Plato’s two dialogues which have Hippias as the chief interlocutor are distinguished as Hippias Major and Hippias Minor by virtue of their relative lengths. Though they are both works of the early period of Plato’s philosophical writing, we will find reasons to believe that Hippias Major belongs on the borderline with the middle period, when Plato began to develop Socrates’ philosophy in a more idiosyncratic manner. There is some controversy about the authenticity of Hippias Major: the inclusion of the dialogue in this volume reflects what I think may now be called the majority opinion (a notable exception is Kahn) that it is a genuine work of Plato’s; indeed, as Platonic scholarship progresses, the same aspects of the dialogue which once seemed to point to its spuriousness can now be seen as relevant to the development of Plato’s thought (see further pp. 218–23).
Although the two dialogues may have been written some years apart, Plato chose to tie them together with the same dramatic date (see p. 275 n. 1), which cannot certainly be decided, but is possibly about 420 B.C., since Gorgias’ famous visit to Athens is a past event (Hippias Major 282b) and Hippias’ words at 281a–b imply that he is not visiting Athens in an official capacity as ambassador for Elis and perhaps that it is a time of peace: Gorgias’ visit was in 427, and there were a few years of uneasy peace between Athens and Sparta after 421. But apart from this dramatic date, the two dialogues have little in common, except their badinage at the expense of Hippias. Socrates’ ‘affected deference mingled with insulting sarcasm’, as it was once described by the Victorian scholar George Grote, is a feature not only of our two dialogues, but also of Xenophon’s report of a meeting between Socrates and Hippias (Memorabilia IV.4, which is worth comparing with Hippias Major on other points too); so perhaps this was the historical Socrates’ attitude, though Xenophon may simply be imitating Plato.
Hippias of Elis (C.470–C. 395) was a prominent member of the Greek sophistic movement of the fifth century – the ‘age of enlightenment’, as it is sometimes known, since an increase in intellectual activity is taken to constitute an enlightenment. His particular philosophical theories and attitudes, in so far as they are recoverable from the second-hand reports that remain, need not concern us here (but see Guthrie, III, and Kerferd), since they do not play a part in our dialogues: there is only an elusive mention of some theory at Hippias Major 301b–e. Rather, Hippias in our dialogues is representative of the sophists in general, as, to some extent, are Protagoras in much of Protagoras and Gorgias in Gorgias, for instance. Using individual sophists as representatives in this way inevitably results in superficial criticism: general characteristics of the movement are attacked, rather than the sophist’s particular thought and argument. With hindsight we may regret this, since it is noticeable that when Plato does turn to more substantial criticism, as in Euthydemus or Theaetetus, our knowledge respectively of a type of sophistic argumentation and Protagoras’ thought is greatly increased. But it must immediately be said that it is not Plato’s purpose in Hippias Minor, Protagoras and so on to provide detailed criticism of sophistry, but rather to use this movement as a dramatic background: to show how Socrates confronted and confuted it by superior philosophical assumptions and methods. The main reason for choosing such a background is that Plato wished to distinguish his master from the sophists: as is clear from his Apology of Socrates, he believed that confusion of Socrates with the sophists was a prime cause of his execution in 399.
The background to our dialogues, then, is this. Prior to the fifth century B.C., the prevailing Greek view of man’s lot in relation to the gods had been pessimistic: man was in the hands of fickle beings whose minds were impenetrable, since the good might suffer while the wicked prospered. In a sense the mainstream of Greek philosophy at this time, though to a degree counter-religious, had been part and parcel of this mood, since it concentrated on trying to understand macrocosmic events beyond man’s control. But during the fifth century a more optimistic mood began to be expressed. Encouraged, no doubt, by their almost miraculous defeat of the Persians by 479, and by an increase in proficiency in all areas of art and science, Greek tragedians and other thinkers stressed how much man on his own could achieve (see, in this context, Hippias Major 281d–282a).
This shift of mood was partly generated by a change in social and political conditions. This is certainly the case in fifth-century Athens, where most of our evidence comes from; but this limitation of the evidence need not worry us in this context, since Athens was the centre of the sophistic movement. Socially, the upper classes acquired more money and correspondingly less need to work – that is, they acquired more leisure. Leisure always allows more time to concentrate on cultural achievements: the Greek word for leisure, scholē, is also the word for learned discussion, and hence school. Politically, Athens was by now a direct democracy, where the rewards for persuasive public speaking could be very great for an ambitious young man (see also p. 264 n. 2).
The sophists (the term originally had no pejorative connotations, but had much the same reference as our ‘teacher’ – someone who is clever, knows his stuff and is prepared to impart it) arose in response to these circumstances, as itinerant teachers of the arts and sciences, from fighting to astronomy. In particular, in Athens they claimed to teach the science of government, which generally meant the ability to speak (Euthydemus 272a; Protagoras 318e–319a; Gorgias 449a–b, 4S2d–e). The sophists, then, were professional teachers, catering to the upper classes. Some specialized in one or two fields, others (like Hippias: see Hippias Major 285c–e; Hippias Minor 368b–d; Protagoras 318d–319a) cast their net wider. They were all offering an education to supplement what a young man could get at school. In order to attract pupils they gave epideixeis, a term which has been translated ‘lecture’ in these two dialogues, but which literally means ‘display’ (see p. 32), and covered not only their formal lectures, but also question-and-answer sessions (see Thucydides III. 38.7; Euthydemus 274a; Hippias Minor 363d; Gorgias 449c; Protagoras 329b, 3340–335a). Pupils were also taught in seminars (Protagoras 314e-316a).
It must be appreciated that there is far more to individual sophists than this outline of the general characteristics of the movement might suggest. Individual sophists made important contributions to philosophy, mathematics, rhetoric, linguistics and so on, but, as remarked above, Plato is not concerned in our dialogues with these particulars.
Plato’s dislike of the sophistic movement as a whole, though there are signs elsewhere of respect for certain individuals, shows in his portrayal of Hippias as stupid and vain (I trust that this picture of Hippias emerges from almost every page of both dialogues, but it has been challenged recently by Woodruff (1982)). He was not alone in this dislike, but why did he feel it? The main reason is his judgement that their values were misplaced. Not only does he portray Hippias as being overly concerned with money (Hippias Major 282a–283b), but he sees the sophists as teaching rhetoric, the appearance of truth, rather than the truth itself (Hippias Major 304a–e; Hippias Minor 369b–c; Euthydemus 289d–290a; Gorgias 464b–466a, 471e–472a); and indeed the contrast between rhetoric and philosophy is a recurrent theme throughout Plato’s dialogues. It was Protagoras’ boast to teach his pupils the ability to present either side of a case with equal plausibility, and indeed this is the purpose of all rhetoric. This became mistrusted as the ability ‘to make the weaker argument defeat the stronger’ (Apology 23d). Parallel to this is the repeated portrayal of Hippias as more concerned with a favourable audience reaction than the truth (Hippias Major 288a, 289e–290a, 291e–292a, 292e; cf. Republic 493a). In short, Plato feels that Socrates, with his disciplined method of inquiry, was a true moral teacher, while the sophists were not.
Secondly, Plato felt that the sophists perpetuated an inadequate political system. Within a democratic system of which Plato was at least suspicious, they offered political training to anyone who had the money to pay for their instruction. But in Plato’s view the best politician is not necessarily the most persuasive speaker who happened to be rich enough to have gained instruction, but the philosopher who knows the truth. In this context, at Hippias Major 282c–d, he compares the sophists unfavourably with other philosophers, because the former teach all and sundry (cf. Xenophon, Memorabilia 1.6.13).
Finally – and this is especially apparent in our dialogues – he seems to feel that they have no right to set themselves up as teachers, since when questioned by Socrates they are soon shown to be incoherent on the very subjects in which they profess to be experts. In Hippias Minor Socrates lampoons the sophists’ literary studies and ties Hippias’ thesis into knots (see Socrates’ concluding words at 376c); in Hippias Major Hippias fails to satisfy Socrates’ requirements of definition and so cannot be said to know what he initially claimed confidently to know. Here, however, the main contrast is with the greater validity, as Plato sees it, of Socratic philosophy, and it is to this, as it emerges from our two dialogues, that we must now turn: this, not criticism of Hippias, is after all the main purpose of the dialogues.
Hippias Major belongs to a group of dialogues (the ‘dialogues of search’) in which Socrates is shown discussing some moral concept with the ostensible purpose of attempting to define it (see also in this volume Laches, Lysis and Charmides). The pattern of these dialogues is that various definitions are proposed but all are found to be lacking, so that the discussions are aporetic (see pp. 30–31). The reasons for this apparent failure, as we now judge, are partly the caustic nature of Socrates’ inquisition, partly his belief in what is known as ‘real definition’ (definition not of words – ‘nominal definition’ – but of things), coupled with his belief in the significant univocality of terms: he believes that however wide the usages of a term, they still reflect some single, definable core.
The reason Socrates places so much emphasis on definition is apparent in our dialogue (286c–d, 304d–e): one cannot incorrigibly use a term, let alone preach about it, unless it is known what that term refers to. This is a reasonable stricture where complex or ambiguous terms are involved, and all the terms Socrates discusses are complex or ambiguous. Nevertheless, it might be thought that the stricture is exaggerated. One line of argument might be that a term acquires a certain meaning or family of meanings within a culture, and that anyone brought up within that culture, having inherited this meaning, will be able to communicate meaningfully with anyone else from the same background, even if he cannot define the term. Socrates, however, would carp at this cultural limitation: his search is for a universal, which transcends boundaries of any sort. He would claim that all such limited meanings are species of the generic meaning which he is after. His only exaggeration, in these terms, is to fail explicitly to acknowledge even the limited usefulness of such limited meanings (for further discussion of Socrates and definition, see pp. 21–2, 223–4).
The concept being discussed in Hippias Major is to kalon or kallos. It is a term of commendation wherever it is used, and its range is very wide. A glance at Hippias Major shows it being used to praise soup and argumentation on the one hand, and to describe the beauty of girls and the moral propriety of certain behaviour on the other. Given the extent of the reference of the term, it is no wonder that Socrates’ assumption of univocality runs into difficulties and the dialogue is aporetic. As an attempt to cover this vast range, I have chosen to translate the abstract substantives to kalon and kallos as ‘fineness’ and the adjective kalos as ‘fine’. These English terms are suitably vague and work well for the majority of the cases in the dialogue, though they are somewhat awkward in the case of beauty. What is perhaps lost, however, and so must be mentioned here, is the aesthetic connotation of the Greek term, which is a telling feature of Greek mentality: for a sensitive Greek a fine argument or achievement was a thing of beauty; their works of art and their analyses of beauty reflect this in emphasizing order, symmetry and so on (we still today describe a proof as ‘elegant’). What is gained is that it is crucial for the English reader of the dialogue as a whole that the same term be used throughout; otherwise Socrates’ assumption of univocality is lost.
Briefly, the course of the dialogue is as follows. After some preliminary banter and scene-setting (Section A), Socrates asks a typical question: ‘What is fineness?’ At first, Hippias misunderstands the question altogether, and responds by asserting that a fine-looking girl is fine (Section B). However, under Socrates’ coaxing, he later comes up with two further suggestions which, though unsatisfactory, are more plausibly definitional in nature: fineness is gold, and fineness is health, wealth and a variety of traditional Greek good things (Sections C and D). Socrates and his alter ego (see 286C–287C for the introduction of this alter ego) now take over to suggest three further definitions: fineness is appropriateness, or benefit, or aesthetic pleasure (Sections E, F and G). None of these stand up to Socrates’ probing, however, and the dialogue ends in the usual aporia (compare Laches, Lysis, Charmides).
The dialogue thus falls broadly into two parts; in the first Hippias is the proposer of ideas and definitions, and in the second Socrates or his alter ego takes over this role. The dialogue’s treatment of the ideas and definitions that arise is discussed in the running commentaries which introduce each section in the text, but these two natural parts respectively offer a convenient means of raising the two questions of this introduction: first, is the dialogue authentic? This question will take us further afield than it might seem to suggest. Secondly, are there constructive thoughts about fineness in the dialogue, despite its negative conclusion? Between them, the answers to these two questions should allow the reader an overview of the chief issues of the dialogue, and we will end with some thoughts on its wider purposes.
Socrates’ arguments against Hippias, and some other assumptions he makes about fineness, plunge us into questions of the development of Plato’s metaphysics and of the authenticity of the dialogue. It has been argued both that the dialogue contains recognizable signs of Platonic as opposed to Socratic thought, and that it does not; and it has been argued both that the thought and style of the dialogue are incompatible with Platonic authorship, and that they are not. I shall assume that the style can tell us very little about the dialogue’s authenticity; I make this assumption not just for the sake of Greekless readers, but also because the arguments from the style of the dialogue have not proved conclusive either way. This brings the thought of the dialogue to the fore, and the interpretation of certain passages becomes important.
These passages require a brief introduction (see further pp. 32–3). The issue is this. In the early Platonic dialogues of search, Socrates attempts to define moral properties such as justice, courage and so on, but is not committed to any special ontological status for these properties. (The reader should be aware, however, that this orthodox ‘minimalist’ view of the early dialogues has been attacked, especially by Allen.) His search for a definition never succeeds, but we learn that the definition must be unitary and applicable to all relevant cases, that it must explain why all relevant cases have the properties they have, and that the defined property must never be liable to characterization as its opposite. No ontology is intended: these are merely requirements of Socratic definition. Later, Plato himself, reflecting that there must be some stable entities (otherwise we could never assign properties even to things which only deserve them for a short while), was led to postulate an existence for the moral properties Socrates was concerned with, and others like them, as entities separate from the world of changing phenomena. He called these entities ‘forms’ (eidē, ideai) and believed that they alone have the true, stable existence – they really are what they are (fine, just or whatever) – necessary for objects of knowledge and definition. The contrast is with the things of this world which ‘participate in’ or ‘imitate’ these forms (or in which the forms may be said to be present), about which one can only have beliefs. Forms are responsible for whatever qualities phenomena have.
This sketch, though necessarily curt, should be enough to set the background for deciding the question of Hippias Major: is the thought of the dialogue Socratic, Platonic, or transitional?
In the course of Socrates’ arguments against Hippias’ three ideas about fineness he makes the following points. Fineness is ‘something’ (287c), an ‘actual entity’ (287c–d), a form (eidos, 289d), which, because it is ‘fineness itself’ (286d etc.) and absolutely, not relatively, fine (passim), is responsible for the relatively fine particular things being fine (passim), by being present in them (289d–e etc.). Do these ideas contain no more than Socratic requirements of definition (the ‘minimalist’ view, whose clearest recent proponent is Guthrie, IV, pp. 183–91), or is the dialogue transitional between Socratic and Platonic thought (here views vary according to how close the commentator finds that the thought is to Plato’s; Woodruff (1982) contains the best account – he finds the dialogue to be minimally transitional), or is it fully fledged Platonism (Tarrant, Moreau)?
We may begin by conceding to the minimalist interpretation that there are no phrases or ideas here which cannot be paralleled here and there in the Socratic dialogues (see Grube, CQ 1926, for a catalogue), or which, at least, are not in themselves significant. This consideration, however, seems to me to miss the point, which is that in Hippias Major we come across all these phrases and ideas in close conjunction, frequently reiterated, and in a single dialogue. Moreover, it is no great task to put them together into a coherent paragraph, as I have just done; this smacks of some systematic theorizing, whereas Socrates, as almost everyone agrees, was not systematic in this regard. We will find that this general impression of systematization is corroborated in the case of each doctrinal point.
Fineness is something (287c). This is not in itself significant. Though the phrase is used by Plato to describe forms (e.g. Phaedo 65d4–7, 74a9–12; Republic 476c9), it is basically a premiss: only if it is used to develop a theory of forms does it become ontologically significant. Otherwise it may be no more than a prerequisite of definition: there is something which Socrates can reasonably hope to define. But the phrase becomes more telling when taken in context: it is glossed by ‘fineness is an actual entity’ (literally, ‘an existing something’) in the context of stating that it (and justice, wisdom, etc.) are responsible for particular things being fine (just, wise, etc.). Again, the statement that fineness exists says no more in itself than we have already seen: in a similar vein, Woodruff (1982, p. 164) points out, anyone might inveigh against injustice without hypostatizing it as a Platonic form: ‘Any discussion presupposes the existence of what it discusses.’ True, but not every discussion makes that presupposition explicit, nor does Socrates (Protagoras 330c–d is a notable exception; Euthyphro 5d and 6d come close, as does Meno 72b–c). Furthermore, Socrates is here made to generalize his point into a theory: anything which is responsible for other things having some characteristic is an existing entity. It would be quite incorrect to read back into this the dichotomy between being and becoming found in fully fledged Platonism, but Plato is on the verge of claiming that only existing entities can be responsible in this way, because ‘becoming’ things may be responsible for even the opposite characteristic. The non-relativity of fineness is stressed in Hippias Major: in conjunction with the emphasis on its existence, the idea is very close to the independence of Platonic forms. So we find here, at the least, that Hippias Major is more systematic and reflective than is usual in early dialogues.
