysis, and all his ancestors – their wealth, their horse-breeding, their victories at the Pythian, Isthmian and Nemean Games1 in the chariot-races and horse-races, and as well as that even hoarier stuff. Indeed, the day before yesterday he described to us in a poem of his the entertainment of Heracles – how, because he was related to Heracles, their ancestor, being himself [d] descended from Zeus (and the daughter of the founder of the deme2), duly made Heracles welcome – just the sort of thing old women sing of, and a lot of other stuff like that, Socrates. That’s what he puts into his prose pieces and songs and forces us to listen to.’
When I heard that I said, ‘You are ridiculous, Hippothales! Are you composing and singing a eulogy in your own honour before you’ve won your victory?’
‘But it’s not in my own honour, Socrates, that I either compose or sing it,’ he objected.
‘You think it’s not,’ I said.
‘How’s that?’ he asked.
‘Those songs,’ I said, ‘concern you most of all. If you catch the sort of [e] boy you’re talking of, what you’ve said and sung of him will bring you glory and be in effect eulogies in honour of you as victor, in that you got such a boy. However, if he slips through your fingers, the greater the eulogies you’ve pronounced on your boy have been, the greater will the blessings of beauty and goodness seem to be of which you’ve been deprived, and so you’ll seem to be ridiculous. Any man who knows what’s [206a] what when it comes to love, my friend, does not praise the boy he’s in love with until he’s caught him, for fear of how the future will turn out. Also, when a man praises or compliments handsome boys, they become filled with pride and conceit. Don’t you think so?’
‘I do,’ he said.
‘And the more conceited they are, the harder they become to catch?’
‘Probably.’
‘What sort of a hunter do you think a man would be then if, when hunting, he scared off his quarry and made it harder to catch?’
‘Obviously a pretty poor one.’ [b]
‘And to employ speeches and songs not so as to make him amenable but so as to make him wild shows considerable crassness, doesn’t it?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Well, watch out that you don’t expose yourself to all those charges with your poetry-writing, Hippothales. Still, I don’t imagine you’d readily agree that a man who harms himself by the poetry he writes can ever be a good poet, since he’s harmful to himself.’
‘Heavens, no,’ he replied. ‘That would be quite absurd. But it’s for precisely that reason that I’m taking you into my confidence, Socrates. If [c] you’ve any further advice to give, do tell me what a man ought to say and do to endear himself to his boy.’
‘It’s not easy to say,’ I replied. ‘But if you wouldn’t mind getting him to have a talk with me, I could perhaps give you a demonstration of what you ought to talk to him about, instead of the things these fellows tell me you say and sing.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that’s not difficult. If you go in with Ctesippus here, and sit down and start talking, I imagine he’ll come over to you without any prompting – he’s exceptionally fond of listening to people, and also, since it’s the festival of the Hermaea,1 the young men and boys are mixed [d] in together in the one spot. So he will come over to you, but if he doesn’t, Ctesippus knows him well through his cousin Menexenus who happens to be Lysis’ best friend. Let Ctesippus call him over, if he doesn’t come without prompting.’
That’s what we should do,’ I said. So I immediately took Ctesippus into the wrestling-school. The others came after us. [e]
Inside we found the boys. They had just finished making their sacrifice, and the ceremony was already almost over. In fact, they were all having a game of knuckle-bones, and were still dressed in their finest clothes. Though most of them were playing outside in the court, some were in a corner of the changing-room, playing at odds and evens with a large number of knuckle-bones which they took out of little baskets. Around them stood others watching them. Lysis belonged to the latter group. He stood among the boys and young men with a garland on his head. He was [207a] easily the best-looking, and deserved to be called not just handsome but rather handsome and good. We went over to the opposite side of the room and sat down – it was quiet there. We started to talk amongst ourselves. Lysis kept turning round and looking at us, obviously wanting to come over to us. For a while, however, he was at a loss about what to do, and hesitated to come over to us on his own; but then Menexenus came in from the court in the middle of the game he’d been playing, and when he [b] saw Ctesippus and me, came to sit beside us. Lysis saw him, followed and sat down beside us with him. Then the others came over to us as well. And, when Hippothales saw more people standing there, he hid himself behind them, where he thought Lysis wouldn’t notice him, since he was afraid of annoying him. From there he listened to us.
I looked at Menexenus and said, ‘Menexenus, which of you is the elder?’ [c]
‘We disagree about that,’ he replied.
‘Would you also dispute which of you is the nobler, then?’ I asked.
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘And the same goes for which is the more handsome.’
They both laughed at that.
‘Anyway, I shan’t ask which of you is the wealthier,’ I said, ‘because you’re friends, aren’t you?’
‘Of course,’ they replied.
‘And friends are supposed to have all things in common, so in that at least there will be no difference between you, provided you’re telling the truth about your friendship.’
They agreed.
I was then going to ask which of them was the juster and which the [d] cleverer, when someone came over and got Menexenus to leave with him, claiming that the trainer wanted him. I presumed he was to take part in the sacrifice.
The description of how not to treat the boy one is in love with is now contrasted with a practical demonstration by Socrates of the right way to do it. His treatment of Lysis exemplifies a superior kind of love/friendship (philia): the educative kind. Socrates is, in fact, educating both Lysis and Hippothales simultaneously: Hippothales is being taught how to be a true friend (philos) and educate his boy himself; Lysis (and, of course, Hippothales and the rest) is being taught that he must acquire knowledge in order to be allowed to do what he likes and so gain happiness; and that he must be humble.
Socrates implicitly defines philia as ‘wanting to make someone as happy as possible’; happiness (eudaimonia) is to consist in possessing freedom and being allowed to do what one likes. Taking as an example parental love (philia), he shows that it is the possession of knowledge in a certain sphere or spheres of action which wins the child freedom and the licence to do what he likes. Hence, by implication, knowledge gives happiness. The conclusion is reached that a man will be trusted by everyone in those matters in which he possesses greater knowledge, but that he will be trusted by no one in those in which he does not. Utility is introduced as an essential factor in philia: people will defer to someone with greater knowledge because it is to their advantage to do so; knowledge makes one useful and good (i.e. good for someone); and if one is useful and good one is universally sought after as a friend (philos).
Since Menexenus had gone off, then, I put my questions to Lysis instead: ‘I suppose, Lysis, your father and mother love you very much?’
‘Of course,’ he replied.
‘Then they’d want you to be as happy as possible?’
‘Naturally.’
‘Do you think that a man is happy when he’s a slave and allowed to do [e] nothing he desires?’
‘Heavens, no, I don’t,’ he said.
‘Then if your father and mother love you and desire your happiness, it’s absolutely clear that they must do their best to make you happy.’
‘Of course,’ he said.
‘So they let you do what you want and don’t scold you at all or stop you doing what you desire?’
