No answer is given in the Lysis to the question, 'What is Friendship?'
any more than in the Charmides to the question, 'What is Temperance?'
There are several resemblances in the two Dialogues: the same
youthfulness and sense of beauty pervades both of them; they are alike
rich in the description of Greek life. The question is again raised of
the relation of knowledge to virtue and good, which also recurs in the
Laches; and Socrates appears again as the elder friend of the two boys,
Lysis and Menexenus. In the Charmides, as also in the Laches, he is
described as middle-aged; in the Lysis he is advanced in years.
The Dialogue consists of two scenes or conversations which seem to have
no relation to each other. The first is a conversation between Socrates
and Lysis, who, like Charmides, is an Athenian youth of noble descent
and of great beauty, goodness, and intelligence: this is carried on
in the absence of Menexenus, who is called away to take part in a
sacrifice. Socrates asks Lysis whether his father and mother do not love
him very much? 'To be sure they do.' 'Then of course they allow him
to do exactly as he likes.' 'Of course not: the very slaves have more
liberty than he has.' 'But how is this?' 'The reason is that he is not
old enough.' 'No; the real reason is that he is not wise enough: for
are there not some things which he is allowed to do, although he is not
allowed to do others?' 'Yes, because he knows them, and does not know
the others.' This leads to the conclusion that all men everywhere will
trust him in what he knows, but not in what he does not know; for in
such matters he will be unprofitable to them, and do them no good. And
no one will love him, if he does them no good; and he can only do them
good by knowledge; and as he is still without knowledge, he can have as
yet no conceit of knowledge. In this manner Socrates reads a lesson
to Hippothales, the foolish lover of Lysis, respecting the style of
conversation which he should address to his beloved.
After the return of Menexenus, Socrates, at the request of Lysis, asks
him a new question: 'What is friendship? You, Menexenus, who have a
friend already, can tell me, who am always longing to find one, what is
the secret of this great blessing.'
When one man loves another, which is the friend--he who loves, or he who
is loved? Or are both friends? From the first of these suppositions they
are driven to the second; and from the second to the third; and neither
the two boys nor Socrates are satisfied with any of the three or with
all of them. Socrates turns to the poets, who affirm that God brings
like to like (Homer), and to philosophers (Empedocles), who also assert
that like is the friend of like. But the bad are not friends, for they
are not even like themselves, and still less are they like one another.
And the good have no need of one another, and therefore do not care
about one another. Moreover there are others who say that likeness is a
cause of aversion, and unlikeness of love and friendship; and they
too adduce the authority of poets and philosophers in support of their
doctrines; for Hesiod says that 'potter is jealous of potter, bard of
bard;' and subtle doctors tell us that 'moist is the friend of dry, hot
of cold,' and the like. But neither can their doctrine be maintained;
for then the just would be the friend of the unjust, good of evil.
Thus we arrive at the conclusion that like is not the friend of like,
nor unlike of unlike; and therefore good is not the friend of good, nor
evil of evil, nor good of evil, nor evil of good. What remains but that
the indifferent, which is neither good nor evil, should be the friend
(not of the indifferent, for that would be 'like the friend of like,'
but) of the good, or rather of the beautiful?
But why should the indifferent have this attachment to the beautiful or
good? There are circumstances under which such an attachment would be
natural. Suppose the indifferent, say the human body, to be desirous of
getting rid of some evil, such as disease, which is not essential but
only accidental to it (for if the evil were essential the body would
cease to be indifferent, and would become evil)--in such a case the
indifferent becomes a friend of the good for the sake of getting rid of
the evil. In this intermediate 'indifferent' position the philosopher or
lover of wisdom stands: he is not wise, and yet not unwise, but he has
ignorance accidentally clinging to him, and he yearns for wisdom as the
cure of the evil. (Symp.)
After this explanation has been received with triumphant accord, a fresh
dissatisfaction begins to steal over the mind of Socrates: Must not
friendship be for the sake of some ulterior end? and what can that final
cause or end of friendship be, other than the good? But the good is
desired by us only as the cure of evil; and therefore if there were no
evil there would be no friendship. Some other explanation then has to
be devised. May not desire be the source of friendship? And desire is of
what a man wants and of what is congenial to him. But then the congenial
cannot be the same as the like; for like, as has been already shown,
cannot be the friend of like. Nor can the congenial be the good; for
good is not the friend of good, as has been also shown. The problem is
unsolved, and the three friends, Socrates, Lysis, and Menexenus, are
still unable to find out what a friend is.
Thus, as in the Charmides and Laches, and several of the other Dialogues
of Plato (compare especially the Protagoras and Theaetetus), no
conclusion is arrived at. Socrates maintains his character of a 'know
nothing;' but the boys have already learned the lesson which he is
unable to teach them, and they are free from the conceit of knowledge.
(Compare Chrm.) The dialogue is what would be called in the language
of Thrasyllus tentative or inquisitive. The subject is continued in the
Phaedrus and Symposium, and treated, with a manifest reference to
the Lysis, in the eighth and ninth books of the Nicomachean Ethics of
Aristotle. As in other writings of Plato (for example, the Republic),
there is a progress from unconscious morality, illustrated by the
friendship of the two youths, and also by the sayings of the poets ('who
are our fathers in wisdom,' and yet only tell us half the truth, and
in this particular instance are not much improved upon by the
philosophers), to a more comprehensive notion of friendship. This,
however, is far from being cleared of its perplexity. Two notions appear
to be struggling or balancing in the mind of Socrates:--First, the sense
that friendship arises out of human needs and wants; Secondly, that the
higher form or ideal of friendship exists only for the sake of the good.
That friends are not necessarily either like or unlike, is also a truth
confirmed by experience. But the use of the terms 'like' or 'good' is
too strictly limited; Socrates has allowed himself to be carried away
by a sort of eristic or illogical logic against which no definition
of friendship would be able to stand. In the course of the argument
he makes a distinction between property and accident which is a real
contribution to the science of logic. Some higher truths appear through
the mist. The manner in which the field of argument is widened, as in
the Charmides and Laches by the introduction of the idea of knowledge,
so here by the introduction of the good, is deserving of attention. The
sense of the inter-dependence of good and evil, and the allusion to the
possibility of the non-existence of evil, are also very remarkable.
The dialectical interest is fully sustained by the dramatic
accompaniments. Observe, first, the scene, which is a Greek Palaestra,
at a time when a sacrifice is going on, and the Hermaea are in course of
celebration; secondly, the 'accustomed irony' of Socrates, who declares,
as in the Symposium, that he is ignorant of all other things, but claims
to have a knowledge of the mysteries of love. There are likewise several
contrasts of character; first of the dry, caustic Ctesippus, of whom
Socrates professes a humorous sort of fear, and Hippothales the flighty
lover, who murders sleep by bawling out the name of his beloved; there
is also a contrast between the false, exaggerated, sentimental love of
Hippothales towards Lysis, and the childlike and innocent friendship
of the boys with one another. Some difference appears to be intended
between the characters of the more talkative Menexenus and the reserved
and simple Lysis. Socrates draws out the latter by a new sort of irony,
which is sometimes adopted in talking to children, and consists in
asking a leading question which can only be answered in a sense contrary
to the intention of the question: 'Your father and mother of course
allow you to drive the chariot?' 'No they do not.' When Menexenus
returns, the serious dialectic begins. He is described as 'very
pugnacious,' and we are thus prepared for the part which a mere youth
takes in a difficult argument. But Plato has not forgotten dramatic
propriety, and Socrates proposes at last to refer the question to some
older person.