that, in terms of a hierarchy of things loved and desired, all else that is dear to and
loved by usendsin this first thing which really and truly is dear to and loved by us,
while all else that is loved for the sake of something else is ‘‘dear and loved’’ just in
name, as a pale shadow or reflection of this first good. The word for ‘‘ends’’ employed
here contains the root of the nountelos, ‘‘end.’’
All mental activity, which for Socrates is always directed towards the good, thus
aims at an end. An explanation of the world in terms of this aiming for and at an end,
and directing one’s actions accordingly, is sometimes referred to as ‘‘teleology.’’ Plato
is usually read as demanding a teleological explanation of the world instead of a
mechanistic one atPhaedo95–107, and to have attempted answers in those terms
both in the myth of thePhaedoand in theTimaeusas a whole; in both cases,
something super-human is involved, be it an immortal soul or a divine craftsman.
But the origin of the notion oftelosor end is found in the purely anthropocentric
explanation of loving and liking in theLysis. This, again, opens up the possibility for
an interpretation of the later dialogues as metaphorically extending and transferring
human psychology to a different plane, for purposes which may be wholly internal to
these later dialogues.
In theLysis, thePhaedo, and theTimaeus, the nountelos, end, is not employed in a
teleological setting; we do find it, however, in the appropriate sense atSymposium
210–11, in a context which is exactly parallel to the one in theLysis. In theSympo-
sium, suddenly seeing and grasping the beautiful itself, for the sake of which one has
pursued all the many beautiful things, is described as having reached it as atelos,an
end. This usage has repercussions far beyond Plato. In an ethical sense, it underlies
the rival theories of action and motivation of the various philosophical schools of
antiquity as to the question of the highest good. But it would be wrong to divorce
this ethical sense from the teleological ontological explanations of nature and the
world. These include Aristotle’s explanation of physical movement, which he links
with the movements of the heavenly bodies. The heavenly bodies in turn, for
Aristotle, form part of his theory of the highest god, the unmoved mover for the
sake of whom all else moves; he moves as being loved and desired (MetaphysicsL
7–10). The same thought underlies later Neoplatonic teleological theology: in his
book on Platonic theology (2.59.16), Proclus, like Aristotle in theMetaphysics, uses
the phraseology of Plato’sLysis.
The decisive link which allows us to see theLysisas at the root of both teleology of
nature and teleology of action(s), and which therefore opens up the possibility of
reading Plato’s theology as an allegory for human ethics, has sometimes been over-
looked. It constitutes the last of the concepts introduced in theLysiswhich are
of interest in this context, and indeed of interest for a fuller understanding of Plato’s
philosophy as a whole. It is the dual notion of cause-and-reason and explanation,
aitionandaitia. In theLysis, the wordaitionhad appeared once at the beginning of
the discussion in the context of a reason and explanation for certain laws and
prescriptions in human life, reminding the reader that adjective and noun had a
widespread application in Attic law as ‘‘responsible’’ and ‘‘the one responsible,’’
‘‘culpable’’ and ‘‘culprit’’ (209). It then recurs five times in quick succession at
221c–d. The context is a thought experiment by Socrates: if the neither-good-nor-
bad loves and likes the good for the sake of the good and because of the bad, what if
the bad disappeared? (Would we still love medicine if we were not ill? Perhaps. Would
394 Fritz-Gregor Herrmann