Plato: Lysis

What is a friend?

This essay explores Plato’s Lysis, a dialogue about friendship, desire, power, and the deep human need to be known and valued. Drawing from historical sources, psychology, and personal reflection, it asks: What makes a friendship ethical—and what makes it endure?

In a world full of social media connections and fleeting interactions, Lysis offers a timeless question:

What truly is a friend?

Amid status seeking and social transactions, who do we trust—and why? In Lysis, Plato explores friendship not as affection or utility, but as a mirror of the soul’s struggle for power, freedom, and the longing to escape social fragmentation, to become whole. Socrates meets two boys—Lysis and Menexenus—and attempts to define friendship through a series of paradoxes. Are we drawn to those who are similar or different? Is friendship based on need, virtue, love, or something else entirely?

What emerges is a landscape of longing, vulnerability, and the limits of definition. Lysis doesn’t answer the question—it reveals how hard it is to craft a reliable definition.

This dialogue challenges us to look beneath comfort and companionship, asking:

• Can friendship survive unequal knowledge or power?

• Is the friend loved for themselves or for what they provide?

• And are we ever friends with ourselves?

Friendship and Power in Ancient Greece

For the modern reader, the sexual overtones and emotional intensity directed toward youths in Lysis can be jarring. In ancient Greece, affection toward youth was institutionalized. In a pre-Christian world, where age, power, and affection were intertwined differently, the lines between friendship, education, and desire were more fluid—and sometimes troubling. But because Plato’s exploration of friendship was open-ended and layered, it’s important to understand the social codes of ancient Greece, not to excuse them, but to ask: What has changed since then, if anything? Lysis began with flirtation and concern over status—but beneath the surface, Plato used those interactions to question the underlying motivations behind attraction.

There are a lot of political debates about the character of friendship in Ancient Greece, including the concept of Philoi, which focused on the transactional nature of friendship and the desire for reciprocity. Some of those social contracts were sexual in nature, and it requires some exploration to understand the context that took place in this dialogue. Examples of sexual exchanges can be seen in vividly pornographic art, especially on pottery, and ancient writings also brought up the topic of pederasty from that historical standpoint. Power defined so many relationships, and its consequence was always felt, even if motivations were unconscious.

What’s the same now as was then were the power dynamics between masculine and feminine energies, which had an unconscious effect on same sex friendships and how people judged each other. What was considered more masculine was mastery, power and control and what was more feminine was nurturing, supportive, and vulnerable. Signals sent, related to one’s power, or lack thereof, elicited different responses. Of course, men and women had, and still do, masculine and feminine mixtures along a spectrum, with the curiosity to explore those differences, based on boredom and fluidity.

Some were more static and felt like a man in a women’s body and vice versa, as seen in a satire of courtesan prostitutes in Lucian’s Dialogues of the Courtesans, Section 5. What adolescent boys and slaves had in common with femininity, including what was attractive to the powerful at that time, was helplessness, the need for discipline, and the exploitation that went with it. Mark Golden explored how a boy and slave, regardless of age, could be interchangeable in the culture. “Children and slaves were felt to share common characteristics, such as intellectual incapacity and exceptional susceptibility to desire, pleasure, pain. More important, both children and slaves were liable in custom and law to physical violence, often in a disciplinary context. Such treatment was a mark of identification, the immediate physical consequence of social inferiority and powerlessness, for slaves and children.”

Mark quoted an example from Aristophanes’ Wasps:

Xanthias
Oh! tortoises! happy to have so hard a skin! Oh! creatures full of sense! what a happy thought to cover your bodies with this shell, which shields it from blows! As for me, I can no longer move; the stick has so belaboured my body.

Leader of the Chorus
Why, what’s the matter, my child? for, old as he may be, one has the right to call anyone a child who has let himself be beaten.