In this context we should glance at one other phrase, ‘fineness itself’ (286d etc.). The phrase is literally ‘the fine itself’ (auto to kalon): the literal translation shows up a Platonic tendency. The addition of ‘itself’ basically does no more than pinpoint, stress or isolate whatever is being discussed, and it is used as such in Socratic contexts, and even outside the Platonic corpus (Isocrates, Antidosis 130, written in 353 B.C.). But in a Platonic or even quasi-Platonic context the phrase feeds the tendency to distinguish fineness and similar concepts from their instances, as each being a thing in itself. The phrase occurs nine times in Hippias Major, whereas it is very rare in other early dialogues, which suggests that Plato might, consciously or unconsciously, be nourishing that tendency.
What about the notion that fineness is responsible for fine things being fine? As mentioned before, Socrates assumes that a definition must explain why all relevant cases have the property or properties they have, and he uses the same formula that we find in Hippias Major (‘F things are F thanks to F-ness’) to get across this idea of logical responsibility (for instance, at Euthyphro 6d). But Plato too uses the formula in expounding his notion of forms as ‘causes’ (Phaedo 100d). In Hippias Major, is there any way of telling whether the mood is Socratic or Platonic on this point? No, there is not. All we can say is that since the formula first appears in a context of virtual hypostatization of fineness, it is part of that transitional mood, and this is corroborated by the frequency of the idea in Hippias Major (287c–d, 288a, 290d, 294a–d, 299d–e, 300a–b, 302c–e), which again suggests the germs of quite systematic reflection on the matter.
The same conclusion is all that can be said about another recurring idea in Hippias Major, that fineness may be said to ‘be present in’ fine things (289d, 293a–294a, 294c, 299e 300a, 303a). This materialistic image is intended to describe how fineness is responsible for fine things being fine, and as such it is equally undecidable to which mood it belongs. The idea crops up in both Platonic (Phaedo 100d etc.) and Socratic (Charmides 158e, Laches 189e, Lysis 217b, Ettthydemus 301a) contexts, but the frequent occurrence of the image in our dialogue suggests that it is now a theory rather than just a way of explaining the relationship between the concept in question and its instances. It is accordingly relevant to remember that theories about the relationship between a universal and its instances become particularly germane if some ontological significance is attributed to the universal. That is, once the idea has taken root that fineness may be an entity of a different order, it needs a theory to explain how such an entity relates to fine things.
Finally, what about the idea that fineness itself is absolutely fine, as contrasted with the relative fineness of particular fine things? I am not here concerned with the knotty problem of what exactly Plato meant by self-predicative statements like ‘Fineness is fine’ (on which see Woodruff (1982), pp. 153–6, 157–9, 172–5, with his further references): statements of this form occur in both Socratic and Platonic contexts. Our concern here is the contrast with the inadequacy of fine things. In a Socratic context this contrast rules out proposed definitions which name examples of a concept, because they are no more fine than not-fine, and therefore cannot be the items Socrates wants true definitions to name, nor can they be responsible for fineness or whatever. To Plato the contrast is ontological: the things of this world have this ontological inferiority to forms, which purely and eternally are what they are (this is his famous ‘degrees of reality’ theory). In Hippias Major what we once again find is that the idea is expressed more frequently and systematically than in any other early dialogue, but falls short of overt ontological commitment. Overt ontological commitment would be something like Symposium 210e–211b, which I take to echo Hippias Major:
[The form, fineness] is eternal: it is subject neither to generation and destruction, nor to increase and decrease. It is not partly fine but partly contemptible; nor sometimes fine but sometimes not; nor fine in one relation but contemptible in another; nor fine in one place but contemptible elsewhere, depending on how people perceive it… it is absolute, self-sufficient, single and eternal, and all other fine things particiother fine thingss participate in it, but it is neither increased nor decreased by their generation and destruction, but remains unaffected.
Clearly, there is nothing like this in Hippias Major, but it does seem to be the case that as a result of reflection and systematization of the usual Socratic requirements of definition, Plato is on the verge of developing his famous theory. In particular, the seeds of hypostatization of fineness, combined with the contrast with fine things, provide a missing link with Plato’s developed theory as found in Republic, in such a way that Plato seems to be capable there of merely assuming points made in Hippias Major. At the end of Republic V, in a famous argument designed to convince us of his theory, he merely assumes that fine things in this world have the inadequacy argued for by Socrates against Hippias’ definitions in Hippias Major. The same assumption, that only the form is absolutely fine, occurs in the passage of Symposium quoted above; again, the thing to notice is that, as distinct from merely making an assumption, Hippias Major argues the point.
Scholars will think my discussion of this crucial topic too brief; others may think it too lengthy, but it is a necessary preamble to the question of authenticity, to which I now turn, assuming that the metaphysics of the dialogue is mid-way between the positions of Socrates and of Plato (this is also the conclusion of Morgan, though he reaches it from an entirely different approach): this will make possible a brief resolution of the question.
Given that we have dismissed arguments from style (the reader is referred to Kahn as the best recent example of this type of approach), the conclusion that the dialogue is transitional removes the remaining prop to the view that it is spurious. Moreau, for instance, argues that the dialogue presupposes the full Platonic ontology, but is stylistically immature: unable to reconcile these two conclusions, he argues that the dialogue was written by a student of Plato’s who was familiar with the theory of forms. But it should by now be clear that the Platonic ontology in the dialogue is fledgling, not fully fledged: there is little sign of the crucial dichotomies that characterize mature Platonism. So far from there being any reason to reject the dialogue as spurious, it actually fills a gap in the written works between the early Socratic dialogues and the middle-period Platonic ones. (And it is worth noticing here that Aristotle seems to have Hippias Major in mind on several occasions (see pp. 250 n. 1, 256 n. 1, 259 n. 1), which increases the possibility that the dialogue was written by Plato himself xrather than some pupil; and the quantity of echoes of Hippias Major in the fourth book of Xenophon’s Memorabilia also increases the likelihood of its authenticity.) All this implies a relative date for the dialogue just prior to, say, Phaedo; more precise dating relative to dialogues such as Gorgias and Meno would be tricky. My feeling is that, given the tentatively transitional theories of Hippias Major, it post-dates Gorgias and precedes Meno; but I would not like to argue the point in detail. It was probably written, then, c. 385.
We must now consider particularly the latter part of the dialogue with a view to answering the question: What can we learn from Hippias Major about the Socratic/Platonic theory of fineness? But there is a prior question: What justification is there for looking in the dialogue for any positive view of fineness at all? For in the first place, the dialogue is aporetic: it ends negatively with Socrates professing just as much puzzlement about fineness as he had at the start of his discussion with Hippias. Secondly, his strictures on definition (p. 217) make certain usage of a term depend on knowledge of its definition, and, as just mentioned, Hippias Major does not make known the definition of fineness.
There is no short answer to either of these much-discussed problems. It will have to be enough here if I simply state conclusions, without the argument and evidence which lead me to endorse them. First, then, though the dialogues of search are formally aporetic, it is sometimes possible to reconstruct some positive points from clues scattered throughout the dialogue. It would be jejune, in my opinion, to expect to be able to reconstruct a definition: this expectation would entail the belief that Plato does not intend us to believe his arguments. It has often been stated, for instance, that where an argument contains an obvious fallacy, Plato expects his readers to notice it and reject the argument. This approach is methodologically unsound, at the least: barring very strong evidence to the contrary, we have to suppose that Plato intended the arguments he used, or at least the conclusions they support. Nevertheless, we might reasonably expect to gain information by default: if fineness is not such-and-such, what might it be? And what assumptions control the argument?
Secondly, his reasons for wanting a definition, in Hippias Major at any rate, fall into the categories Santas has called ‘diagnostic’ and ‘aetiological’ (pp. 115–26). He wants to know what fineness is so that he can tell what things are fine (304d–e) and so that he can support beliefs that certain things are fine (286c–d with 288a). Neither reason precludes his having not only beliefs that certain things are fine, but also the ability to make judgements about fineness, for instance that it is beneficial. The first reason is sometimes taken to preclude this, but does not: the diagnostic use of definitions only claims that a definition would be an invaluable tool for diagnosis, not that it is the only possible tool.
We see from the start, then, that we should not expect Hippias Major to provide a definitive Platonic or Socratic theory of fineness – Plato was rarely this kind of discursive philosopher – but we might expect to be pointed in certain directions. Some pointers of a logical nature have already emerged from our discussion of Hippias’ ‘definitions’, for instance that fineness is fine and is the single entity which makes all fine things fine; but we are now concerned less with logic than with the descriptive pointers that may arise from the attempted definitions put into Socrates’ own mouth in the latter part of the dialogue.
Socrates’ first two proposals link together in a way that makes it reasonable to consider them together. When Socrates touches on the topic of appropriateness in Section C, he takes it to be synonymous with usefulness. So his first proposal, in Section E, that fineness is appropriateness, naturally leads on to his second, in Section F, that it is usefulness or benefit. It is argued in Section E, that fineness is not appropriateness if appropriateness only makes things appear fine (that is, we may add ‘appropriate’ to our quiver of attributes of fineness if we understand it as ‘making things actually fine’); fineness must make things actually fine, and may then be benefit, or the cause of goodness, as Section F considers.
The rejection of the definition of fineness as appropriateness tells us no more than we already know: that fineness cannot be contextually determinable, and is the cause of things really being fine. But what about the idea that fineness is benefit? Even if Plato does not believe that this is its definition (as we have to suppose, despite the weakness of his argument against it), he does not rule out the possibility of describing fineness as beneficial. In fact, it is telling that at 296c–d the idea that fineness may have harmful consequences is rejected: it must be beneficial. And the final attempted definition, of fineness as aesthetic pleasure, reduces in Plato’s view to describing fineness as beneficial (303e–304a). The conclusion is inescapable that, in Plato’s view, the notions of fineness and benefit are closely linked, even if not interchangeable. This conclusion is fortunate because elsewhere (especially at Gorgias 474d–e and by Xenophon, Memorabilia III.8.4–7) the idea that fineness is beneficial is attributed to Socrates without refutation; and fineness is constantly linked to benefit (and goodness) in the Socratic dialogues as the three firm attributes of the virtues that are his main concern.
We can go one stage further. If fineness is beneficial, it is productive of good (296c ff.). But by the rules of Socratic/Platonic causation, only something good can be productive of good. Thus the assumption underlying much of the second half of the dialogue, and especially (paradoxically) the rejection of the definition that fineness is benefit, is precisely that fineness is good. If goodness produces good, and fineness produces good, is fineness then not definable as goodness? By the Socratic assumption of univocality (that distinct terms have distinct definitions), the answer must be negative; still, some very close connection is being suggested here, which Plato is either unwilling or unable to try to expound. Since goodness is the goal of life, the idea that fineness is good can be seen to be more than the mere truism that it sounds.
Finally, what can the last attempted definition, that fineness is aesthetic pleasure, tell us about fineness? First, since this is presumably meant to be the most plausible attempt at defining fineness in aesthetic terms, and since it is rejected, it tells us not to limit fineness to the aesthetic and sensible. This may be thought to have seemed obvious to a Greek, for whom the term covered moral as well as aesthetic qualities. But notice that Hippias’ second definition (Section D), in which he apparently moves away from the aesthetic and into the area of common Greek morality, still strongly emphasizes display and being seen to have admirable possessions. Very probably this was an inherent way of thinking, handed down from Homer, whose thought was still influential in Plato’s day, and whose heroic code valued visible prowess and the esteem of one’s peers. Socrates was always the enemy of this ingrained Homericism, and hence a revolutionary: we will see this at work to some extent in Hippias Minor. Secondly, but connectedly, the rejection of this definition tells us that fineness cannot be assessed by the apparent pleasure it produces (or rather, in view of the ideal philosophic pleasures of other dialogues, by even the best of what is commonly taken to be pleasant).
This direct attack on the presuppositions of his contemporaries is actually, in my view, a satisfactory end to the dialogue. The dialogue is aporetic, but it is not therefore negative. Any educator has to rid his audience of misconceptions in order to make room for what he sees as the truth. Socrates has less certainty about what the truth is than many more misguided and dogmatic moral teachers, but he has, he feels, a valid method of inquiry. The positive potential of this method, which may at times seem pointlessly destructive, is that what we learn about fineness in Hippias Major, even if not much in itself, may be used as premisses for prospective future inquiry or action.
If the dialogue is scarcely informative on the nature of fineness, why did Plato write it? There is no single answer to this question; I mention the four possible reasons which strike me; they are not mutually exclusive. First, as mentioned on p. 214, he wished to distinguish Socrates from the sophists who are epitomized in Hippias. Second, given the somewhat systematic manner in which the quasi-ontological issues are broached, we cannot rule out the notion that Plato wanted to use the dialogue to communicate these budding ideas of his. Third, the definitions of fineness that are put into Socrates’ mouth are no doubt ones that Plato wanted to explore either for themselves or to clear them out of the way. Fourth – and I reserve this until last, because it seems to me to be the dominant reason – Plato appears to have used the dialogue to air certain formal issues connected with Socratic definition. Each stage of the argument can be seen to raise a separate issue. If the raising of such issues was the dominant reason for the writing of the dialogue, it would explain why the attempts to define fineness sometimes sound implausible: they are introduced as much for reasons of logical rigour and completeness as for their possible virtues as definitions. It is arguable that the course of the arguments is somewhat pedantic and tortuous precisely because they are designed to raise such logical points in as clear and thorough a manner as possible: I am thinking particularly of 297e-303d, on aesthetic pleasure, on whose purpose see below. To be specific, the points raised in the dialogue are as follows. (Notice that in a definition of the form A is x, A is the definiendum (‘what is to be defined’), x is the definiens (‘definer’).)
1. If the definiendum is a universal, the definiens must be
(a) neither a particular, like a girl (287e–289d)
(b) nor a mass substance, like gold (289d–291c).
These are relatively straightforward points, as the relevant sections of the dialogue show: if Hippias Major is an exercise in logic, it makes sense to start by eliminating obvious errors before moving on to more abstruse ones. Both these first points are subordinate to the fundamental principle of definition, which is stressed in other early dialogues, and has been called the principle of coextensivity (Kahn, p. 275): ‘The definiens must be true of all and only those cases which are cases of the definiendum.’ The definiens must be neither too narrow nor too broad.
2. A true definition must be timelessly true (especially 291d–293c). For this to be the case
(a) the definiens must be the cause of things having the property which the definiendum has, or is (288a etc.);
(b) the definiendum must be absolutely what it is (288c etc.);
(c) definitions must state the reality of the case, not the appearance (293e-294e).
3. The definiens must have unity (297e–303d): only then can it encompass the unity of the definiendum. The supposed problem with the definition of fineness as visual and auditory pleasure is that if one of them is fineness, the other cannot be fine, since visual pleasure, for instance, cannot be responsible for the fineness of auditory pleasure.
These issues we would class as formal or even logical. Two others, arising from Section F of the dialogue, are particularly interesting in the context of Socrates’ and Plato’s concern with virtue.
4. Intuitively good properties cannot be defined in neutral terms (296b–d). Thus it is a mistake to think of fineness simply in terms of ability because ability may have negative consequences.
5. Intuitively good properties cannot be defined in isolation from goodness (296d–297d; see p. 225).
If it is right to think of Hippias Major as making these statements about Socratic definitions, then the dialogue is not unimportant. It is virtually a handbook on Socratic definition. It is interesting that Plato, having stood back from his master’s and his own early work enough to formulate these propositions, was at the same time, as I have argued, working towards his own metaphysical response to the issues Socrates raised. This makes good sense: he feels that such a list of features required in a definiendum can only be satisfied by a Platonic form, which ex hypothesi has the necessary properties. This is obvious enough in the case of (1)–(3); on (4) and (5) it must be remembered that in Republic Plato declares that all forms participate in the form of the good (507b-509b).
