Plato's Lysis / Edition 1

by Terry Penner, Christopher Rowe

Overview

The Lysis is one of Plato's most engaging but also puzzling dialogues; it has often been regarded, in the modern period, as a philosophical failure. The full philosophical and literary exploration of the dialogue illustrates how it in fact provides a systematic and coherent, if incomplete, account of a special theory about, and special explanation of, human desire and action. Furthermore, it shows how that theory and explanation are fundamental to a whole range of other Platonic dialogues and indeed to the understanding of the corpus as a whole. Part One offers an analysis of, or running commentary on, the dialogue. In Part Two Professors Penner and Rowe examine the philosophical and methodological implications of the argument uncovered by the analysis. The whole is rounded off by an epilogue of the relation between the Lysis and some other Platonic (and Aristotelian) texts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521791304
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	10/20/2005
Series:	Cambridge Studies in the Dialogues of Plato
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	5.98(w) x 9.02(h) x 0.98(d)

About the Author

Terry Penner is Professor of Philosophy, Emeritus, and was, for a time, Affiliate Professor of Classics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In Spring 2005 he was A. G. Leventis Visiting Research Professor of Greek in the University of Edinburgh. His previous publications include The Ascent from Nominalism: Some Existence Arguments in Plato's Middle Dialogues(1986) and numerous articles on Socrates.

Christopher Rowe is Professor of Greek at the University of Durham; he was Leverhulme Personal Research Professor from 1999 until 2004. His previous publications include commentaries on four Platonic dialogues; he has edited The Cambridge History of Greek and Roman Political Thought (with Malcolm Schofield, 2000) and New Perspectives on Plato, Modern and Ancient(with Julia Annas, 2002), as well as providing a new translation of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics to accompany a philosophical commentary by Sarah Broadie (2002).

Read an Excerpt

Cambridge University Press
0521791308 - Plato's Lysis - by Terry Penner and Christopher Rowe
Excerpt

PART I

An analysis of the Lysis

CHAPTER 1

203A1-207B7: the cast assembles, and the main conversation is set up

We begin with a largely uninterrupted translation of the opening few pages of the Lysis, which serve to introduce and set the scene for the main argument. (For subsequent sections of the dialogue, our method will have some resemblance to a running commentary.) We shall provide, in footnotes to the translation, some preliminary comments on details of this first section of the dialogue, but for the most part we shall delay discussion of major points until after our analysis of the argument of the rest of the Lysis (see chapter 9). We begin with the expectation, though the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, that the design of the opening scene will have at least something to do with the concerns of that argument.

203A1 I was on my way from the Academy straight to the Lyceum along the road that runs outside the wall, under the wall itself; but when I'd got to the small gate where the spring of Panops is, there I chanced on Hippothales son of Hieronymus and Ctesippus of the Paeania deme and other young lads (neaniskois) 203A5 with them, all standing in a group. And when Hippothales caught sight of me coming towards them, he said 'Socrates! Where is it you're on your way to, and 203B1 where from?'

'From the Academy,' I said; 'I'm on my way straight to the Lyceum.'

'Come straight here to us,' he said. 'Won't you come over? It really will be worth your while.'

203B5 'Where do you mean,' I said, 'and who are the "us" you want me to come over to?'

'I mean here,' he said, showing me just over from the wall a kind of precinct with its door standing open; 'and the ones passing our time there are those of us here now and others as well - quite a lot of them, and beauties too.'

204A1 'So what is this place, and how do you pass your time?'

'It's a wrestling-school,' he said, 'one just recently built; we spend most of our time in discussions (logoi), and would gladly make you a part of them.'

'Fine,' I said, 'if you do that; but who's teaching there?'

204A5 'It's actually a friend (hetairos) of yours,' he said, 'and an admirer - Miccus.'

'Zeus!' I said; 'definitely no mean person (ou phaulos);¹ in fact a fair professional when it comes to wisdom.'²

'So are you prepared to follow us,' he said, 'so you can see for yourself those who are there?'³

204B1 'Before that I'd like to be told what I'll be going in for, and who the beauty is.'⁴

'One of us thinks it's one person, Socrates,' he said, 'another another.'

'But who do you think it is, Hippothales? This is what you should tell me.'

