Teenagers ask to Socrate: what's love, how to conquer the one that we love and obtain from him that he loves us in return? Such is the subject of the
Lysis. Take in appearance, the Lysis hits by the imbalance on its part. The preamble of the dialog is strangely long, it runs of 203 has at 207 b and constitutes therefore the fifth one of the body of the text that spreads up to 223 b. Socrate there relates by the detail how it induced in the newly open palestre. It is pleased to underline the laughable one in love behavior of Hippothalès, then don't talk about of the spectacle that welcomes it to his enter into the palestre. A first exchange, noticeably as long as the preamble (207c-211d), is involved itself then between Socrate and Lysis. It concerns the love of the parents for the children. The return of Ménéxène, gone out to accomplish a religious ritual, marks the beginning of the investigation on the nature of
friendship. The discussion is involved at last and carries first on three challenged hypotheses after one another. Lysis resumes next the role of the privileged speaker. The new
examination will concern this that say the poets: it is
necessary to think with Homère that the
similar one is friend of the similar one? Or with Hésiode, that this is the opposite that is friend of his opposite? In 216A, Ménéxène resumes the word to Lysis, to conclude with Socrate to the impossibility of these two hypotheses. An old proverb and an inspiration sort divinatrice relaunch the dialog. The new hypothesis in examination enunciates that " this that is or good or bad is friend of the beautiful one and good because of the presence of some evil ". Socrate develops the idea, but the euphoria is brief since succeeds for him without transition questioned it result and at the end of three analysis orderlies, the hypothesis does not appear anymore than as a vain gossip. A last solution is envisioned, that friendship be convenience. This is she that Socrate prepares itself to examine when arise two slaves that will prevent it from accomplish this project. The Lysis seems therefore to finish on a failure. On the bottom, what therefore exactly that love? To this in love, erotic question, Socrate gives a somewhat diverted response: it is necessary to inquire himself previously definition of friendship. If the Lysis well the first one treated philosophical that consecrates fermement ethical importance of friendship, it also the one that appears to deprive the friendly
relation of his autonomy and of his intimacy. Far from being only an affection relation reciprocal, free of all interest calculation, the friendship according to Platon is a non reciprocal desire and interested. This is that there is in the liked something that one desires for oneself, something that one wishes to appropriate itself and that pushes for us towards him: the good. But the Lysis remains on an equivocal response, the problem not being totally resolved.
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