It must also be added, however – though it is a pity to end on a downward beat in the case of such a lively dialogue – that if the dialogue is seen as a record of Plato’s early thoughts about definition, it is ultimately disappointing and perhaps even muddled. One argument in particular – that of Section F, on the difference between causes and their products – raises problems. Plato has stymied himself, in two respects. First, the argument would forbid even the statement that goodness produces good, since it denies that a cause can have the same properties as its product; yet the core of Hippias Major, as of dialogues containing more developed Platonic theory, is that the forms are the causes of things having their qualities. Secondly, Plato implicitly rules out any meaningful definition whatsoever: the final position (see p. 225) entails that one can only make tautologous statements like ‘Fineness is fineness’, when attempting definition. No wonder we are given no clear definition of fineness in the dialogue and receive only pointers. There is no sign that Plato recognized these difficulties at the time; but it is true that in the dialogues immediately following Hippias Major Plato begins more fully to develop his own solutions to the problems posed by Socrates’ search for definitions.
A. Introduction
B. Fineness and a Fine-looking Girl
C. Fineness as Gold
D. Fineness as Health, Wealth and So On
E. Fineness as Appropriateness
F. Fineness as Usefulness and Benefit (the Cause of Goodness)
G. Fineness as Aesthetic Pleasure
H. Epilogue
SOCRATES
HIPPIAS: From Elis in the Peloponnese. Born c. 470, died c. 395 – in other words, a more or less exact contemporary of Socrates. He was a prominent sophist, offering tuition in a vast range of subjects (see Hippias Major 285c–e, Hippias Minor 368b–d, Protagoras 318d–319a).
The introductory conversation is lively and full of characterization: Socrates teases Hippias more and more obviously, but Hippias is so full of his own importance that Socrates’ sarcasm is lost on him. Plato enjoys portraying Socrates making a fool of sophists: see Protagoras, Gorgias, Euthydemus. Much of the argument, as a consequence of this characterization, is conducted at the level of implication. It may be seen as hostile to the sophistic movement as a whole, embodied in Hippias in this dialogue. The sophists claimed to offer the best education, but this is an incoherent generalization: is it best for everyone everywhere? So Hippias is led to the absurd conclusion that the Spartans, in not wishing to be educated by him, are acting illegally. In order to reach this conclusion Socrates trades on an ambiguity in the term ‘law’, which is either law as actually established, or law as it ought to be established. Only in the latter sense (and also only on the assumption that Hippias’ education is beneficial) could the Spartans conceivably be said to be contravening law.
SOCRATES: Here’s that fine1 expert hippias! It’s ages since you [281a] descended on athens!2
HIPPIAS: I’ve been busy, socrates. you see, whenever elis needs to negotiate with some other city, I’m the first of her citizens she turns to when she chooses a representative, since she thinks that I am best able to judge and report each city’s communications.3 Though I’ve often [b] been sent to other cities too, Sparta’s where I’ve represented Elis most often and on the most crucial and important issues.4 So, to answer your question, that is why I don’t frequent this region.5
SOCRATES: Well, hippias, this is the sort of thing a true all-round expert must expect. I say ‘all-round’ because not only are you capable, in the private sphere, of giving the young men who pay you so much their money’s worth and more in terms of benefit,1 but also, in the public [c] sphere, you are able to help your own city, which is only right and proper for someone who intends to gain the public’s esteem and avoid their contempt.2 But tell me, Hippias, why those men of old, with great reputations for wisdom – Pittacus, Bias, Thales and his school, and more recent thinkers too, up to and including Anaxagoras – why does it turn out that they all, or most of them, abstained from state affairs?3
HIPPIAS: Why else do you think, Socrates, apart from a complete inability to use their wisdom for accomplishments in both spheres, the [d] public and the private?
SOCRATES: Is it really the case that just as all other areas of expertise have progressed, and their former practitioners are inferior to the present ones, so also your own field, sophistry, has progressed, and some of the ancients who were concerned with wisdom are inferior to you and your colleagues?
HIPPIAS: That’s quite right.
SOCRATES: So if Bias were resurrected,4 Hippias, he would be a source of amusement to you and your colleagues, just as sculptors say that Dae-dalus [282a]5 would be ridiculous if he had been born nowadays and were to produce the work for which he became famous.
HIPPIAS: That is so, Socrates, just as you say. But I tend to praise the men of old who came before us, before and more than my contemporaries, because while I try and avoid the malice of the living, I am frightened of the wrath of the dead.6
SOCRATES: Fine words, Hippias, and fine thoughts, in my opinion. [b] And I am in a position to confirm that you are not mistaken: in fact your area of expertise has progressed towards the ability to combine private with public business. I mean, Gorgias, the famous sophist from Leontini,1 came here on public business as the representative of his native city, because he was thought to be the most competent of the Leontinians to conduct their state affairs; and not only was he popularly regarded as the best speaker ever to have addressed the Assembly,2 but he also gave lectures3 as a private individual and met with our young men, and earned and received a lot of money from our city. Or take our eminent friend [c] Prodicus,4 who often came here on public business; but the high point was his recent visit on public business from Ceos when he gained considerable fame in the Council as a speaker, as well as earning an incredible amount of money from giving lectures as a private individual and meeting with our young men. On the other hand, none of those men of old ever thought it right to be remunerated or to display his wisdom by lecturing to all sorts of people. That’s how simple they were: they didn’t realize [d] how valuable money is. Either of the men I’ve mentioned, however, has earned more money from his expertise than any other practitioner of any craft. And even before them there was Protagoras.5
HIPPIAS: You don’t realize just how fine the situation is, Socrates: you’d be astonished if you knew how much money I have earned. Here’s just one example: once, on a trip to Sicily while Protagoras was living there, despite his prestige and greater age, it took me, his junior by far, [e] hardly any time to earn at least 150 minae;6 yes, and from a single place, Inycum,7 which is pretty small, I got more than twenty minae, which I took home with me and gave to my father, much to his astonishment and that of the rest of my fellow-citizens. I would go so far as to suppose that my earnings are more than the total earnings of any other two sophists you care to mention.
SOCRATES: Well, that is fine, Hippias, and powerful evidence both of your expertise and of how much more clever our contemporaries are than [283a] men of old. To your way of thinking, Anaxagoras and his predecessors1 were pretty dense, in view of the stories that are told about them. For instance, they say that Anaxagoras had the opposite experience to you: once he inherited a lot of money, but wasn’t concerned about it and lost it all – so little intelligence was there in his philosophizing;2 and there are other similar stories about other men of old. So I think this is a fine piece of evidence you’ve produced about the wisdom of our contemporaries as compared to their predecessors; and the common view too is that wisdom [b] begins at home.3 And, of course, you can define the wise man by seeing who has earned the most money. But enough on that. Now tell me this: from which of the cities you’ve visited did you earn the most? Obviously Sparta, I suppose, since you’ve been there most often.
HIPPIAS: Good heavens, no, Socrates!
SOCRATES: What? Do you mean you’ve earned the least there?4
HIPPIAS: In fact I’ve never earned anything there at all. [c]
SOCRATES: That’s preposterous, Hippias! I can hardly believe my ears! What you’re good at, surely, is improving the morals of those who come to you as students, isn’t it?5
HIPPIAS: Yes, very much, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Well, were you only able to improve the sons of Inycans, not of Spartans?
HIPPIAS: Far from it.
SOCRATES: Is it, then, that Sicilians desire to be improved, but Spartans don’t?
HIPPIAS: No, Socrates, the Spartans certainly want to as well. [d]
SOCRATES: So they couldn’t afford your teaching?
HIPPIAS: No, they have enough money.
SOCRATES: Why then, if they have the desire and the money, and if you are able to give them the greatest benefit, did you not leave them with your coffers full? Could it be – no, surely the Spartans can’t educate their own children better than you can? Is that to be our conclusion? would you endorse it?
HIPPIAS: Not at all. [e]
SOCRATES: Were you, then, unable to persuade the young men in sparta that if they attended your classes they would make better progress towards virtue than if they went to their own teachers? or were you unable to persuade their fathers that, if they have their sons’ interests at heart at all, they should entrust them to you radier than take care of them them–selves? I assume that they weren’t deliberately preventing their sons becoming as good as possible.1
HIPPIAS: I don’t dunk they were.
SOCRATES: Well now, sparta has an orderly constitution.
HIPPIAS: Of course.
SOCRATES: And in citíes with orderly constitutions virtue is highly [284a] thought of.
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And you know better than anyone else how to impart virtue.
HIPPIAS: Yes, far better, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Well, consider the expert teacher of horsemanship: in Greece, wouldn’t he receive especially high regard and earnings in thes–saly, and wherever else dûs skill is cultivated?
HIPPIAS: Presumably.
SOCRATES: So won’t the expert teacher of the subjects which are most valuable for virtue receive especially high regard and earnings in sparta, [b] if he wants, and in any other Greek city which has an orderly constitution? Do you think he will do better in inycum, Sicily?2 Is that what we are to believe, Hippias? We must take your word for it, if you say so.
HIPPIAS: The thing is, Socrates, the Spartans are conservative about their laws and won’t educate their sons in an unusual manner.
SOCRATES: What? Surely it’s not the spartan tradition to do wrong rather than right? [c]
HIPPIAS: I wouldn’t dunk so, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Would they be doing right in educating their younger generation better rather than worse?
HIPPIAS: Yes, but a foreign education is illegal there. Otherwise you may be sure – to judge by the pleasure my teaching gives them and the praise I receive – that I would have been the foremost recipient of any money that there was to be had for teaching. But, as I say, it’s illegal.
SOCRATES: Hippias, do you think law harms or benefits a city? [d]
HIPPIAS: I imagine it’s established to be beneficial, but sometimes it is harmful, if a bad law gets passed.
SOCRATES: But surely legislators establish the law because it is the greatest good for a city, and is the sine qua non of an orderly community?
HIPPIAS: True.
SOCRATES: So any legislator who proposes a law without a grasp of what is good falls short of legality and law. Do you agree?
HIPPIAS: Strictly speaking, Socrates, that is so; but it strains normal [e] language.1
SOCRATES: Do you mean a knowledgeable or an ignorant use of language, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: A popular one.
SOCRATES: Is it the populace that knows the truth?
HIPPIAS: No, of course not.
SOCRATES: But men of knowledge, anyway, hold that in truth, the more beneficial a things is, the more it is lawful for all men. Don’t you agree?
HIPPIAS: Yes, I suppose I agree that this is the truth of the matter.
SOCRATES: And the facts are and remain as men of knowledge hold them to be?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Now, you claim that the education you offer, though [285a] foreign, is more beneficial for the Spartans than their native one.
HIPPIAS: Yes, and I’m right too.
SOCRATES: And do you also maintain that the more beneficial a thing is, the more lawful it is, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Yes, as I’ve already said.
SOCRATES: So in your view it is more lawful for the young men of Sparta to be educated by Hippias than by their fathers, assuming that they will in fact get greater benefit from you.
HIPPIAS: But they will.
SOCRATES: So, in failing to offer you money and entrust their sons to [b] you, the Spartans are on the wrong side of the law.
HIPPIAS: I agree – I mean, I think your argument is in my favour and I see no reason to resist it.
SOCRATES: We find, then, my friend, that the Spartans, who are thought to be the most law-abiding people, are in contravention of law, and on the most important of matters at that.
After some more teasing of Hippias, the mam subject of the dialogue, ‘What is fineness?’, is introduced. Socrates gains Hippias’ agreement that there is such a thing as fineness, and asks him to define it. But Hippias avoids the question – he seems to acknowledge his inability to answer it – and gives instead, as an example of fineness, a fine-looking girl. He does not make the gross mistake of saying that fineness is a fine-looking girl – that is, of offering this as a definition of fineness – as the passage has often been interpreted. But he has admitted the existence of fineness, so the point Socrates has to get across in this section is that an example of F can never be the F itself: Hippias must first learn how to distinguish between the general and the particular. In this section, then, Socrates provides two criteria which fineness itself must satisfy and which any example’ of fineness, such as a fine-looking girl, fails to satisfy. First, any example of fineness cannot be responsible for fineness in other fine examples, and so cannot tell us how to recognize fineness elsewhere. Second, any fine thing in this world is only relatively fine and may in another contrast be seen as contemptible. Therefore it cannot stand as the paradigm, fineness, which, since it is supposed to be responsible for the fineness of fine things, cannot be described under any circumstances as less than fine. So the two criteria which an F itself must satisfy are that it must be responsible for other things being F, and it must never be not-F. If Hippias can come up with an answer which tries to satisfy these criteria, he will be on the road to defining fineness. He attempts a definition based on the first of these criteria in the next section, and on the second in the section after that; thus the first part of the dialogue is carefully structured.
SOCRATES: But what do they praise you for, and enjoy hearing about?1 I suppose it must be your special branch of knowledge, astronomy.2 [c]
HIPPIAS: Not at all. That’s a subject they don’t even tolerate.1
SOCRATES: But does geometry give them any pleasure?
HIPPIAS: No. It’s barely an exaggeration to say that many of them can’t even count!2
SOCRATES: Then they won’t put up with you lecturing on arithmetic.
HIPPIAS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Then they must enjoy the subject in which your analytical abilities are so exceptional, the significance of letters, syllables, rhythms [d] and intonations.3
HIPPIAS: My dear Socrates! Intonations and letters! Ha!
SOCRATES: So which lecture-subject of yours gives them pleasure and wins you their praise? You’ll have to tell me yourself, because I’m stuck.
HIPPIAS: The genealogies of heroes and men, and how cities were founded in the distant past: in short, antiquarianism in general is what they most enjoy hearing about, and so I was obliged to make a thorough [e] study of the whole subject until I’d mastered it.
SOCRATES: Well, Hippias, you’re certainly lucky that the Spartans don’t enjoy the enumeration of Athenian archontes from Solon onwards,4 otherwise you’d have had a job mastering it.5
HIPPIAS: Why, Socrates? I can reel off fifty names after hearing them only once.
SOCRATES: You’re right: I wasn’t taking your mnemonic technique into account.6 Now I understand the situation: the Spartans treat you as children do old women, to tell them pleasant stories; so naturally they enjoy [286a] you and your vast store of knowledge.
HIPPIAS: Yes, and I tell you, Socrates, I acquired quite a reputation by an exposition I gave there recently of the fine practices to which a young man ought to devote himself. I’ve got an exceedingly fine lecture composed on the subject; its use of words is particularly good. The scene is subsequent to the sack of Troy and I start the lecture off with Neoptolemus asking Nestor1 which fine practices bring fame to a young man, [b] and then Nestor gives him plenty of advice on the finest rules of life. This is the lecture I delivered there and, at the request of Eudicus the son of Apemantus,2 I’m going to give it here too, in two days’ time, in Pheidostratus’ school. It’s worth hearing and there’ll be more besides, so make sure you come, and bring other competent critics. [c]
SOCRATES: Yes, I’ll do that, God willing, Hippias. But while we’re on the subject, I’ve got a small question to which i’d appreciate your answer: in fact, you reminded me of it, with a fine sense of timing. you see, my friend, I was recently plunged into confusion when, during a discussion in which I was condemning some things as contemptible but praising others as fine, I was rudely interrupted with a question which went some what as follows: ‘socrates,’ I was asked, ‘what makes you an expert on what sorts of things are fine and contemptible? I mean, could you tell [d] me what fineness is?’3 Now, I’m not up to this kind of thing, so I got confused and couldn’t make a proper reply. After we’d parted company, I was angry with myself, told myself off, and swore that as soon as I had bumped into any of you experts, I would return to my inquisitor to renew the battle, with instruction, teaching and study to back me up. So now, as I say, you’ve come at a fine time: explain to me, as well as you can, [e] what fineness itself is, and try to answer my questions as accurately as possible. I don’t want to make a fool of myself again in a second cross-examination. I’m sure you’re crystal-clear on the subject and that it must be only a fraction of your vast knowledge.
HIPPIAS: Yes, indeed it is, Socrates, and not a particularly important part either.
SOCRATES: Then I’ll have no trouble learning about it, and no one will ever expose my ignorance again.
HIPPIAS: No, no one: I would be a worthless amateur in my job if they could.[287a]
SOCRATES: That’s really good to hear, hippias: we might yet get the better of the fellow. But would it be a nuisance if I imitated him by criticizing your answers? My thinking is that I’ll get the most out of your instruction that way. I’m quite well versed in his criticisms.1 So, if it makes no difference to you, I wouldn’t mind criticizing you, to reinforce what I learn.
HIPPIAS: Go ahead. As I said just now, it’s an easy question: I could teach you how to become unassailable by anyone – anyone at all – on far [b] more difficult issues.
