In this dialogue, with an unnamed companion, Socrates recounts a discussion he has had with two noble youths, Lysis and Menexenus, at a wrestling school. The theme of their discussion was the meaning and nature of friendship. As often for Socrates, the discussion ends with no resolution, even to the definition of friendship. Instead, Socrates takes the group around in circles, poking at this and that aspect of friendship. At first, the definition seems so simple, as Socrates addresses the two boys, “And friends have everything in common, as the saying goes; so in this respect the two of you won’t differ, that is, if what you said about being friends is true.”
At the outset, Socrates discloses, “You know how it is, everybody is different: one person wants to own horses, another dogs, another wants money, and another fame. Well, I’m pretty lukewarm about those things, but when it comes to having friends I’m absolutely passionate, and I would rather have a good friend than the best quail or gamecock known to man, and, I swear by Zeus above, more than any horse or dog. There’s no doubt in my mind, by the Dog, that I would rather possess a friend than all Darius’ gold, or even than Darius himself. That’s how much I value friends and companions.”
After leading the boys around for a bit, Socrates proposes, “Those who are already wise no longer love wisdom, whether they are gods or men. Nor do those love it who are so ignorant that they are bad, for no bad and stupid man loves wisdom. There remain only those who have this bad thing, ignorance, but have not yet been made ignorant and stupid by it. They are conscious of not knowing what they don’t know. The upshot is that those who are bad do not, and neither do those who are good…. We have discovered for sure what is a friend and what it is a friend to. For we maintain that in the soul and in the body and everywhere, that which is neither good nor bad itself is, by the presence of evil, a friend to the good.”
Not so fast. Later Socrates asks, “Can it really be, as we were just saying, that desire is the cause of friendship, and that what desires is a friend to that which it desires, and is so whenever it does so? And that what we were saying earlier about being a friend was all just chatter…. A thing desires what it is deficient in…. And the deficient is a friend to that in which it is deficient…. And it becomes deficient where something is taken away from it…. Then it is what belongs to oneself, it seems, that passionate love and friendship and desire are directed towards…. And if you two are friends with each other, then in some way you naturally belong to each other…. And if one person desires another, my boys, or loves him passionately, he would not desire him or love him passionately or as a friend unless he somehow belonged to his beloved either in his soul or in some characteristic, habit, or aspect of his soul…. What belongs to us by nature has shown itself to us as something we must love.” In the end, Socrates admits, “These people here will go away saying that we are friends of one another—for I count myself in with you—but what a friend is we have not yet been able to find out.”
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