Instructions: After reading Plato's Lysis write an essay answering the below questions.  Make sure that you support your responses by offering corroboration from the text or examples from your own life. Your response should be no longer than 3 typewritten pages and should be submitted through the course website. Your essay should be a cohesive composition with complete paragraphs and sentences (not numerically organized answers), with proper spelling and punctuation, and satisfying all of the homework formatting requirements. 

1.Explain in your own words the scene of Socrates' dialogue.  Discuss the relationships between Hippothales, Lysis, and Menexenus.  Why exactly does this dialogue initiate?

2.Socrates considers several potential responses to the question "what is friendship?"  Explain two of Socrates' dialogues about friendship using textual citations as support.

3.On your account, what is friendship?  Provide a full discussion of this concept considering any necessary conditions and possible examples.

(1) The setting for Lysis, as referenced in its opening notes, is a “newly erected Palaestra outside the walls of Athens”, and one finds (after looking up the one alien word) that a palaestra is a “wrestling school or gymnasium.” This, given Socrates and his ancient Greek colleagues, hardly comes as a surprise. Their penchant for eros between males, often consisting of pairings of older men with much younger boys, is well-known, and in fact inspires the word “platonic” as a descriptor of an asexual relationship between a man and a woman. Where better, for men of such leanings, to eye potential erotic partners than a wrestling school, where the students will be athletically fit, scantily dressed, and engaged in activities that mimic the sex act itself?

Socrates nears this place, meeting some youth as he does who invite him to come inside for conversation. Among them is Hippothales, is a young and naïve man who has a major crush on another youth, the likewise young and highly desirable Lysis. It is apparently a bad case, as Ctesippus and others relate to Socrates how much Hippothales pines over Lysis, and composes poems, etc. to the point of being a nuisance. Menexenus is a friend of Lysis who, being more confident in himself, first approaches Socrates and thereby affords Lysis a chance to join as well.

The ensuing dialogue initiates from the preliminary discussion of Hippothales' infatuation with Lysis; but for our protagonist Socrates, Plato uses this literary device to get to the “meat” of the story, which is the philosophical analysis of friendship.

(2) As is his “method”, Socrates engages in a serious scrutiny of friendship and its dynamics, with leading questions, examples and counter-examples designed to rein the concept in, but not necessarily pin it down... For Socrates it seems to be at least as much about the journey as the destination. He is a master of turning premises on their heads and finding contradictions. Considering the proposal that friendship must be reciprocal, that each friend must admire the other‒ Socrates brings up an example where men love objects which cannot love them back:

"Then nothing which does not love in return is beloved by a lover? I think not. Then they are not lovers of horses, whom the horses do not love in return; nor lovers of quails, nor of dogs, nor of wine, nor of gymnastic exercises, who have no return of love; no, nor of wisdom, unless wisdom loves them in return.”

It is a subtle shift of semantics, often, that Socrates takes to arrive at his paradoxes. But can we not call it a bit of a cheat? Friendship was the topic at hand; not horses, quail, wine, or wisdom. I was more impressed with a later turn where the idea of “opposites attract” is considered:

“Have I not heard some one say... that the like is the greatest enemy of the like, the good of the good?... Potter quarrels with potter, bard with bard, beggar with beggar... the poor man is compelled to be the friend of the rich, and the weak requires the aid of the strong, and the sick man of the physician; and every one who is ignorant, has to love and court him who knows.”

Again, while all the observations have some truth to them, and opposites do depend on each other by their nature, it is hardly a “proof” that such make stronger friendships among men.

(3) Friendship is a component of my life that has shifted somewhat from childhood to now, in my mid-fifties, and I would venture that my experience has not been typical (but whose has?) My early childhood was isolated, in a rural setting, and I was an only child for five years until my brother was born. So I developed an inner world of sorts that wasn't very dependent, and indeed somewhat clumsy with the idea of playmates/friends. Most of my friends were adults (neighbors, uncles, aunts).

Elementary school, and a move to the suburbs of a mid-sized city (Hickory NC) was something of a shock to my introversion. I had friends my own age, and adapted fairly well. Though still a quiet child compared to most, I did not have any social anxieties or problems to speak of. Until puberty kicked in, that is. Ouch... My middle and high school years were a study in self-imposed agony. I was hopelessly self-conscious, shy, and fearful of any social interactions outside of a small circle of friends, who, ironically enough, were fellow members of a garage-type rock band I started (and I had no problem performing with them in front of large groups of people‒ go figure).

I've never had a need for some set amount of friends, some quota that meets a goal for being popular or successful. I spent sometimes weeks in high school without saying a word to anyone there.

My first really deep friendships occurred in my late teens/early twenties when I followed my aspirations of being a professional musician (the reason I attend college now, as opposed to then). Most of my friends since have been through that connection (musicians and their support team). We had things in common, of course. Many better musicians are shy. (Because I had no social life, it was easy to spend most of my spare hours as a teenager practicing guitar. I got very good at it).

True friends have common interests, usually a similar amount of intelligence, and most importantly, I think, enough love for each other to be honest even when it hurts... to tell you when you're wrong. You can ask them for help, even knowing that it is a major imposition, but it's okay because it is implicitly understood that you'd do the same for them. You would fight for them, if they were being harmed, and yet fight against them if they were harming others. They're like siblings, but perhaps a little better because you get to choose a friend...