Ivor Ludlam: A Critical Analysis of Plato’s Lysis
Click here for a full analysis of Plato’s dialogue Lysis.
Traditional View
- The dialogue is about friendship (philia) and the friend (philos)
- Socrates examines a succession of possible accounts of friends, passive or active, unrequited or necessarily mutual, of similar or dissimilar, etc.
- The dialogue is aporetic. There is no final conclusion about friendship.
This Analysis
- The dialogue is a philosophical drama in which the central idea is not friendship, but to agathon, the good.
- Three aspects (eidē) of the good are dramatized: pleasure, reputation, and benefit
- The arguments concerning friendship are not simply unsuccessful attempts to establish a definition. Their apparent failures form part of the drama.
The Plato Paradigm 