Other Works

• Lysis

  - Recommended translations:
  • Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: An Interpretation of the Lysis, with a New Translation, trans. David Bolotin (Cornell, 1979).
  • "Lysis," trans. S. Lombardo in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997).
  Excerpt: Ah well, I said, Hippothales, what an altogether noble and gallant love you have discovered there! Now please go on and give me a performance like those that you give your friends here, so that I may know whether you understand what a lover ought to… More

• Phaedrus

  - Recommended translations:
  • The Rhetoric of Morality and Philosophy: Plato's Gorgias and Phaedrus, trans. Seth Benardete (University of Chicago Press, 1991, 2009).
  • "Phaedrus," trans. M. Nichols, A. Nehamas, and P. Woodruff in Plato: Complete Works, ed. J. M. Cooper (Hackett, 1997).
   
  Excerpt: Socrates Dear Phaedrus, whither away, and where do you come from? Phaedrus From Lysias, Socrates, the son of Cephalus; and I am going for a walk outside the wall. For I spent a long time there with Lysias, sitting since early morning; and on the… More

Commentary

• Plato’s Dialogue on Friendship: An Interpretation of the Lysis, with a New Translation

  - Bolotin, David, Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: An Interpretation of the Lysis with a New Translation, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1979.
  Excerpt: If we wish to find philosophic discussions of friendship, we are almost compelled to turn to the writings of classical antiquity. The question of friendship was an important one for ancient thinkers. Yet in modern times, philosophers have rarely… More

• Self-knowledge in Plato’s Phaedrus

  - Griswold, Charles L. Jr., Self-Knowledge in Plato's Phaedrus, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986.
  Excerpt: The Phaedrus presents the appearance of a tapestry that has come partially unraveled into a tangled skein of themes and images. The warp and woof are Socrates and Phaedrus, a pair so ill matched that their relationship strikes us as comic. Their… More

• On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues

  - Bruell, Christopher, On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1999.
  Excerpt: Nothing is so well established in our Western democracies today as the right of each to seek happiness in his or her own way. It is as if a pass to that effect had been issued to us at birth. This much is obvious. Less obvious is the fact that… More

• On Plato’s Lysis

  - Benardete, Seth, "On Plato's Lysis," The Argument of the Action: Essays on Greek Poetry and Philosophy, ed. Ronna Burger and Michael Davis, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, 198-230.
  Excerpt: In the Lysis Plato has Socrates presents himself at his sleaziest. He reports how he undertook to pimp for the silly Hippothales and succeeded first in smashing the false pride of Lysis and then in breaking down the distinction between love and… More

• Friendship and Human Neediness in Plato’s Lysis

  - Pangle, Lorraine Smith, "Friendship and Human Neediness in Plato's Lysis," Ancient Philosophy 21, no. 2 (2001), 305-23.
  Excerpt: Recent years have seen a striking resurgence of interest in the theme of friendship in classical moral philosophy. This development is but one manifestation of a broader turn in ethical and political thought. Like the current interest in identity… More

• Socrates on Friendship and Community: Reflections on Plato’s Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis

  - Nichols, Mary P., Socrates on Friendship and Community: Reflections on Plato's Symposium, Phaedrus, and Lysis, New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.
  Excerpt: Any argument that the philosophic pursuits of Plato’s Socrates exemplify an understanding of love and friendship supportive of political life, as I make in this book, must confront the charges against Socrates made by his own political… More