Xanthias
Alas! my master is really the worst of all plagues. He was the most drunk of all the guests, [and] a hundred times more insolent than any. As soon as he had stuffed himself with a host of good dishes, he began to leap and spring, to laugh and to fart like a little ass well stuffed with barley. Then he set to beating me with all his heart, shouting, “Slave! slave!”

The children of aristocrats would be partially raised by slaves and go through a process of moving from helplessness into power, and pederasty could intermediate between the two. “Two features are particularly relevant. (1) Homosexual relationships did not involve equals. As Dover puts it, ‘…homosexual relationships in Greek society are regarded as the product not of the reciprocated sentiments of equals but of the pursuit of those of lower status by those of higher status.’ This inequality is basically a function of a disparity in age. Both parties might well be young men and unmarried. But one is normally younger than the other…According to common Greek views on the relationship between men of different ages, the younger man would normally be thought of as subordinate to the older. To quote Dover again, ‘The virtues admired in a [passive partner] are the virtues which the ruling element in a society (in the case of Greek society, adult male citizens) approves in the ruled (women and children).’ And the roles of the partners in sexual activity emphasize the subordination of the younger man: he plays the passive role.”

Even when this system was in place, it was expected that the younger male would become more aggressive over time and pursue more independence as expected from free citizens, and this in a lot of ways mirrored later efforts to abolish slavery. Slaves literally saw everyday the powerful and what consumption they had access to, which naturally led to feelings of envy, resentment, and acute self-loathing. What you get as a reward for the passive role is rarely equal to those in the active role, despite how hard you work. From the point of view of the active, even everyday people today going shopping, it is solely focused on searching for objects to consume, with cost being an afterthought. Freedom for many people is simply freedom to consume, because when you are a slave, you’re reminded of how much you cost and how much you have to produce to stay in the master’s good graces. You need permission from gatekeepers. “Nevertheless, certain of the conventions of Athenian homosexuality deny the subordinate status of the younger party. Aidos [modesty] and sophrosyne [temperance], both virtues appropriate to subordinate status, were valued in the young. But the [passive partner] had virtues suited to a dominant as well as a subordinate role. Xenophon’s Socrates praises the strength and steadfastness and manliness of Callias’ [passive partner] Autolycus as well as his sophrosyne. The author of the Erotikos ascribed to Demosthenes also joins sophrosyne and andreia [manliness] and comments on the union of contradictory qualities displayed by the young subject of his [speech]. Such a mix is of course unsurprising in a transitional stage. That the transition is towards full enjoyment of citizen status is perhaps implied by Xenophon’s comment that those inspired by love look very much like free men.”

Plato: Charmides: https://rumble.com/v6v07ej-plato-charmides.html

Like in all forced socialization, love, as well as friendship, or a desire for mentorship, can be unrequited, and those in power may not care. It’s just another cost to negotiate over. “It is especially instructive to compare vase paintings showing homosexual acts with those depicting other groupings. Women on the vases often appear to enjoy sex. But passive homosexual partners show no sign of pleasure; they have no erection and usually stare straight ahead during intercourse. A few sources refer to love as a master and to lovers as slaves of desire. The implication of these vase paintings is that the passive partner, despite his subordinate sexual role, is not overcome or enslaved by pleasure or any other emotion.”

Despite this damning narrative, power wasn’t moving in only one direction. In fact active partners had to compete for passive partners with status and better looks, so the object of desire could play suitors off of each other. “The older was not only the sexually active partner; he was also the aggressor. As such he was forced to court, to approach boys, his social inferiors, as a suppliant. So we find vase paintings which show older men—they are bearded—reaching out to touch a younger male’s chin in the classic gesture of supplication. Greek idiom points the same way. Charizomai ‘to oblige,’ is often found in sexual contexts with the meaning ‘to grant sexual favours.’ Pausanias in his speech in Plato’s Symposium refers to some who call it a disgrace to grant favours to suitors. It seems that it is the [passive partner] who is in control. [Passive partners] might even flaunt their power: ‘spoilt beauties,’ says Socrates, ‘act like despots when they are in bloom.'”

