3 - 210e1–213c9: Socrates and Menexenus – how does one get a friend?

Summary

On first reading, and even twentieth reading, the next section (we shall call it ‘the Menexenus discussion’) is one of the most baffling passages in the Lysis. It is baffling because it is difficult to see what it accomplishes philosophically, and so also because it is difficult to see how it accomplishes anything that is of the slightest use to the forward motion of the dialogue. At any rate, this represents an accurate description of our (Penner's and Rowe's) history with the passage; it probably also covers the experience of most previous interpreters, the majority of whom appear to have given up on the Menexenus discussion completely, concluding that it plays either wittingly or unwittingly on ambiguities (readings which, again, will affect the global interpretation of the Lysis: if there is dishonesty or confusion here, why not elsewhere?). We ourselves, indeed, came close to the same sort of judgement, being strongly tempted by the view that the best we could say of it was that it showed Socrates giving Menexenus the eristic a dose of his own medicine (see chapter 2 above, text to n. 6).

We have, however, finally come to a clear view of the philosophical importance of the passage, within the economy of the whole. The key difficulty turned out to be our resistance to having Socrates anticipate assumptions that he will justify only later: even though, as we suppose, the argument will work sufficiently well without those assumptions to carry the immediate interlocutors, Lysis and Menexenus, along with it, and to secure their agreement with Socrates, the full defence of at least one crucial claim will require the deployment of resources which have yet to be introduced, that is, in this particular context, and in this particular conversation.