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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: 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
Lysis |