Sexual desire was treated as a vice like any other and was open to ridicule, like when the pursued inevitably became conceited after receiving excessive attention. The one in need became vulnerable to the one who supplied. True freedom could only be attained if there was enough self-control and virtue. “And a number of texts assert that the [active partners], aggressive and older though he may be, is no better than a slave of the [passive partner]. In Plato’s Symposium Pausanias [characterized them as] ‘wishing to undergo slavery as no slave would.’ Socrates in the Phaedrus speaks of the lover’s soul as neglectful of all other concerns, ‘ready to be a slave (and to sleep wherever it is allowed, as near as possible to the beloved.'”

Beyond social exchanges and power differentials, and not being of age, being possessed by limerence had economic and legal consequences as well. Like Plato identified in the following dialogue, there’s a lack of trust with people who do not have the skill to be free, which is to be able to control oneself without the need of direction from others.

In a world where invasion, murder, pillage, and enslavement were always possible, there was a respect for those who were loyal and trustworthy protectors. But when you have dependents given few experiences to exercise freedom, which would be the argument against slavery, those skills for self-mastery would never have been developed: a regression fostered by gatekeepers. “Athenians saw slaves and children as occupying similar statuses within the structure of their society. The identification of certain characteristics, like intellectual immaturity, was inevitable…For Plato in particular slaves and children pose parallel problems. In the Republic, the emphasis falls on the similarity of their natural characteristics. We learn that children and slaves share, with women and moral weaklings, the greatest susceptibility to desire, pleasure, and pain.”

In some ways there’s a sadomasochistic relationship of having to punish underlings in order to make them good, responsible, and put out. Sadomasochism is about using punishments to elicit work or pleasure from the subject and to reward them if they satisfy, to squeeze out as much benefit against their will as possible. We may start to like those we rule over, but ruling under pressure to meet standards doesn’t always lead to rulers who are kind and merciful. The free man on the other hand is supposed to be able to reward and punish themselves, which is like the psychoanalytic super-ego, to control one’s desire and be self-sufficient. This isn’t always easy, so when one is in a situation where one can’t be self-sufficient, one has to resort to “experts,” who unlike friends, take advantage of the weakness, and maybe even communicate their contempt for the captive helpless person that needs “help.”

Eurythmics, Annie Lennox, Dave Stewart – Sweet Dreams: https://youtu.be/qeMFqkcPYcg?si=RaPaR2d_1uz4aGn2

The Ego and the Id – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gvdo1-the-ego-and-the-id-sigmund-freud.html

The helpless are trapped in the world of authority figures who use the threat of punishment to motivate. This gets compounded with the fact that rewards for slaves are too small to motivate entirely, leaving them without the energy to rebel. The argument for the slave is that exploitation is present when rewards are lopsided on behalf of the free man. How much in contribution are the powerful providing in order to justify their rewards? Is it really an equal exchange for all that toil? The gatekeepers are keenly aware of this and play politics in defense of their privilege.

Totem and Taboo – Sigmund Freud: https://rumble.com/v1gsmvn-totem-and-taboo-sigmund-freud.html

Sexuality Pt 4: Masochism – Sigmund Freud & Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gtrq1-sexuality-pt-4-masochism-sigmund-freud-and-beyond.html

Sexuality Pt 5: Sadism – Sigmund Freud & Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gtssd-sexuality-pt-5-sadism-sigmund-freud-and-beyond.html

Sinead O’Connor – Arsenio Hall – “We are concerned about money more than we are about each other.” https://youtu.be/mAf7fGEeRQs?si=D7wUXGdS0PtUkGJk

This desire for better standards of living connects to the human mind and it’s universal desire for what is better, transcendent, and in the estimation of Plato, to climb the ladder of love and arrive at his heaven of Forms, but for those inclined to worldliness it’s all for techne, innovation, leverage, privilege and social capital. How we are rated and how we rate ourselves depends on moving goal posts, where boredom demands ever higher standards, and all humans struggle with these expectations that society demands of us, and that we in turn demand from ourselves.

