Did Plato Nod?

Some Conjectures
on Egoism and Friendship in the Lysis
by Michael D. Roth (Lancaster)

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 judi-
ciously 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 sum-
mation: "Even Plato can nod."1 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 φίλο$ and φιλία2, but that the crucial elements of that
1
W. K. C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, Vol. IV (Cambridge, 1975),
p. 143.
2
Even those who are prepared to give some credence to Socrates' disclaimer at
the end of the Lysis that no progress has been made concerning the question of
what it means to be a friend are still willing to maintain that the Lysis "sets the
scene" or "lays the groundwork" and thus serves as a "point of departure" for
later treatments; E.g., A. W. Price, Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle
(Oxford 1989), p. 14. See also Julia Annas, "Plato and Aristotle on Friendship
and Altruism" (Mind, Oct. 1977), p. 539. In my judgment, it is a matter of con-
siderable scholarly significance to note that the commonplaces of a certain gener-
ation of scholars are not eternal verities and the contraries of these common-
places can themselves become the commonplaces of a different generation of
scholars. Thus, George Grote, perhaps the greatest of the nineteenth century
Platonists, after giving the text of the Lysis his most scrupulous attention, con-
cluded that "the whole business of the dialogue was to multiply defective expla-
nations and say why they are defective" (Plato and the Other Companions of
Socrates, Vol. 1 [London, 1865], p. 516). Likewise, Eduard Zeller in the subsec-
tion on Socratic friendship in a work devoted to Socrates, does not refer to the
text of the Lysis even once, claiming it to be unreliable as a source of Socratic
doctrine (Socrates and the Socratic Schools [Russell and Russell, New York,
1962], pp. 164-167). If one were to conjecture as to which intellectual presuppo-
sitions might have separated the scholars of the latter half of the present century

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2 Michael D. Roth

doctrine are not difficult to ascertain. Among those who are prepared
to defend the claim that some positive theses regarding φιλία can be
justly ascribed to Socrates in the Lysis, the view which has, by far,
found the most favor is that Socrates, in the Lysis, is committed to a
blatantly egoistic conception of friendship whereby no person is ever
motivated either to enter into a friendship or to sustain a friendship3
unless the friendship is seen by that person to promote certain of her
own interests, regardless of whether that friendship promotes the inter-
ests of her friend. Those who are willing to ascribe such a view to
Socrates on the basis of what he says in the Lysis are often quick to
point out that this view can be contrasted, to Socrates9 great detriment,
with Aristotle's much admired and oft-quoted view in the Nicomachean
Ethics that a friend is someone who wishes good to his friend "for the
sake of his friend".4
In what follows I propose to challenge these two commonplaces, but
I do so without the normal (and, some would think, requisite) degree
of confidence which usually accompanies such challenges. My overall
reaction to the Lysis is one of honest perplexity. I do not have a satis-
factory answer to the question of why Plato makes it appear that
Socrates comes to the end of the discussion having retained no sincerely

from those of the latter half of the previous one, it could be plausibly argued
that the nineteenth century scholars were governed more rigidly by an attitude
of "strict constructionism" in matters of Platonic scholarship than those of the
present era. Every positive thesis regarding φίλος and φιλία in the Lysis is either
subsequently given an explicit denial or occurs within a context which impugns
the sincerity of Socrates* commitment to such a thesis. It is not difficult to see
how someone who took this aspect of the text seriously could conclude that the
Lysis was somewhat arid as a source of Socratic doctrine. Contemporary schol-
ars, on the other hand, acknowledge that there is a genuine problem of Socratic
irony or coyness which often does pose a challenge for uncovering Socrates' real
views but that this problem is not confined to any single dialogue. It is pervasive
throughout the so-called "early Socratic" dialogues and appears to be deliberate.
Thus unless one wants to address, specifically, the problem of why Plato so often
appears to hide Socrates' true meaning, one is free to read "between the lines" in
interpreting particular dialogues such as the Lysis where this sort of phenomenon
occurs. Uncovering such hidden doctrines becomes, on this account, a test of
one's scholarly acumen. I confess to having certain sympathies with the strict
constructionists but I do not intend to pursue their cause here. Since the scholars
whose views I confront below subscribe, without exception, to the contemporary,
more liberal scholarly attitude, I too will adopt that attitude for the purpose of
this essay.
3
By the phrase, "sustain a friendship" I mean to include the performance of acts
which one friend might expect of another friend because they are friends.
4
Aristotle, N. £, 1166a.

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 Did Plato Nod? 3

held beliefs about the nature of friendship.5 I am troubled by the fact

that I can make little or no sense of roughly the last three Stephanus
pages of the text and, consequently, I have no insight into how this
concluding section bears on the rest of the dialogue/Thus, I cannot say
that the arguments I offer below are based on the conviction that I
know what Plato intended to convey to his readers in the text of the
Lysis, and, as a result, I cannot assert, with confidence, that the two
commonplaces introduced above are false. The best I can do, assuming
that Plato did intend to portray Socrates as committed to holding cer-
tain views regarding friendship in the Lysis, is to offer more or less
plausible conjectures as to what these views might be. Given my own
account of the scholarly difficulties presented by the Lysis, this is the
best anyone can do.
With this rather strong incentive towards modesty firmly in mind, I
am ready to state the purpose of this essay. While it may not be wildly
implausible to construe the Lysis as a vehicle for endorsing egoism or
as an illustration that even the greatest philosophical geniuses can have
a bad day, I contend that the denials of such construals are at least as
plausible, if not more so. In what follows I will try to make the case
that the following conjectures on the Lysis are at least as well-founded
as any of those in the current literature with which they are inconsis-
tent: (a) the Lysis is, in terms of subtlety, richness and philosophical
power, at least the equal of such other early Socratic dialogues as the
Laches, Charmides and Euthyphro, (b) Socrates not only was not, in
any interesting or detrimental sense, an egoist with respect to φιλία,
but was fully alive to and fully endorsed the altruistic component of
φιλία, and finally, (c) with respect to the roles that egoism and altruism
play in the correct understanding of φιλία, Socrates differs little, if at
all, from Aristotle.

