Plato's Lysis

Penner, Terry; Rowe, Christopher*

Abstract

The Lysis is one of Plato's most engaging but also puzzling dialogues; it has often been regarded, in the modern period, as a philosophical failure. The full philosophical and literary exploration of the dialogue illustrates how it in fact provides a systematic and coherent, if incomplete, account of a special theory about, and special explanation of, human desire and action. Furthermore, it shows how that theory and explanation are fundamental to a whole range of other Platonic dialogues and indeed to the understanding of the corpus as a whole. Part One offers an analysis of, or running commentary on, the dialogue. In Part Two Professors Penner and Rowe examine the philosophical and methodological implications of the argument uncovered by the analysis. The whole is rounded off by an epilogue on the relation between the Lysis and some other Platonic (and Aristotelian) texts.

Citation

Penner, T., & Rowe, C. (2005). Plato's Lysis. Cambridge University Press

• Book Type: Authored Book
• Publication Date: 2005
• Deposit Date: Feb 28, 2008
• Publicly Available Date: Jun 2, 2010
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Series Title: Cambridge studies in the dialogues of Plato
• Edition: 1st ed.
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1126418
• Publisher URL: http://www.cambridge.org/catalogue/catalogue.asp?isbn=0521791308