Lysis does not glorify these ancient customs. Instead, it uses them as a lens to expose our deeper confusion: When we use euphemisms like “love,” and “fellowship,” is dominance what’s lurking in the background instead? Plato invites us to ask whether a relationship of equals is even possible.

Lysis

The dialogue opened with Socrates on his way to the Lyceum, where he met Hippothales who was spending time with young men in a newly built wrestling school. He was invited to join because “there are quite a few besides ourselves—and they’re all good-looking.” Hippothales blushed numerous times as he had to admit he had a crush on the youthful Lysis who was the oldest son of the noble Democrates of Aexone. His zeal and obsession bothered Ctesippus. “All he can think of to say or write is stuff the whole city goes around singing—poems about Democrates and the boy’s grandfather Lysis and all his ancestors; their wealth and their stables and their victories at the Pythian, Isthmian, and Nemean Games in the chariot and horseback races.” Socrates entered the gymnasium not just to observe but to draw something out of these dynamics. He noticed how Hippothales’ fawning could send the wrong signal of desperation.

It’s okay to recognize the potential for excellence in the human body, but instead of being fixated on one form of excellence, to the exclusion of others, isn’t it more balanced to notice that attraction can also be for all things excellent? Balance in desire moderates, so that pleasure does not overstimulate into boredom and escalate into more twisted and kinky obsessions. It gives space for virtue and achievement. Even more important is seeing how favoring one type of excellence over another can create conflict where being excellent in other ways, like the obvious one of refraining from buggery, is an opportunity. Contradictions in virtue can wall one off from forms of excellence that increase well-being and survival. Even further, if one wants to be attractive, by putting effort into other areas of excellence, neglect of that will lead one to not be excellent enough to magnetize attraction to reciprocate, which puts one in danger of unrequited love.

Depeche Mode – It’s No Good: https://youtu.be/_-QPvffO1gs?si=oEk_luN0jLi6kOO7

SOC: “If you make a conquest of a boy like this, then everything you’ve said and sung turns out to eulogize yourself as victor in having won such a boyfriend. But if he gets away, then the greater your praise of his beauty and goodness, the more you will seem to have lost and the more you will be ridiculed. This is why the skilled lover doesn’t praise his beloved until he has him: he fears how the future may turn out. And besides, these good-looking boys, if anybody praises them, get swelled heads and start to think they’re really somebody. Doesn’t it seem that way to you? And the more swell-headed they get, the harder they are to catch.” The insight slowly sunk in to Hippothales and he made his way to the back of the crowd to listen to the following discussion, for fear of annoying Lysis.

Socrates began to inspect Lysis and his friend Menexenus, after they were finished with their rituals and a game of knucklebones, and looked deeper into what attracted their friendship in particular.

SOC: “Friends have everything in common, as the saying goes; so in this respect the two of you won’t differ, that is, if what you said about being friends is true.”

For a young one like Lysis, it made sense to start by looking at all his relationships and assess how much freedom he actually enjoyed. By focusing on skill and trustworthiness he got through to Lysis that his parental restrictions were for his own benefit so that his later freedom would be of value. “Am I right in assuming, Lysis, that your father and mother love you very much? Then they would like you to be as happy as possible, right? So they allow you to do as you please, and they never scold you or stop you from doing whatever you want to do…Well, do you think a man is happy if he’s a slave and is not permitted to do whatever he likes?”

LYS: “Not true, Socrates. There are a whole lot of things they don’t let me do.”

SOC: “It seems, then, that your parents think more even of a slave than they do their own son, and trust him rather than you with their property, and let him do what he wants, but prevent you. But tell me one more thing. Do they allow you to be in charge of your own life, or do they not trust you even that far?”