Among recent writers on the Lysis, the interpretation which has had
the widest readership as well as the greatest influence is that offered by
Gregory Vlastos. In his famous essay, "The Individual as the Object of
Love in Plato", Vlastos sets out to show that the text of the Lysis
commits Socrates to an egostic conception of love and friendship6, a
5
See n. 2 above and Lysis, 222E.
6 "The Individual as the Object of Love in Plato", Platonic Studies, 2nd ed.
Princeton, 1981 (hereafter "IOLP"), pp. 3-11.

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4 Michael D. Roth

conception which is morally inferior to Aristotle's since the Socratic

befriender "seems positively incapable of loving others for their own
sake"7. Vlastos arrives at this rather harsh assessment by citing and
interpreting three separate passages from the text. Rather than repro-
duce verbatim lengthy passages from the dialogue, I will provide the
appropriate reference and give a brief summary of the relevant pas-
sages. Here then are the textual sources of Vlastos5 argument that
Socratic befrienders are motivated strictly by egoism:
2IOC—D: Socrates exhorts Lysis to become wise (σοφό$) for by becoming wise
he will become useful (χρήσιμο$). Then and only then will anyone come to have
φιλία for Lysis. Not even his parents will love him if he is useless.
215C—E: Socrates proposes that feelings of friendship can only occur in one
member of a pair of opposites with respect to the other member of that pair.
Thus, the poor must (άναγκάζεσθαι) befriend the rich, the weak the strong and
the ignorant the informed. Such instances between persons only serve to illustrate
the general thesis that in all of nature everything desires (εττιθυμεΐν) its opposite.
215A—C: Socrates suggests that love and friendship cannot obtain between those
who are good (αγαθοί). To whatever degree one is good to that same degree is
she also sufficient (ικανό'$). One who is sufficient does not need (δεόμενος) anything
and whoever is in need of nothing will not feel affection (άγάττη). She who feels
no affection cannot love (φίλοι), and hence cannot be a friend to anyone.
Vlastos believes that the only reason 2IOC—D does not commit Soc-
rates to a notion of utility-love is because it is not made clear in the
text for whom Lysis is supposed to become useful/While he admits
that the weight of the passage favors the utility view he appeals to
some rather far-fetched possibilities in order to avoid ascribing such a
view at this point to Socrates. There is nothing in the text, he claims,
which rules out the possibility that someone might befriend Lysis be-
cause Lysis is either useful to himself or even to some third party.8 A
few paragraphs later, however, Vlastos resolves the alleged tension by
claiming that subsequent passages in the text clearly justify ascribing
to Socrates a doctrine of "straightforward utility-love55.9
There is one aspect of Vlastos5 account of this passage which is im-
mediately and strikingly discordant. What Socrates proposes to Lysis
in the passage is a plan whereby other people will come to have φιλία
for Lysis. Lysis will become the object of their φιλία and his newly
acquired φίλοι the subjects. But, if friendship is nothing other than
7
IOLP, p. 9.
8
IOLP, p. 7. It is difficult to see how Vlastos' view can accommodate 210D where
Lysis is told that by becoming wise "everyone will be your friend".
9
IOLP, pp. 7f. Guthrie (op. cit., p. 144) too endorses 210C—D as evidence for
the "utilitarian motive".

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 Did Plato Nod? 5

straightforward utility-love, then Lysis' newfound friends will be inter-

ested in him only insofar as he is useful to them and will not value him
at all for his own sake. Thus, on Vlastos' account, Socrates is advising
Lysis to acquire certain characteristics for the sole purpose of being
selfishly exploited by others. If this view is correct, then the charges
against Socrates should be expanded to include not only egoism but
sadism! But such a portrayal of Socrates falls far enough beyond the
parameters of any reasonable interpretation of what we know of Socra-
tes' character to be unacceptable on its face. Something has obviously
gone awry here, but what? Well, for one thing, Vlastos has overlooked
a crucial piece of text which immediately precedes the passage he
quotes. At 21 OB Socrates suggests to Lysis another reason for acquiring
intelligence:
[...] with regard to matters in which we become intelligent (φρόνιμοι), everyone
will entrust us with them [...] and in such matters we shall do as we please and
nobody will care to obstruct us. Nay, not only shall we ourselves be free and have
control of others in these affairs, but they will also belong to us since we shall
derive advantage from them.
Suppose we take Socrates' advice to Lysis to begin not at 2IOC but
at 21 OB and to continue through to the end of 210D. What emerges is
a picture of φιλία as providing a psychological and emotional frame-
work for exchanging mutual benefit. In the passage just quoted, Lysis
is told that by acquiring intelligence he will derive profit from a certain
class of people — namely, those whose friendly feelings for him stems
from their having a stake in those "matters in which he becomes intelli-
gent" (ταύτα α αν φρόνιμοι γενώμεθα). But, in the section of the passage
which Vlastos appeals to, it is this very same class of people for whom
he is supposed to be a source of benefit. Thus, it can be argued that
the point Plato is making in this whole passage from 210B to 210D is
that in order to acquire friends who will be a source of benefit to you,
you, in turn, must become a source of benefit to them. Now I am not
suggesting that this passage amounts to a clear declaration of altruism,
at least not in Aristotle's sense of wishing another person good things
for that person's sake. Yet Plato does seem to be stressing the mutuality
of friendship in this passage and such mutuality is an essential compo-
nent of Aristotle's conception of friendship.10 One might object at this

10
N. E., 1156a. This similarity between Plato in the Lysis and Aristotle in the Nico-
machean Ethics is flatly denied by Julia Annas, op. cit., pp. 533 f. Annas claims
that Aristotle, in emphasizing the mutual aspect of friendship, is responding
directly to Plato's "rejection" of it in the Lysis. She bases her remarks on
212D-E which she concedes occurs as part of a series of paradoxes which are