204B5 At that question he blushed. And I said 'Son of Hieronymus, Hippothales, this you don't need to tell me - whether you're in love with (erais) someone or not;⁵ for I know that you're not only in love (erais), but already pretty far along in your love (porrō ēdē ei poreuomenos tou erōtos).⁶ I am, myself, of mean ability (phaulos), 204C1 indeed useless (achrēstos), in respect to everything else, but this much has been given me - I don't know how - from god, the capacity to recognize (gignōskein) quickly a lover and an object of love (erōnta te kai erōmenon).'⁷

When he heard me say this he blushed much more deeply still. At that Ctesippus said 'So very charming of you to blush, Hippothales, 204C5 and to be coy about telling Socrates the name! But if he passes even a little time with you, he'll be worn out by your saying it over and over again. At any rate, Socrates, he's deafened our 204D1 ears by stuffing them with "Lysis"; and then again if he has a bit of a drink,⁸ there's every chance we'll wake up in the middle of the night too, thinking we're hearing "Lysis". And as terrible as the things are that he says in ordinary conversation, they are hardly terrible at all compared with the poems that he tries 204D5 to pour over our heads, and the bits of prose. And what's more terrible than these is that he even sings to his beloved, in an extraordinary voice that we have to put up with listening to. Now you ask him the name, and he blushes!'

204E1 'And Lysis, it seems,' I said, 'is some young person; I'm guessing, because I didn't recognize (gignōskein) the name when I heard it.'

'Right,' he [Ctesippus] said, 'people don't mention his own name all that much; instead he's still called by his patronymic because his father is so widely 204E5 known (gignōskein). Because I'm sure there's little chance of your not knowing (agnoein) what the boy looks like [his eidos]; he's good-looking enough to be known (gignōskein)⁹ just from that alone.'

'Please let me be told whose son he is,' I said.

'Democrates,' he said, 'from the deme of Aexone - Lysis is his eldest son.'¹⁰

'Well now,' I said, 'Hippothales, how noble and dashing 204E10 a love this is that you've discovered, from every point of view!¹¹ So¹² come on, give me just the displays 205A1 you give these people here, so that I can establish whether you know¹³ the things a lover should say¹⁴ about a beloved to him or to others.'¹⁵

'But do you attach weight, Socrates,' he said, 'to any of the things this person says?'

'Are you denying,' I said, 'even that you're in love with the one "this person" says?'

205A5 'No, I'm not,' he [Hippothales] said, 'but I do deny that I write poetry to my beloved, or put things in prose to him.'

'He's not well,' said Ctesippus; 'he's delirious, raving!'

And I said 'Hippothales, I'm not for a moment asking to hear 205B1 your verses, or any song you may have composed to the young lad (neaniskos); what I'm asking to hear is what your thought is,¹⁶ so that I can establish the way you're applying yourself to your beloved.'

'I'm sure he'll tell you,' he said; 'for he knows it in detail, 205B5 off by heart, if as he says he's deafened from hearing it from me.'

'Heavens above [By the gods]!' said Ctesippus; 'For sure I do. Because the things he says are ridiculous into the bargain, Socrates. He's a lover, with his mind fixed more than anyone else's on the boy, and yet he doesn't 205C1 have anything of his own [idion] to say that even - a boy couldn't say: is that ridiculous, or isn't it?¹⁷ But what the whole city celebrates, about Democrates, and Lysis, the boy's grandfather, and about all the boy's ancestors, things like wealth and racehorses and victories at the Pythian and 205C5 Isthmian and Nemean Games with the four-horse team and the single horse and rider - that's what he puts in the poems he recites, and stuff that's even older news than that. It was the reception given to Heracles that he was going through in some poem the day before yesterday - how because of their kinship with Heracles their ancestor 205D1 received Heracles as a visitor, the ancestor being himself descended from Zeus and the daughter of the founder of the deme; things old women sing about,¹⁸ and lots of other things of the same sort, Socrates. These are the things that this person talks and sings about, forcing us as well to be his audience.'

205D5 On hearing that, I said 'Ridiculous Hippothales,¹⁹ are you composing and singing an encomium to yourself before you've won?'

'But it's not to myself, Socrates,' he said, 'that I'm composing or singing.'

'You certainly don't think so,' I said.²⁰

205D10 'But how's that?' he said.

205E1 'It's to you most of all,' I said, 'that these songs of yours refer. For on the one hand, if you catch your beloved when he's as you describe him, what you've said and sung will be an ornament to you, and truly encomia, as if you were the victor, for having succeeded with a beloved like that; but on the other hand, if he escapes you, 205E5 the greater the encomia you've uttered about your beloved, so much the greater the beautiful and good things²¹ you'll seem to have been deprived of, 206A1 and ridiculous as a result. So the person who's an expert [or 'wise': sophos] in erotics (ta erōtika), my friend (philos),²² doesn't praise the one he loves until he catches him, out of fear for how the future will turn out. And at the same time whenever anyone praises them and builds them up,²³ the beautiful ones get full of proud and arrogant thoughts; or don't you think so?'

