Epilogue
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 September 2009
Summary
This book has had relatively little to say about rival modern interpretations of the Lysis. This is for two reasons. The first reason is that it is one of the general and stated aims of the series to which the book belongs to engage first and foremost with Plato, and with his text. The second, and more important, reason is that for the most part other modern interpreters have – in our view – tended to give up too easily on Plato and his argument; and not to do that was the second, and crucial, part of our brief in approaching the Lysis. We quote a recent writer, who seems to us accurately to catch the spirit of the generality of modern interpretations:
Contemporary interpretations of the Lysis appear to be governed by two commonplaces. The first is that the Lysis is not to be counted among Plato's nobler accomplishments and its contents may be judiciously ignored since the general topic it investigates is given a fuller and certainly more satisfying treatment in the Symposium. Perhaps no present-day writer on the Lysis has expressed this view with more verve or wit than W. K. C. Guthrie in his marvellously succinct one-line summation: ‘Even Plato can nod.’ The second commonplace is that the Lysis not only provides rather fertile acreage for harvesting a crop of Socratic doctrine regarding the meaning and philosophical import of such terms as philos and philia, but that the crucial elements of that doctrine are not difficult to ascertain. […]
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- Plato's Lysis , pp. 297 - 325Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2005