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Lysis (2004)

by Plato(Favorite Author)

3.52 of 5 Votes: 1

ISBN

141913180X (ISBN13: 9781419131806)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Kessinger Publishing

review 1: One of the more headache-inducing Socratic dialogues that I've read. Concerning friendship, love, and good and evil, with Socrates doing most of the talking. Really convoluted and hard to follow half the time. At one point Socrates alludes to evil being necessary for good to exist, as was believed by some Oriental philosophers that he wouldn't have been aware of, but he quickly refutes himself in that too. Ends on an amusing note from Socrates:- "O Menexenus and Lysis, how ridiculous that you two boys, and I, an old boy, who would fain be one of you, should imagine ourselves to be friends - this is what by-standers will go away and say - and as yet we have not been able to discover what is a friend!"
review 2: Socrates engages the youths of his day, the beautif... moreul, beautiful youths. First, he questions Lysis. Your parents love you? Yes, Socrates, they do. And yet they restrict you? Oh, yes! And place you beneath (in terms of certain freedoms) and under the control of nothing more or less than slaves? Hmm. Lysis takes his interrogation beautifully, as the beautiful youth that he is, and Socrates moves on to Menexenus. What is friendship? For friendship to exist, must the love of which it consists be equally shared? Can evil persons be friends, or must friendship derive from the good? If a person is truly good, would they even have a need for friendship? What void would it fill? They are already good. Socrates soon finds himself "dizzied by the entanglement of the subject," not that it would matter it if he didn't. The boys seem convinced by every turn that he takes...and by his every turn-back...and by his every figure-eight. This is not a complaint. The Lysis, like many of the dialogues, seems concerned above all with examining and questioning the assumptions that we make. Plus there is the comedy--the comedy of men squirming and blushing in the presence of their beautiful beloveds... less

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