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6 Michael D. Roth

point that while Plato does seem to be making a case for the mutuality
of friendship, it appears to be the sort of mutuality to be found in what
Aristotle calls, "friendships for utility"11, i.e., relationships in which
each of the parties uses the other solely to gain some advantage for
herself. I concede that, on the basis of the text which has been intro-
duced up to this point, this is a fair objection. Vlastos himself is well
aware that the passage, 21OB-D is open to just this possibility:
There is not a word here to imply that Lysis's father and mother love him when
he is "wise" because they see how beneficial it would be for Lysis if he were wise,
and that they wish this for him just because their loving him means wishing for
his own good for his own sake. What Socrates says of their love for the boy
would have been perfectly true even if they had happened to be arrant egoists
who wanted their son to be sensible and well-behaved only because of the trouble
this would spare them and the credit it would bring on them. So egoistic love is
not excluded though, so far, neither is it implied.12
There is devastating irony in the opening sentence of the above
quote. Had Vlastos given the text the sort of careful reading he was so
justly famous for holding his students to, he would have encountered
Socrates a few pages earlier, once again discussing Lysis' parents,
speaking as follows:
Soc. I suppose Lysis, your father and mother are exceedingly fond (σφόδρα
φιλεΐ) of you.
Lys: Yes [...].
Soc. Then (ούκουν) they wish (βούλοιντο) you to be as happy as possible (εύδαι-
μονέστατον είναι). . ;. ,
Lys: Yes.
Soc: [...] Then if your father and mother are fond of you and desire (έττιθυμοΟσι)
your happiness it is plain that they are anxious to secure your happiness.13
I submit that not only can Vlastos be properly faulted for overlook-
ing this piece of text14, but that this can hardly be viewed as a minor

"purely verbal" and "sophistic" and which she herself characterizes as "boring
and trivial". She then goes on to offer the proposal that such paradoxes "could
be cleared up quickly by paying attention to the various uses of φίλος in ordinary
Greek", and concludes that Plato's use of them is thus "irresponsible". Now
either Plato was fully alive to the "purely verbal" and "sophistic" nature of these
paradoxes when he introduced them into the Lysis or Annas is well-positioned
to give Plato lessons in "ordinary Greek". I leave it to the reader to judge which
disjunct is more likely to be true.
11
N.K, 1156a.
12 IOLP, p. 8.
13
Lysis, 207D-F.
14
It was my privilege and pleasure to be one of Vlastos' students a few years ago
in a summer long NEH seminar on Socrates. True to his character, Professor

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 Did Plato Nod? 7

oversight on his part. It is perfectly plain that the argument of the

passage requires that parenthood be a sufficient condition for having
φιλία for Lysis and not a necessary one. Socrates neither claims nor
implies that only parents can feel this sort of φιλία. It is not unreason-
able to suggest that since parents do, in fact, almost always feel this
way about their children, Socrates is appealing to them as a paradigm
instance in order to illustrate a more general point about φιλία, or, at
the very least, σφοδρά φιλία. Moreover, the text unambiguously de-
clares that Lysis' parents desire his happiness and wish him to be as
happy as possible, not because they are his parents, but because (and
in the text only because) they φιλοϋσιν him. If we are willing to grant
that this is a justifiable reading of the text then it is a least arguable
that Plato is making a conceptual point in this passage about φιλία in
its fullest or strongest sense, i.e., in the sense in which parents have
φιλία for their children. If A has φιλία for Β to the requisite degree then
it follows, as a matter of logic, that A will desire B's happiness and
wish Β to be as happy as possible.
Thus, if we extend the passage to cover the whole of the section in
which Socrates illustrates to Hippothales how to humble his beloved
(207C—210D), it appears as though Socrates is made to argue for two
points: (1) If A has strong feelings of φιλία for Β then A wants Β not
only to be happy but to be as happy as possible. (2) If A wants to
bring it about that she and Β become φίλοι (in the strong sense), then
A needs to bring it about that she and Β have a relationship which is
mutually beneficial to both of them. Now let us reconsider Vlastos'
suggestion that (2) is perfectly compatible with Aristotle's notion of
friendship for the sake of utility. Is it still credible to suppose that Lysis'
parents might wish him to become wise so that they will be spared the
inconveniences ensuing from having a foolish child? Such a supposition
simply flies in the face of the more compelling and certainly more ac-
cessible explanation offered in the text, namely that Lysis' parents wish
him to become wise because they want him to be as happy as possible.
Thus, I will speculate that (1) glosses (2) in the sense that (1) provides
strong confirmation that Plato intends for us to understand (2) in a
way which excludes Vlastos' supposition of "arrant egoists".
Continuing in the speculative mode, let me propose what I take to
be some further plausible conjectures which have a bearing- on the in-
terpretation of 210B-D. Suppose the point of Plato's appeal to Lysis'

Vlastos was quick to acknowledge the irony noted above. The phrase "properly
faulted" is borrowed from his comments.

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8 , Michael D. Roth

parents and the σφοδρά φιλία they have for him was to draw our atten-
tion to a special kind of friendship - friendship in its fullest and most
realized form. To point to this normal state of parental love as a para-
digmatic instance of such friendship would, I suggest, be no less un-
common to Plato's Greek contemporaries than it is to contemporary
speakers of English.15 When we wish to indicate that someone outside
of our immediate family is related to us in this special sense of friend-
ship, the most commonly used phrases are variants of sentences such
as "he was like a son to me" or "he was my brother" etc. I will specu-
late that Lysis and Menexenus are introduced into the dialogue as ex-
amples of friends in this sense and this explains why Socrates tells them
that neither is wealthier than the other since "friends are said to have
everything in common" (207C). Moreover, it is tempting to suppose
that it is friends in just this sense for which Socrates expresses such a
passionate longing at 21 IE, a longing which surpasses in intensity even
his desire for "all of Darius'gold".
I submit then that there is ample evidence in the.Lysis that Plato
was well aware of this paradigmatic notion of friendship and that it
was a type of friendship which was to be distinguished from the sorts of
relationships that one might have with colleagues, co-workers, drinking
companions, neighbors, sorority sisters etc. If we are willing to grant
that these are not unfounded conjectures, then there should be little
difficulty in accommodating Socrates' remark that not only will Lysis'
parents not love him unless he is useful, but that no one will have φιλία
for anyone who is not useful. If, as I have speculated, Plato is thinking
primarily of this strong sense of φιλία, then the requirement of useful-
ness amounts to nothing more than a commonplace about friendship
of this kind. A friend in this sense is someone we "can count on", one
who will "be there for us" and who we would "trust with our lives".
Of course, what we expect of such people is rooted in the conviction
that they expect, with good reason, the same of us. Such relationships
can be either sustained or broken depending on how well the patients
live up to each other's expectations. While the occurrence of the cir-
cumstances which call for the expected responses may be accidental,
the expectations themselves are not. They are conceptually connected
to the notion that the other party is one's friend in the relevant sense.
I propose to call people who are such friends, "σφοδροί φίλοι", and I
will stipulate that with respect to such friends the following very strong
condition holds: necessarily, if χ and y are σφοδροί φίλοι, then χ and y
15
Such a paradigm certainly occurred to Aristotle; c. f. N. E., 1166a5.