‘Heavens, no, Socrates, there are lots and lots of things they stop me doing.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked. ‘They want you to be perfectly content, but still stop you doing what you want? Well, tell me this: if you desire [208a] to ride in one of your father’s chariots and take the reins in a race, they wouldn’t let you, but would stop you?’
‘Heavens,’ he said, ‘indeed they wouldn’t let me.’
‘Well then, whom would they?’
‘My father has a charioteer who’s paid to do that.’
‘What do you mean? They trust a hired servant rather than you to do what he wants with the horses and, what’s more, they actually pay this fellow money for doing just that?’
Why, of course,’ he replied. [b]
‘But they do trust you, I imagine, to be the master of the mule-pair. If you wanted to take the whip and flog them, they’d let you.’
‘No, they certainly would not.’
‘What!’ I exclaimed. ‘Is no one allowed to flog them?’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘the mule-driver is.’
‘Is he a slave or a free man?’
‘A slave,’ he said.
‘Do they really think more highly of a slave than of you, their son, and trust their property to him rather than you, and let him do what he wants, but stop you? Tell me this too: do they let you be your own master, or [c] don’t they trust you with even that?’
‘Of course they don’t,’ he replied.
‘But you do have a master?’
‘My tutor here,’ he said.1
‘He’s not a slave, is he?’
‘Indeed he is. One of ours,’ he replied.
‘It is strange,’ I said, ‘that a slave should be the master of a free man. What is it this tutor does that makes him your master?’
‘He takes me to school, of course,’ he replied.
‘Surely they’re not your masters as well, your teachers?’
‘They most certainly are.’
‘So your father deliberately sets lots and lots of bosses and masters over [d] you. But when you go home to your mother, she lets you do what you want with her wool or her loom when she’s weaving, so that she can see you perfectly content. I don’t suppose she stops you touching her weaving-blade or shuttle or any other of her spinning implements.’
Lysis laughed and said, ‘Heavens, Socrates, not only does she stop me, but I’d actually be beaten if I touched any of them.’ [e]
‘Goodness,’ I said, ‘surely you haven’t done anything wrong to your father or mother?’
‘Heavens, no, I haven’t,’ he replied.
‘Well then, what have you done to make them behave so oddly and stop you being happy and doing what you want, and bring you up by keeping you all day long in a state of constant subjection to someone else and in short doing virtually nothing you desire? The result would appear to be that neither is all that great wealth any use to you, but everyone rather than you is master of it, nor is your own person, which is so noble, any [209a] use to you, but even that is tended and taken care of by someone else; whereas you, Lysis, are master of nobody and do nothing you desire.’
‘It’s because I’m not yet of age, Socrates,’ he said.
‘I’m not sure it’s that that stops you, Lysis, since both your father, Democrates, and your mother trust you to some extent, I imagine, without waiting until you’re of age. For example, when they want things read to them or written for them, I imagine they give that job to you before anyone [b] else in the house. Don’t they?’
‘Of course,’ he replied.
‘So in that instance you’re allowed to write whichever of the letters you want first, and whichever second; and you’re allowed to do the same in reading them. And, I imagine, when you pick up your lyre, neither your father nor your mother stops you tightening or slackening whichever of the strings you want, or plucking or striking them with your plectrum. Or do they?’
‘No, they don’t.’
‘So, Lysis, what on earth can be the reason for their not stopping you [c] in those cases, whereas they do stop you in the ones we were speaking of just now?’
‘I suppose it’s because I know about those things but not the others,’ he replied.
‘Well,’ I said. ‘Excellent! So your father is not waiting for you to come of age to trust everything to you, but on the day he considers that you know better than himself, he’ll trust both himself and his property to you.’
‘I expect so,’ he said.
‘All right,’ I said, ‘but what about the man next door? Doesn’t the same criterion about you apply to him as to your father? Do you think he’ll trust you to run his house, as soon as he considers that you have a better [d] knowledge of running a house than he does himself? Or will he retain charge of it himself?’
‘I imagine he’ll trust me with it.’
‘What about the Athenians? Do you think they’ll trust you with their affairs, as soon as they realize that you know enough?’
‘Heavens,’ I said, ‘what about the Great King, then?1 Would he trust his eldest son, the heir to the throne of Asia, to put what he wanted into the sauce for the meat he was having cooked, or would he rather trust us, [e] if we came to his court and showed him that we had a finer knowledge than his son of the preparation of fancy dishes?’
‘Us, obviously,’ he replied.
‘He wouldn’t let his son put in even a pinch of anything, but would let us, even if we wanted to chuck in salt by the handful.’
‘Naturally.’
‘What if his son had an eye-complaint? Would he let him touch his own eyes if he considered him to be no doctor, or would he stop him?’ [210a]
‘He’d stop him.’
‘But if he supposed we were skilled in medicine, even if we wanted to open his eyes and sprinkle ashes in them,2 I don’t think he’d stop us, so long as he considered we knew the right treatment.’
‘That’s true.’
‘So he would trust us rather than himself or his son with everything else as well in which we seemed to him to be more expert than they?’
‘He’d have to, Socrates’, he replied.
‘Then it’s like this, my dear Lysis,’ I said. ‘As regards matters of which we possess knowledge, everyone, both Greeks and foreigners, men and [b] women, will trust them to us and we shall do what we want with them, and no one will deliberately thwart us, but we for our part shall be free in those matters and masters of other people, and those things will be our business, since we shall profit from them. Whereas, as regards matters of which we have no understanding, not only will no one trust us to do what [c] we please in them, but everyone, not just strangers, but even our fathers and mothers and anyone closer to us than they, will do their best to thwart us, and we for our pan shall be subject to others in those matters, and they will not be our business, since we shall not profit from them. Do you agree that it’s like that?’
‘Yes.’
‘Shall we be dear to anyone, and will anyone love us, in matters in which we are of no benefit?’
‘Certainly not,’ he replied.
‘So now, your father doesn’t love you, nor yet does anyone else love anyone else, in so far as that other is useless?’
‘It would appear not,’ he said.
‘So if you become wise, my boy, everybody will be a friend to you, [d] everybody will be close to you, since you’ll be useful and good; but if you don’t, neither your father nor your mother nor your close kin nor anyone else at all will be a friend to you. And is it in fact possible, Lysis, to pride oneself on things of which one has not as yet any knowledge?’
‘How could it be?’ he asked.
‘And if you need a teacher, you do not as yet possess knowledge.’
‘True.’
‘So you don’t pride yourself on your knowledge, if you are in fact without any as yet.’
‘Heavens, Socrates,’ he said, ‘I don’t think so.’
