Customer Reviews

Plato's Dialogue on Friendship: An Interpretation of the Lysis, With a New Translation (Agora Paperback Editions)

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This is a good translation, perhaps the best available of the Lysis but beware of Bolotin's footnotes and interpretation. Bolotin is a card carrying Straussian, which is fine as far as that goes but that tends to lead to his reading into things that aren't there. For instance, a parable about friends being like and assumes its not only from Homer but a reverse of what Homer says--so in essence a misquote. Yet in ancient Greece parables about friends and likeness are very common and if one tracks down the passage in Homer it simply doesn't make sense.

I like this translation, it is clear and it is honest about how it translates the very key term philia--but this is the same man that said that Aristotle had something up his sleeve when he wrote the physics and somehow argued that Aristotle is trying to dupe his students/readers. Not a very credible interpretation, but a fine translation.