SOCRATES: This gets better and better. Anyway, since you’ve given me the go-ahead, I’ll do my best to make myself his Doppelgänger and try to question you. You see, if you were to give him that lecture you’ve mentioned on fine practices, then once he’d heard you out, the first thing he’d ask you about, if he’s true to form, is fineness. ‘May I ask our [c] distinguished visitor from Elis,’ he’d say, ‘whether it’s thanks to justice that just people are just?’ Imagine he’s here putting the question, Hippias, and answer him.2
HIPPIAS: Yes, thanks to justice, will be my reply.
SOCRATES: ‘so justice is something?’
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: ‘And wise people are wise thanks to wisdom, all good things good thanks to goodness?’
HIPPIAS: Of course.
SOCRATES: ‘That is, thanks to actual entities –1 mean, it couldn’t be thanks to non-entities.’3
HIPPIAS: NO, entities.
SOCRATES: ‘Therefore, aren’t all fine things fine thanks to fineness?’
HIPPIAS: Yes. [d]
SOCRATES: ‘That is, thanks to an actual entity?’
HIPPIAS: Yes, why not?
SOCRATES: ‘Tell me, then, my friend,’ he’ll say; ‘what is this thing, fineness?’
HIPPIAS: Isn’t this the same as asking what is fine, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I don’t think so, Hippias: I think the question is what fineness is.
HIPPIAS: What’s the difference?
SOCRATES: None, you think?
HIPPIAS: No, there is none.
SOCRATES: Well, obviously you have a finer knowledge of the matter. But still, since the question is not what is fine, but what fineness is, please apply your mind to that. [e]
HIPPIAS: I see, my friend; I will tell him what fineness is, absolutely incontrovertibly… Well, you can be sure of the truth of this, that a fine–looking girl is a fine thing!
SOCRATES: By the Dog, Hippias!1 What a fine answer! Excellent! So, if I give this answer, I will have answered the question, and done so [288a] correctly and absolutely incontrovertibly?
HIPPIAS: Of course it’s incontrovertible, Socrates: it’s a universally held opinion. Your audience will unanimously support your view as correct.2.
SOCRATES: Well, all right. Now, Hippias, let me review the situation. I will be questioned as follows: ‘Now, Socrates, answer me this: taking your examples of fine things, what must fineness itself be if they are to be fine?’ Shall I really reply that if a fine-looking girl is a fine thing, it is this that is responsible for their being fine?3
HIPPIAS: What do you think will happen if he tries to argue that what [b] you mention is not a fine thing? Surely he’ll only make himself ridiculous if he tries?
SOCRATES: I’m sure he’ll try, my friend, but only events can prove the attempt ridiculous. But I don’t mind telling you what he’ll say.
HIPPIAS: Go ahead.
SOCRATES: ‘How naïve you are, Socrates!’ he’ll protest. ‘Isn’t a fine Elean mare a fine thing?4 Remember even the god praised mares in the oracle.’ What shall we say, Hippias? Aren’t we to say that a mare too, [c] provided it is fine, is a fine thing? I mean, we can hardly go so far as to deny that something fine is a fine thing.
HIPPIAS: Good thinking, Socrates: yes, we breed some very fine mares, so the god was right.
SOCRATES: ‘Now,’ he’ll continue, ‘what about a fine lyre? Isn’t it a fine thing?’ Should we agree, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well, if I’m any judge of his character, I’m pretty certain that next he will ask: ‘My very dear friend, what about a fine pot? Is it then not a fine thing?’
HIPPIAS: Socrates, who is this person? He must be a boor, to judge by [d] his cheek in introducing such trivia into dignified proceedings.1
SOCRATES: He doesn’t have the subtle touch, Hippias: no, in his singleminded concern for the truth, he’s rather a vulgar fellow. Still he deserves an answer; I’ll give my view first. If the pot has been fashioned by a good potter so that it is smooth, well rounded and properly fired, like some very fine pots that there are of the two-handled variety with a capacity of six choes2 – if that’s the sort of pot he’s asking about, I would agree that [e] it is fine. I mean, how could we deny that a fine thing is fine?
HIPPIAS: We can’t, Socrates.
SOCRATES: ‘So tell me,’ he’ll say, ‘isn’t even a fine pot a fine thing?’
HIPPIAS: Yes, I think so, Socrates: even this utensil is fine if it has been finely wrought, but utensils in general are not up to the standard in fineness of fine horses, girls and so on.
SOCRATES: Ah, I see, Hippias! We must reply to our inquisitor as [289a] follows: ‘Sir, you are overlooking the correctness of Heraclitus’ dictum that “the finest ape is contemptible compared to man”.3 The finest pot too is contemptible compared to girls – so says Hippias, and he’s an expert.’ Isn’t that so, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Certainly, Socrates; your reply is correct.
SOCRATES: So listen to what I’m sure he’ll say next: ‘Well, Socrates, doesn’t the same principle obtain for girls as compared with gods as [b] for pots as compared with girls? Won’t the finest-looking girl turn out to be contemptible in comparison? Isn’t this exactly what Heraclitus – whom you adduce – says: “The wisest man will turn out to be an ape compared with God”, and not just in respect of wisdom but of fineness and every-thing else?’ Should we concede that the finest-looking girl is contemptible compared to gods, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Yes, that is undeniable, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Well, if we make this concession, he will laugh and say: [c] ‘Socrates, do you remember what the question was?’ ‘Yes,’ I’ll reply, ‘what fineness itself is.’ ‘And yet,’ he’ll continue, ‘although you were asked about fineness, your reply names something which by your own admission is in fact no more fine than contemptible1. ‘It seems so,’ I’ll say – or what would you recommend me to say, my friend?
HIPPIAS: Nothing different: his assertion that man is not fine compared to gods will be correct, of course.
SOCRATES: ‘Suppose,’ he will continue, ‘that I had originally wanted to know what is both fine and contemptible: wouldn’t your recent [d] answer have been correct? Moreover, do you think that fineness itself, the form,2 which when present makes everything else as well attractive and appear fine, is a girl, a horse or a lyre?’
Socrates has introduced the notion that the ‘presence’ of fineness in things is responsible for their fineness; this leads Hippias to a definition of fineness as gold (for a comparable materialistic understanding of ‘presence’, see Euthy-demus 301a ff). This is progress, in two related ways: first, Hippias does not choose a particular thing, but gold in general; and second, he shows some understanding that he is to look for what is responsible for things being fine. Thus he may be said to be attempting a definition. But soon he is talking as if the question had been ‘What is fine?’, because he has to admit that gold cannot be responsible for all fine things being fine. The second point Socrates presses is that gold and so on are only responsible for fineness when appropriate: when inappropriate they are contemptible, so they do not satisfy the criterion of never being not-F. Notice the introduction of appropriateness, which will recur later, and how it inevitably raises the issue of a thing’s appearance: Socrates is after something which is fine, whether or not it appears and is recognized as such.
HIPPIAS: Oh well, Socrates, if that’s what he’s after, there’s no difficulty at all in telling him what fineness is, thanks to which everything else as well is made attractive and whose presence makes them appear fine. What an idiot this fellow must be, with no understanding of fine things! [e] Here’s your reply to him: when he’s asking about fineness, he’s asking about gold. That’ll confound him; he won’t try to refute you. I mean, everyone knows that the presence of gold makes even things which previously seemed contemptible look fine. Yes, gold’s what makes them attractive.
SOCRATES: Because you aren’t familiar with the man, Hippias, you don’t realize how stubborn he is: he doesn’t just take somebody’s word for something.
HIPPIAS: What do you mean, Socrates? He has to accept a correct proposition, otherwise he’ll make a fool of himself. [290a]
SOCRATES: Maybe, but so far from accepting this answer, my friend, he will scoff at me mightily and say, ‘Are you out of your mind? Do you regard Pheidias as an inferior craftsman?’1 ‘Not at all,’ I imagine will be my reply.
HIPPIAS: And you’ll be right, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Of course, and that is exactly why, on gaining my agreement that Pheidias is a good craftsman, he will say: ‘So do you suppose that Pheidias was ignorant of this “fineness” of yours?’ ‘What are you [b] getting at?’ I’ll rejoin. ‘I’ll tell you,’ he’ll say. ‘He didn’t use gold for Athena’s eyes or for her face either, or her feet, or her hands, even if it is true that gold would have had the finest effect – he used ivory. Obviously his ignorance led him astray: he didn’t realize that gold is the stuff whose presence makes everything fine.’ How are we to respond to him on this, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Easy: we approve of Pheidias’ work, because ivory is a fine [c] thing too, in my opinion.
SOCRATES: ‘So why didn’t he use ivory for the eyeballs as well?’ he will ask. ‘He used stone and made sure that the stone was as similar as possible to ivory.2 Is fine stone a fine thing too?’ Shall we say yes, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Of course it is, when appropriate.
SOCRATES: ‘But contemptible when inappropriate?’ Am I to agree or not?
HIPPIAS: Yes, when it is inappropriate.
SOCRATES: ‘Brilliant!’ he’ll say. ‘So ivory and gold, when appropriate, [d] make things look fine but, when inappropriate, contemptible – right?’ Do we argue against this or accept that it is correct?
HIPPIAS: Whatever is appropriate for a particular object makes that object fine. That is what we will accept.1
SOCRATES: ‘When that fine pot we were just talking about is full of fine simmering soup,’ he’ll say, ‘is a golden or a wooden ladle appropriate?’
HIPPIAS: Heavens above, Socrates! I despair of this fellow! Won’t you tell me who he is? [e]
SOCRATES: You’d be none the wiser if I told you his name.
HIPPIAS: I’ll tell you what I do know about him already – he’s an idiot.
SOCRATES: He’s certainly a pest, Hippias. Still, what shall we reply? Which of the ladles is appropriate for the pot and its soup? Evidently the wooden one, isn’t it? It improves the aroma of the soup, not to mention the fact, my friend, that it won’t break the pot and so spill the soup, put out the fire, and deprive the prospective diners of a splendid soup. But since the golden one would do all that, to my mind, unless you raise any objections, we have to say that the wooden ladle is more appropriate than [291a] the golden one.
HIPPIAS: Yes, it is, Socrates. But for my part, I wouldn’t carry on a conversation with someone who asks this sort of question.
SOCRATES: Quite right, my friend: it wouldn’t be proper for you to be infected by these sorts of terms, with your fine clothes, your fine shoes2 and your reputation for wisdom among all the Greeks. But it’s no trouble for me to associate with the fellow. So, for my sake, clue me up in advance [b] by answering him. ‘If the wooden one is more appropriate than the golden one,’ he’ll say, ‘then mustn’t it also be finer, since you agreed, Socrates, that what is more appropriate is finer than what is inappropriate?’ We must agree, mustn’t we, Hippias, that the wooden one is finer than the golden one?
HIPPIAS: Do you want me to give you a definition of fineness which will save you from a lengthy discussion, Socrates?
SOCRATES: By all means, but not until you’ve told me which of those [c] two ladles I should name in my reply as appropriate and finer.
HIPPIAS: All right, if you insist: tell him it’s the one made out of wood.
SOCRATES: Now go on with what you were about to say. You see, if I avail myself of your last solution and say that fineness is gold, it will, in my judgement, be proved that gold is no more fine than wood. But how do you define fineness now?
Again, Hippias begins with some progress, since he at last comes up with a universal as his definition, and now understands that whatever he defines as F must never be not-F. But in fact he fails to satisfy this criterion. He defines fineness as a number of things drawn from standard Greek sentiments about what is fine and about the benefits of old age. He expects this to satisfy the criterion by gaining universal approbation for his definition. But Socrates never thought that the majority opinion was necessarily right, and he quickly demolishes this attempt by Hippias, using arguments similar to those of the previous two sections, and without having to argue that Hippias’ definition patently fails to be unitary (see Section G) and that it commits an obvious petitio principii by using the term ‘fine’ in a definition of fineness.
HIPPIAS: I’ll tell you. What you’re after, I think, for your answer, is [d] fineness which is such that it will never under any circumstances seem contemptible to anyone.
SOCRATES: Exactly, Hippias; now you’ve got it. Fine!
HIPPIAS: Listen, then. I assure you that if any objection is raised against what I have to say, you may count me a complete ignoramus.
SOCRATES: Go on, please. I can hardly wait.
HIPPIAS: My view is everlastingly and universally applicable everywhere: the finest accomplishment is for a wealthy, healthy man, who has gained respect among the Greeks and attained old age, and has given his parents fine funerals on their deaths, to be given by his own children a [e] grand and fine burial.1
SOCRATES: Oh Hippias, Hippias! What a remarkably splendid statement! It really has done you proud. I am really and truly delighted that you seem to be doing all you can to come to my assistance. So kind of you! All the same, you should realize that we have left the enemy unscathed: he will now ridicule us more than ever.
HIPPIAS: Feeble ridicule, Socrates: if he can do nothing else but jeer at what I’ve said, then he’ll end up the butt of his own laughter and be ridiculed by the company himself. [292a]
SOCRATES: That’s possible; but if my intuition is right, it’s not impossible that he might do more than just ridicule me for this answer.
HIPPIAS: What do you mean?
SOCRATES: If he has a stick and I don’t get well out of his reach, he will try hard to beat me.
HIPPIAS: What? Is he in some sense your master? Won’t he be arrested and convicted for this? Or does Athens allow her citizens to commit unjustified [b] assault on one another, which is anarchy?
SOCRATES: No, of course she doesn’t.
HIPPIAS: So he’ll be punished for unjustified assault.
SOCRATES: I don’t think it would be unjustified, Hippias – no, if I gave that answer, it would be justified, in my opinion.
HIPPIAS: I too think it’d be justified, Socrates. Who am I to gainsay your opinion?
SOCRATES: Do you want me to spell out why I myself think the assault would be justified if I gave that answer? Will you let me get a word in, or are you too going to assault me without a hearing?
HIPPIAS: No, it would be monstrous of me not to listen, Socrates, [c] What argument do you have to offer?
SOCRATES: I’ll tell you, and I’ll imitate him as I did before, so that I will be the object of his harsh, uncouth words, rather than you of mine. I’m sure this is what he’ll say: ‘Tell me, Socrates, do you suppose a thrashing would be unjustified if in singing such a tasteless, long dithyramb1 you were way out of tune with the question?’ ‘What do you mean?’ I’ll ask. ‘What do I mean?’ he’ll rejoin. ‘Are you incapable of remembering that I keep asking about fineness itself, whose presence makes anything [d] fine, be it stone, wood, man, god, action or lesson? My question, man, is what fineness itself is, but I can’t get that through to you. You might just as well be a stone here beside me, and a dense one at that,2 for all the ears and brain you’ve got.’ Wouldn’t you be annoyed, Hippias, if I took fright and said: ‘But that’s how Hippias defined fineness, even though I kept [e] asking him the same question, namely, what is universally and everlastingly fine.’ Well? Won’t you be annoyed if I say that?
HIPPIAS: I am confident, Socrates, That I have specified what is universally fine and will be accepted as such.
SOCRATES: ‘Will it also be fine in the future?’ he’ll ask. ‘For fineness is everlastingly fine, of course.’
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: ‘And was in the past as well?’ he’ll add.
HIPPIAS: Yes, in the past as well.
SOCRATES: ‘Did your visitor from Elis,’ he’ll say, ‘also claim that it would have been fine for Achilles to be buried after his parents, or for his grandfather Aeacus, or any other descendant of the gods? And what about the gods themselves?’1 [293a]
HIPPIAS: What? This is the blessed limit!2 These questions of his are Profane, Socrates.
SOCRATES: But it is not particularly profane to answer yes when the question is asked by someone else, is it?
HIPPIAS: Maybe.
SOCRATES: ‘Well maybe,’ he will continue, ‘you are the one who is claiming that it is universally and everlastingly fine to be buried by one’s children and to bury one’s parents. But “universally” doesn’t exclude Heracles3 and all the others we mentioned a moment ago, does it?’
HIPPIAS: I didn’t mean to include the gods.
SOCRATES: ‘Nor the heroes, it seems.’ [b]
HIPPIAS: Not when they are children of gods.
SOCRATES: ‘But when they aren’t?’
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: ‘It seems to follow from your argument that among the heroes it is terrible, irreverent and contemptible for Tantalus, Dardanus and Zethus, but fine for pelops and anyone else with similar parentage.’4
HIPPIAS: I agree.
SOCRATES: ‘You are contradicting yourself,’ he’ll argue. ‘Previously you denied that being buried by one’s children after burying one’s parents is ever contemptible for anyone. Since it is apparently even more impossible [c] for this to be universally fine, then it has suffered the same fate as our girl and pot before: in a still more absurd way it is fine for some but not for others. Even today, Socrates,’ he’ll add, ‘you are still unable to define fineness when asked to do so.’ He’ll be justified in telling me off if I answer him as you’ve suggested.