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 Did Plato Nod? 9

are useful to each other. In using the modality I am suggesting that

this is an a priori condition of σφοδρά φιλία and is explicative of the
concept of friendship in this sense. I am further suggesting, or, more
accurately, plausibly speculating, that Plato was doing nothing more
than making this condition explicit when he has Socrates exhort Lysis
to become useful.
Now, if this is the way in which Socrates is claiming that σφοδροί
φίλοι are useful to each other then such usefulness is inextricably bound
up with certain personal qualities of the φίλοι, qualities such as honesty,
loyalty, courage and trustworthiness. Consequently, if one seeks to en-
ter into relationships of σφοδρά φιλία one must both develop such qual-
ities as well as learn how to seek them out in others. If there is anyone
in the history of Western thought who is identified with the idea that
the proper way to acquire these sorts of virtuous qualities is by becom-
ing wise, surely it is Socrates. Wisdom, Socrates tells Lysis, will not
only make him useful, it will make him good (αγαθός, 210D)! Thus, I
take the foregoing to be a plausible account of the long passage from
270C through 210D. The three key elements of this account are, first,
that Plato is focusing on a particular and paradigmatic notion of
friendship whose instances are relationships between what I have called
σφοδροί φίλοι; second, that one necessary condition of such friendship
is that the parties to it desire each other's happiness, and, finally, that
a second necessary condition of such friendship is that the parties to it
be useful to each other in the sense that they can count on each other's
help and support when such help and support is needed.16
I have previously stated that such a notion of friendship corresponds
almost exactly to what contemporary speakers of English recognize as
the strongest and most fully realized sense of friendship, the sense in
which we speak of someone as a "close" or "real" or "true" friend.
Lest I be accused of importing an alien, contemporary notion of friend-
ship into Plato's Athens, here is Plato's character, Crito, speaking in
the dialogue named after him:
CRITO: But look here, Socrates, it is still not too late to take my advice and
escape. Your death means a double calamity for me. I shall not only lose a friend
whom I can never possibly replace, but besides a great many people who don't
know you and me very well will be sure to think that I let ypu down, because I
could have saved you if I had been willing to spend the money. And what could
be more contemptible than to get a name for thinking more of money than of

16
Plato explicitly draws this inference at 215A-C. See below.

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10 Michael D. Roth

your friends? Most people will never believe that it was you who refused to leave
this place although we tried our hardest to persuade you.
SOCRATES: But my dear Crito, why should we pay so much attention to what
'most people' think? The really reasonable people, who have more claim to be
considered, will believe that the facts are exactly as they are, (Crito, 44B-C)
I read this passage on the reasonable supposition that Crito has σφο-
δρά φιλία for Socrates and that his appeal to what his fellow Athenians
will think of him is predicated on his awareness and acceptance of their
beliefs about this kind of friendship. It should be noted that Socrates
does not dispute Crito's claims about the obligations of such friendship,
but only that the many will be wrong in thinking he has failed to
discharge those obligations.

777

Given the argument set out above, I submit that it is not implausible to conjecture
that Plato was aware of the, type of frienship that obtained between σφοδροί φίλοι.
But given the text of the Lysis., it is equally fair to claim that Plato was also well
aware that such words as 'φίλος' and 'φιλία' could be used to refer to instances of
relationships which were clearly not cases of σφοδρά φιλία. In such instances the
meaning of these terms had shifted to the extent that the type of relationship in-
stanced by σφοδροί φίλοι could no longer stand as a paradigm without gross inaccu-
racy. It is a common complaint about the Lysis that Plato keeps introducing these
different and incompatible uses of 'φίλος' without any acknowledgement on the part
of any of the characters in the dialogue, including Socrates, that such a shift of
meaning has occurred.17 The complaint is justified and I have no ingenious explana-
tion to offer as to why Plato chose to do this, although the literature does not lack
for such explanations.18

17
See, for example, Guthrie, op. cit., pp. 136 f., 143; Annas, op. cit., p. 551; Price,
op. cit., p. 34.
18
Guthrie, op. cit., gives a brief overview of such explanations, chief among which
are that Plato is satirizing the methods of some of the leading sophists of the
day or that Plato is showing his contempt for the intellectual pretensions of the
Athenian society which had sentenced Socrates to die. Guthrie complains with
regard to the former explanation that it seems unfair for Plato to vent his wrath
on two admiring and unsuspecting schoolboys and in the process make Socrates
appear to be an ogre. But it is possible that both explanations have a role to
• play here. Plato's point may have been that the capacity for understanding of
most of the Athenian "intelligentsia" i. e., those who most admired the Sophists,
was equal to but not beyond that of Lysis and Menexenus. At any rate, it is
strange to find Guthrie making the philosophical worth of the dialogue depend,
even in part, on the "niceness" of its main character. See Guthrie, pp. 143 f.