206A5 'I do,' he said.

'Well, the more arrogant they are, the more difficult they become to catch?'

'Yes, that's likely.'

'So what sort of hunter would it be, in your view, that started up 206A10 his prey and made it more difficult to catch?'

206B1 'Clearly, a poor (phaulos) one.'²⁴

'And what's more, to use words and songs on a subject not to soothe it but to drive it wild would be a matter of a distinct lack of musical ability, wouldn't it?'

'It seems so to me.'

206B5 'Watch out then, Hippothales, that you don't make yourself liable to all these things with your poetry-making. And furthermore, I myself think you wouldn't wish to (ethelein) concede that a man who's doing harm to himself with poetry is ever a good poet, in being harmful to himself.'²⁵

'Zeus! No indeed,' he said; 'that would be quite senseless. But these 206C1 are just the reasons, Socrates, that I'm telling you everything: if you've something else up your sleeve, give your advice about the line a person should take in conversation (tina . . . logon dialegomenos), or what he should do, to become an object of love for [prosphilēs to] a beloved.'²⁶

'It's not easy to say,' I said. 'But if you were prepared to get 206C5 him to come and exchange words with me (moi . . . eis logous elthein), perhaps I'd be able to demonstrate to you what one should say in conversation (dialegesthai)²⁷ with him instead of the things these people claim that you actually do say, and sing as well.'

'Not difficult at all,' he said. 'For if you go in with Ctesippus here and sit down and have a conversation (dialegesthai), my thinking is that he'll 206C10 actually come over (prosienai) to you himself, because you see, Socrates, he's got this outstanding love 206D1 of listening ["he's outstandingly philēkoös"]. And another thing is that it's the Hermaea festival, so that the younger people and the boys are all mixed up together. So he'll come over to you, and if he doesn't, he knows Ctesippus well enough through Ctesippus' cousin Menexenus, because in fact it's Menexenus he goes around with [is hetairos of] more 206D5 than anybody else - so let's have Ctesippus call him over in case he doesn't come over himself after all.'

'That's what we should do,' I said. And as I said it, I took 206E1 Ctesippus and made my approach,²⁸ into the wrestling-school; the others came behind us.

When we got in, what we found there was that the boys had made their sacrifice and the business surrounding the sacred rituals was pretty well already done with, 206E5 so that everyone was playing knucklebones, all dressed up as they were. Well, most of them were playing outside in the courtyard, but a few were playing odds and evens in a corner of the stripping-off room with a large quantity of knucklebones that they were selecting (proairoumenoi) out of some little baskets; others were standing around and forming an audience.²⁹ Now one of these was actually Lysis, who was standing there among 207A1 the boys and the younger people with a garland on his head and standing out by his looks (tēn opsin) - worth talking about not just for his beauty but for his beauty-and-goodness.³⁰

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© Cambridge University Press

Table of Contents

Preface; Part I. An Analysis of the Lysis: 1. 203AI–207B7: the cast assembles and the main conversation is set up; 2. 207B8–210D8 (Socrates and Lysis): do Lysis' parents really love him?; 3. 210EI–213C9: Socrates and Menexenus - how does one get a friend?; 4. 213DI–216B9: Socrates and Lysis again, then Menexenus - poets and cosmologists on what is friend of what (like of like: or opposite of opposite?); 5. 216CI–221D6: what it is that loves, what it really loves and why; 6. 221D6–222B2: the main argument reaches its conclusion; 7. 222B3–E7: some further questions from Socrates about the argument, leading to (apparent) impasse; 8. 223AI–B8: the dialogue ends - people will say that Socrates and the boys think they are friends, but they haven't been able to discover what 'the friend' is; 9. 203AI–207B7 revisited; Part II. The Theory of the Lysis: 10. A rereading of the Lysis: some preliminaries; 11. A rereading of the Lysis; 12. On seeking the good of others independently of one's own good; and other unfinished business; Epilogue; Translation of the Lysis; Bibliography; Indexes.

Editorial Reviews

"...succeeds admirably in making the case for the philosophical significance of the Lysis, a dialogue which has suffered from dismissal and neglect. ...their book is philosophically provocative and engaging. It will be of vital interest to all scholars of Plato; parts of it will also be of substantial use for philosophers working on moral psychology and, in particular, on love." —Bryn Mawr Classical Review, 11/2006

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