Platos Lysis with Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics Essay

Platos Lysis with Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics - Essay Example Lysis is Plato’s dialogues discussing the nature of friendship whereas Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics also discusses the nature and concept of friendship and its importance in the lives of human beings. Plato and Aristotle are the Greek philosophers that have covered several important subjects in their writings. They contradict as well as support each others’ view point on certain matters however, the conception of friendship is perceived differently by these philosophers and they provide the understanding of the nature of friendship.The Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics has been regarded as Aristotle’s best work on friendship and ethics. It is the most important philosophical work that drew significant impacts upon the European middle age societies because the medieval philosophy was widely based upon the concepts presented in Nicomachean Ethics. The conception of friendship presented by Aristotle basically depicts his thinking about the nature of fri endship and why people need friends in their lives (Crisp, p76). He believes that there is no person that would like to live a friend less life because being a social animal man always like situations and circumstances where he has a friend. Plato Lysis also talks about the importance of friendship but he has not much focused upon the importance and role of friendship in the lives of people from social and emotional perspective (Cooper, p290). The dynamics of friendship are also explored by Plato in one of his most engaging puzzling dialogues Lysis. These dialogues are rich mixtures of stable arguments, theories and literature in which Plato presented his views regarding friendship. Plato discusses the nature of friendship in these dialogues using the main characters of Socrates and two boys and friends Lysis and Menexunun. Another character of the dialogue was Hipplothales who had unrequited love with Lysis. In Lysis, Plato explained the conception of friendship in detail and depth and says that true friendship is based upon four basic conditions. At first, friendship could develop between the people that are similar and good man. Secondly, friendship occurs between dissimilar people. Thirdly, people who are neither good nor bad could also become friend and fourthly the relatives develop gradual friendship with each others because it is in the nature of the human beings to become friend of others (Annas, p532). The Lysis are often being regarded as philosophical failure because several arguments depicted in the dialogues are not convincing and due to these bad dialogues it has been regarded as a philosophical failure. It is found that Lysis fails to provide satisfying answers to certain important questions associated with the nature of the friendship. It is often been argues that Lysis actually didn’t answer the question that what friendship is. It shows dialogues between Socrates, Lysis and menexenus arguing about the friendship where Socrates asked Lysis and Menexunun that when a person loves another who is friend the lover