When I heard him admit that, I looked at Hippothales and almost put [e] my foot in it. It was on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘There, Hippothales, that’s how one ought to talk to one’s boy, making him humble and unaffected, not, as you do, making him conceited and spoiled.’ Well, I noticed he was squirming with embarrassment at what we’d been saying and I remembered that, though he was standing near by, he wanted to avoid being seen by Lysis, so I checked myself and said nothing.
Difficulties are caused in this passage and in the rest of the dialogue by Plato’s ambiguous use of the word philos: he shifts to and fro, without warning or explanation, from the masculine philos to the neuter philon. More confusingly, he shifts from the active sense of the masculine noun philos (‘friend (of)’, i.e. ‘he who loves’) and the active sense of the masculine adjective philos (‘friendly (to)’, i.e. ‘who loves’) to the two respective passive senses (‘friend (of)’, i.e. ‘who is loved’, and ‘dear (to)’, i.e. ‘who is loved’); and from the passive sense of the neuter adjective philon (‘dear (to)’, i.e. ‘which is loved’) to the active sense of the same neuter adjective (‘friendly (to)’, i. e. ‘which loves’). A further complication is caused by his use of both the masculine and the neuter to denote reciprocal friendship, i.e. ‘friend’ meaning ‘he who/that which both loves and is loved’.
At 212a, Socrates asks: ‘How does one man become the friend of another?’ This question is immediately modified to: ‘When a man loves (philein) someone, which is the friend of which?’
First step (212b1–3). The possibilities are: (i) the one who loves is the friend of the one who is loved; (ii) the one who is loved is the friend of the one who loves; (iii) there is no difference. Possibility (iii) is accepted.
Second step (212b3-d4). Socrates then considers the case of unreciprocated love: the one who loves is not loved in return, or is hated, by the one who is loved; the one loves and the other is loved. Which is the friend of which in this case? The possibilities are: (i) the one who loves is the friend of the one who is loved; (ii) the one who is loved is the friend of the one who loves; (iii) neither is the friend of either. Possibility (iii) is accepted.
Third step (212d4-e6). This leads to Hypothesis 1, that nothing that does not love in return is dear to what loves it. For example, (i) I love wine; (ii) wine cannot love me in return; (iii) therefore, wine is not dear to (i.e. hoed by) me. This absurd conclusion is rejected on the authority of a quotation from Solon.
Fourth step (212e6–213bs). Hypothesis 2, which corresponds to the second possibility of the second step, is that what is loved is dear to what loves it, whether it loves or hates what loves it. This is refuted as follows: (i) the one who is loved is the dear one, i.e. friend; (ii) the one who is hated is the enemy (the hated one). From these, two conclusions follow: (iii) the friend (the one who is loved) may be loved by his enemy (the one who is hated); and (iv) the enemy (the one who is hated) may be hated by his friend (the one who is loved). These conclusions in turn lead to the paradoxes: (v) one may be a friend to one’s enemy; (vi) one may be an enemy to one’s friend.
Fifth step (213bs-c5). Hypothesis 3, which corresponds to the first possibility of the second step, that what loves is the friend of what is loved, is now considered. This hypothesis is refuted as follows: (i) what loves is the friend of (loves) what is loved; (ii) what hates is the enemy of (hates) what is hated. From these, two conclusions follow: (iii) the friend (the one who loves) may be the friend of (love) his enemy (the one who hates him); and (iv) the enemy (the one who hates) may be the enemy of (hate) his friend (the one who loves him). These conclusions in turn lead to the paradoxes: (v) the friend may be the friend of his enemy; (vi) the enemy may be the enemy of his friend.
Summary (21305–7). Socrates summarizes the rejected answers to the question ‘Who are friends?’ These are Hypothesis 3 (those who love), Hypothesis 2 (those who are loved) and Hypothesis I (those who both love and are loved).
Socrates’ point is that reciprocated love is not the whole answer. We can still talk of philia where only one of the pair loves – in which case it is impossible to say whether it is the one who loves or the one who is loved who is the friend.
Meanwhile Menexenus had come back and taken his seat beside Lysis [211a] again. Lysis then whispered to me in a very boyish and friendly way, so that Menexenus should not hear, ‘Socrates, say what you’ve been saying to me to Menexenus too.’
So I said, ‘You can tell him that, Lysis. I’m sure you were paying close attention.’
‘I certainly was,’ he replied.
‘Well then,’ I said, ‘try to remember it as well as you can in order to tell him it all clearly, and if you forget any of it, ask me again the next [b] time you run into me.’
‘I’ll most definitely do that, Socrates,’ he said. ‘Rest assured. But talk about something else with him, so that I too may hear some more, until it’s time to go home.’
‘Well, I can hardly say no to you,’ I replied. ‘But see that you come to my rescue if Menexenus tries to refute me. You know how argumentative1 he is, don’t you?’
‘Heavens, he is indeed. That’s why I want you to talk to him.’ [c]
‘For me to make a fool of myself?’ I asked.
‘Heavens, no,’ he replied, ‘for you to teach him a lesson.’
‘How?’ I asked. ‘It’s not easy. He’s a formidable opponent, a pupil of Ctesippus. Look, he’s here himself – don’t you see him? – Ctesippus.’
‘Don’t worry about anybody, Socrates,’ he said. ‘Come on, talk to him.’
‘If I must, I must,’ I said.
While the two of us were having this tête-à-tête, Ctesippus interrupted: ‘Is this a private party you two are having, or can we take part in the conversation?’ [d]
‘Yes, indeed you must,’ I replied. ‘Lysis doesn’t understand something I’ve been saying, but tells me he thinks Menexenus knows, and demands that I ask him.’
‘Why don’t you ask him, then?’ he said.
‘All right, I will,’ I replied. ‘Menexenus, be ready to answer whatever questions I put to you. Ever since I was a boy I’ve always desired to acquire a certain thing. You know how different people desire different things: for example one man desires to acquire horses; another, to acquire dogs; another, gold; another, honours. I’m quite indifferent to those [e] things, but I do passionately love acquiring friends. I’d rather get a good friend than the best quail or cock in the world. By heaven, I’d prefer that to the best horse or dog. I think, by the Dog,2 I’d much rather acquire a real friend than Darius’ gold3 – I’d much rather acquire Darius himself:4 that’s how much I love friends. When I see you two, you and Lysis, I’m amazed, and think you must be very happy because, though you are so [212a] young, you’ve been able to acquire that possession quickly and easily: you’ve acquired Lysis as a friend so quickly and firmly; and he, you. Whereas I’m so far from acquiring one that I don’t even know how one man becomes the friend of another. That’s what I want to ask you about, in view of your experience.
‘Tell me, when a man loves someone, which is the friend of which? Is it the [b] one who loves who is the friend of the one who is loved? Or is it the one who is loved who is the friend of the one who loves? Or is there no difference?’
‘I don’t think there’s any difference,’ he replied.