In Section C the possibility was raised that whatever is fine is appropriate for its situation. Socrates now, in the person of his alter ego, proposes that appropriateness is the definition of fineness. But this is briefly claimed to be wrong. Appropriateness, it is argued, either makes things seem fine, or it actually makes things fine. Hippias first suggests that it makes things seem fine (294a), but Socrates argues that whatever fineness is, it must make things genuinely be fine, whether or not they appear, or are seen, to be fine.
Hippias next (294c) suggests that appropriateness makes things both appear and be fine. Socrates replies that the two – both appearing and being fine – do not necessarily occur together: Hippias’ suggestion begs the question as to why fine things are sometimes recognized as fine, but sometimes not. He must still choose between being or seeming fine. Not unnaturally, given that appropriateness is contextually determined, he opts for the notion that appropriateness merely allows things to seem fine. This leaves all the cases where fine things are not universally recognized as fine uncatered for; so the definition of fineness as appropriateness fails.
The argument is neat, but flawed, from our point of view, because we want to say that fineness is an aesthetic quality: it lies in the eye of the beholder. There seems to be little sense in the notion that something is fine, if in fact no one recognizes it as such. Plato stresses cases where things are fine but are not universally recognized as such – but what has universal recognition got to do with it? However many people see X as fine, X is fine for them; if no one sees X as fine, X is not fine for them.
SOCRATES: Usually, Hippias, this is more or less how he talks to me, [d] but sometimes it is as if he takes pity on my lack of experience and learning, and makes a positive suggestion himself- he might ask whether I think fineness, or whatever else happens to be the subject of his inquiry and our conversation, is such-and-such.
HIPPIAS: Could you be more specific, Socrates?
SOCRATES: All right. ‘My dear Socrates,’ he might say, ‘please don’t give any more answers as utterly foolish and demonstrably mistaken as these were. But see whether you think the following suggestion is fine, [e] which in fact we touched on a short while ago when we were saying, during one of the answers, that gold is fine for things for which it is appropriate, but not for things for which it is not, and so on for any other case where this feature is present. What is this thing, appropriateness, in itself? What is its essential nature? See whether it might in fact be fineness.’ Now, I can never think of anything to say on these occasions, so I tend to acquiesce; but do you think appropriateness is fineness?1
HIPPIAS: Absolutely, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Let’s investigate the issue, to make sure we’re not somehow misled.
HIPPIAS: Yes, we should.
SOCRATES: Well then, what do we think about appropriateness? Is it that which by coming to be present in anything makes that thing seem [294a] fine, or actually be fine, or neither?
HIPPIAS: I think it’s what makes things seem fine. for example, well-fitting clothes or shoes make even someone gawky look finer.
SOCRATES: So if appropriateness makes things appear finer than they are, then in a sense it misleads us about fineness, and can’t be our quarry, Hippias, can it? I mean, our quarry has always been whatever is responsible for all fine things being fine, analogous to excess, thanks to which all [b] big things are big.2 Excess is what makes anything big; even if something doesn’t look big, but does have excess, it is necessarily big. Similarly the question is, leaving appearances aside, what fineness could be, thanks to which anything is fine. It can’t be appropriateness, if you’re right that it makes things seem finer than they are and prevents things from being seen as they are. No, we must try to say what it is that makes things really fine, leaving appearances aside, as I said just now. That’s our quarry, if [c] it’s fineness we’re after.
HIPPIAS: But Socrates, the presence of appropriateness makes things both actually be and appear fine.
SOCRATES: Is it then impossible for things which are in fact fine not to appear fine, given the presence of what causes the impression?
HIPPIAS: Impossible.
SOCRATES: So it must be the case, Hippias, that everything which is in fact fine – a law, say, or a practice – is thought to be fine, and universally and everlastingly appears so. But is this the case, or the exact opposite, [d] that ignorance prevails and that such things are the prime cause of strife and contention in the private affairs of individuals and in the public life of states?
HIPPIAS: The latter, rather, Socrates: ignorance prevails.
SOCRATES: But it wouldn’t if the appearance were present;1 and it would be present if appropriateness were fineness and caused things to appear fine as well as be so. Therefore there are two possibilities: either appropriateness is what makes things fine, in which case it is our quarry, [e] fineness, but isn’t what makes them appear fine; alternatively, appropri ateness is what makes things fine, in which case it isn’t our quarry, fineness. For fineness makes things actually fine, but the cause of things being fine is necessarily different from the cause of their appearing fine2 “or anything else, for that matter. So we must choose whether we think that appropriateness is what makes things appear fine or actually be fine.
HIPPIAS: Appear, I think, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Damn! That means that knowledge of what fineness is has eluded us, Hippias, since appropriateness has turned out not to be identifiable with fineness.
HIPPIAS: Yes it has, Socrates, it has indeed; and I find that most peculiar.
The suggestion that fineness is usefulness is reached by typically Socratic induction from a few examples. However, it is argued that something may be useful for bad consequences, which of course is not fine, so the definition needs qualification. The qualified definition, then, is that fineness is ‘usefulness and ability for good action’, i.e. benefit. This receives most unsatisfactory treatment. From the uncontroversial premisses that benefit produces good, and that a producer and its product are different, Socrates draws the mistaken conclusion that fine-ness (benefit) cannot be good, which is intuitively absurd, and the definition is accordingly rejected. But if this conclusion were legitimate, it would also follow that heat cannot be produced by something hot! Socrates is being made to commit the fallacy of confusing identity and attribution: even if fineness is not identical to goodness, which it produces, it may still be good. He equivocates, therefore, on the word ‘different’: even if a cause is different from (not identical to) its product, it is not necessarily different from (not similar to) its product.
SOCRATES: But we mustn’t give up the chase yet, my friend. Uncovering [295a] what fineness is isn’t quite hopeless yet.
HIPPIAS: Of course not, socrates. It’s really quite easy. I’m sure that after I’d thought it over for a bit, in peace and quiet, I could give you them ost precise of precise definitions.
SOCRATES: Hey, Hippias, no boasting! You can see how much trouble our quarry has already caused us, and I’m afraid that if it gets angry, it will run even further away. But this is nonsense – I’m sure that on your [b] own you would easily hunt it down, but please could you do so while I’m here, or, if you prefer, let’s search together, as we did just now. A successful search would be the finest thing of all; but if that doesn’t happen, I suppose I shall reconcile myself with my lot, and you will go elsewhere and have no difficulty in discovering it. But remember, if we find it now, then of course I won’t later have to bother you by asking what it was that you found by yourself. So please consider now what you think fineness itself is. I propose that it is – please concentrate to make sure I’m not [c] talking nonsense – I mean, let’s take anything useful to be fine. My thinking is this: we don’t call ‘fine’ eyes which we think are incapable of sight, but those which are capable of, and useful for, sight. Isn’t that so?
HIPPIAS: YES.
SOCRATES: The same goes for the whole body: we call it ‘fine for running’ or ‘for wrestling’. Or again, take any living creature – a fine horse, cock or quail;1 take any artefact; take any vehicles for land, and [d] boats and ships on the sea; yes, and take any instrument, whether it is musical or used in some other skill; and, if you like, take practices and laws – all of these we invariably call ‘fine’ in the same sense. We consider the nature, construction or constitution of each of them, and call it ‘fine’ if it is [e] useful in some way or for some purpose or at some time; but if it is useless in all these respects, we call it ‘contemptible’. Don’t you agree, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: I do.
SOCRATES: So are we right in saying that it is in fact pre-eminently what is useful that is fine?
HIPPIAS: Yes, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Isn’t anything useful to the extent that it is capable of performing its particular function, but useless if incapable?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: So ability is fine, inability contemptible?
HIPPIAS: Most certainly. Many things provide adequate evidence of [296a] this, Socrates, but especially state affairs. Political ability in the affairs of one’s own state is the finest thing, inability the most contemptible.
SOCRATES: That’s well said. Heavens above, Hippias! Does this explain why expertise is the finest thing, ignorance the most contemptible?
HIPPIAS: Of course, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Whoa there, my friend! I’m apprehensive about all this.
HIPPIAS: Why, Socrates? Your argument has made fine strides. [b]
SOCRATES: I hope so, but let’s examine this point together: could anything be done with a total lack of the know-how and ability to do it?
HIPPIAS: Of course not.
SOCRATES: Therefore isn’t it the case that even errors and unintentional misdeeds and actions1 could never happen unless people were capable of them?2
HIPPIAS: Obviously.
SOCRATES: But people are capable of doing something thanks to ability – I mean, it couldn’t be thanks to inability. [c]
HIPPIAS: No, of course it couldn’t.
SOCRATES: Therefore every action is the result of the ability to do that action?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Bad actions and unintentional errors are far more common among humans than good ones, from childhood onwards.
HIPPIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Well then, shall we describe this ability as fine? Shall we say that things whose usefulness is to contribute towards some bad result are fine? Or would that be quite wrong? [d]
HIPPIAS: Quite wrong, I think, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Therefore, Hippias, ability and usefulness are apparently not fineness.
HIPPIAS: They are, if ability is ability for good, and usefulness contributes to that sort of result, Socrates.1
SOCRATES: Anyway, our original unqualified proposition, that ability and usefulness are fineness, has come to nothing. What about usefulness and ability for good action? Was this the definition of fineness that we actually had in the back of our minds, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: I think so. [e]
SOCRATES: ‘Beneficial’ is another way of putting it, isn’t it?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: In that case it’s because they are beneficial that fine bodies, fine laws, expertise and everything we mentioned a short while ago are fine.
HIPPIAS: Obviously.
SOCRATES: Apparently, then, benefit is fineness, Hippias.
HIPPIAS: Absolutely, socrates.
SOCRATES: Now, benefit is what produces good.
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And a producer is the same as a cause, isn’t it?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So fineness is a cause of goodness.
HIPPIAS: Yes. [297a]
SOCRATES: Now a cause, Hippias, is different from that of which it is the cause. I mean, a cause can’t be the cause of a cause.2 Look at it this way: we have demonstrated that a cause is productive, haven’t we?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: The product of a producer is only what is generated; it is not the producer.
HIPPIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Therefore what is generated is different from the producer.
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Therefore a cause is not a cause of a cause, but of what is generated by it. [b]
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: If, then, fineness is a cause of good, goodness would be generated by fineness. And it apparently follows that when we pursue wisdom or any other “fine” thing, what’s really stimulating us is its product or offspring, goodness. The conclusion seems to follow that fineness is in the position of father, as it were, of goodness.
HIPPIAS: Certainly. A fine argument, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Is this a fine argument too, that a father isn’t his son, nor a son his father?
HIPPIAS: Yes. [c]
SOCRATES: And a cause isn’t its product, nor a product its cause?
HIPPIAS: True.
SOCRATES: Good heavens, my friend! Fineness, then, isn’t good, nor is goodness fine. Don’t you think that is ruled out by our argument?
HIPPIAS: Good heavens, yes, it seems so!
SOCRATES: Would we be prepared to deny, without qualms, that fineness is good and goodness fine?
HIPPIAS: Good heavens, no, not without considerable qualms.
SOCRATES: Good heavens, Hippias, I agree: I am less satisfied with this proposition than any other we’ve come up with.1 [d]
HIPPIAS: I don’t doubt it.
SOCRATES: So instead of being the finest argument, as we thought before, the proposition that benefit is fine – that is, that usefulness and ability for good action are fine – seems likely to be more absurd than our first propositions, if that is possible, when we thought that the girl and our other earlier candidates were fineness.2
HIPPIAS: It seems so.
The argument which is supposed (erroneously, as it happens) to refute this definition looks at first sight somewhat daunting, but is actually quite straightforward: it is simply long-winded and contains digressions. There are two crucial premisses: (1) the hypothesis that visual and auditory pleasures are fine; (2) the fact that the property of being fine is one which, if it obtains for a pair, also obtains for each member of that pair. It is argued that these two points are incompatible. The property of being visual and auditory only obtains for the pair, not for each member of the pair, as it would have to if the property in question were fineness; so the definition is rejected. The error here is confusing ‘and’ and ‘and/or’. The original hypothesis used ‘and’ in the sense of ‘and/or’: visual and/or auditory pleasures are fine; hence it is agreed that each individually is fine as well as the pair (299c). But the later stages of the argument take ‘visual and auditory’ to join the two terms together inseparably.
Apart from this illogicality, there are two oddities about the argument. The first is its bare formality: if, as is agreed at the outset, both the pair of pleasures and each pleasure are fine, then the search for fineness is the search for the common feature responsible for their fineness (300a). But rather than pursue this, Plato rejects the hypothesis on purely formal (even if illogical) grounds.
Perhaps the reason for this is to be found in considering the second oddity, which is the restriction to aesthetic pleasure. At 298b–d Plato deliberately skates over more refined kinds of pleasure, which it is clear from other dialogues he would include as fine. In other words, the definition is at best only partial. So perhaps he is content with a purely formal rebuttal, partly because the definition is not offered seriously in the first place, but mainly because it raises the formal issue of unity of definition (see p. 227).
SOCRATES: Well, I don’t know which way to turn any more, Hippias – I’m stuck. Do you have anything to say?
HIPPIAS: Not just at the moment, but, as I said a little while ago, I’m [e] sure I’ll come up with something after I’ve thought it over.
SOCRATES: I think I’m too eager for knowledge to be able to bear the delay. And in fact I might have just made some headway. What about this idea? If we were to call ‘fine’ whatever gives us pleasure – I don’t mean all pleasures, but auditory and visual ones1 – could we defend that position at all? It’s certainly true, Hippias, that we get pleasure from seeing fine [298a] people, patterns, pictures and images, and that fine sounds, music in general, speeches and stories have the same effect. So, if we were to answer that insolent fellow by saying: ‘Sir, fineness is auditory and visual pleasure’, don’t you think we’d check his insolence?
HIPPIAS: Well, I think that now you’ve given an excellent definition of fineness. [b]
SOCRATES: But Hippias, will we claim that fine practices and laws are fine because they give auditory or visual pleasure? Or are they of a different type?2
HIPPIAS: Perhaps he’ll overlook these cases, Socrates.
SOCRATES: By the Dog,1 Hippias, no, he won’t, and he’s the last person to whom I would want to talk rubbish and to pretend I have a point when I don’t.
HIPPIAS: Who is he?
SOCRATES: The son of Sophroniscus, who would no more allow me to get away with these assertions as long as they remain unexamined than to [c] talk as if I had knowledge that I don’t have.2
HIPPIAS: Well in fact, since you mention it, I too think that laws are another story.
SOCRATES: Tread carefully, Hippias: we’re in danger of imagining that we’re making some headway, when in fact we’ve fallen into the same difficulty about fineness as just now.3
HIPPIAS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: I’ll tell you my impression, for what it’s worth. It’s not impossible that laws and practices might turn out to be within the range [d] of our sensations of hearing and sight; but let’s leave aside the question of laws and go along with our account of fineness as pleasure which arises through these sensations. If our familiar adversary, or anyone else, were to ask us: ‘Why, Hippias and Socrates, do you isolate that sort of pleasure as fine? Why are you denying that food, drink, sex and so on, which [e] are pleasant to other senses, are fine? Are you denying that they are evenpleasant – that is, are you saying that only sight and hearing involve pleasures?’ What shall we reply, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: That the other senses too involve very great pleasures, Socrates, of course. That’s altogether undeniable.
SOCRATES: ‘Well then,’ he’ll ask, ‘if they are all pleasures equally, why do you refuse the latter set the designation and not allow them to be fine?’ ‘Because,’ we will reply, ‘it would be utterly ridiculous to substitute “fine” [299a] for “pleasant” in the case of eating or a pleasant smell. As for sex, everyone would contend that, while it is extremely pleasant, it should be indulged in, if at all, in secret, because it is a highly contemptible sight.’ To this, Hippias, he might perhaps rejoin: ‘I too can see why you have an ingrained distaste for calling these pleasures fine, because people don’t think they are. But I was asking you what is fine, not what is commonly held to be [b] fine.’ I imagine our response will be to restate our original hypothesis: ‘Our proposition is that the visual and auditory subset of pleasure is fine.’ Do you have an alternative way of handling the argument, Hippias? What else are we to say?
HIPPIAS: Nothing, Socrates: that’s exactly the necessary response.