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 Did Plato Nod? 11

But, explanations aside, I believe it is beyond plausible speculation that Plato

does introduce these different uses of 'φίλο*' and 'φιλία' and he does so with full
knowledge of their differences. This point has significant bearing on Vlastos' second
piece of textual evidence. The passage which Vlastos refers to begins at 215C and
extends to 216A. The argument of the passage purports to show that rather than
friendship obtaining between things which are alike (δμοιον), it obtains between
things which are opposed (εναντίον). As part of the evidence for this thesis, Socrates
cites, as illustrative examples, the poor, who are compelled (άναγκάζεσθαι) to be
friendly to the rich, as are the weak to the strong, the sick to the doctor and the
ignorant to the well informed (215D). Socrates then goes on to use these examples
to support the general thesis that since "everything desires (έπιθυμεΐν) its opposite"
(215E), then friendship must obtain between things "most opposed" (έναντιώτατον).
Of this passage Vlastos writes:
But as we go on reading in the dialogue we find that [egoistic love] is implied, in
effect, after all. This happens when Socrates goes on to argue (213Eff.) that if A
loves B, he does so because of some benefit he needs from Β and for the sake of
just that benefit: the sick man loves his doctor for the sake of health [...]; the
poor love the affluent and the weak the strong for the sake of aid [...]; "and
everyone who is ignorant has affection and love for the one who has knowledge."
This is straightforward utility-love: the doctor, the rich, the wise are loved by one
who needs them for what he can get out of them and no reason is offered why
we could love anyone except for what we could get out of him.19
I do not contest the claim that all of the examples, cited here by Vlastos, of one
person loving another are examples of "straight forward utility-love". But in order
to use them in the way that he does, Vlastos also needs to show that in putting these
examples into the mouth of Socrates, Plato was presenting Socrates as expressing
his sincere and judicious endorsement of such examples as providing legitimate
grounds for the thesis they are intended to illustrate. The textual evidence against
this view is simply overwhelming. To begin, of the four pairs of so-called "opposites"
which Socrates appeals to, one of them is glaringly anomalous. Neither Socrates nor
Plato could fail to be aware that the doctor is, in no sense, the opposite of the sick.
Both the author of the Lysis and its main character are too familiar with examples
involving sickness and its correct opposite to propose seriously such an exaggerated
misconstrual of that relationship. In addition, not only do these examples fail to
support the thesis they were intended to illustrate, they are patently inconsistent with
it. Neither the rich, nor the strong, nor the knowledgeable would feel any sense of
love, but especially not utility-love, for their opposites.20 The error here is so egre-

19
IOLP, p. 8. Vlastos' examples are drawn from the passage under discussion,
except for the sick person's' love for the doctor. For this pair Vlastos chooses to
cite its occurrence at 218E rather than the source of all his other examples, even
though the sick/doctor pair is to be found with the others at 215D. I am at a
loss to understand Vlastos' motives here.
2° At 215E Socrates unidentified "speaker", the proposer of this theory, goes on to
claim that everything desires (έπιθυμεϊν) its opposite, where "everything" is

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12 M i c h a e l D. R o t h

gious and its presence so intrusive that to suppose that Plato was unaware of it
simply defies credulity. 21
But even if there were not this damaging evidence within the passage itself can
we take seriously the implication, inherent in Vlastos' remarks quoted above, that
Plato could have held the view that what the poor felt for the rich was anything
even remotely like what Lysis' parents felt for him? Is it conceivable that in citing
these two disparate examples of φιλία Plato believed himself to be illustrating dif-
ferent but compatible aspects of one and the same thing? It is worth recalling that
when Plato cited Lysis' parents feelings toward their son as an instance of σφοδρά
φιλία it followed from their φιλία that they desired his happiness. Would the same
thing follow if we increased the strength of the φιλία the poor must feel towards the
rich? One consideration which tells heavily against such an idea is the fact that in
English we have preserved the same sense of "friend" and "friendly" that Plato was
clearly trying to capture in his pairs of opposites. I suspect, or, once again, to speak
more accurately, I offer as a plausible conjecture that when Plato has Socrates tell
us that the poor "must be" friendly to the rich he does not mean only that poor
hold "dear" something that the rich possess, but that the poor are prepared to be-
have toward the rich in certain ways in order to improve their prospects of getting
what they want. But this is exactly the sense of "friend" from which advertising
agencies become exceedingly rich. When we are in need of a loan and money is dear
to us, the prospect of our making payments at a substantial rate of interest becomes,
in turn, dear to our banker. In such circumstances, it is supposedly comforting to
know that we can talk to someone at the "Friendly First". The state in which I am
presently writing this paper beckons potential visitors (and their credit cards) by
declaring that they have a "friend in Pennsylvania" and while others may be content
to find themselves in good hands at Allstate, we, fortunately, have yet another
"friend at State Farm". Now when speakers of English hear such claims being made,
they understand perfectly well the sense in which "friend" and "friendly" are being
used and are not prone to the sort of confusion which would lead them to ask their
insurance agent to look after their children while they vacation in Hawaii. I submit
that when Socrates is made to introduce this very sense of the term "friend" into
the Lysis, it would be as absurd to suppose that he failed to be aware of the differ-
ences between this sense and the σφοδρός φίλος sense as it would be to suppose it of
ourselves. Thus, I want to claim that the case for interpreting the passage 215C—
216A as one which begs for a subtle rather than a literal reading is, at a minimum,
as strong as its converse.

clearly meant to include such opposed pairs as rich and poor and weak and
strong. Even those who find Plato to be a writer whose capacity for subtlety
knows no bounds might be daunted by the prospect of explaining in what sense
Plato could have thought that the rich "desire" the poor.
21
It is worth noting that the argument embodied in the passage 215C—216A is
immediately followed by a passage in which the thesis that all and only opposites
are friends is described as "άλλόκοτον" whose main meaning seems to be 'absurd'
and which Lamb chooses to translate as 'monstrous'. Why Vlastos consistently
ignores such disclaimers is puzzling.

