From the book
Lysis
Plato · Diotimos Editions · 2026
Browse this book’s lexicon →Orientation
At a Glance
- The wordMēte agathon mēte kakon means neither good nor bad.
- In LysisThis is an attested phrase, not a single technical noun.
- Reading contextThe phrase therefore has more than one explanatory role across the dialogue; it should not be treated as one unchanging doctrine of a neutral class.
- A place to readThe Greek example means “what is neither good nor bad.”
- English renderings
- Neither good nor bad
Meaning
Neither good nor bad.
Grammatical category: coordinated adjective phrase.
Use in the book
This is an attested phrase, not a single technical noun. With τό it denotes what falls into neither evaluative class. Equivalent word orders and οὔτε … οὔτε occur. At 216d, Socrates tentatively distinguishes three kinds: good, bad, and neither.
The body considered simply as body is neither good nor bad (217b). Because illness is present, it welcomes medicine, which is beneficial and good. The essential qualification is that a bad thing may be present without yet making the bearer bad; the colour analogy explains the distinction (217c–e2). The application to philosophy identifies those who have ignorance but still believe they do not know what they do not know (218a–b2). It does not commend indifference to goodness or ignorance.
The initial account says that the intermediate is a friend of the good because of the presence of bad. It is first celebrated, then reopened at 218c. Later, desires themselves can be neither good nor bad and can survive the imagined disappearance of bad things (221a–b). That revision undermines badness as the sole cause of attachment. The phrase therefore has more than one explanatory role across the dialogue; it should not be treated as one unchanging doctrine of a neutral class.