SOCRATES: ‘A fine sentiment,’ he’ll say. ‘Now, doesn’t it obviously follow that if visual and auditory pleasure is fine, any other sort of pleasure is not fine?’ Shall we agree? [c]
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: ‘Is visual pleasure aurally pleasant as well,’ he’ll ask, ‘or auditory pleasure visually as well?’ ‘If we’ve understood your question,’ we’ll reply, ‘the answer is “no”: it’s impossible for either of them to be doubly pleasant like that. Our proposition was that both of these pleasures are fine, and also that each of them is fine just as it is.’ Won’t that be our answer?
HIPPIAS: Certainly. [d]
SOCRATES: ‘Does any pleasure, qua pleasure, differ from any other?’ he’ll ask. ‘I don’t mean in terms of intensity or degree, but do pleasures differ in the sense that one is, and another is not, a pleasure?’ We think not, don’t we?
HIPPIAS: Right.
SOCRATES: ‘So,’ he’ll say, ‘you gave preference to these pleasures for some reason other than just that they are pleasures, didn’t you? You noticed that both of them differ from other pleasures in some respect, in [e] virtue of which you are calling them fine. I mean, it is not, of course, qua visual that visual pleasure is fine: if that were the case, the other kind, auditory pleasure, could never be fine, since it isn’t visual pleasure.’ ‘You’re right,’ we’ll say, won’t we?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: ‘Nor again is it qua auditory that auditory pleasure happens [300a] to be fine, which would debar visual pleasure from being fine, since it isn’t auditory pleasure.’ Shall we say that this is right, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: ‘Now, your claim is that both are fine.’ Yes?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: ‘So there is a common feature responsible for their being fine, which both of them share and each of them also has individually. Otherwise it wouldn’t be the case that both are fine and that each is fine.’[b] Give me your answer as if I were him.
HIPPIAS: Very well: I think you’re right.
SOCRATES: So, if both of these pleasures have an attribute which neither of them has separately, then it wouldn’t be thanks to this attribute that they are fine.
HIPPIAS: How could both have an attribute, Socrates – any actual attribute you like – which neither has separately?1
SOCRATES: Impossible, you think? [c]
HIPPIAS: If it were possible, then I wouldn’t have thorough experience of these matters and familiarity with the terms of the discussion.
SOCRATES: Pleasantly put, Hippias! Well, this must be nonsense, but I think there’s a chance that I can perhaps see an example of what you say is impossible.
HIPPIAS: No chance, Socrates; you’re obviously mistaken.
SOCRATES: Well actually, many examples come to my mind, but I distrust them, because they don’t occur to you, and your expertise has earned you more money than anyone alive,2 while I’ve earned nothing. In [d] fact, so many striking examples occur to me that I’m wondering whether you’re playing games with me, my friend, and tricking me on purpose.
HIPPIAS: You’ll have finer knowledge than anyone whether or not I’m playing games, Socrates, when you try to describe these notions of yours and are shown to be talking nonsense. It’s quite impossible – you’ll never find an attribute which neither you nor I have, but which both of us have.
SOCRATES: Are you sure, Hippias? I suppose you’ve got a point, but [e] I don’t understand. Let me explain more clearly what I’m getting at: it seems to me that both of us together may possess as an attribute something which I neither have as an attribute nor am (and neither are you); and, to put it the other way round, that neither of us, as individuals, may be something which both of us together have as an attribute.
HIPPIAS: Socrates, this is apparently even more preposterous than the response you made a little while ago.3 Look here: if both of us are just, then each of us must be too, surely? If each of us is unjust, aren’t both too? If both are healthy, isn’t each too? Or if each of us were tired, [301a] wounded, bruised, or had any other attribute, then wouldn’t both of us also have this attribute? Or again, if both of us happened to be golden, silver, ivory, or well-born, if you like, or clever, or respected – yes, or old or young or anything else which man can be, isn’t there an overwhelming necessity that each of us would be too?
SOCRATES: Yes, absolutely. [b]
HIPPIAS: The fact of the matter is, Socrates, that you and your usual interlocutors fail to take account of things at the general level: your method of analysis is to isolate fineness or whatever it may be, and dissect it verbally; so of course these obvious points pass you by, and you fail to take account of the continuity of physical reality.1 Your oversight in the present case is so great that you think there is some attribute or essential quality which obtains simultaneously for both the things we’ve been talking about, but not for each individually – or conversely, for each but not for both. How [c] mindless, careless, senseless and thoughtless can you get!2
SOCRATES: That’s in keeping with the saw one keeps on hearing, Hippias: ability, not desire, dictates human achievement. But your constant criticism is helpful. I mean, just now, before your scolding about how foolishly we were conducting ourselves – well, shall I tell you even more of what we thought on this issue, or should I keep quiet? [d]
HIPPIAS: Go ahead, if you want, Socrates, just so long as you understand that you’ll be speaking to an expert: I know all the ways discussions are conducted.
SOCRATES: Yes, I do want to. You see, before you spoke, my friend, we were so inane as to believe that each of us – you and I – is one, but that both of us together, being two not one, are not what each individual is. See how stupid we were! But now we know better: you’ve explained that if both together are two, then each individual must be two as well; and if [e] each individual is one, both must be one as well. I mean, that necessarily follows from Hippias’ theory of ‘continuous’ reality, which entails that whatever both are, each is too, and vice versa. So here I sit, a new convert. Please refresh my memory, though, Hippias: are you and I one each or two each?
HIPPIAS: What do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Just what I said. If there’s a lack of clarity, it’s because I’m wary of provoking you when you think you’ve made a good point. But [302a] still I must ask you again: isn’t each of us one? Doesn’t each of us have the attribute of being one?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: So each of us, qua one, must also be numerically odd – or don’t you think that one is odd?
HIPPIAS: I do.
SOCRATES: Are both the two of us together odd as well, then?
HIPPIAS: Impossible, Socrates.
SOCRATES: In fact we’re even, aren’t we?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Surely the fact that both of us together are even doesn’t make each of us individually even, does it?
HIPPIAS: Of course not. [b]
SOCRATES: There can, then, contrary to your recent assertion, be no absolute necessity that each of us is what both are, and vice versa.
HIPPIAS: Yes, in those sorts of cases, but not in the ones I was talking about before.
SOCRATES: That’s all I need, Hippias: it’s enough that sometimes the one thing is obviously the case, sometimes the other. You see, if you remember the origin of this discussion, I was saying that visual and auditory pleasures cannot be fine thanks to some attribute they each have but don’t together, or both have but don’t individually, but rather thanks to [c] what they both have together and each has individually, because you agreed that they are both fine together and that each individually is fine. That is why I thought that if they are both fine, it must be thanks to an essential quality which applies to both of them, rather than thanks to something which one or the other of them lacks. And I haven’t changed my mind. So go back to the beginning, as it were: if visual and auditory pleasures are fine together and individually, then doesn’t the cause of their [d] fineness apply to them together and individually?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Can it be the fact that they are each and both pleasure that is responsible for their being fine? Wouldn’t that imply that all other pleasures are no less fine, since, if you remember,1 we demonstrated that all pleasures are equally pleasures?
HIPPIAS: I remember.
SOCRATES: Instead we claimed that they are fine because they are visual and auditory. [e]
HIPPIAS: Yes, we did.
SOCRATES: Now, make sure I get this right. If my memory serves me well, the idea was that only the visual and auditory aspect of pleasure is fine.
HIPPIAS: That’s right.
SOCRATES: Now this attribute1 only applies to both the senses, doesn’t it, not to each individually? I mean, as I said before, it’s not that each individual pleasure is caused by both the senses together, but the pair of both pleasures together (not each individually) is caused by both the senses together.2 Isn’t that the case?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Therefore, this is not what is responsible for each being fine, since it doesn’t apply to each of them (for ‘both’ does not apply to each); therefore we may say ex hypothesi that both are fine, but not that each is fine. Aren’t we forced to that conclusion? [303a]
HIPPIAS: I suppose so.
SOCRATES: Are we to say, then, that both together are fine, but each individually isn’t?
HIPPIAS: I don’t see any reason why we shouldn’t.
SOCRATES: I think I do, my friend: didn’t we find that some things – all the ones which you specified3 – when they are added to particular things, are such that if both have them, so does each, and vice versa?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: But the same wasn’t true for all the ones I specified, amongwhich were precisely ‘each’ and ‘both’. Right?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: In which class do you think fineness is, Hippias? Does it [b] belong among the things you mentioned? If you and I are each strong or just, so are we both; and if we both are, so is each of us. Is this also true for fineness, so that if you and I are each fine, so are we both, and vice versa? Or could an allowable analogy be even or irrational numbers, or any of the thousands of cases which I said seemed clear to me? An evenc number is the sum of either two odd or two even numbers; two irrationals [c] can make either rational or irrational numbers.4 In which category do you locate fineness? I wonder if you agree with my impression, which is that, as in all other similar cases, the idea that both of us may be fine without each of us being fine as well, or vice versa, is quite untenable. Do you agree with my impression, or prefer the alternative?
HIPPIAS: I agree with you, Socrates.
SOCRATES: Good – that ends our inquiry, Hippias. If fineness belongs to that category, then visual and auditory pleasure can’t be fine, since [d] being visual and auditory can only make both fine, not each individually, and this, as you conceded to me, Hippias, is unacceptable.
HIPPIAS: Yes, we’re agreed on that.
SOCRATES: So it is impossible that visual and auditory pleasure is fine, since that generates an impossible consequence.
HIPPIAS: True.
The discussion of aesthetic pleasures is allowed to trickle on by restating the important point, raised but neglected in the previous section, that rather than a purely formal rejection of the definition, the search should be for the common feature which makes these pleasures fine. It has already been agreed in the previous section that the common feature cannot simply be that they are both pleasures, because common sense (and argument elsewhere, e.g. Republic IX, Philebus) dictates that not all pleasures are fine and that aesthetic pleasures are somehow superior to others. So what is left? Only that they are ‘inoffensive’. Socrates equates inoffensive with ‘beneficial’, which is the fallacy of confusing a contradictory with a contrary: something inoffensive is not necessarily beneficial, just as something not hot is not necessarily cold. But given this equation he can reject the new definition of fineness as beneficial pleasure by referring back to Section F, where the idea that fineness is benefit was thrown out.
Finally, in the persons of Hippias and Socrates, Plato briefly contrasts the concern of the sophists with fame and politics with the Socratic search for the truth. The lesson he wants us to learn from this dialogue, as from other early dialogues, is that we use words like ‘fine’ as if we knew their meaning, when we do not. This pretence to knowledge is the chief target of Socrates, since it closes doors: his mission was to reopen them, to allow active searching to continue.
SOCRATES: ‘You’d better start again,’ he’ll say, ‘since you’ve got nowhere so far. How do you define this fineness which both pleasures [e] have, thanks to which you elevated them above other pleasures with the title “fine–?’ I think we’re bound to say, Hippias, that they, together and individually, are the most inoffensive pleasures and the best. Can you specify any other reason for their difference from other pleasures?
HIPPIAS: No, they really are the best.
SOCRATES: ‘In other words,’ he’ll say, ‘are you defining fineness as beneficial pleasure?’ ‘I suppose we are,’ I’ll reply. What about you?
HIPPIAS: Yes, I too.
SOCRATES: ‘Now, benefit is what causes goodness,’ he’ll say, ‘and we found recently that the cause and the product are different: doesn’t this thesis of yours come up against the earlier argument that, since each of [304a] them is different, goodness can’t be fine and fineness can’t be good?’1’ You‘re absolutely right,’ we’ll reply, Hippias, if we have any sense. I mean, it‘s inexcusable to disagree with a correct idea.
HIPPIAS: Listen, Socrates. This is all picking and whittling at words, as I said before – just splitting hairs. What else do you suppose it is? But the ability eloquently to deliver such a fine speech to the court, Council or whichever official body the speech is being delivered to, that you win [b] them over and carry off not the most trivial but the greatest of all prizes – the preservation of yourself, your property and your friends2 – this is both fine and valuable, and is what you should concentrate on. Forget all this nitpicking: if you continue to get involved in trivial nonsense, you’ll end up with a reputation for extreme stupidity.
SOCRATES: Hippias my friend, you are a lucky fellow, both because you know what people should occupy themselves with, and because you’ve done it all already – or so you say. But I am apparently held back by [c] some supernatural bad luck, which makes me wander around in perpetual perplexity, and when I display my perplexity to you clever people – well, when I do so, all I get is abuse from you. I mean, you all tell me, as you too have just been telling me, that what I’m involved in is silly, petty and worthless. But the problem is that once you’ve convinced me and I repeat your idea, that by far the most important thing is the ability eloquently to accomplish the delivery of a fine speech in court or any other assembly, I get every kind of abuse from whoever I’m with, but especially from this [d] constant inquisitor of mine – constant, because he happens to be a very close relative and to share the same house. So when I go home and he hears what I have to say, he asks me if I am not ashamed of my effrontery in discussing fine occupations, when questioning shows how obviously ignorant I am even about what fineness itself is. ‘And yet,’ he continues, how can you know whose speech or other action is finely formed, if you’re [e] ignorant about fineness? Don’t you think you might as well be dead, in such a condition?’ The upshot is, as I say, that I get slandered and abused not only by you, but by him too. But perhaps I should put up with it all – I wouldn’t be surprised if it did me good. I think, Hippias, that I have benefited from my conversation with the two of you, in the sense that I understand the meaning of the proverb, ‘Anything fine is difficult.’1
Hippias Minor is a simple dialogue, in the sense that it deals with a single area of Socratic thought – in fact, does so very methodically – without throwing up ramifications such as we had to consider with regard to Hippias Major. The arguments which constitute the dialogue are discussed in the running commentaries that precede each section of the text. In this introduction it only remains to consider whether or not Plato believes the paradoxical conclusions of the dialogue, that the liar and the truthful person are the same, and that the deliberate criminal is morally better than the unwitting one.
In the background of the work are the two so-called Socratic paradoxes: ‘Virtue is knowledge’ and ‘No one does wrong deliberately’. For a fuller exposition of these propositions see pp. 23–8, with Irwin, Chapter 3, Santas, Chapters 6–7 or Mackenzie, Chapter 9. It will be convenient to base my brief exposition on Socrates’ analogy between virtue and the various crafts and abilities, since this is so prominent in Hippias Minor all the crucial arguments are inferences from what obtains for various functional abilities to what obtains for morality.
The ‘craft analogy’, as it is known, is central to Socrates’ moral thought. Throughout the early Platonic dialogues he is portrayed searching for definitions of moral properties. He believes that correct definitions will stand as paradigms to enable him to recognize true instances of the property in question, and similarly he seeks, or bemoans the lack of, an expert in morality. Virtue, then, is analogous to the crafts in the sense that, just as they have functions whose success or failure is measurable, so too the proper definition of a virtue will enable one to measure one’s own or others’ actions; and craft is the prime area where experts may be found with the technical and teaching abilities of the order Socrates requires in the moral expert. Herein lies the first Socratic paradox, ‘Virtue is knowledge’, which means that virtue is craft-knowledge.
The main weakness (but see also p. 171) of the craft analogy that is relevant to Hippias Minor is the question of abuse. A craftsman achieves a result, but it is beyond the province of the craftsman simply qua crafts-man to guarantee that the result is used, by himself or by others, for good or ill. But by definition virtue must be used well, so the analogy totters. How could Socrates argue that virtue is always used well? The most obvious line of argument would be the Aristotelian one that the virtuous man naturally desires or chooses good (see also Xenophon, Memorabilia III. 9.5). But we see in Hippias Minor that Socrates ignores this possibility (see pp. 277, 288). There is no sign that he does so consciously, but it is arguable that he does, for, since such desire or choice cannot be a matter of the technical ability of a craftsman (it is something extraneous to craft), if Socrates had taken this line of argument, he would be relegating the craft analogy to the sidelines of his thought, rather than having it occupy a central position.
The more abstruse line of argument to which Socrates is committed, if he is to retain the craft analogy, is that knowledge is by itself sufficient for virtue – no extra desire or choice is required (pace Santas). Anyone with the relevant knowledge (which is knowledge of what is good and bad for oneself) will be virtuous. Herein lies the second Socratic paradox: ‘No one does wrong deliberately’ means that anyone only does wrong by mistaking where his good really lies; everyone aims for their own good and, given knowledge, would attain it. (On eudaimonia, the summum bonum according to Socrates, and whether virtue is instrumental to it, or actually constitutes it, see pp. 25–7.) The doctrine that knowledge (craft-knowledge) is sufficient for virtue lies within the parameters of the craft analogy.
