U:/p_1/apei/apei11_01/apei.2011.005/apei.2011.005u.3d vom 15.12.2010 Schriften: (In der CS3-VMware standardmäßig installierte TrueType-Schriften) #2104169 APEIRON 1/2011 APP9.1-Unicode in UNIVERSAL-XP CS3-VMware Bearbeiter: Hasert A Socratic Seduction: Philosophical Protreptic in Plato’s Lysis BENJAMIN A. RIDER Department of Philosophy and Religion University of Central Arkansas brider@uca.edu Abstract In Plato’s Lysis, Socrates’ conversation with Lysis (207d – 11c) features logical falla- cies and questionable premises and closes with a blatantly eristic trick. I show how the form and content of these arguments make sense if we interpret them from the perspective of Socrates’ pedagogical goals. Lysis is a competitive teenager who, along with his friend Menexenus, enjoys the game of eristic disputation. Socrates recognizes Lysis’ predilections, and he constructs his arguments to engage Lysis’ interests and loves, while also drawing the boy into thinking philosophically about the issues that the arguments raise about love, freedom, and happiness. Keywords: Plato, moral education, protreptic, Socrates, eristic Plato’s Lysis poses many challenges for an interpreter. Socrates’ arguments in the dialogue are at times disjointed and fallacious, quite often confus- ingly abstract and inconclusive. Of course, poorly supported and inconclu- sive arguments are not uncommon in Plato, but the Lysis seems to have more than its fair share. 1 What is particularly troubling, however, is that Socrates carries on this discussion with interlocutors who are just about apeiron, vol. 44, pp. 40 – 66 © Walter de Gruyter 2011 DOI.1515/apeiron/2011.005 1 George Grote (1888, vol. 2), reports that some prominent German scholars of his time went so far as to reject Plato’s authorship of the dialogue: ‘Ast and Socher characterize the dialogue as a tissue of subtle sophistry and eristic contradiction, such as (in their opinion) Plato cannot have composed’ (184, fn. 2). Others, such as Schleiermacher and Hermann, although accepting its authenticity, considered it to be a very early work, marked, as Grote puts it, with the ‘adolescentiae vestigia’ (ibid). Among more recent scholars, both Cornford (n.d.) and Guthrie (1975) give similarly dim evaluations. ‘Even Plato can nod,’ Guthrie (infamously) wrote of the dialogue.