Lysis (dialogue)

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Part of the series on:
The Dialogues of Plato
Early dialogues:
Apology – Charmides – Crito
Euthyphro – First Alcibiades
Hippias Major – Hippias Minor
Ion – Laches – Lysis
Transitional & middle dialogues:
Cratylus – Euthydemus – Gorgias
Menexenus – Meno – Phaedo
Protagoras – Symposium
Later middle dialogues:
The Republic – Phaedrus
Parmenides – Theaetetus
Late dialogues:
Timaeus – Critias
The Sophist – The Statesman
Philebus – Laws
Of doubtful authenticity:
Clitophon – Epinomis
Epistles – Hipparchus
Minos – Rival Lovers
Second Alcibiades – Theages
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Lysis is one of the socratic dialogues written by Plato and discusses the nature of friendship.

The main characters are Socrates, the boys Lysis and Menexenus who are friends, as well as Hippothales, who is in unrequited love with Lysis. Socrates proposes several possible notions regarding the true nature of friendship: Friendship between like and like; friendship between unlike and unlike; friendship between neither-good-nor-bad and good in the presence of evil.

In the end, Socrates discards all these ideas as wrong. While no definite conclusion is reached, it is suggested that the common pursuit of the "good and beautiful" (kalos kagathos) is the true motivation for friendship.

French aristocrat Jacques d'Adelswärd-Fersen, who had fled Paris in the early 1900s after a homosexual scandal, named the house he built on Capri Villa Lysis after the title of this dialogue.

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