Even with this brief introduction to the background, we should be in a position to decide whether or not Plato believes the paradoxical conclusions of Hippias Minor. Either view is in fact prima facie plausible, depending on which of the two Socratic paradoxes is stressed. If one stresses that virtue is craft-knowledge and, as Socrates argues, that all such abilities are abilities for good or ill, then it is arguable that it is the virtuous person, who has the ability, who is the most effective liar or criminal. On the other hand, if one stresses that no one does wrong deliberately, then it must follow that Plato disbelieves the conclusion which states that someone – in this case paradoxically the virtuous person – does wrong deliberately. In this case Hippias Minor must be seen as a reductio ad absurdum of the idea that wrong can be knowingly committed.
It is curious to see the two paradoxes ranged against each other in this way, when, as described previously, they were just two sides of the same coin: virtue is knowledge, therefore no one can knowingly do wrong. Probably a correct interpretation of the dialogue should not only produce evidence for which of the alternative views of Plato’s commitment to the conclusions is correct, but also argue that the Socratic paradoxes are not contradictory in this way – unless Plato is drawing out inconsistencies in Socrates’ thought; but this is unlikely since, in some form or other, Plato adheres to the Socratic paradoxes throughout his life.
Support for the view that Plato – or, in this instance, Socrates as reported by Plato – is prepared to accept the paradoxical conclusion, that the deliberate wrongdoer is better than the alternative, seems to come from Xenophon, Memorabilia IV.2.8–23, where Socrates argues that intentional injustice is possible only for a just person. But if we take this as evidence to show that Socrates accepted the paradoxical conclusion, we come up against Hippias Minor 376b, where Socrates cannot accept it.
Lest this develop into an impasse, it must immediately be noticed that Xenophon and Plato can be reconciled, and a correct interpretation of the dialogue be reached, because the conclusion in Hippias Minor is hypothetical: if a deliberate criminal were to exist, he would be a virtuous person. In other words, while it is true, as Xenophon reports, that intentional justice is only possible for a just person, nevertheless a just person who deliberately commits injustice cannot be found; so no one does wrong deliberately. The argument is a reductio ad absurdum: the conclusion supports the Socratic paradox by showing the idea of deliberate criminality to be absurd.
What about the other Socratic paradox, which, as we have seen, could have led Plato to endorse the conclusion of the dialogue? Given the interpretation that Plato could not accept a non-hypothetical version of the conclusion of the dialogue, and thereby supports the Socratic dictum that no one goes wrong deliberately, do we have to go further and interpret the dialogue as critical of the other Socratic dictum that virtue is knowledge? It does not seem to me that he is criticizing this dictum: at most he is testing the limits of the craft analogy which Socrates uses in conjunction with it. He is saying that moral knowledge is different from other crafts in that it cannot be used for ill. This limit, Plato seems to say, is necessary within Socrates’ thought, and the doctrine that knowledge is sufficient for virtue effectively embodies it. Similarly, at Republic 331e–336a, Plato has Socrates argue that justice differs from other crafts in that the just man is unable to do wrong.
The extent of this reflection on the craft analogy must not exaggeratedly be called criticism, as it often is. Plato is by no means damning the craft analogy. We can still maintain that in Hippias Minor he accepts it in toto: all crafts have the ability for good or ill in their sphere; morality has the same ability, but in its case the ability will simply not be put to bad use, and the deliberate criminal remains hypothetical. In this sense, while the conclusion of Hippias Minor is unacceptable, yet as a hypothetical conclusion it is acceptable. As Penner puts it, Socrates is saying that ‘justice is simply a very unusual art’ (p. 144). If Plato were rejecting the craft analogy, he would presumably be aware that he was doing so, since he is aware of the paradoxical nature of the conclusion and how it is reached; and even if we accept the wider consequence that he would in effect be rejecting a core of Socrates’ thought, we should also have to accept that he employs some grossly fallacious argumentation in order to do so, in particular the fallacy of secundum quid. But as I argue on p. 288, this fallacy is not present in a vicious form, and we can see why: because in Hippias Minor Plato maintains that virtue is a craft, something one can be good at.
We have seen, then, that Plato does not accept the final paradoxical conclusion of the dialogue (except in so far as it is hypothetical). What about the interim paradox at the end of Section B, that the liar and the truthful person are the same? It would be simple to say that in so far as this entails that the deliberate liar is superior to the unconscious liar, and is meant to support the main conclusion of the dialogue, Plato believes it to be as unacceptable as the main conclusion. But, surprisingly, we should pause before rushing into this interpretation. We should always be wary of imposing on Plato our own view that honesty is an integral part of morality. It is instructive to turn to Republic 382a–d, where the ignorant liar is disparagingly distinguished from the conscious liar (see also Republic 535e), and where Plato approves of judicious use of deliberate lies.
The conclusion of Section B, however, is quite different from this. If the argument of Section B had been couched entirely in terms of ability, then the conclusion would be that the person with the ability to lie is better than the person who is unable to lie (or tell the truth, for that matter); this would square with what is said in Republic, and it would not be clear that Plato would reject such a notion. But, as I argue on p. 277, the conclusion is meant to be more radical than that: it is that someone who deliberately exercises his talent for deceit is better than one who does not. This goes way beyond what is said in Republic: such regular deceit is not merely judicious use of deliberate lies, but something as immoral and unacceptable as the final conclusion of the dialogue. Hippias’ disapproving attitude towards deceit reflects not just common Greek morality, but Plato’s views too; the conclusion is unacceptable all round.
Finally, what shall we make of the dialogue as a whole? It comes across as somewhat naïve, which is a reason for dating it as one of the earliest Platonic pieces (written c. 395–390). The Socratic paradoxes require psychological, not just logical, justification: it needs to be argued, for instance (as it is in Protagoras and Gorgias), that passion never overcomes reason, so that it can fairly be claimed that no one desires wrong. Gorgias 467c ff., in particular, with its distinction of means and ends in relation to an individual’s intention, is an important advance. But this sort of psychological analysis would have led to the Aristotelian position of taking desire into consideration, and we have seen (p. 268) that this would be detrimental to the craft analogy. It is worth mentioning, however, that Santas does attribute this Aristotelian position to Socrates, and that one consequence of this would be to relieve Hippias Minor of all major fallacies, because he would not be confusing being morally good with being good at something. But there is no evidence in the dialogue that Socrates included desire in his purview. We must count this over-emphasis on man’s intellect as a central defect in Socrates’ moral thought, although, as Dihle records, this rationalism was shared by many Greek thinkers who tackled the problem of will. It is significant that later in his life, in Republic, Plato felt impelled to part company with Socrates on this issue: Plato’s triadic analysis of the ‘soul’ acknowledges that emotion can defeat reason.
A. Introduction
B. Achilles and Odysseus
C. Socrates on Homer
D. Intentional and Unintentional Misdeeds
SOCRATES
HIPPIAS: From Elis in the Peloponnese. Born c. 470, died c. 395 – in other words, a more or less exact contemporary of Socrates. He was a prominent sophist, offering tuition in a vast range of subjects (see Hip-pias Major 285c–1e, Hippias Minor 368b–d, Protagoras 318d–319a).
EUDICUS: Son of Apemantus; also mentioned at Hippias Major 286b, but otherwise unknown. Probably an Athenian gentleman and patron of the sophists.
The introductory conversation is remarkable only for its glimpses of the scene at a sophistic lecture (compare Protagoras), and for its evidence about the intellectual side of the Olympic Games. Any Greek could attend the Olympic festival, which was one of the most important panhellenic occasions. It was, then, an easy opportunity for the itinerant and cosmopolitan sophists to find a suitable audience ready made. It is likely that the sophists used to engage in formal debates there, as part of a regular competition to be judged by the audience; the rhapsodic contests mentioned at Ion 53Oa–b provide a parallel. Protagoras is said to have instituted such debates (Diogenes Laertius IX. 52); we hear of Gorgias speaking there (Phibstratus, Lives of the Sophists 9.5); and Lysias XXXIII.2 implies that lectures, at any rate, were a regular feature. The winner in such debates was the one who, within a set time-limit, refuted his opponent or reduced him to fallacy, paradox, solecism or babbling (Aristotle, De Sophisticis Elenchis 165b12–22). See the brilliant but sometimes fanciful account of such ‘eristic moots’ by Ryle.
Hippias’ oratory and arrogance are as prominent as in Hippias Major, and Socrates’ response is the same badinage. The introduction, taken with Hippias’ ineffectiveness in the rest of the dialogue, portrays him as a capable orator, but unable to cope with hard argument.
EUDICUS: Why on earth don’t you have anything to say, Socrates, [363a] after Hippias’ magnificent lecture?1 Don’t you find anything in his talk to praise, like the rest of us, or even to argue against, if there’s something you’re dissatisfied with? you needn’t worry: those of us who might have the best claim to an interest in philosophical discussion are on our own now.
SOCRATES: Well, Eudicus, it’s true that there are some questions I’d be glad to ask Hippias in connection with what he was just saying about [b] Homer. I remember Apemantus, your father, saying that the I liad was a finer poem of Homer’s than the Odyssey, to the extent that Achilles is better than Odysseus – he claimed that Achilles was the subject of the one poem, Odysseus of the other. So, if Hippias doesn’t mind, I’d love to pursue that topic and find out his thoughts on these two men – which does he say is better? For he’s already lectured to us at length on all sorts of [c] other topics in poetry, especially Homer.
EUDICUS: Of course Hippias won’t refuse to answer any question of yours. You’ll answer Socrates’ questions, Hippias, won’t you?
HIPPIAS: It would be monstrous of me to evade Socrates’ questions, Eudicus. After all, every time the Olympic Games are on, I leave my home in Elis and go to Olympia,1 to the sacred precinct there, and make myself [d] available to the assembled company of all the Greeks, to expound any subject on which I’ve got a lecture prepared, and to answer any question: anyone only has to ask.2
SOCRATES: What a happy feeling, Hippias, to enter the sacred precinct [364a] at every Olympic festival with such confidence in your mental expertise. I very much doubt that any athlete goes there to compete with such sanguine confidence in his physical prowess as you claim you have in your intelligence.
HIPPIAS: Naturally that’s how I feel, Socrates: ever since I began to compete at Olympia, I have never been up against anyone who could beat me at anything.
SOCRATES: What a splendid ornament to Elis, and to your family, your [b] reputation for wisdom must be, Hippias! But come, tell us about Achilles and Odysseus. Which of them do you think is better, and in what respect? You see, when you were delivering your lecture to the crowd of us indoors, I got a bit lost, since I didn’t want to question you – there were so many people in there, for one thing, and also I thought my questions would have interrupted your lecture. But now that there are fewer of us, I ask you, at Eudicus’ instigation, to explain clearly what you were saying about [c] these two men. On what grounds were you distinguishing them?
The aim of this section is to argue for the paradox that the truthful person and the liar are one and the same. When faced with a paradoxical conclusion such as this, we must ask three questions: How good is the argument? Is the paradox radical or only apparent? Does the author believe it? The answers hinge on a single issue: is the argument conducted entirely in terms of ability to lie and tell the truth? If it is, as has been argued by Weiss, then (a) the argument does not equivocate between taking a liar as one who habitually tells lies, and one who is merely capable of telling lies; (b) the paradox is defused since the conclusion says no more than that ability to lie and tell the truth go together; and (c), given (b), there is no reason for Plato to disbelieve the conclusion.
Unfortunately (because it is an attempt to salvage the argument), but fortunately (because it trivializes the conclusion – indeed, there would be no reason for Hippias to object to it as he does), this interpretation can only be maintained at some distance from the text. Hippias introduces the terms of the argument at 365b as indicative of Achilles’ and Odysseus’ characters: they are, respectively, characteristically or habitually honest and deceitful. Socrates proceeds to introduce the notion of ability and bolsters it up with a series of arguments from analogy, but reverts at the end of each analogy, and at the conclusion to the whole series, to talk of disposition, not ability: in each case he says ‘… is a liar’, not ‘… is capable of deceit’. In other words, while it is true that he is talking about successful lying (see especially 366e–367a), and that therefore the arguments from ability are relevant, the conclusion concerns not just someone with the ability to lie, but someone who regularly and habitually exercises this talent. It follows, then, that while each stage of the argument may be strong in itself (and see Santas, pp. 148–50), the conclusion falls foul of the Aristotelian criticism that someone who has the ability to lie may – in fact, invariably will – choose not to exercise this ability (see Nicomachean Ethics 1127b14–17). It also follows that Plato intends the conclusion to be radical, not trivial, since it is couched in terms of habit. My answer to the remaining question – whether Plato believes the paradox – is ‘no’, as argued on p. 270.
HIPPIAS: All right, Socrates. I don’t mind going through my views both on them and on others even more clearly than before. My claim is that of those who went to Troy, homer portrayed Achilles as the best, Nestor as the cleverest, and Odysseus as the most complex.
SOCRATES: Well, bless me, Hippias!1 Now, would you do me a favour? Please don’t laugh at me if I’m a bit slow at understanding what you say and keep asking questions, but try to be tolerant and considerate as you [d] answer them.
HIPPIAS: It would be monstrous behaviour on my part, Socrates, to educate others on these very points and to think that I deserve payment for it, and then not to be patient and tolerant in answering your questions.
SOCRATES: That’s very good of you. You see, I thought I understood your claim that Achilles is portrayed as the best and Nestor as the cleverest [e] in the poems, but, to tell the truth, I completely fail to understand what you mean by saying that the poet portrayed Odysseus as the most complex.1 Perhaps I’ll understand it better if you answer this question: isn’t Homer’s Achilles complex?
HIPPIAS: Not at all, Socrates: he’s the most straightforward, honest character. In the Prayers2 Homer makes them converse with each other and Achilles (as the poet has it) says to Odysseus: Great god-born son of Laertes, crafty Odysseus, I must tell you outright precisely [365a] what I will do and intend to accomplish.
For I hate as I hate the gates of Hades the man who conceals one thing in his heart while saying another. So I will tell you [b] what will come to pass.
In these lines the poet reveals each man’s character, since it’s Achilles he has speaking them to Odysseus: Achilles is honest and straightforward, while Odysseus is complex and deceitful.
SOCRATES: Now I think I see what you mean, Hippias. By ‘complex’ you seem to mean ‘deceitful’.
HIPPIAS: Certainly, Socrates: that’s how Homer portrays Odysseus in [c] many places in both the I liad and the Odyssey.
SOCRATES: I suppose, then, that Homer distinguished between honest and deceitful people, as not being the same.
HIPPIAS: Of course, Socrates.
SOCRATES: And that’s your opinion too, Hippias?
HIPPIAS: Most certainly: it would be monstrous to think otherwise.
SOCRATES: Well, let’s leave Homer out of this, since it’s impossible to question him about his poetic intentions in these lines;3 but you can answer [d] for Homer as well as yourself, since you’re obviously undertaking the responsibility of doing so, and you agree with Homer’s words as you see them.
HIPPIAS: All right; hurry up and ask whatever you want.
SOCRATES: Would you say that deceitful people are capable of action or, like invalids, incapable?
HIPPIAS: Extremely capable, I would say, especially at deceiving people.
SOCRATES: So your opinion, apparently, is that they are capable as well [e] as complex. Is that right?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Is it inane stupidity or a kind of unscrupulous wisdom which makes them complex and deceitful?
HIPPIAS: Unscrupulous wisdom – no doubt about it.
SOCRATES: Apparently, then, they are wise.
HIPPIAS: Yes indeed, too wise.
SOCRATES: If wise, do they know what they are doing, or not?
HIPPIAS: They know very well; that is why they are unscrupulous.
SOCRATES: Given this knowledge, are they ignorant or clever?
HIPPIAS: Clever, of course, at least in their sphere, deception. [366a]
SOCRATES: Wait a minute. Let’s review what you’re saying: liars are capable, wise, knowledgeable and clever at their falsehoods?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And liars are different from honest people – quite the opposite, in fact?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well then, your view is apparently that liars are to be ranked among capable, clever people.1
HIPPIAS: Right.
SOCRATES: In saying that liars are capable and clever at precisely their [b] lying, do you mean that they are capable or incapable of these lies of theirs in some situation when they choose?
HIPPIAS: Capable, in my opinion.
SOCRATES: So, to sum up, liars are those who are clever and are capable of lying.
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So someone who is incapable of lying and is ignorant could not be a liar.
HIPPIAS: Right.
SOCRATES: Now, ability is doing what you want, when you want – as you, for example, are able to write my name when you want. Leaving
aside exceptional factors like illness, which may limit action, wouldn’t [c] you call that ‘ability’?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Now, tell me, Hippias, you’re proficient at arithmetic, surely, aren’t you?
HIPPIAS: Particularly proficient, Socrates.1
SOCRATES: So if you were asked what 3 × 700 is, you would produce the true answer particularly quickly, wouldn’t you, if you wanted?
