Why do you love your friends—and does loving someone make you their friend?

In Plato’s Lysis, a walk through Athens leads Socrates to a wrestling school and a question that feels close to home. Hippothales cannot speak to the boy he loves. Socrates challenges his approach to courtship, then draws two boys into a conversation about what makes one person dear to another.

With Menexenus, a lively boy who enjoys argument, Socrates asks whether friendship belongs to the lover or the loved. Does likeness bring people together, or do opposites attract? Each answer faces another question. What begins as an afternoon’s talk opens into an inquiry about friendship, desire, and the good.

この本で学べること

• An awkward young admirer Meet Hippothales, whose difficulty speaking to the boy he loves gives the inquiry a human starting point.
• The lover and the loved Consider whether affection makes a friend of the person who loves or the person loved.
• Likeness put to the test Follow Socrates as he questions whether similarity or opposition can explain why people become friends.
• Desire for the good Explore the thought that what is neither good nor bad reaches toward what is good.
• Questions worth staying with Watch an argument take shape, meet objections, and leave you with puzzles rather than a tidy moral.

どのような方におすすめですか？

愛や友情、欲望について鋭く問いかけるのが好きな人に向いた対話篇です。知性に富む人が自分の考えを試す姿を楽しみたい人や、初めてプラトンに触れたい人にもおすすめです。