Is the "Lysis" a Dialogue of Definition?

Author(s): David Sedley

Source: Phronesis, Vol. 34, No. 1 (1989), pp. 107-108
Published by: Brill
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/4182321
Accessed: 20-11-2019 18:56 UTC

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 DISCUSSION NOTES

Is the Lysis a dialogue of definition?

DAVID SEDLEY

Can the way in which we read an entire Platonic dialogue depend on the accentuation of a
single word? If what follows is right, it can.

'But as it is, Lysis and Menexenus,' I said, 'both I, an old man, and you have become
a laughing stock. These people are going to leave here saying that we consider
ourselves each other's friends (for I count myself among you), but that we haven't
yet managed to find out what a friend is (6TL lOrLV 6 4okog).'

Are these closing words of the Lysis a serious application of the so-called 'Socratic
fallacy', that until you can define something you cannot know how to predicate it truly of
anything, or anything truly of it (cf. Euthyphro 15d, Meno 71b, Rep. 354b)? Or are they
more in the nature of a humorous parting shot, not intended to be squeezed too hard for
precise philosophical content? The latter seems to me in principle the preferable answer,
on the ground that (contrary to what appears to be the prevailing view of the dialogue)'
the topic addressed throughout the Lysis is not the definitional question 'What is a
friend?' (or 'What is friendship?' or 'What is the friendly?'). No question with the
definitional form 't' oL (a 6 4(XLov;' is framed. Rather, the central concem is the
identificatory question: who or what is a friend to whom or what? Lover to loved? Loved
to lover? Like to like? Unlike to unlike? The good to the good? The morally neutral to
the good? This cluster of questions is well exemplified at 214d8-el:

Then we have now established who friends are (TLVFg L'aWv oL 4oiXol). Our argu-
ment indicates that they are those people who are good.

In view of all this, there seems no need to be troubled by a sentence near the end in which
Socrates describes their topic as neQL 4$Xolv 6 goTLV (222b5). Although this formula is,
as a matter of Greek, too imprecise to enable us to decide between the definitional and
the identificatory reading, the entire preceding run of the argument should lead us to
expect no more than the latter.
But what about the interim conclusion expressed back at 218b6-c2?

vwOv &QIa, iv 6'Eyd, d A1voL xai May ave, rnavr6 ,uzkov Ftuqnuxac"v 6 ?oIv
-r6o0kov xa'Lo-6.4)%4vy& cavxo,xai XaTn Vv xvia'xa a6 aca xvi navaXo6,
i6b pre xax6v ti^ua &yaO6v b6L xaXoiU RaLQouCav oio dyaOoii 4qXov r1vat.

'So now, Lysis and Menexenus,' I said, 'we really have found out what the friendly
and the unfriendly are. What we are saying about it is that in the soul, in the body,
and everywhere, that which is neither bad nor good is the friend of the good because
of the presence of bad.'

Phronesis 1989. Vol. XXXIVII (Accepted October 1988) 107

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The end of the first sentence, 8 9OtLv 6 4loiov xcaL oi, has such a strong definitional ring
to it that is has never, as far as I know, been explicitly denied that Socrates is here, at a
crucial point in the discussion, claiming actually to have defined 'friendly'.
But we should not rush to endorse this impression. For one thing, it imports an
uncharacteristic philosophical confusion.2 If the claim here really is definitional, Socrates
is in the Lysis committing the cardinal sin of failing to maintain the very distinction
between definitional and non-definitional questions whose importance he himself stress-
es in such well known passages as Euthyphro 11a and Meno 71b.
Second, there is something wrong with the Greek. The elliptical formula for 'the
friendly and the unfriendly' should be not T6 4q"ov xaL ov, but r6 4qkov xai Rdl. Cf. T6
6oLov xaiL JAqi at Euthyphro 9c7-8 (see also ib. 15el, 6-7; Laws 861c5-6). I can find no other
departure in Plato's works from the rule that ', not ot, is the proper negative in generic
phrases.
Third, the logical structure of the passage is faulty. If Socrates is claiming in the first
sentence to have found out the definition of the friendly and the unfriendly, why does the
second sentence refer only to the friendly (4ag+v ydzp arb6. . .) and forget about its
opposite? Contrast the otherwise similarly structured Euthyphro 9c7-8: &OAa yaQ oib
TOUTQ) 4xv-i &QT (QLoavt ta 6o LOV xai ji. T6 yaQ OEo.tL&g 6v xai 8Eo4OLkXg tovij.
To all these problems there is a remedy of irresistible simplicity. The first sentence
should end:

... ravTr6g R&Aov 1tvuoxap"v 6 tarLvTl 4Tkov xav ov.

... we really have found out what the friendly is, and what it is (the friend) of.

Since Plato did not himself write with accents or breathings, this is not really an
emendation at all, just a reinterpretation.
Grammar, logical structure and philosophical coherence are all immediately restored.
The first sentence announces the discovery, not of the definitions of 'friendly' and
'unfriendly', but of the relation in which the two partners to a friendship must stand: (a)
what kind of partner a friend is, and (b) what kind of partner this friend must be the friend
of. The second sentence delivers what the first promises, by specifying both (a) and (b).
And the Lysis neither is, nor pretends to be, a dialogue of definition.

Christ's College, Cambridge

1 E.g. W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy IV (Cambridge, 1975), p. 144:

'The Lysis belongs to the group including Euthyphro, Laches and Charmides, which all
seek to define a single virtue . . .'; D.B. Robinson, 'Plato's Lysis: the structural prob-
lem', Illinois Classical Studies 11 (1986), 63-83, which opens 'The Lysis is one of five short
Platonic dialogues which address themselves entirely to the question of definition.' I am
very grateful both for the stimulus provided by David Robinson's valuable paper, and for
his helpful comments and encouragement in discussing this issue with me, even though
we remain in disagreement on it.
2 Cf. R. Robinson, Plato's Earlier Dialectic (Ithaca, 1941), p. 51: 'The explicit question
of the Lysis is not "what friendship is" but what its condition is, although the former
question is present as a faint undercurrent, and there is perhaps some confusion between
the two.' This is the most promising evaluation I have found in the modem literature, and
my object is to show how even the concession which I have italicised can be resisted.

108

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