‘What do you mean?’ I said. ‘Both of them become friends of each other if only one loves the other?’
‘I think so,’ he said.
‘What? Isn’t it possible for a man who loves someone not to be loved in return by that someone he loves?’
‘It is.’
‘And is it possible for a man who loves someone actually to be hated by him? Lovers certainly do sometimes seem to experience something of that sort with their boys. However much they may love them, some think [c] they’re not loved in return; others, that they’re actually hated by them. Don’t you think that’s true?’
‘Yes, very true indeed,’ he replied.
‘In such a case, then,’ I went on, ‘the one loves and the other is loved?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then which of them is the friend of which? Is it the one who loves who is the friend of the one who is loved, whether he’s loved in return or whether he’s actually hated? Or is it the one who is loved who is the friend of the one who loves? Alternatively, in such a case is neither the friend of either, unless both of them love each other?’
‘It would certainly appear to be so.’
‘So we now think differently from how we thought earlier. Then we [d] thought that if one loved, both were friends; whereas now, unless both love, neither is a friend.’
‘That may well be right,’ he said.
‘So nothing that does not love in return is dear to what loves it.’
‘It would appear not.’
‘So they’re not horse-lovers either whom the horses don’t love in return – or quail-lovers, or dog-lovers, wine-lovers, sports-lovers, or wisdom-lovers, if wisdom doesn’t love them in return. Or does each group love those things which are nevertheless not friendly to them? Was the [e] poet lying who said:
“Happy the man to whom his children are dear, and his horses with hoofs uncloven,
his hunting-dogs, and his guest from a foreign land”?’1
‘I don’t think he was,’ he replied.
‘You think he was speaking the truth?’
‘Yes.’
‘Then, Menexenus, it would appear that what is loved is dear to what loves it whether it loves what loves it or whether it actually hates it. For example, some newly born children do not yet love, while others actually hate their mother or father when they are punished by them. None the [213a] less they are most dear to their parents at the time they actually hate them.’
‘I think that’s so,’ he said.
‘So it’s not the one who loves who is the friend according to this line of argument, but the one who is loved.’
‘It would appear so.’
‘And the one who is hated is the enemy, not the one who hates.’
‘Apparently.’
‘Then many men are loved by their enemies and hated by their friends, and are friends to their enemies and enemies to their friends, if it is what [b] is loved that is the friend, not what loves. And yet it’s quite absurd, my dear fellow – or rather, I think, impossible, in fact – to be an enemy to one’s friend and a friend to one’s enemy.’
‘What you’re saying would appear to be true, Socrates,’ he said.
‘If that’s impossible, it must be what loves that is the friend of what is loved.’
‘Apparently.’
‘And it is what hates that is the enemy of what is hated.’
‘It must be.’
‘That will mean, then, that we must allow exactly what we allowed earlier in our discussion, that a man is often the friend of what is not his [c] friend, and often of what is actually his enemy, when he either loves what doesn’t love him, or loves what actually hates him; and that a man is often the enemy of what is not his enemy, or of what is actually his friend, when he either hates what does not hate him, or hates what actually loves him.’
‘That may well be right,’ he said.
‘What are we to do, then,’ I asked, ‘if neither those who love, nor those who are loved, nor those who both love and are loved are to be friends? Shall we say any others remain, over and above these, who become friends to one another?’
‘Heavens, Socrates,’ he said, ‘I don’t know what to say.’
Can it be that we were not conducting our investigation properly at all, [d] Menexenus?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think we were, Socrates,’ said Lysis. As soon as he said that he blushed. I thought that he’d let those words slip out unintentionally, because of the extreme concentration with which he’d obviously been listening to what we’d been saying.
Socrates now suggests another answer to the question ‘Who are friends?’: like is friend to like. This is refuted by considering men who are alike in being bad, and those who are alike in being good.
A bad man, it is argued, cannot be friend to another bad man, because (i) if one bad man associates with another, he wrongs him; (ii) wronger and wronged cannot be friends; therefore (iii) bad cannot befriend to bad.
Step (i) is explained by Republic 351c7–352d2, where Plato argues that unjust men are capable of undertaking joint action only if they are not completely bad: it is precisely the presence of some portion of justice in them that enables them to cooperate; if they were completely unjust, they would be unable to stop themselves wronging one another in any joint undertaking, and so would never achieve anything together.
Moreover, Socrates goes on (214d), bad men are unstable; therefore a bad man is never like even his own self, much less like any other bad man.
The idea that a good person is friend to another good person now looks attractive. But (i) if two things are alike (and by this Socrates means completely alike, i.e. identical), the one cannot do anything good or bad to the other which that other cannot do to itself, because the two are identical; therefore (ii) neither will be useful to the other; therefore (iii) neither will feel affection for the other, since philia is dependent on considerations of utility; therefore (iv) like (i.e. identical) will not befriend to like.
Socrates ignores the fact that if two people are alike only in some respects (i.e. similar, rather than identical), friendship could exist between them, since the one could be useful to the other in the respects in which the other was deficient, but in which he himself was not.
Socrates now argues: (i) the good man is self-sufficient; therefore (ii) the good man needs nothing; therefore (iii) the good man will hold nothing in affection; therefore (iv) the good man will befriend to no one. Again, in this argument, good must mean completely good, in that to be completely self-sufficient, one must be completely good.
So, wanting to give Menexenus a rest and delighted with Lysis’ interest in philosophy, I took up the discussion with him instead and said, ‘Lysis, [e] I think what you’re saying is true. If we were looking at the question properly, we should never be lost like this. Well, let’s change our approach. Our method of looking at the question seems to me to be taking us along a rather difficult sort of road. I think we ought to follow the path which we turned along before, and look at the question according to the precepts of the poets, who are, so to speak, our fathers and guides in [214a] wisdom. They, of course, express themselves impressively on the subject of people who are friends. Indeed they say that God himself makes them friends by bringing them to one another. I think the sort of thing they say is this: “God always brings like to like”1 and makes them acquainted. Haven’t you come across that line?’ [b]
‘I have,’ he said.
‘Then have you also come across the writings of our wisest men, which say just the same: like must always be friend to like? These are, of course, the men who discuss and write about nature and the universe.’2
‘That’s true,’ he said.
‘Well,’ I said, ‘are they right?’
‘Possibly,’ he replied.
‘Possibly half-right,’ I said, ‘but possibly even wholly right, only we don’t understand them properly. We think that the closer one wicked man gets to another wicked man and the more he associates with him, the [c] more he becomes hated by him, because he wrongs him; and it is, of course, impossible for wronger and wronged to be friends, isn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ he replied.
‘Well then, according to that, half of the statement would be untrue, if wicked men are like one another.’
‘That’s true.’
