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Letting Go: Imagery and Symbolic Naming in Plato's Lysis
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 July 2014
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At the beginning of the Lysis, Socrates is walking from the Academy to the Lyceum (a good route for any Western philosopher), when he meets some young men who lure him into a new palaestra with the promise of logoi and kaloi. The dialogue which follows has been fairly generally felt to be charming, early, and not very well unified. Most scholars would call the subject of the discussion ‘Friendship’, but the inconclusive discussion of friendship does not apparently begin until the dialogue is almost half completed.
I believe that the Lysis is unified, and that this unity can be most readily seen in two areas: (1) the role and character of the boy Lysis and (2) the simple and consistent use of repeated images or references drawn from three areas of life. These three categories of images, I think, are all related to each other and to the eponymous ‘hero’ of the dialogue, and an understanding of their use can help us to see that the subject of the dialogue is more complicated than ‘what is friendship?’, and that Plato's position is a good deal less inconclusive than the ending of the dialogue would lead us to believe.
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- Copyright © Aureal Publications 1978
References
1. The approach I have found most helpful is that of Friedländer, Paul, Plato (trans. Meyerhoff, ) (New York, 1964), vol. II, 92–105Google Scholar and elsewhere. There is also a good study by Levin, Donald Norman, ‘Some Observations Concerning Plato’s Lysis’, in John P., Anton and George L., Kustas, Essays in Ancient Greek Philosophy (Albany, 1971), 236–259Google Scholar. Grube, G. M. A., Plato’s Thought (Boston, 1958), 90–95Google Scholar, has an instructive appreciation, as does Woodbridge, F., The Son of Apollo (Boston, 1929Google Scholar), who in fact suggests, as I do in this paper, that the names of the characters may be significant (p. 167), but does not attempt to make any study of the names, dropping the idea after mentioning it. Many commentators, however, would unfortunately agree with Gould, Thomas, Platonic Love (London, 1963), 1Google Scholar, that the Lysis is ‘a rather dreary early work with only two or three really interesting moments’.
2. Friedländer (n. 1 above), 102, would agree: ‘If somebody says that this is “merely dramatic setting”, which has nothing to do with the “intellectual content” of the dialogue, he cuts straight through the living reality of the whole.’ Hartland-Swann, John, ‘Plato as Poet: A Critical Interpretation’, Philosophy 26 (1951), 3–18, 131–141CrossRefGoogle Scholar, attempts to determine whether Plato is really consistently ‘poetic’, and whether we (as philosophers) should condemn him for this vice. H-S does not seem clear, himself, on what ‘poetic’ means; sometimes it seems for him merely to be synonymous with ‘beautiful’. Hence his conclusions, that ‘poetic’ qualities add richness, variety and conviction to Plato’s work (even if they often confuse as well), and that, although ‘what we really like are treatises’ (p. 136), we should not condemn Plato for being poetic, are rather weak and not really helpful to us here. When I say that Plato writes like a poet, I mean that he uses figurative language and symbols imbedded in the dramatic setting to express important, not just decorative, content.
3. Although I think the Symposium, too, could still use a definitive literary analysis. Rosen’s, StanleyPlato Symposium (New Haven, 1968Google Scholar) has an excellent introduction and is so thorough that he cannot help making many of the right points, but, I feel, much more (as well as much less) should be said about imagery and symbolism in the work.
4. See William W., Fortenbaugh, ‘Plato Phaedrus 235C3’, CP 61 (1966), 108–9Google Scholar. Fortenbaugh suggests that Plato’s use of the driving metaphor in the Phaedrus derives ultimately from Anacreon’s Thracian filly — a metaphorical horse of a clearly sexual nature.
5. On the Athenian horsy set, see Aristophanese’ Clouds.
6. Levin (n. 1 above), 245, has some helpful observations about the importance of to oikeion, and the difficulty of translating the word.
7. Friedländer (n. 1 above), 95: ‘He who truly loves educates. … In revealing the relationship between love and knowledge, love and education, this section provides the indispensable foundation for the conceptual structure of the dialogue as a whole.’
8. Hermaea: In Crete, the festival was apparently celebrated as a sort of Saturnalia, in which slaves exchanged roles with masters for the day (OCD, on ‘Hermes’, referring to Ath. 639b).
9. Aëtius, V, 30.1, quoted and discussed by W. H. S. Jones, in Hippocrates (Cambridge, Mass., 1923), vol. I, p. xi and xlvii.
10. Shorey, Paul, ‘The Alleged Fallacy in Plato Lysis 220E’, CP 25 (1930), 380–383Google Scholar.
11. Jones (n. 9 above), vols. I-IV.
12. Ibid., vol. IV, p. xxxiii: ‘This is the best known work in the whole Hippocratic Collection. From the earliest times it has been regarded with a reverence almost religious… . The Greek manuscripts are more numerous than those containing any other work… .’
13. Another meaning of lyō, ‘to deflower’, may lurk behind Lysis’ name, too, since innocence is certainly a major theme in the dialogue, but I would not want to urge this interpretation too strenuously. Such is the enthusiasm that seizes the literary symbol-hunter that sometimes, unfortunately, he reaches a point where everything begins to seem significant and full of hidden meaning. That way lies madness, or the American Imago.
14. E.g., in the Agamemnon, where the chorus ponders the name ‘Helen’, or the Hippolytus, where the horse-loosing imagery rivals that of this dialogue.
15. But see Ronald B. Levinson, ‘Language, Plato, and Logic’, in Anton and Kustas (n. 1 above), 259–285, who argues convincingly that Plato is never guilty of word-magic, and never mistakes the name for the thing named. On the other hand, see the Theages (if it’s Plato’s), in which Socrates takes Theages’ name as a strikingly favorable omen.