Lysis confirmed that he had a tutor that was a slave and in charge of him. “Pretty strange, a free man directed by a slave. How does this tutor direct you; I mean, what does he do?”

LYS : “Mostly he takes me to school.”

SOC: “And your schoolteachers, they’re not in charge of you too, are they?”

LYS: “They sure are!”

Freedom has consequences when we interfere with the freedom of others, so ultimately if we want to honor justice, freedom cannot be absolute, and if one wants a well run society, excellence has to be present in as many people as possible. “It looks like your father has decided to put quite a few masters and dictators over you. But what about when you come home to your mother, does she let you do whatever it takes to make you happy, like playing with her wool or her loom when she’s weaving? She doesn’t stop you from touching the blade or the comb or any of her other wool-working tools, does she?”

LYS: “Stop me? She would beat me if I laid a finger on them.”

We often have to demonstrate to authority figures what we can actually do so that trust is earned. This starts with parenting, but then it moves to vocation, and if one is successful enough to be a politician of any trustworthiness, to make consequential change, then the city will grant the power to do so. “I imagine, that your father and mother trust you without waiting for you to come of age. For instance, when they want someone to read or write for them, I’ll bet that you, of everyone in the household, are their first choice for the job. Right? And nobody tells you which letter to write first and which second, and the same goes for reading. And when you take up your lyre, I’ll bet neither your father nor your mother stops you from tightening or loosening whatever string you wish, nor from using a plectrum or just your fingers to play.”

LYS: “I suppose it’s because I know about these things but not those.”

SOC: “So your father isn’t waiting for you to come of age before he trusts you with everything; but come the day when he thinks that you know more than he does, he’ll trust you with himself and everything that belongs to him. When he thinks you know more about managing his estate than he does, will he trust you to do it, or will he manage it himself?”

LYS: “I suppose he will trust me to do it.”

SOC: “And how about the Athenians? Do you think they will trust you with their affairs when they perceive that you know enough? What about if his son had something wrong with his eyes; would he let him treat his own eyes, knowing he wasn’t a doctor, or would he prevent him? If he thought we were doctors, he wouldn’t stop us even if we pried his eyes open and smeared ashes in them, because he would think we knew what we were doing. So…he would trust us, rather than himself or his son, with all his business, as long as we seemed to him wiser than either of them.”

LYS: “True.”

Freedom for Socrates comes at the price of contribution. When the contribution is recognized, in a more egalitarian environment with no slavery, there is social license and permission to access consumption based on the level of contribution, but trust cannot be broken, and corruption must not exist. “In those areas where we’re really wiser, everybody—Greeks and barbarians, men and women—will trust us, and there we will act just as we choose, and nobody will want to get in our way. There we will be free ourselves, and in control of others. There things will belong to us, because we will derive some advantage from them. But in areas where we haven’t got any understanding, no one will trust us to act as we judge best, but everybody will do their best to stop us, and not only strangers, but also our mother and father and anyone else even more intimate. And there we are going to be subject to the orders of others; there things are not going to be ours because we are not going to derive any advantage from them. Do you agree this is how it is?”

Coming full circle, all these interactions, whether we are children, parents, business associates, or in government, there are some restrictions on friendship. It’s not unconditional. “Well, then, are we going to be anyone’s friend, or is anyone going to love us as a friend in those areas in which we are good for nothing?”

LYS: “Not at all.”

SOC: “So it turns out that your father does not love you, nor does anyone love anyone else, so far as that person is useless.”

LYS: “It doesn’t look like it.”

Socrates indicated the need for teachers and how usefulness, that could be demonstrated, was a prerequisite for friendship in society. Putting people on a pedestal and idealizing them was a distortion of an object’s true importance. “This is how you should talk with your boyfriends, Hippothales, cutting them down to size and putting them in their place, instead of swelling them up and spoiling them, as you do.” Of course, this is problematic since devaluation can be just as distorting when tyrants want to control and be gatekeepers blocking knowledge and independence from the populace, but it is true of newlyweds that at some point they have to get out of bed and get to work with being well-rounded people capable of accomplishing the necessities of life.