‘But I think that what they mean is that good men are like one another and therefore friends, whereas bad men (as is in fact said of them) are never like even their own selves, but are capricious and unstable, and anything which is unlike and at variance with itself would hardly become [d] like or friend to anything else. Don’t you think so too?’
‘I do,’ he said.
‘Well then, in my opinion, Lysis, this is what people mean when they say, in their cryptic way, that like is friend to like: friendship exists only between good men, whereas the bad man never achieves true friendship with either a good or a bad man. Do you agree?’
He nodded assent.
‘So, we can now tell who are friends. Our argument shows us that the answer is those who are good men.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘it does indeed seem so.’ [e]
‘I agree,’ I said. ‘And yet I’m not happy with a part of the answer. Come eon then, by heaven, let’s look at what it is I suspect. Are two people who are alike friends in so far as they are alike, and are two such people useful to each other? To put it another way, what benefit could any two things which were alike hold for each other, or what harm could they do to each other, that they could not do to themselves too? What could be done to them that could not be done to them by themselves too? How would such [215a] things be held in affection by each other when they could give each other no assistance? Is it possible?’
‘No.’
‘How could what is not held in affection be a friend?’
‘It’s not possible.’
‘Well then, two people who are alike are not friends; but would one good man be a friend to another good man in so far as he is good, not in so far as he is like him?’
‘Possibly.’
‘But again, wouldn’t the good man, in so far as he is good, be, to that extent, sufficient for himself?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the man who is sufficient needs nothing because of his being sufficient.’
‘Naturally.’
‘And the man who needs nothing would not feel affection for anything either.’
‘No, he would not.’
And what he doesn’t feel affection for he wouldn’t love either.’ [b]
‘Certainly not.’
‘And the man who doesn’t love is no friend.’
‘Apparently not.’
‘How can we say, then, that good men will be friends to good men at all, if they neither miss one another when they’re apart (they’re sufficient for themselves even when they’re separated), nor have need of one another when they’re together? How can such people put a high value on one another?’
‘There’s no way.’
‘And they wouldn’t be friends, if they didn’t put a high value on one [c] another.’
‘True.’
The opposite thesis is now examined: unlike is friend to unlike. It is argued that like is not friend to like: in fact, like is enemy to like because of the spirit of envy and rivalry that their being alike engenders between them; unlike will be friend to unlike because they will find each other useful, in that the one will be able to supply what the other needs.
This is quickly refuted: (i) enmity is the opposite of friendship; therefore (ii) the inimical cannot be friend to the friendly; and (ii) the friendly cannot be friend to the inimical.
This argument can work only if ‘unlike’ means ‘opposite’, not ‘dissimilar’: philia might be possible between, for example, someone who was only partly inimical and someone who was only partly friendly, since, though not opposites, they would still be unlike, qua dissimilar.
‘Look where we’re going wrong, Lysis. Aren’t we in fact entirely mistaken?’
‘How?’ he asked.
‘I once heard someone say – I’ve just remembered it – that like was the greatest foe to like,1 and so were good men to good men. What’s more, he brought forward Hesiod as a witness, saying that:
“Potter feuds with potter, bard with bard,
beggar with beggar.’2 [d]
And he said it was the same in all other cases. It was inevitable that things which were most like one another should be most filled with envy, contentiousness and hatred, and that things which were most unlike one another, with friendship. The poor man was forced to be friend to the rich; the weak, because of his need for assistance, to the strong; the sick man, to the doctor; and everyone who was ignorant felt affection for and loved the man who possessed knowledge. In fact he pursued his theme even more impressively, saying that the last thing that like would be was [e] friend to like. It was the very opposite of that: the most opposed was the greatest friend to the most opposed; each thing desired that sort of thing, not its like. For example, the dry desired the wet; the cold, the hot; the bitter, the sweet; the sharp, the blunt; the empty, filling; the full, emptying; and the rest likewise on the same principle, because opposite was food to opposite; and like would derive no advantage from like. What’s [216a] more, Lysis, it seemed clever of him to say that. He did speak well. But how do you boys think he spoke?’ I said.
‘I think he did put it well,’ replied Menexenus, ‘to judge from your account of it, at any rate.’
‘So, are we to say that opposite is greatest friend to opposite?’
‘Of course.’
‘Well,’ I said, ‘isn’t that monstrous, Menexenus? Won’t those terribly clever fellows, those experts in disputation,1 leap on us at once in delight and ask whether enmity is not the most opposite thing to friendship? What answer shall we give them? Are we not forced to agree that they’re [b] right?’
‘We are.’
‘So then, they’ll say, is the enemy friend to the friend or the friend friend to the enemy?’
‘Neither.’
‘Well, is the just friend to the unjust or the self-controlled to the undisciplined or the good to the bad?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘But yet,’ I said, ‘if it is because of their being opposite that one thing is friend to another, those things too must be friends.’
‘They must.’
‘So, neither like is friend to like nor opposite to opposite.’
‘It would appear not.’
The remaining possibility is that what is neither good nor bad is the friend of the good (and not of the bad, since nothing would be friend to the bad, or of
what is neither good nor bad, since like cannot be friend to like). Here it must be noted that ‘friend’ is no longer reciprocal, but only active: it means ‘friend to’, i.e. ‘loving’, because, as was argued earlier, the good man is friend to no one (215a-c).
This remaining possibility is illustrated and developed by the common Socratic means of a medical analogy. What is neither good nor bad (the body) becomes the friend of the good (medicine) because of the presence of bad (disease); and this happens before what is neither good nor bad itself becomes bad through the presence of the bad in it.
That is to say, bad may be present in two ways: first, in such a way that it makes what is neither good nor bad desire good; second, in such a way that it has made what was neither good nor bad become wholly bad – and the wholly bad is no friend to good.
The example of philosophy, the love of wisdom, is used to illustrate and summarize the results: (i) those who are already wise no longer love wisdom: like (good) is not friend to like (good); there is no presence of bad. (ii) those who are so ignorant that they are bad do not love wisdom: opposite (bad) is not friend to opposite (good); the bad is present in the second way described above; (iii) those who possess ignorance (a bad thing), but have not yet been rendered stupid (bad) by it (i.e. those who are neither good nor bad), do love wisdom: what is neither good nor bad is the friend of the good because of the presence of bad (in the first way described above). Socrates concludes that (iii) gives the answer to the question of what a friend is.
Let’s consider the possibility which is left, that we’re even more mistaken, [c] and the truth is that what a friend is is none of these, but that it is what is neither good nor bad that becomes, in some cases, the friend of the good.’
‘What do you mean?’ he said.
‘Heavens,’ I said, ‘I don’t know. In fact my head’s spinning with the difficulties of the argument. It may well be that ‘the beautiful is the friend’,1 as the old proverb has it. It certainly resembles something soft, smooth and shiny; which is why, being that sort of thing, it can easily give [d] us the slip and escape from us. Well, I say that the good is beautiful. Don’t you think so?’
