Interpreting Plato's "Lysis"

I recently wrote a paper entitled "What Really Happened in the Lysis," which will soon be published in Kennesaw State University's OtherWise philosophical journal. I don't want to post the entire paper on this blog but, as promised in my first entry, I did want to comment on it. My overall thesis of the paper was that, while many scholars' interpretations of the Lysis focus on the conversations between Socrates and Menexenus and Lysis, I argue that the opening and closing scenes, as well as the actual events that occur within the Lysis, relayed to the reader through Socrates’ narration, reveal an overlooked aspect of Plato's philosophy regarding friendship that the dialectical conversation tends to eclipse.
In the paper I reviewed the following scholars' interpretations of the Lysis: David Bolotin, Christopher Planeaux, Terry Penner, Christopher Rowe and Hans-Georg Gadamer. I found the views of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Christopher Planeaux to be the most satisfactory interpretations of the sources I reviewed, as they both took an important step away from the typical analysis of the Lysis by detecting the layer of ergon, or “doing” itself. Gadamer, though, concludes that this kind of showing by example, or deed, failed to work. I argue that Plato's use of ergon was successful. Planeaux concludes that Socrates was an unreliable narrator, which I also argue against.
The rest of my paper consists of a close reading of the Lysis with analytic commentary on select passages and events in the dialogue. The Lysis ends with Socrates saying: "Now we’ve done it, Lysis and Menexenus—made fools of ourselves, I, an old man, and you as well. These people will go away saying that we are friends of one another—for I count myself in with you—but what a friend is we have not yet been able to find out." I interpret this to mean that, during the time in which they were engaged in philosophical discourse, a friendship had emerged between them. Although the dialogue's attempt to come to a verbal definition of friendship fails (as the dialogue ends in aporia), the dialogue is successful on a pragmatic level, as Hippothales finds delight and relief, having found a way to deal with his passionate feelings toward Lysis, and friendships have been formed between both Socrates and Lysis as well as Socrates and Menexenus. This, I argue, is how Socrates shows (not tells) his reader what being a friend means and how friendships are formed.
While writing this paper I, at times, felt like I was performing a literary analysis and was not "doing" philosophy. Hindsight, I realize that philosophy can sometimes (especially with authors such as Plato) be found within literature. This prompted me to wonder how much contemporary literature exists that has great philosophical value. Perhaps there are literary works hidden away within the Literature shelves of the library that I walk right past as I hustle to the philosophy section. Perhaps the lines of philosophy blur into other subjects more than I had initially realized.
If anyone reading this has any reading recommendations in the realm of literature that might fall into this category, let me know.

A Philosophy Blog?

This is my first attempt at a blog, but I thought it would be worth making one as it would provide a place for me to write down all of my random thoughts and musings about philosophy topics and, hopefully, further sort through them. My current academic interests are metaphysics, especially emergentism, Plato, and aesthetics. That being said, I often find myself discussing other branches of philosophy over coffee with friends; this is the place I plan to use to sort through those kinds of stray thoughts. I have just finished a paper on Plato's 'Lysis' and plan to comment on that in the near future.
My final thought for my introductory blog post has to do with the name of this blog, 'Philosophy From Room 312.' Most of my philosophy classes at Belmont University are held in Fidelity Hall, Room 312. Over the past 3 1/2 years I have begun to closely relate the idea of challenging and productive intellectual philosophical discussion with Room 312 (although, in reality, it has nothing to do with the room and everything to do with my brilliant professors and peers). I'm currently applying to graduate schools in order to pursue, eventually, a Ph.D. in philosophy. I know, though, that this department will always hold a special place in my heart; I couldn't ask for a better education (in the fullest sense of the word) than Belmont's philosophy department has given me. This is why I chose this name for my blog.

(As a side note, anything I write in this blog does not actually come from room 312 and, like all those television networks say before they air a program, it does not necessarily express the opinions of my peers or my department. Obviously.)