Love – Freud and Beyond: https://rumble.com/v1gv5pd-love-freud-and-beyond.html

Because of these ever increasing standards, Socrates pointed out the common danger of unrequited love. The reason it’s common is because it is easy to do, to love a person for what pleasure they could give us, but at the same time ignore that we may have nothing of our own to offer in exchange. It becomes an entitlement, and even worse we may be critical towards people we like, yet if they ever attempted to bring us into their circle, we would be found to be infinitely more flawed and deserving heaps more criticism. Isn’t that the common comeback today? Don’t throw rocks when you live in a glass house! “First we thought that if one person loved another, they were both friends. But now, unless they both love each other, neither is a friend.”

Celebrity Mean Tweets – Jimmy Kimmel: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GB3FO3ExNDU

Celebrity Mean Tweets – Jimmy Kimmel: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/T_DNr0InNL8

The situation is different with parents, where the child has no choice but to tolerate them: a forced friendliness. Here there is still that sadomasochistic quality of management, where the child has to fear the threat of punishment, but because parental bonds are often stronger, and especially if they were good parents, the child will eventually possess real skills as an adult. True friendship may involve the goal of betterment. “Babies, for example, who are too young to show love but not too young to hate, when they are disciplined by their mother or father, are at that moment, even though they hate their parents then, their very dearest friends.”

The conversation moved towards the common assumption that like attracts like, but that isn’t the case when people are alike in their positions. They have to be able to find it easy to share common objects of desire, otherwise exchanging positions with one another generates rivalry. You have to look at what people are exchanging in each example to understand this dialogue. As Socrates quoted Hesiod:

Potter is angry with potter, poet with poet

And beggar with beggar.

Friendship | Official Trailer: https://youtu.be/cmSPwZIZu6Y?si=Aaw1sfn7T1R0CRu8

If there is trade between people, where one is giving something evil in exchange for a good, then friendship is not likely, regardless of how alike they are in many other areas. Like in psychology, it’s better to judge behaviors over identity to increase accuracy. “To our way of thinking, the closer a wicked man comes to a wicked man and the more he associates with him, the more he becomes his enemy. Because he does him an injustice. And it’s impossible for those who do an injustice and those who suffer it to be friends. Isn’t that so? The good are like each other and are friends, while the bad—as another saying goes—are never alike, not even to themselves. They are out of kilter and unstable. And when something is not even like itself and is inconsistent with itself, it can hardly be like something else and be a friend to it…How can anything be a friend if it is not prized?”

All these are exchanges, not permanent identities, but exchanges only happen because there’s an insufficiency of one kind or another. If one was theoretically sufficient in total, and a complete friend to oneself, as parents endeavor to create for the next generation, there would be no need for friendship. This would be the ultimate boredom in relationships, like boredom found right at the point of acquisition or consumption. “Isn’t a good person, insofar as he is good, sufficient to himself? And a self-sufficient person has no need of anything, just because of his self-sufficiency? And the person who needs nothing wouldn’t prize anything. What he didn’t prize, he wouldn’t love. And whoever doesn’t love is not a friend.”

Quickly pivoting towards Socrates’ favorite subject of The Good, the actions of a friend have to be consistently good so as to maintain these friendships. Because people can never be totally self-sufficient, they are forced into exchanges by necessity, where good has to be traded for good, to be happy and whole for as long as possible, in a world of disease and misfortune. “The poor man is forced to be friends with the rich, and the weak with the strong—for the sake of assistance—and the sick man with the doctor.”