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 Did Plato Nod? 13

IV
But the passage which Vlastos puts the most weight on, the one which, in his
mind, commits Socrates "unmistakably" to egoism occurs at 215B where Socrates
says: .;' . .
And if a man has no need (δεόμενο$) of anything he will not cherish (άγαπώτ))
anything [...] and that which does not cherish will not love (φίλον) [...] and one
who loves not is no friend (φίλο$).
Of this passage, Vlastos writes:
The lover Socrates has in view is positively incapable of loving others for their
own sake, else why must he feel no affection for anyone whose good-producing
qualities he did not happen to need?22
What lover does Socrates have in view here? Does Vlastos believe that Socrates
is singling out some special class of human beings who had either previously been
or were at the time walking about on the face of the earth? If this were so and we
asked Socrates to characterize that special class of human beings he would have no
choice but to reply that they were those human beings who have no need of anything.
Surely it is not ill-founded to conjecture that Socrates is perfectly aware that there
never have been and never will be such human beings, and that the proper conclu-
sion to be drawn from 21,5B is that the capacity to express φιλία is available only to
those beings who have needs, wants and desires. A being who is so self-sufficient as
to need nothing is not even a possible candidate for expressing φιλία, for such a being
is beyond human capability. Thus, in characterizing a being as one who is in need
of nothing Socrates is not merely describing someone who is "incapable of loving
others for their own sake", he is describing someone who is incapable of loving-
period. Does this commit Socrates to the view that human beings lack the emotional
and psychological wherewithal to "wish another person's good for that person's
sake"? If so, then Vlastos must forfeit his claim that Aristotle provides a "standard
against which to measure Plato's concept of love".23 At the very outset of his discus-
sion of friendship in the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle declares that every human
being needs friends in order to live a good live.24 One immediately consequence of
this declaration is that all human beings have at least one need and are thus excluded
from the category of "those who are in need of nothing". But if Aristotle can extend
the concept of φιλία to include beings who have needs, and at the same time make
it a requirement of φιλία that the φίλοι wish each well for the other's sake, then why
can't Socrates? Moreover, both in the Ethics and the Metaphysics, Aristotle appears
to have quite definite views about a being whose perfect self-sufficiency frees it from

22 IOLP, ρ. 8.
23 IOLP, p. 6.
24 N.E., 1155al.

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14 M i c h a e l D. R o t h

all needs, wants and desires. Such a being would be divine, says Aristotle, and its
sole activity would be θεωρία. As such, it has no need of the many virtues which are
a prerequisite for φιλία.25 Thus, from the fact that Socrates excludes those who are
in need of nothing from participation in φιλία, it does not follow that those who are
able to participate in it must do so from an "egoistic perspective".26
Not only does such a conclusion not follow, but if we examine closely the context
surrounding the alleged "smoking gun" passage contained in 215B, we find Socrates
committed to claims which have a markedly non-egoistic character. If we expand
the passage cited by Vlastos to include the lines both immediately preceding and
immediately succeeding it, we find that Socrates' claims all of the following:
»
(a) If χ and y cherish each other (άγαπηθείη) then they help each other when in
need (έττικουρίαν, 215A1 — 2).
(b) If χ is a friend (φίλο$), then χ is cherished (215A3 — 4).
(c) If χ expresses φιλία then χ cherishes (215B3).
(d) If χ is a friend then χ expresses φιλία (215Β4).
(e) If χ and y are friends then they set a high value on each other (περί πολλού
ποιούμενοι έαυτού$, 215C). · ,

25
Ν. Κ, 1178b8ff., Met. XII, 7-10. See also Professor Irwin's instructive com-
ments in the Glossary which he provides for his translation of Ν.-Έ.' (Hackett,
1985), pp. 405 f.
26
The temptation to think otherwise is rooted, I suspect, in the failure to place
proper constraints on the notion of egoism. There is a doctrine which I believe
both Socrates and Aristotle would endorse and which says, in effect, that one's
own happiness is the ultimate goal of all of one's rational acts. Let us call such
a doctrine, "eudaimonism". Thus, for the eudaimonist, the penultimate step in
any successful attempt to provide a complete, rational justification for a particu-
lar act would take the form "Because I wanted X". And in response to the
question "Why did you want X?" the eudaimonist would reply "Because X
makes me happy" — supposedly rendering any further demand for justification
pointless. It is worth noting that eudaimonism, as I have presented it here, is
not constrained by any sort of principle of 'eudamonistic closure'. If I do X
because X makes me happy and I do Y because Y makes it possible that X, it
does not follow that I do Y because Y makes me happy. Thus, I may go fishing
because fishing makes me happy and I may dig worms because digging worms
makes it possible for me to go fishing. But it is no the case that I dig worms
because digging them makes me happy. Now given this account of eudaimonism,
it is perfectly plain (at least to me) that in order to be an eudaimonist one need
not be an egoist. Whether or not one were an egoist would depend entirely on
what sort of things make one happy. If Mother Teresa justifies her efforts to
relieve the suffering of the helpless poor in Calcutta on the grounds that such
efforts make her happy, surely it would be grotesque to accuse her, on those
grounds, of egoism. If, on the other hand, one were to argue it is not even
possible to separate the two since eudaimonism just is a species of egoism as a
matter of definition, then egoism ceases to be a moral theory worthy of philo-
sophical interest. If Mother Teresa's appeal to her own happiness is itself suffi-
cient to commit her to egoism then that is an unfortunate consequence not for

