Lysis

Lysis attempts (and of course fails) to define friendship.  In this it follows the format we've seen before.  In fact, the only real departure here is that Socrates, because he is speaking exclusively with two young boys, Lysis and Menexemus, supplies both the questions and answers himself.  He's taking it easy on the kids, only hinting at how ignorant they are, rather than proving it to them conclusively as he does with adults.  However, the conclusion of the conversation remains the same -- we generate a strange paradox just as we return to the initial inadequate definition, so we're only left knowing we know nothing about friendship.

The scene opens with Ctesippus inviting Socrates to try out a new wrestling school they've joined.  Ctesippus wants Socrates to come check out Lysis, because he feels that his buddy Hippothales, who has gone gaga over the boy, is going about seducing the youth in completely the wrong way.  Socrates agrees that Hippothales saccharine flattery is the wrong approach and claims that beautiful young aristocrats like Lysis will only fall in love with someone capable of taking them down a peg.  This literary setting of the dialog helps us to keep in mind that the word translated here as friendship has broader resonances in the original Greek.

The Greek word for love here is philein, cognate to the word for 'friendship', philia: 'friendship' in this discussion includes the love of parents and children and other relatives, as well as the close elective attachments of what we understand as personal friendship. It also covers impassioned, erotic fixations like Hippothales' for Lysis. (editorial notes)

In other words, pretty much any of the relationships depicted in the story could be called friendships, without much of a boundary between a friend and what we might call a lover.  In addition, as we see towards the end of the dialog, the word covers the relationship between the philosopher and wisdom.  φιλοσοφία is philo-sophia, the love or befriending of wisdom.  So this word friendship has a lot of work to do.  

The discussion breaks down into three parts, the first two of which are really just drawn out preliminaries.  First, apropos of the setting with the young boys, Socrates asks which direction friendship runs in.  Is the lover the friend, or it is the loved?  Or perhaps friendship is necessarily reciprocal?  Hippothales love of or friendship with Lysis is proof that the relationship need not be reciprocal.  But if we choose one direction or the other, Socrates finds we can end up saying strange things like we're friends with people that hate us or hate people who are our friends.

Having run aground, Socrates changes directions and next asks whether friends must be alike or share some kinship, or whether opposites attract.  If we're only friends to people just like ourselves though, what good does that do us?  We assume friendship provides some sort of benefit, but here we're just getting more of what we've already got.  But if we agree that opposites attract, then will the friend be attracted to the enemy, and vice versa?  There is one more option though, and it begins to take us to the heart of the question.  What if the neutral is a friend of the good?

"And the good is not a friend to the good, nor the bad to the bad, e nor the good to the bad. Our previous argument disallows it. Only one possibility remains. If anything is a friend to anything, what is neither good nor bad is a friend either to the good or to something like itself. For I don't suppose anything could be a friend to the bad." (216e)

Socrates analogy is that the body, which is neither good nor bad in itself, becomes a friend of medicine in cases where it is ill.  This would explain why friendship is a benefit.  We are drawn to something that is neither like us nor opposite to us, but something that fills a gap within us or cures us of a sort of contamination by the bad.  We yearn for the good as something that heals us, that takes a neutral but corruptible matter and leads it in the right direction.   Though it sounds suspiciously like an untutored young man falling in love with a wise old soul, this is what friendship must really be.  Socrates immediately makes it explicit that this is exactly why the philosopher is a friend to wisdom.

"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. For our earlier discussion made it clear that the opposite is not friend to the opposite, nor is like friend to like. Remember?" (218b)

Just when it seems we've reached a satisfying conclusion, Socrates adds a third and final twist that pulls the rug out from under us.  Because at this point he begins to tug at the implications of his seemingly successful definition.  A neutral thing (the body) becomes the friend of a good thing (medicine) for the sake of some property possessed by that good thing (health) on account of a bad thing (illness) that has happened to it.  But if we are only friends with the good because it possesses some good quality, then aren't we kinda just using our friend to get at the quality?  Isn't it the quality itself, the thing for the sake of which we're friends, that is the real friend?  In this example, isn't the true friend health, not medicine?  But then, don't we want health for the sake of something else as well?  Don't we face an infinite regress of friends, each of which is actually just a means to an end?  Shouldn't we only call the final link in this chain, the first friend, our only true friend?  Of course, this one true friend would be the Good itself, the thing for which we love all the good things and by which we benefit from their ability to draw us away from the corruption of bad things.  This would be a thing that we could love for itself, in itself, and not for the sake of any other thing.  

You might think this is exactly the sort of theory of friendship the Plato™ would say.  I mean, it's so similar to a Christian love of God or Kant's categorical imperative.  The only true friend is the radiant sun which illuminates all the other things we love only for their reflection of it.   And yet this is the exact moment when the dialog collapses into confusion.  Because we've produced another circle or paradox.  Socrates asks whether this Good itself meets his definition of a friend.  All the friends in our chain were similar to one another insofar as we loved them for the sake of something else, some good they possessed.  However, it appears that we love the Good only for the sake of its opposite, the bad.  That opposition was central to our desire to become friends with the first good thing in the chain, and then all the rest.  Take away the bad (illness) and it seems the good (health) would be useless and meaningless to us.

"Then that friend of ours, the one which was the terminal point for all the other things that we called 'friends for the sake of another friend,' does not resemble them at all. For they are called friends for the sake of a friend, but the real friend appears to have a nature completely the opposite of this. It has become clear to us that it was a friend for the sake of an enemy. Take away the enemy and it seems it is no longer a friend." (220e)

We should pause for a moment to note how weird this is coming out of the mouth of Socrates.  We don't love the Good for itself at all, but precisely for the sake of its opposite.  And if we take this as an early reference to the theory of Forms, then this Form of the Good that is meant to be the preeminent good at the end of the chain turns out to be nothing like the links in the chain that it structures.  It's like saying that the proverbial Form of a Table is nothing like a table, but actually like its opposite (a not-table? a chaise lounge?).

Socrates partially pulls back from this conclusion by continuing his strange thought experiment.  He wonders whether, if the bad were eliminated, we would have any desires at all.  Without the bad, could there be such a thing as friendship?  Would we ever be hungry and thirsty if these didn't cause us to suffer?  But then, are hunger and thirst just motivated by the bad?  It seems that these can be good or bad feelings depending on the circumstances.  We don't experience hunger as a bad thing just as we sit down to a good burger.  So perhaps they're neutral feelings in themselves?  In which case maybe we could desire and love something in a neutral sort of way?  Might we be able to tell our spouse we have a purely Platonic relationship with the Good, so to speak?  This at least would mean that we don't love it just for the sake of the evil it will deliver us from, but positively and in itself.

Of course, if we love the Good only neutrally, it's not clear anymore what good it actually does us!  This was exactly the problem we began with -- if like is friend to like then what good can they offer each other?  The dialog ends with some foreshadowing of a theory of love proposed in the Symposium.  What if we really just love the other half of our self, from which we have somehow become separated?  In this context, the thought is meant to have a sort of circle-squaring effect because we are both like and not like the thing that we love, or, as Socrates puts it here, it belongs to us without being like us, since it is in some sense our opposite.  Since it's our missing piece, it would be good to be reunited with it.  But since it's also really just us, we can love it in itself and for the sake of itself, or at least, for our own sake.