What is good or bad requires knowledge, and so the pursuit of knowledge of the Good becomes the recurring theme for Plato, but this can only happen from a learning mentality. Those who are ignorant and don’t know that they are, and those who are ignorant but think they know, cannot learn. The neutral standpoint delays any claims to truth until enough evidence is found. “From this we may infer that those who are already wise no longer love wisdom, whether they are gods or men. Nor do those love it who are so ignorant that they are bad, for no bad and stupid man loves wisdom. There remain only those who have this bad thing, ignorance, but have not yet been made ignorant and stupid by it. They are conscious of not knowing what they don’t know. The upshot is that those who are as yet neither good nor bad love wisdom, while all those who are bad do not, and neither do those who are good.”

This left Socrates stuck on transactional relationships, or the truth that all relationships require some kind of transaction that is mutually beneficial, even if it’s only good company: a friendship for the sake of…And yet, Plato’s description is the best I’ve seen so far for the value of evil in that it provides meaning and purpose for those who want to fight it. “For if nothing could still harm us, we would have no need of any assistance, and it would be perfectly clear to us that it was on account of the bad that we prized and loved the good—as if the good is a drug against the bad, and the bad is a disease, so that without the disease there is no need for the drug. Isn’t the good by nature loved on account of the bad by those of us who are midway between good and bad; but by itself and for its own sake, it has no use at all?”

Plato’s heaven would be one of god-like self-sufficiency and this would likely affect desire and friendliness, but there would still be complete peace. In a way, this was a challenge to his earlier idea of Elysium which was purported to be self-sufficient, but also eternally rapturous. The paradox is that humans love being in lack, as long as it’s not so threatening, or in the case of friendship, that it is an easy one. “I wonder, if the bad is eliminated, whether it will be possible to be hungry or thirsty or anything like that. When a cause is abolished, the thing that it was the cause of can no longer exist…A thing desires what it is deficient in. Right? And it becomes deficient when something is taken away from it. And the deficient is a friend to that in which it is deficient.”

Plato: Phaedo: https://rumble.com/v6uhnsv-plato-phaedo.html

Talking Heads – Heaven (1984, Stop Making Sense): https://youtu.be/YuSsCRUXGOU?si=Ss0Rav555Uik9V3Y

At a minimum, we have to eat and we are mortal. “Is there any alternative to the good being a friend only to the good?” One could assess even deeper if one is being a friend to oneself based on pursuing the good for oneself as opposed to self-sabotage. Friends can accept that many of the things we lack there is something they can do for one another so that no premature evil builds up, or if they are more engaged, they are helping each other become better.

Tending to Souls: A Platonic Friendship

Socrates couldn’t find the Platonic friend, because friendship is a construct based on human needs. Yet the discussion was not all a waste, because many so-called “friendships” involve enabling behaviors, out of balance power differentials, exploitation, and even some enemies are misconstrued as friends. Need becomes the basis of attraction even if it is unstable. To avoid abandonment, the candidates have to pursue the good themselves and then support it in others so as to avoid fawning and other signals that predict conflict around power or dependency. Because The Good is an escalating standard in the human world that can never be fully attained, human expectations have to guide people away from perfectionism to avoid useless lives of endless complaining, devaluation, conflict and depression.

Friendship and intimacy must not be at the expense of self-respect—but it has the potential to amplify it. The imperfections of the world leave endless goals and projects for friends to work on together. People are always unfinished and therefore meaning cannot be exhausted in one lifetime. When love is requited, neither partners feel like they are exploiting each other. When their mutuality is supported by an interdependent sufficiency, that they won’t find when alone or with evil people, it can be continuously renewed into inevitable old age and dotage. Humans in this plane of existence are always becoming and can never truly “arrive,” and so they want to be loved just as they are, as long as their intentions are coming from the right place. It cannot be blamed that people get sick, age and become feeble, because you cannot be blamed for what’s not a choice. We can still make meaning in the midst of decline.