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 Did Plato Nod? 15

Now if we draw the obvious inference from (c) and (d) and conjoin it to (b), we
discover that Socrates is committed to the claim that in order to qualify as a φίλο$
one must both cherish and be cherished. I am, once again, prepared to offer a conjec-
ture on what is not definitely nailed down in the text - namely that to satisfy the
requirement of being a φίλος the one cherishing must cherish the one she is cherished
by. The alternative would be absurd. It would allow for the possibility that one could
still satisfy all the requirements of friendship even if one cherished only wine and
was cherished only by one's mother, (a) and (e) make it plain enough that this is not
what Socrates has in mind. Furthermore, I believe it is plausible to hold that when
we are told in (a) that if the people cherish each other, then they provide help for
each other when in need, the prospect of help is not the cause of the cherishing, but a
logical consequence of it. In other words, they do not cherish each other because they
provide needed assistance for each other but, rather, they provide such assistance be-
cause they cherish one another. One possible motivation for interpreting (a) in this way
is by understanding (e) in the charitable but not improbable sense that friends set a
high value on each other, as opposed to each other's gold or skills or social status etc.
It is significant that Socrates is not made to argue for any of the claims (a)—(e). He
appeals to them as though they were commonly shared intuitions which would be im-
mediately accepted by any Athenian citizen fluent in his native language.
Assuming the foregoing speculations all have the plausibility I have claimed for
them, it can be argued that from 207D through 215C Socrates proposes the
following theses regarding φιλία: (1) If χ has σφοδρά φιλία for y then χ desires y's
happiness. (2) If χ & y are (σφοδροί) φίλοι, then χ & y provide mutual benefit to each
other. (3) If χ is a (σφοδρός) φίλος then χ both cherishes y and is cherished by y. (4)
If χ & y are (σφοδροί) φίλοι then they have high regard for each other's person. If
we could somehow put different theories of friendship on the altruism scale and
measure (1)—(4) against Aristotle's "wishing each other well for the other's sake",
those who would contend that Aristotle's theory will have a higher weight must
sustain that belief in the hope that the scale is calibrated to register the most exquisite
discriminations.

There is one other passage which Vlastos cites as indirect evidence

for the thesis that friendship between human beings is, on Plato's view,
always egoistic. The passage, which can be roughly demarcated as run-
ning between 219B and 220B, is, perhaps, the most well-known passage
in the Lysis since it contains the famous argument for the so-called

Mother Teresa but for the doctrine of egoism. Thus, for the purposes of this
essay, we shall understand an egoist to be someone who could never terminate
a complete, rational justification for some act by truthfully stating that helping
others makes her happy.

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 16 Michael D. Roth

"πρώτον φίλον" or "first friend". Vlatos characterizes the argument of

the passage in the following way:
Socrates then goes on to argue that just as we love the doctor for the sake of
health, so we love health for the sake of something else; hence short of an infinite
regress, there must be a proton pinion, ou heneka kai ta alia phamen panta phila
einai - a "first [i.e., terminal] object of love, for whose sake, we say, all other
objects are loved" (219D) this being the only thing that is "truly" (hos alethos)
or "really" (to onti) loved - or, more precisely that should be so loved. There is
danger, Socrates warns, that "those other subjects, of which we said that they are
loved — for its sake, should deceive us, like so many images of it" (219D2—4).
So unless a man we loved actually was this proton philon, it would be a mistake
to love him "for his own sake," to treat him, in Kant's phrase, as "an end in
himself." [...] What is it then, this sovereign protonphilonl All Socrates seems to
be prepared to say is it is "the good", and "the good for any given person"
Socrates understands to mean: what makes that person happy.27
Later on in this paper, partly on the basis of the lines just quoted,
Vlastos concludes:
What needs to be stressed most of all in this area is that Plato's theory is not,
and is not meant to be, about personal love for persons — i. e., about the kind of
love we have only for persons and cannot have for things or abstractions. What
it is really about is love for place-holders of the predicates "useful" and "beauti-
ful" — of the former when it is only philia, of the latter, when it is eros.28
I concede that the argument embodied in the πρώτον φίλον passage
is a difficult one to get hold of and I can cite no direct textual evidence
which would diminish whatever initial persuasiveness attaches itself to,
Vlastos' interpretation. But much has been written about the ττρώτον
φίλον and it is instructive to note the wide divergence of opinion among
those who have commented on it. Guthrie sees in the passage an un-
conscious anticipation of the forms29 while Julia Annas finds in it evi-
dence of an altruistic motivation for φιλία!30 Even if this diversity of
opinion lent itself to decisive adjudication, which I doubt, such a pro-
ject would be far beyond the scope of the present essay. All I propose

27
IOLP, pp. 10 f. I take Vlastor's supposition that another person might be the
ττρώτον φίλον to be purely rhetorical since he is already committed himself to
an egoistic interpretation of Socratic φιλία as it applies to persons.
28
IOLP, p. 26. For two different readings of the πρώτον φίλον passage, both of
which also commit Socrates to egoism, see T. Irwin, Plato's'MoralTheory^ (Ox-
ford, 1977), p. 84, and A. W. Price, op. cit., p. 8.
29
Guthrie, op. cit., pp. 151 f.
30
Annas, op. cit., pp. 534—538.

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 Did Plato Nod? 17

to do at this point is to set beside these other views still another specu-
lative account which will make the passage conform to the rather chari-
table readings I have offered of previous passages.
Once again, I adopt the strategem of interpreting the passage by
considering the context into which it is introduced. At 216D Socrates
proposes a new thesis about friendship at least one aspect of which
appears to have gone unnoticed in the literature. He introduces this
thesis by claiming it as his own and does not assign its authorship to
either some poet or some unspecified source. Such a claim takes on
added significance when we realize that this is the only place in the
dialogue where Socrates does this.31 The thesis is that what is neither
good nor bad in itself is a φίλος to what is instrumental to it in attaining
some desired good and avoiding some corresponding evil (216Dff.).
The example Socrates uses to illustrate this thesis is the familiar one of
the body's relation to health. The body, which is neither good nor bad
in itself, is a φίλος to medicine for the sake of attaining health and
avoiding disease (217A). I am inclined to interject a reminder at this
point that Socrates is using φίλος here in the same sense in which the
poor man was a φίλος to the rich. This is surely not the same sense of
φιλία which is exemplified by Lysis' parents feelings towards their son
and I suggest that it is as unlikely to suppose that Socrates is unaware
of the difference in this latter case as it was in the former.
Socrates then proceeds to use the example of the body's relation to
health to generalize: "Hence the friend is a friend of. its friend for the
sake of its friend and because of its foe" (217B). Thus the body is a
friend of medicine for the sake of health because of disease. I find this
illustration of the general formula for φιλία to be highly suggestive. At
two places in the text (218B-C and 220C) Socrates draws our attention
to the fact that like the body, the soul is to be counted among those
things that are neither good nor bad in themselves. He then points out
that just as disease in the body is cured by medicine, so is ignorance in
the soul cured by wisdom (218A-B). The suggestion of analogy ap-
pears to be deliberate and Socrates has filled in for us three of the four
terms in his general formula for φιλία. The soul is a friend of wisdom
for the sake of χ because of ignorance. Socrates is never made to say
explicitly what χ is but it would clearly be that which is to the soul

31
"Then I will be a diviner for once (λέγω τοίνυν άττομαντευόμενος) and state that
what is neither good nor bad is friendly to what is beautiful and good" (Lysis,
216D).

