A Socratic dialogue set in a wrestling school where Socrates questions two boys, Lysis and Menexenus, about what a friend actually is, and never settles the answer.
The Lysis is one of Plato's shorter Socratic dialogues, framed as a first-person narration by Socrates. Walking from the Academy to the Lyceum, he is pulled into a wrestling school by Hippothales, who is infatuated with a handsome boy named Lysis but too embarrassed to speak to him directly. Socrates first demonstrates, through a long exchange with Lysis, that the boy's wealthy parents trust slaves and hired experts with the horses, mules, and household affairs more than they trust their own son, because expertise rather than status or affection determines who is allowed to act freely. This deflates Hippothales's flattering approach to courtship and sets up the dialogue's real question.
Socrates then turns to the philosophical problem announced by Hippothales's love: what is a friend (philos), and how does friendship (philia) arise? Questioning Lysis and then his friend Menexenus, Socrates tests a series of candidate answers drawn from the poets and natural philosophers: that like loves like, that opposite loves opposite, and finally that the neither-good-nor-bad loves the good because it is threatened by the bad (as a sick body loves medicine because of disease). Each formula is pursued with logical rigor and each collapses under its own weight, including the seemingly best answer, which turns out to make the good beloved only as a means to warding off evil, not as a thing loved for its own sake. Socrates and the boys try to identify something that is loved for its own sake, a first friend that all other things are loved for the sake of, but the argument runs out before they reach it.
The dialogue ends without resolution: the boys' tutors arrive to take them home, and Socrates admits that he, Lysis, and Menexenus have made themselves ridiculous, claiming to be friends to one another while still unable to say what a friend is. The Lysis matters as an early and unusually candid example of Socratic method failing to reach closure, and as a text that treats erotic desire (Hippothales's love for Lysis) and philosophical friendship (philia) as two forms of the same underlying puzzle about attachment, need, and what is truly one's own.
“I can quickly tell when someone is in love, and who is the”
— Lysis · read this chapter →
“You, Lysis, are in charge of nothing, and you don't do a single thing you want.”
— Lysis · read this chapter →
“God ever draws like to like, and makes them known to each other.”
— Lysis · read this chapter →
“So what's neither bad nor good becomes friend to the good because of the presence of the bad.”
— Lysis · read this chapter →
“we've made ourselves ridiculous today”
— Lysis · read this chapter →
It is a Socratic dialogue set in a wrestling school where Socrates questions the boy Lysis and his friend Menexenus about what a friend is. Several candidate definitions (like loves like, opposite loves opposite, the neither-good-nor-bad loves the good) are examined and rejected, and the dialogue ends without a settled answer.
Lysis is a handsome young Athenian boy, son of Democrates, whom Hippothales is infatuated with. Socrates uses a conversation with Lysis about his parents' trust in servants and experts to open the inquiry into friendship, and Lysis later becomes one of the two interlocutors in the main argument.
No. The dialogue tries several definitions in turn and Socrates shows each one to be inadequate, including the promising idea that the neither-good-nor-bad loves the good because of the presence of the bad. It ends in aporia, with Socrates admitting he, Lysis, and Menexenus still cannot say what a friend actually is.
Socrates gets Lysis to admit that his parents let a hired charioteer and even a slave muleteer handle the horses and mules, tasks they will not let Lysis himself do, because those with skill are trusted regardless of status while Lysis, their own son, is trusted with almost nothing yet.
Hippothales is a young man in love with Lysis who composes poems and songs about him but is too embarrassed to speak to him directly. His unrequited, poorly-handled infatuation is the occasion for the whole dialogue, and Socrates uses it to demonstrate a better, more searching way of engaging someone you love.
The boys' tutors arrive to take Lysis and Menexenus home because it is late, breaking up the gathering. Socrates closes by saying that he and the two boys have made themselves ridiculous, since onlookers will say they call themselves friends even though none of them has been able to discover what a friend actually is.
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