Róisín Murphy – Exploitation: https://youtu.be/NjSwFsPCeJ4?si=8RMbVuqSUeiX23Sh

Network (1976) – “I Want You to Love Me”: https://youtu.be/NprX9OpYWUc?si=MG7rsFhuvc0I1Gmt

On the other hand, when one has to work with perfectionists, it helps to have a scientific attitude to create boundaries against these inhuman demands. Your presence can improve others quietly by using curiosity as a shield, and method as a boundary. No one can disarm you if you’re anchored in understanding that is at the level of realistic human standards. Perfectionists can take it or leave it. The vain will have trouble exploiting you if you know your true worth. Those who are endlessly unimpressed will not easily find a replacement, if the laws of physics, energy and exhaustion remain the same. Partnerships in the end cannot survive if they are predatory and designed to break people.

The base pleasures of the body can still be shared, but they are moderated by a mutual interest in the refinement of the soul, which also cares about long-term wear and tear, well-being and dignity. People who care don’t just consume others; they offer maintenance as well. Even if a self-sufficient heaven is incomprehensible to those who have never found a positive emotion that lasted, needs reveal not only the temporal meaning of Good, they abolish the illusion that a sense of lack eliminates purpose, when in fact purpose could only be generated by a sensation of lack. People are not against a normal sense of lack. What they are really against is intense burnout and debilitating depression that prevents one from responding and acting in a meaningful way.

Just this thought rests the desire to transcend and escape within this earthly dimension, which is ultimately futile, and death now takes on a new meaning, where effort ceases, and this is whether there is an experience of an effortless afterlife or consciousness ends permanently. In all cases complaints have to end one way or another. Our aims to repair and restore have meaning to the only life we are sure of and where it’s at least possible to enjoy the function of memory. And even if we get tired of all the meaningful maintenance, this life will have to end at some point, and the new generations we’ve helped and loved can continue on. Whether we stand still and wait for death, or if we take meaningful actions, it still will end ultimately, so we have the choice to make a meal of it.

The Life of Chuck – Official Trailer: https://youtu.be/dOyXdwXt8d4?si=TjedLsClebqdPD6Z

If this world feels uncanny and absurd, one can try to imagine a different universe than this one, including the many concepts of heaven, but surely any of us will be bounced back when our imagination gets tired, back to the only vibrating world we are aware of, with the only people we can make meaning with. “The philosophical relationship into which Socrates aims to attract Lysis pursues ends distinct from Socrates himself—namely, Lysis’ own wisdom and happiness. To that extent, Socrates qua suitor is not the unqualifiedly final object of Lysis’ desire. On the one hand, this is a healthy and good-making feature of Socrates’ approach: Socrates, unlike Hippothales, seeks to promote Lysis’ ethical development, rather than simply to satisfy his own desires for recognition. On the other hand, this feature of Socrates’ approach need not render it self-effacing. For a beloved wooed into such a relationship need not focus exclusively on the relationship’s exterior, ultimate end. Hence, the suitor need not be thoroughly sidelined as an object of desire for his or her own sake. On the contrary, an end can be loved both for its own sake and for the sake of other ends. And this point presumably holds for suitors qua ends as well. So, should Socrates succeed in attracting Lysis into a close relationship for the sake of wisdom, Socrates would stand subordinate to wisdom as an end. But Socrates, for all that, can still be an end of desire lovable for his own sake. He need not be merely instrumentally desirable for wisdom.”

Payne, A. (2023). Philia as fellowship in plato’s lysis. Revista Archai, (32).

Golden M. – Slavery and homosexuality in Athens. Phoenix 1984 XXXVIII : 308–324

Golden, M. (1985). PAIS, «CHILD» AND «SLAVE». L’Antiquité Classique, 54, 91–104.

Dialogues of the Courtesans (Dialogi Meretricii), Lucian, [Section 5] The Works of Lucian of Samosata, translated by Henry Watson Fowler (1858-1933) and Francis George Fowler (1871–1918), Oxford edition of 1905 https://topostext.org/work/352

Aristophanes’ Wasps: https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0044%3Acard%3D1292

Greek Homosexuality – Ken Dover: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9780674362703/

Philosophy: https://psychreviews.org/category/philosophy03/