|
The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from Lysis by Plato: however, is far from being cleared of its perplexity. Two notions appear
to be struggling or balancing in the mind of Socrates:--First, the sense
that friendship arises out of human needs and wants; Secondly, that the
higher form or ideal of friendship exists only for the sake of the good.
That friends are not necessarily either like or unlike, is also a truth
confirmed by experience. But the use of the terms 'like' or 'good' is too
strictly limited; Socrates has allowed himself to be carried away by a sort
of eristic or illogical logic against which no definition of friendship
would be able to stand. In the course of the argument he makes a
distinction between property and accident which is a real contribution to
the science of logic. Some higher truths appear through the mist. The
Lysis |