‘I do.’
‘Well then, I have a feeling that what is neither good nor bad is the friend of the beautiful and good. Listen and I’ll tell you what gives me that feeling: I think there are, as it were, three categories of things: the good, the bad, and what is neither good nor bad. What do you think?’
‘I agree,’ he said.
‘Also, the good is not friend to the good, or the bad to the bad, or the good to the bad. Our earlier argument showed that those were ruled out. We’re left, then, with the possibility that if anything is friend to anything, [e] it is what is neither good nor bad that is the friend either of the good or of the sort of thing it is itself, since nothing surely would be a friend to the bad.’
‘True.’
‘Nor indeed, as we said just now, is like friend to like. Is it?’
‘No.’
‘So, what is neither good nor bad will not be a friend to the sort of thing it is itself.’
‘Apparently not.’
‘It follows, then, that only what is neither good nor bad becomes a friend to the good, and only to the good.’ [217a]
‘It must be so, it would appear.’
‘Is what we’re now saying leading us in the right direction then, boys?’ I asked. ‘Just suppose we were to take the instance of the healthy body. It needs no medical care or any other form of assistance, since it is sufficient, which means that no one, when healthy, is a friend to a doctor, because of his health. Is he?’
‘No.’
‘But the sick man is, I imagine, because of his disease.’
‘Naturally.’
And disease is a bad thing, medicine a beneficial and good thing.’ [b]
‘Yes.’
‘And a body, of course, as a body, is neither good nor bad.’
‘That’s so.’
‘And a body is forced to welcome and love medicine because of disease.’
‘I think so.’
‘So, what is neither bad nor good becomes the friend of the good because of the presence of bad –’
‘It would appear so.’
‘–but obviously before it becomes bad itself through the bad it possesses. Once it had become bad it would certainly not desire the good or be its friend any longer, because we said it was impossible for bad to be friend [c] to good.’
‘It is impossible.’
‘Now consider what I’m saying: some things are of the same sort themselves as whatever is present to them is. For example, suppose one were to smear something with a certain colour. What has been smeared on is, in a sense, present to what has been smeared.’
‘Of course.’
‘At that time, then, is what has been smeared of the same colour as what is on it?’
‘I don’t understand,’ he said.
‘Well, let me put it this way,’ I said. ‘Suppose someone smeared your [d] fair hair with white lead. Would it then be white, or just seem so?’
‘Just seem so,’ he replied.
‘And yet whiteness would be present to it.’
‘Yes.’
‘All the same, your hair wouldn’t be any whiter at all as yet. Though whiteness is present to it, it is not more white than it is black.’
‘True.’
‘But when, my friend, old age brings that same colour to your hair, it becomes at that time of the same sort as what is present to it is – white, by the presence of white.’
‘Of course.’
‘Well, that’s the question I’m asking you now. When one thing is [e] present to another, will what possesses what is present to it be of the same sort as it? Or only if it is present in a certain way, but not if it is not?’
‘The latter, rather,’ he said.
‘So sometimes, when bad is present, what is neither bad nor good is not bad as yet, but there are times when it has already become bad.’
‘Of course.’
‘When it’s not yet bad, then, though bad is present, this presence of bad makes it desire good; whereas the presence of bad which actually makes it bad deprives it of both its desire and its feelings of friendship for the good, because it is no longer neither bad nor good, but is now bad. [218a] And bad was found to be no friend to good.’
‘No, indeed.’
‘That’s why we’d say that those who are already wise, whether they are gods or men, no longer love wisdom,1 and that those who are so ignorant that they are bad do not love wisdom either, because no bad or stupid man loves wisdom. So, we’re left with those who possess that bad thing, ignorance, but have not yet been rendered foolish or stupid by it, in that they still believe they don’t know what they don’t know. Consequently [b] those who are still neither good nor bad do, in fact, love wisdom; whereas all those who are bad, as well as all those who are good, do not, because, as we decided earlier in our discussion, neither is opposite the friend of opposite, nor like of like. Don’t your remember?’
‘Of course,’ they said.
‘So now, Lysis and Menexenus,’ I said, ‘we’ve done it! We’ve discovered what a friend is and what it is not. We say that in the soul, in the body and anywhere else, it is what is neither bad nor good that is the [c] friend of the good because of the presence of bad.’
The two of them agreed wholeheartedly, admitting that it was so.
The definition is now modified: what is neither good nor bad (the body) is the friend of the good (medicine) because of the bad (disease) for the sake of (another) good (health). Medicine, a good thing, is a friend (loved by what is neither good nor bad) for the sake of health, a good thing and also a friend.
We now begin to find philon being used ever more frequently in its passive sense instead of the active. The shift begins in this section and gathers momentum as we move into Section H where the use of philon in its passive sense becomes predominant. Consequently, when, for example, Socrates say that ‘medicine is a friend’, what the Greek really means is ‘medicine is something that is loved’. From 218d until 220e great care must be taken to distinguish between the active and passive uses of the word.
And what’s more I felt quite delighted, like a hunter, in the satisfaction of getting in my grasp what I’d been hunting. Then, unaccountably, a most absurd suspicion came into my head that what we’d agreed was not true, and I said at once in annoyance, ‘Unfortunately, Lysis and Menexenus, it may well be that we’ve been building castles in the air.’
‘What makes you say that?’ asked Menexenus.
‘I’m afraid,’ I said, ‘that we’ve run into certain arguments about what [d] a friend1 is which are, as it were, impostors.’
‘How’s that?’ he asked.
‘Let’s look at it this way,’ I said. ‘Is the man who’s to be a friend1 a friend1 to someone or not?’
‘He has to be,’ he replied.
‘Is it for the sake of nothing or because of nothing, then, or for the sake of something and because of something?’
‘For the sake of something and because of something.’
‘Is that thing for the sake of which the friend1 is friend1 to the friend2 a friend,2 or is it neither a friend2 nor an enemy3?’
‘I’m not quite with you there,’ he said.
‘That’s not surprising,’ I said. ‘But perhaps you will follow me if I put [e] it like this – and I think I’ll understand what I’m saying better too. The sick man, we said a minute ago, is the friend1 of the doctor, isn’t he?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is it because of disease and for the sake of health, then, that he’s the friend1 of the doctor?’
‘Yes.’
‘Disease is a bad thing?’
‘Of course.’
‘What about health?’ I asked. ‘Is it a good thing or a bad one or neither?’
‘A good thing,’ he said.
‘So it appears that we were saying that the body, which is neither good [219a] nor bad, is, because of disease – that is, because of a bad thing – the friend1 of medicine, and medicine is a good thing; and it is for the sake of health that medicine has acquired the friendship, and health is a good thing, isn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is health a friend2 or not a friend2?’
