Source edition
Platonis Opera, Tomus III: Tetralogia V-VII. Burnet, John, editor. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903.
Source data
Perseus Digital Library · CC BY-SA (per Perseus's terms)
Cloned and adapted by Humanitext, with ongoing edits.
Summary
This work is Plato's dialogue in which the philosopher Socrates investigates the essence of "friendship" (philia) through conversations with young boys. Set in a newly built gymnasium in Athens, Socrates meets the beautiful and virtuous youth Lysis and his friend Menexenus, engaging them in a lively discussion. The dialogue begins with an examination of the relationship between parental love and personal freedom as determined by knowledge, before transitioning into a search for the definition of a "friend" (philos). Socrates and his interlocutors examine various hypotheses: whether like attracts like, whether opposites attract, whether the neither-good-nor-bad seeks the good to escape evil, and the concept of a "first friend" as the ultimate source of affection. However, even the hypothesis that friendship lies in desiring what is "appropriate" (oikeion) to oneself falls into self-contradiction, and the dialogue abruptly ends in an aporia (impasse) when the boys' tutors intervene.