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18 Michael D. Roth

what health is to the body. Moreover, I content that it is reasonable to

conjecture that this missing fourth term is intended to appear conspicu-
ous by its absence.
Now, if we assume, arguendo, that Plato intended for the knowledge-
able reader to mark this analogy between soul and body then the miss-
ing fourth term is clearly 'virtue5. It is our virtue which renders and
sustains our soul in the maximal psychic state. Thus, if we keep clearly
in mind that Plato is, in the πρώτον φίλον passage, using the location
"x is a friend to y" to mean, roughly, "x feels affection for y because χ
needs or wants something y has" (219B), then it is not implausible to
speculate that Socrates is making a point about the connection between
friendship and virtue. Our first friend, that which we should value
above all else, even above those for whom we have σφοδρά φιλία, is
our own virtue. And if a conflict should arise between the claims of
friendship and the claims of virtue, it is always virtue which should be
chosen. This corresponds nicely to another contemporary intuition
about friendship. We can easily imagine situations in which if someone
were to tell us that if we were a "real friend" we would do such and
such, it would be perfectly appropriate for us to respond by saying that
if they were a real friend they wouldn't ask us to do such and such. I
suspect that the overwhelming majority of such cases would be cases
where doing "such and such" would entail performing acts which
would compromise our virtue and the appropriate reply would signify
that we value or virtue even more than our friendships. But this is the
very point I am suggesting that Socrates is, in subtle fashion, making
in the ττρώτον φίλον passage. It hardly needs mentioning that in ascrib-
ing such a view to Socrates, I do no violence to the dramatis persona
which Plato puts before us in the early Socratic dialogues.32
One consequence of this view is worth making explicit. If there were
two people who had σφοδρά φιλία for each other and both of whom
knew that each valued her own virtue above all else, then from what
Socrates has claimed about such people in the Lysis (or what I have
speculatively conjectured he has claimed), it would seem likely that
such φίλοι would value each other's virtue as well as their own. A friend
in this sense would never ask her friend to compromise her virtue since
that virtue is an important component of what she cherishes and wishes

32
It is a view which seems perfectly compatible with the one Vlastos himself
ascribes to Socrates in his recent assay "Happiness and Virtue in Socrates' Moral
Theory" (Proceedings of the Cambridge Philological Society, 1984), pp. 181-213.

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 Did Plato Nod? 19

to preserve in her friend. If this is something which Socrates could have

had in mind when he speaks of the πρώτον φίλον, then Socrates is
endorsing a view, at least by implication, which fits almost perfectly
with Aristotle's conception of "the friendship of good people similar in
virtue"33. This last point can be used to forestall a certain objection to
ascribing this sort of view to Socrates. One who sees Socrates in the
Lysis as a strong advocate of egoism might claim that the view I am
proposing simply strengthens the case for egoism. Since friendship
essentially involves interacting with other people and treating them in
certain ways, and since one's own virtue, which is exercised in such
interactions, is more important and more valuable than one's friends,
then at least one source of the value we place on friendship is as an
instrument for enhancing and preserving our own virtue. The proper
reply to this objection is that if one labels Socrates an egoist for holding
such a view then one must also apply the same label to Aristotle.34
On the basis of the foregoing, I am now prepared to assert that the
plausibility of the following conjectures is at least equal to the plausibil-
ity of their denials: (a) the Lysis can stand, both philosophically and
dramatically, alongside any of the shorter and earlier Socratic dia-
logues such as the Laches and Charmides; (b) Socrates not only was
aware of, but enthusiastically endorsed the genuine concern for other's
well being which he saw as a necessary component of φιλία in its para-
digmatic sense; and (c) with respect to reconciling the two views regard-
ing φιλία that, on the one hand, our φίλοι are beneficial to us while, on
the other, φίλοι wish each other well for each other's sake, Socrates
gives pretty much the same account as Aristotle.
But to claim of (a), (b) and (c) that I have established that their
plausibility is at least equal to their denials leaves me open to the fur-
ther objection that in order to accept such a claim one would have to
invest the Lysis with far more subtlety then it is reasonable to suppose
is there. I agree that the speculative conjectures offered above do im-
pose a high degree of subtlety on the Lysis, but, granting that, I am

33
Ν. Ε., 1156b7, see also 1165bl3ff. While there is danger in citing anything from
the chaotic final section of the Lysis (220C-223B), it is a fact that the very last
point that Socrates has to make about friendship in the dialogue is that "we
34
cannot avoid making the good only a friend to the good" (222D).
Ν. Κ, 1155al4, 1155a29. But it is a point worth repeating that if Aristotle would
insist that the virtuous friend is required to wish good things to her friend for
her friend's sake, then there is no reason not to suppose that Socrates would
too.

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20 Michael D, Roth

still unwilling to concede the objection. To say of the Lysis that it

embodies great subtlety is no more or less implausible than saying that
it is.a trivial and pointless exercise in criticizing patently flawed argu-
ments or that its author intentionallyportrays his revered main charac-
ter as one who exhorts school boys to act solely out of self interest. If,
in fact, these are our choices then I need only repeat that the interpreta-
tion I have offered above is as credible as any of the others.35

35
Gregory Vlastos, Richard Kraut and Robert Heinaman all commented on an
earlier draft of this paper. I am grateful to each of them for suggestions which
improved the argument of the paper considerably.

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