‘A friend2.’
‘Disease is an enemy3.’
‘Of course.’
‘So what is neither bad nor good is, because of what is bad and an [b] enemy,3 friend1 of what is good, for the sake of what is good and a friend2.’
‘Apparently.’
‘What is a friend1 is the friend1 of what is a friend2 for the sake of what is a friend2 because of what is an enemy3.’
‘It would appear so.’
Since medicine (a ‘friend’ in the sense of a ‘loved object’) is loved for the sake of health (another ‘friend’ or ‘loved object), then health, in being itself a ‘friend’ or ‘loved object’, must be loved for the sake of yet another ‘friend’ or ‘loved object’, and so on to infinity, or until one reaches the ‘first friend’ or the ‘first thing that is loved’ (prōton philon), for the sake of which all other things that
are ‘friends’ are loved. The ‘first thing that is loved’ is not loved for the sake of another ‘friend’, so that what is really loved (or a ‘friend’) is not loved for the sake of another ‘friend’, in contrast to all other ‘friends’.
Socrates next examines the qualifying phrase ‘because of the bad’. Since the good is a ‘friend’ or ‘loved object’ because of the bad, then if the bad is removed, the good becomes useless to what is neither good nor bad: if there is no disease (bad), the body (what is neither good nor bad) needs no remedy (good). Therefore the good is loved because of the bad and is useless in itself.
The identification of the good with what is a ‘friend’ enables Socrates to argue that the ‘first friend’ or the ‘first thing that is loved’ is loved because of an ‘enemy’ or ‘hated object’; and if the ‘enemy’ is removed, the ‘first friend’ will no longer be a ‘friend’.
‘All right then,’ I said. ‘Now that we’ve got as far as this, boys, let’s be careful not to be deceived. I’m willing to ignore the difficulty that what is a friend1 has become the friend3 of what is a friend,2 and therefore like becomes the friend3 of like,4 which, we say, 5 is impossible. Anyway, to avoid being deceived by that point, let’s consider the following one: medicine, we say, is a friend6 for the sake of health.’ [c]
‘Yes.’
‘Is health a friend too, then?’
‘Of course.’
‘If it is a friend, it is so for the sake of something.’
‘Yes.’
‘And that something is a friend, if it is to be consistent with what we admitted earlier.’
‘Of course.’
‘And that too, in its turn, will be a friend for the sake of a friend?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well then, aren’t we bound to get tired going on like that and give up, or else arrive at some point of origin which will not refer us to yet another friend, but which will constitute the first thing that is a friend, for the [d] sake of which we say that all the others too are friends?’
‘We are.’
‘My fear about this is that all the other things, which we said were friends for the sake of that thing, being as it were phantoms of it, may deceive us, and that that first thing may be what is really and truly a friend. Let’s look at it this way. When a man values something highly, as, for example, a father prizes his son more than all his other possessions, would such a man value anything else highly because of his considering [e] his son most important? For example, if he found that his son had drunk hemlock, wouldn’t he value wine highly, if he believed that that would save his son?’
‘Why, he certainly would!’ he replied.
‘And the jar which contained the wine?’
‘Of course.’
‘So does he then value his son no more highly than he values an earthenware cup or three measures of wine? Or perhaps it’s like this: all concern of that sort is shown not for those things which are procured for the sake of something, but for that thing for the sake of which all things of that sort are procured. Admittedly, we do often say that we value gold and [220a] silver highly, but that hardly comes any nearer the truth. What we value most highly is that thing (whatever it may reveal itself as being) for the sake of which both gold and everything else that is procured are procured. Shall we settle for that?’
‘Of course.’
‘May the same thing be said of what is a friend as well? All the things we say are our friends for the sake of some other thing that is a friend are clearly friends in name only; whereas what is really a friend should be that [b] thing in which all those so-called friendships terminate.’
‘That should be the case,’ he said.
‘What is really a friend, then, is not a friend for the sake a friend.’
‘True.’
‘Well then, that’s settled: it is not for the sake of a friend that what is a friend is a friend. So, is the good a friend?’
‘I think so.’
‘Then is the good loved because of the bad? Is the following the case? Suppose of the three categories we were speaking of a minute ago – namely [c] good, bad, and what is neither good nor bad – two were allowed to remain, and the bad were removed and did not interfere with anything, body, soul, or the other things which we say are in themselves neither bad nor good. Wouldn’t the good be of no use at all to us in that case, but have become useless? You see, if nothing harmed us any more, we’d have no need of any benefit, and in this way it would then become obvious that [d] we felt affection and love for the good because of the bad, the good being a remedy for the bad, the bad being a disease; and if there is no disease, a remedy is not needed. Is that the nature of the good? Is it because of the bad that the good is loved by us, who are between the bad and the good? Is it of no use itself for its own sake?’
‘It would appear that’s the case,’ he replied.
‘So that thing that is a friend of ours in which all the others terminated – we said those things are friends for the sake of something else that is a [e] friend – is quite different from them. They’ve been called friends for the sake of a friend, but what is really a friend seems of the completely opposite nature to that, because we showed that it is a friend because of1 an enemy, and if the enemy were removed, it would appear to be no longer a friend.’
‘I’m inclined to agree,’ he said, ‘at least according to what we’re saying now.’
Socrates now argues that desires may be harmful (bad), beneficial (good) or neither (neither good nor bad). If all bad things, including bad desires, are removed, there will still be those desires which are neither bad nor good. Building on this, Socrates asserts: (i) if a man desires (epithumein) or adores (eran) something, he also loves (philein) it; (ii) even if bad things are destroyed, there will still be some things which will be loved; (iii) if a man still loves something after the bad has been removed, it cannot be because of the bad that he loves it, since once the cause has been removed, there can be no consequence of it. Therefore (iv) it must be desire that is the cause of philia.
The conclusion that desire is the cause of philia is hardly justified by the argument. Socrates has shown that the cause of love need not be the bad, or is not the bad, and that in ordinary parlance love and desire imply each other; but he has not demonstrated why desire must be the cause of love.
‘By heaven,’ I exclaimed, ‘if the bad is destroyed, will it be impossible to be hungry any more, or thirsty, or anything else of that sort? Or will [221a] there still be hunger, as long as there are men and other animals, but not harmful hunger? And thirst and the other desires, except that they won’t be bad, since the bad will have been destroyed? Or is the question of what there will or will not be then ridiculous, because who can know? Well, anyway, we do know this, that as things are, it is possible to be harmed by being hungry, though it is possible to be benefited by it too. Isn’t that so?’
‘Then it’s possible, when one experiences thirst or any other such desire, for that desire sometimes to be beneficial, other times to be harmful, [b] and other times to be neither?’
‘Yes, definitely.’
