Lysis
- Language:
- English
- Translation:
- Benjamin Jowett
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~8,840 words · 42 passages
Cite this work
- APAPlato. (n.d.). Lysis (Benjamin Jowett, Trans.). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/lysis
- MLAPlato. Lysis. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/lysis.
- ChicagoPlato. Lysis. Translated by Benjamin Jowett. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/plato/lysis.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
What is a friend, and what makes two people friends? Every combination is tried — like with like, opposite with opposite, the neither-good-nor-bad — and none accounts for friendship.
Context and history
The first text in Western philosophy given wholly to friendship, and the one Aristotle had in front of him when he wrote books VIII and IX of the Nicomachean Ethics, which do give an answer. Reading them in that order shows how a tradition gets built.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Have I not heard some one say, as I just now recollect, that the like is the greatest enemy of the like, the good of the good?--Yes, and he quoted the authority of Hesiod, who says: 'Potter quarrels with potter, bard with bard, Beggar with beggar;' and of all other things he affirmed, in like manner, 'That of necessity the most like are most full of envy, strife, and hatred of one another, and the most unlike, of friendship. For the poor man is compelled to be the friend of the rich, and the weak requires the aid of the strong, and the sick man of the physician; and every one who is ignorant, has to love and court him who knows.' And indeed he went on to say in grandiloquent language, that the idea of friendship existing between similars is not the truth, but the very reverse of the truth, and that the most opposed are the most friendly; for that everything desires not like but that which is most unlike: for example, the dry desires the moist, the cold the hot, the bitter the sweet, the sharp the blunt, the void the full, the full the void, and so of all other things; for the opposite is the food of the opposite, whereas like receives nothing from like. And I thought that he who said this was a charming man, and that he spoke well. What do the rest of you say? I should say, at first hearing, that he is right, said Menexenus. Then we are to say that the greatest friendship is of opposites? Exactly. Yes, Menexenus; but will not that be a monstrous answer? and will not the all-wise eristics be down upon us in triumph, and ask, fairly enough, whether love is not the very opposite of hate; and what answer shall we make to them--must we not admit that they speak the truth? We must. They will then proceed to ask whether the enemy is the friend of the friend, or the friend the friend of the enemy? Neither, he replied. Well, but is a just man the friend of the unjust, or the temperate of the intemperate, or the good of the bad?…