Lysis, or Friendship

by Plato, Benjamin Jowett (Translator)

Overview

Lysis, or Friendship
by Plato translated by Benjamin Jowett

"Lysis is one of the socratic dialogues written by Plato and discusses the nature of friendship.

The main characters are Socrates, the boys Lysis and Menexenus who are friends, as well as Hippothales, who is in unrequited love with Lysis. Socrates proposes several possible notions regarding the true nature of friendship: Friendship between like and like; friendship between unlike and unlike; friendship between neither-good-nor-bad and good in the presence of evil.

In the end, Socrates discards all these ideas as wrong. While no definite conclusion is reached, it is suggested that the common pursuit of the "good and beautiful" (kalos kagathos) is the true motivation for friendship.

French aristocrat Jacques d'Adelsward-Fersen, who had fled Paris in the early 1900s after a homosexual scandal, named the house he built on Capri Villa Lysis after the title of this dialogue."

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Product Details

BN ID:	2940012699978
Publisher:	Apps Publisher
Publication date:	01/12/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	491 KB

About the Author

"Plato (wide, broad-browed) (428/427 BC - 348/347 BC), was a Classical Greek philosopher. Together with his teacher, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the philosophical foundations of Western culture. Plato was also a mathematician, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the western world. Plato was originally a student of Socrates, and was much influenced by his thinking as by what he saw as his teacher's unjust death.

Plato's brilliance as a writer and thinker can be witnessed by reading his Socratic dialogues. Some of the dialogues, letters, and other works that are ascribed to him are considered spurious. Interestingly, although there is little question that Plato lectured at the Academy that he founded, the pedagogical function of his dialogues, if any, is not known with certainty.