Plato's Lysis

Abstract

THE views of Platonic scholars in Germany during the nineteenth century strike contemporary critics at times as amusing; and their remarks regarding Plato's Lysis frequently are no exception. In the judgment of Ast and Socher, for example, the Lysis (as well as the Charmides) is spurious; for, they declare, Plato could not have composed a treatise containing so much sophistry and eristic.1 Fortunately other scholars of the same era dissent, holding to the genuineness of the Lysis; because the dialogue, however, contains in their opinion adolescentiae vestigia, they assert that the date of composition is very early around the rule of the Thirty Tyrants, or several years before the death of Socrates.2 In part some Platonic students no doubt were influenced by Diogenes Laertius, who relates Socrates' supposed criticism of the lysis ;3 but in general the scholars of the nineteenth century relied heavily on subjective judgment, observing traces of youthfulness also in the Protagoras, Phaedrus and Parmenides.4 Critics of the twentieth century fortunately have not followved their predecessors in regard to the Lysis. No contemporary Platonist to mny knowledge rejects the authenticity of the dialogue; A. E. Taylor in fact states: extensive use of the Lysis in these books [eight and nine of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics] of itself disposes of the misguided attack made on its authenticity by some nineteenth-century scholars.5 Nor do all recent critics regard the Lysis as necessarily one of the earliest Raeder and Ritter, for examiple, place the Lysis imnmediately before the Symposium, Phacdo, Republic and Phacdrus; 6 Grube renmarks: Lysis is probably later than most of the early dialogues. 7 The position of the Lysis accor(ling to these scholars is all the inore