‘If bad things are destroyed, is there any reason why things which are not in fact bad should be destroyed along with the bad things?’
‘None at all.’
‘So there will still be the desires which are neither good nor bad, even if bad things are destroyed.’
‘Apparently.’
‘Is it possible, then, for a man who desires and adores something not to love what he desires and adores?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘So, it would appear that even if bad things have been destroyed, there will still be some things which will be loved.’ [c]
‘Yes.’
‘But not if the bad were the cause of something being a friend. The one thing would not be a friend to the other, once the bad had been destroyed, because once the causal factor had been destroyed, it would surely be impossible for the thing of which it was the cause to exist any longer.’
‘You’re right.’
‘And we have allowed that what is a friend loves something, and does so because of something? Didn’t we think at that stage that it was because of the bad that what was neither good nor bad loved the good?’
‘True.’
‘But now, it would appear, there seems to be another cause of loving [d] and being loved.’
‘It would.’
‘So really, as we were saying just now, desire is the cause of friendship, and that thing which desires is a friend to which it desires, and at the time it desires it. Whereas what we said before about what was a friend was a piece of nonsense, like a poem spun out at length.’
‘That may well be the case,’ he said.
Socrates argues that desire is felt for what one is in need of; that what one is in need of is what has been taken away from one; that what has been taken away from one is what is akin to one; and therefore the object of sexual love (erōs), lovelfriendship (philia,) and desire (epithumia) is what is akin.
The reciprocal nature of this is now brought out: if A is akin to B, then B is akin to A. This means that if A loves B, since B is akin to A, then since A is also akin to B, it must be loved by B. This is, in effect, to say that what is akin is the friend of what is akin. But this may stand only if what is akin is different from what is like, since like cannot be friend to like. On the assumption that akin and like are not the same, Socrates now suggests: either (a) what is good is akin to everything (good, bad and neither good nor bad), and what is bad is alien to everything; or (b) the bad is akin to the bad, the good is akin to the good, and what is neither good nor bad is akin to what is neither good nor bad.
Menexenus and Lysis favour accepting (b); but it has already been shown that bad cannot be friend to bad, and good cannot be friend to good. Instead of examining (a) as formulated, Socrates argues that what is akin cannot be the same as what is good, because this would mean that one good man is a friend only to another good man – a statement thought to have been refuted earlier (Section D).
Socrates now sums up the rejected arguments and admits defeat. If he had examined (a) as formulated, what conclusions might he have reached? What is good is akin to everything (and what is bad is alien to everything) would have meant: (i) the good is akin to the good; (ii) the good is akin to the bad; (ii) the good is akin to what is neither good nor bad; and, since kinship is a reciprocal relationship, (iv) what is neither good nor bad is akin to the good. Since the good is self-sufficient and so a friend to nothing (214e–215c) and the bad is incapable of enjoying philia (214b–d; see also 216b), then only (iv) can remain. Assuming, then, for the sake of argument, that this is the conclusion that Plato is leaving us to draw from the aporia, namely that what is neither good nor bad is akin to – and so friend to – the good, can we reconcile this statement, which satisfactorily accounts for the object of philia (namely, the good), with reciprocal friendship? Does each man, who, as a human being, is neither absolutely good nor absolutely bad, love the good in another man, who is also neither absolutely good nor absolutely bad?
‘But surely,’ I went on, ‘that thing which desires desires what it is in need of, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes.’
‘So the thing which is in need is the friend of what it is in need of?’ [e]
‘I think so.’
‘And it finds itself in need of what is taken away from it.’
‘It would appear, then, Menexenus and Lysis, that the object of passionate love, friendship and desire is, in fact, it seems, what is akin.’
Both of them said yes.
‘So if you are friends to each other you are in a way akin to each other by nature.’
‘Definitely,’ they said.
‘And boys,’ I said, ‘if one man desires another or adores him, he’d never [222a] desire or adore or love him, if he weren’t in some way in fact akin to the man he adored, either in his soul, or in some disposition of his soul, or in his conduct, or in his looks.’
‘Yes, certainly,’ said Menexenus. Lysis stayed silent.
‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’ve shown, then, that we must love what is akin by nature.’
‘It would appear so,’ he said.
‘So the genuine lover, though not the fake one, must be loved by his boy.’
To that Lysis and Menexenus gave a rather grudging nod of assent; [b] Hippothales turned all the colours of the rainbow with delight.
I now wanted to review the course of the discussion, so I said, ‘If what is akin is in any respect different from that which is like, I think, Lysis and Menexenus, we’d be saying something significant about what a friend is; but if what is like and what is akin are in fact the same thing, it is not easy to reject the earlier argument, that like is useless to like by virtue of their being alike; and it’s wrong to allow that what is useless is a friend. Well then,’ I said, ‘since we’ve got rather woozy with the argument, shall [c] we come to an agreement and say that what is akin is something different from what is like?’
‘Yes, of course.’
‘Shall we assume, then, that what is good is akin to everything, whereas what is bad is alien to everything? Or is the bad akin to the bad; the good to the good; and what is neither good nor bad to what is neither good nor bad?’
They said they thought it was so: each was akin to its counterpart.
‘In that case, boys,’ I said, ‘haven’t we fallen back into those first [d] statements of ours about friendship, which we rejected, since one unjust man will be a friend to another unjust man, and bad man to another bad man, no less than one good man to another good man?’
‘It would appear so,’ he said.
‘What’s more, if we say that what is good and what is akin are the same thing, is that anything other than to say that one good man is a friend only to another good man?’
‘True.’
‘All the same, we thought we’d refuted ourselves in that too. Don’t your emember?’
‘We do.’
‘What more can we do with the argument, then? Or is it obvious that [e] we can do nothing with it? I beg to be allowed to recapitulate all that we’ve said, then, like the clever fellows in the courts. If neither those who are loved nor those who love, nor the alike nor the unlike, nor the good, nor those who are akin, nor all the other cases we went through – I can’t remember them all now, there were so many – well, if none of those is a friend, I don’t know what more to say.’
With that I was intending to provoke another of the older men into [223a] speaking. Just then, like evil spirits, Lysis’ and Menexenus’ tutors came over with the boys’ brothers, called to them, and told them to come home; it was already late. At first, with the support of those standing around us, we tried to chase them away; but since they took no notice of us, but began to shout angrily in their rather foreign accents and went on calling the boys (we were of the opinion they’d had a bit to drink at the festival of [b] the Hermaea, which made them impossible to handle), we then conceded defeat to them and broke up our party. However, I did say, just as they were leaving, ‘Lysis and Menexenus, we’ve now made utter fools of ourselves, an old man like me and you, since these people will go away and say that we think that we’re friends of one another – for I consider myself one of your number – though we were not as yet able to find out precisely what a friend is.’