Friendship and Human Neediness in Plato’s Lysis

Lucretius on the Nature of Parental Love

“… 20 Pangle (2001) 312 states: ‘Parents love children not because they are good or good for them but because they are their own, and at the end of the dialogue Socrates will give the phenomenon of love based on kinship its due’. However, as far as I can see, such a dogmatic view on parental love does not appear to be condoned in the Lysis.…”

“… 21 See Pangle (2001) 317-22 and Glidden (1981) 50-8. Clearly the distinctions and entailments between ‘being like’ (ὅμοιον) and ‘belonging’ (οἰκεῖον) are fundamentally important (222b-e), but precisely how it all plays out in the case of friendship is unresolved at the end of the dialogue.…”

“…Clearly the distinctions and entailments between ‘being like’ (ὅμοιον) and ‘belonging’ (οἰκεῖον) are fundamentally important (222b-e), but precisely how it all plays out in the case of friendship is unresolved at the end of the dialogue. For discussion of the dialogue’s concluding sections, which many scholars have found deeply unsatisfying, see Penner and Rowe (2005) 173-88; Pangle (2001) 321-2; Bolotin (1979) 182-99.…”