HIPPIAS: Of course. [d]
SOCRATES: Because your expertise and ability at it are outstanding?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And are you merely extremely clever and capable, or are you also particularly good at what you are extremely clever at – arithmetic, that is?
HIPPIAS: Yes, of course I’m particularly good, Socrates.
SOCRATES: So you have a pre-eminent ability to speak the truth in arithmetic, don’t you?
HIPPIAS: I think so. [e]
SOCRATES: And what about lies on the same subject? Please carry on with your frank and generous answers, Hippias. Suppose you’re asked how much 3 × 700 is and you want to lie – in fact, continually to refrain from the true answer. Would you always be the superlative, consistent liar about it, or would an ignoramus about arithmetic be better at lying about [367a] arithmetic than you, if you chose to? Wouldn’t the ignoramus often be misled by his ignorance and unwittingly tell the truth, if he stumbled on it, despite his intention to lie, while you, the expert, if you wanted to lie, could always do so consistently?
HIPPIAS: Yes, you’re right.
SOCRATES: So is arithmetic a subject in which a liar cannot lie, although he can in other cases?
HIPPIAS: No, he can certainly lie about arithmetic.
SOCRATES: May we further assume, then, Hippias, the existence of a liar about arithmetic?
HIPPIAS: Yes. [b]
SOCRATES: What would he be like? Doesn’t he have to have the ability to deceive, if he’s going to be a liar? You conceded this a short while ago when you said that he who cannot lie will never become a liar.1 Do you remember?
HIPPIAS: Yes, I do remember that being said.
SOCRATES: Now, didn’t you just now turn out to be pre-eminently capable of lying about arithmetic?
HIPPIAS: Yes, that’s another point that came up.
SOCRATES: And aren’t you also pre-eminently capable of telling the [c] truth about arithmetic?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: So pre-eminent ability to tell both lies and the truth about arithmetic go hand in hand – the same person, the arithmetician, who is good at the subject, has them both.
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So it turns out that, thanks to his ability, only a good arithmetician is a liar about arithmetic, doesn’t it? And he is also the one who is honest.
HIPPIAS:I suppose so.
SOCRATES: Do you realize, then, that both lying and honesty in this subject reside in the same person; an honest person is not better than a liar – he can’t be, because he is the same person, and is not in exactly [d] the opposite position, as you supposed a short while ago.2
HIPPIAS: I suppose you’re right, in this instance, at any rate.
SOCRATES: Do you want us to look at other areas too, then?
HIPPIAS: If you do.
SOCRATES: All right; are you proficient at geometry too?
HIPPIAS: I am.
SOCRATES: Well, isn’t it the case in geometry too that the same person, the geometer, is supremely capable of telling both lies and the truth about his diagrams?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And the geometer is the one who is good at the subject?
HIPPIAS: Yes. [e]
SOCRATES: So the good, clever geometer is supremely capable in both respects, isn’t he? Since he is capable of lying about diagrams, then if there is a liar in this subject, it is he, isn’t it, the one who is good – because someone bad, as we found, is incapable of lying? So this reaffirms our earlier conclusion that he who cannot lie will never become a liar.
SOCRATES: Well, let’s round off the investigation with astronomy, an area of expertise in which you consider yourself to be even more knowledgeable than you are in the ones we’ve already discussed, don’t you, Hippias? [368a]
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So isn’t the very same true in astronomy as well?
HIPPIAS: Probably, Socrates.
SOCRATES: In astronomy too, then, the good astronomer, with his ability to deceive, is a liar, if anyone is, since ignorance leads to inability.
HIPPIAS: I suppose that’s right.
SOCRATES: So astronomy is no exception: the same person is both honest and deceitful.
HIPPIAS: It would seem so.
SOCRATES: Now, Hippias, let’s not waste any more time: just look at branches of knowledge in general, to see if there are any exceptions. In [b] my hearing, you have bragged of being altogether more of an expert at more areas of expertise than anyone; I remember you in the agora by the bankers’ tables1 enumerating your considerable and enviable expertise. you said that once you went to Olympia with nothing on your person which you hadn’t made yourself. you started with the ring you were wearing, claiming to know how to engrave rings: not only it, but the rest [c] of your jewellery too, and your strigil-and-flask set2 – all your own work, you said. then you went on to the shoes you were wearing – cobbled by yourself, you claimed, and your cloak and tunic, woven by yourself. Then – and this struck everyone as most remarkable and as clear evidence of outstanding expertise – you said that although your tunic belt was in the persian style of the expensive kind, you had braided it yourself. But that wasn’t all. you had brought epic, tragic and dithyrambic3 poetry, you said, and many prose speeches in a variety of styles. and you had come [d] equipped not only with exceptional expertise in the areas I mentioned just before, but also in matters of rhythm, intonation,4 orthography and very many other things besides, I seem to remember – oh, but I was forgetting what was apparently your technique of remembering,5 on which you really pride yourself. I reckon I’ve probably forgotten lots of other things too!6 Anyway, as I say, look at your own skills – they would be enough, but [e] consider others’ skills too and tell me: given our conclusions, is there any area where honesty and lying do not go hand in hand in the same person? Call it what you will, expert or unscrupulous activity, but nowhere, my [369a] friend, will you find any exceptions, for none exist. Go on, see if you can.
HIPPIAS: I can’t, Socrates, at least not without further deliberation.
SOCRATES: Even that won’t help, in my opinion. But you should remember1 what the argument entails if I’m right, Hippias.
HIPPIAS: I don’t quite see what you’re getting at, Socrates.
SOCRATES: I suppose you’re not using your mnemonic technique – you obviously don’t think it’s called for. I’ll remind you: you know you said that Achilles was honest, Odysseus a liar and complex? [b]
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Well, it has been demonstrated that both lying and honesty reside in the same person. It follows that if Odysseus was a liar, he is honest too, and vice versa for Achilles: they are not different from each other, let alone opposite – they are alike. Now do you see?
In this section Socrates supports the paradoxical conclusion of the last section by reference to passages of Homer’s I liad. The argument must be taken with a considerable pinch of salt: Socrates is parodying the sophists’ literary studies of Homer by showing that Homer can be used to support almost any position. Compare Socrates’ parody of the sophists on the lyric poets at Protagoras 338e–347a. Both passages also reflect unfavourably on the use of both Homer and the lyric poets in traditional Greek education as bases of moral education. There is also probably a particular dig at Hippias, who was an acknowledged expert on Homer: at any rate, apart from Plato’s evidence of his concern with Homer, a near witness is Aristotle, Poetics 1461a21–3, where a minute change of accent on a single word is intended to preserve Zeus’ integrity according to Homer. (Aristotle wrongly attributes this to a certain Hippias of Thasos: our Hippias of Elis is more likely.)
This section leads into the next by widening the scope from honesty and dishonesty to morality in general, at 3716–3720. Hippias mentions the fundamental jurisprudential point that Hippias Minor appears to contravene: that the law is more lenient towards misdeeds performed in ignorance or from some external necessity.
Notice how Hippias is now moved to respond to Socrates’ badinage with personal attacks; and how Eudicus’ entry at the end of the section punctuates the dialogue: he initiated the first main argument (Section B), and he does the same for the second (Section D).
HIPPIAS: This is typical of your tortuous style of argument, Socrates. You isolate the most awkward point and tenaciously pick away at it, instead of coming to grips with the issue at the general level.1 Even now, [c] if you want, I shall prove satisfactorily and with plenty of evidence that Homer’s Achilles is truthful and better than Odysseus, who is cunning, often a liar, and worse than Achilles. Then, if you want, you can produce a counter-argument for Odysseus being better, so that our audience here will be in a better position to know which of us is more correct.2
SOCRATES: Listen, Hippias, I’m not disputing your superior cleverness. [d] I’m only following my usual practice of paying attention to any argument, especially from someone who strikes me as clever, and of questioning, examining afresh and checking his thesis, because I want to understand the point and hope by these means to do so. But if the speaker strikes me as second-rate, I’m not interested enough in his argument to ask further questions. You can tell whom I regard as clever by my persistent investigation of his argument, with an eye on the benefit to be gained from [e] learning something. So you see, it occurred to me just now, while you were speaking, that I think it highly unlikely that you are right about the lines you recently quoted to show that Achilles addresses Odysseus as two-faced, since there’s nothing in the lines which makes Odysseus, the ‘complex’ one, a liar, whereas Achilles turns out on your own argument [370a] to be complex, or a liar, at any rate. I mean, first he speaks the lines you recently quoted:
For I hate as I hate the gates of Hades the man who conceals one thing in his heart while saying another.
And he follows this a little later with the assertion that he will not be won [b] over by Odysseus and Agamemnon, and in fact will not remain in Troy at all, but, he says,3
Tomorrow, once I have sacrificed to Zeus and all the gods, and stocked my ships, I’ll launch them, and early in the morning, if you care to look, you’ll see my ships sailing on the fish-rich Hellespont, with my men eager at the oars. And if the great [c] Earthshaker grants me fair sailing, on the third day I will reach the fertile soil of Phthia.
And even before these passages, during his slating of Agamemnon, he said:1
And now I’m off to Phthia, since it is far better to go home with my beaked ships: I do not intend to remain here to lose face and pile up your spoils and wealth. [d]
But although on this occasion he made his declaration in the presence of the whole army, and to his own comrades on the other occasion, there is no sign of his either making any preparations or trying to launch his ships for a voyage home – see what a lordly disregard he has for telling the truth. Anyway, Hippias, I originally questioned you because I was puzzled about which of these two men the poet intended to be better, and because I [e] thought that both were particularly excellent, and it would be hard to decide their relative merit as regards virtue generally as well as truth and falsehood in particular, in which respect both are much of a muchness.
HIPPIAS: That’s because you’re no good as a researcher, Socrates: Achilles’ lies are obviously not premeditated. He doesn’t lie deliberately, but is forced to stay and help because of the army’s setbacks. But Odys-seus’ lies are deliberate and premeditated.
SOCRATES: You could be Odysseus yourself, Hippias: you’re deceiving me.
HIPPIAS: No, I’m not, Socrates. why? what makes you think so? [371a]
SOCRATES: Because you claim that Achilles’ lies were not premeditated, when Homer portrayed him not only as two-faced but as a deliberate illusionist. Why, he seems to be so much more astute than odysseus that his duplicity goes undetected by him: he has the audacity to contradict himself in odysseus’ hearing, and he gets away with it – at any rate, Odysseus doesn’t act as if he were noticing him lying: there’s no sign of him commenting on it. [b]
HIPPIAS: What passage do you mean, Socrates?
SOCRATES: Don’t you know that in a later speech, after he has told Odysseus that he would sail away at daybreak, he tells Ajax a different story, with no mention of sailing away?
HIPPIAS: Where?
SOCRATES: When he says:2 I will not trouble myself with bloody war until great Hector, the son of wise Priam, [c] has cut through the Greek army as far as the huts and ships of the Myrmidons, and brings fire to our fleet. As to him, for all his warlike spirit, I reckon he will be checked here, by my hut, my dark ship.
Do you really imagine, Hippias, that the son of Thetis, educated by Cheiron the sage,1 was so forgetful that one minute he was slating duplicity [d] in the most violent terms, but the next minute tells Odysseus that he will sail away, and Ajax that he will stay? Don’t you think this was intentional, in the sense that he regarded Odysseus as senile,2 and thought that thesewere just the tricks and lies to outwit him?
HIPPIAS: No, I don’t, Socrates. even in this case he was under pressure: this time his goodwill towards Ajax made him tell a different story [e] from the one he’d told Odysseus. But Odysseus’ honesty and lying are always equally premeditated.
SOCRATES: Then apparently Odysseus is better than Achilles.
HIPPIAS: Not in the slightest, Socrates.
SOCRATES: What do you mean? Wasn’t it recently proved that deliberate liars are better than unwitting ones?3
HIPPIAS: How on earth can criminals who deliberately premeditate and carry out bad acts be better than people with no such intentions? A [372a] crime, lie or any bad act performed in ignorance is accorded plenty of indulgence, and the laws are far more severe on deliberate misdeeds and lies than on unintentional ones.
SOCRATES: Do you see that I’m telling the truth, hippias, when I say that I’m persistent in questioning clever people? this is probably my only [b] good point: in other respects I’m pretty useless. I mean, I’m ignorant about the way things are, which just baffles me. I can easily prove this: whenever I meet anyone like you whose wisdom is famous and vouched for by all the Greeks, my ignorance becomes evident, because we disagreec on almost everything. what greater proof of ignorance can there be than [c] disagreement with experts? but, astonishingly, I have this single good point, my saving grace: I am humble enough to learn, so I probe and ask questions, and am extremely grateful to anyone who answers me. I always repay my debts by never passing the lesson off as a discovery of my own and so denying the fact that I have learned something. No, I extol the cleverness of my teacher as I explain what he taught me. To be specific now, I do not agree with your view; in fact, I strongly disagree. I don’t [d] propose to exaggerate my abilities: I am what I am, so I’m sure that this disagreement is my fault. My view is quite the opposite of yours: it is not those who unintentionally cause injury, commit crimes, tell lies, deceive and make mistakes who are better; no, those who intentionally do all this are better than those who unintentionally do so, in my opinion. But it’s true that, obviously under the influence of my ignorance, I chop and change, and even hold the opposite opinion sometimes. But the situation at the moment is that I’m suffering a sort of seizure: I think that those [e] who intentionally make mistakes are better than those who do so unintentionally. I blame this current state of mine on the discussion we were having, which, for the time being, makes anyone who unintentionally does any of the things we mentioned seem worse than those who mean to do them. So do me a favour: don’t refuse to cure my mind. You will be benefiting me far more by arresting mental ignorance than if you arrested [373a] a physical ailment. I should warn you, though, that long speeches won’t effect a cure, since I can’t follow them; but if you are prepared to answer me as you did before, you’ll help me a lot, and I don’t think you’d suffer either. And it would be only fair to call you too in on this, son of Apemantus, since it was you who encouraged me to talk with Hippias: if Hippias isn’t prepared to answer my questions, you must intercede now on my behalf.
EUDICUS: I don’t think Hippias will need my intercession, Socrates, because earlier he said, not what you imply, but that he would evade no [b] one’s questions. well, Hippias? didn’t you say that?
HIPPIAS: I did, Eudicus, but the effect of Socrates’ habitual mischievousness is to disrupt the discussion.1
SOCRATES: My very dear Hippias, I don’t mean to – that would make me clever and shrewd, you could argue – and since I don’t mean to, you should pardon me: you claim that unintentional misdeeds ought to be pardoned.
EUDICUS: Go on, Hippias, do as he says. For our sakes, and to make [c] the previous discussion worthwhile, answer socrates’ questions.
HIPPIAS: All right, just for you. Ask what you want, then.
This section is precisely parallel to Section B: the conclusion is paradoxical and arguments from analogy are brought up to support it. It even involves the same weakness. The same three questions must be asked as before: How good is the argument? Is the paradox radical or merely apparent? Does Plato believe it? The paradoxical conclusion is that a deliberate criminal is morally better than an unintentional one. The argument has invariably been criticized as extremely weak: the accusation is that Plato equivocates between being morally good and being good at something. He is accused, then, of committing the fallacy of secundum quid (see p. 304) by shedding the suffix ‘at something’ and drawing a conclusion about morality from arguments about ability. A more than cursory glance at the argument, however, proves that this accusation does not apply to the bulk of the section. The argument is that not only does functional goodness go hand in hand with functional badness in the case of various abilities, but the same also applies to morality. If that was the end of the argument, the accusation of fallacy would be correct; but instead we find that Plato carefully supplies the missing premiss, that morality is such that one can be functionally good and bad at it (375d-376a). Whether or not this conclusion is unassailable in itself, it is clear that Plato has safeguarded the argument used to reach it. The argument is now effectively over and it has, unlike Section B, been couched entirely in terms of ability. But then Plato summarizes the conclusion, and it is only at this point that the fallacy creeps in: instead of talking about a mind that is good at something (as in 375b, for instance), Plato summarizes this as the mind of a good man (376b). The fallacy is there, then, but it does not affect the main argument; this section is therefore better argued than Section B, though its purpose is similar: to suggest that it is ability that governs honesty, virtue and their opposites.
The argument – barring the fact that no inductive argument can lead to certainty – is reasonable. The weakness, as in Section B, lies in the conclusion: it may be doubted whether someone who does something knowingly in the sense that he has the ability to do it will necessarily do it deliberately in the sense that he chooses to do it (see Aristotle, Metaphysics 1025a6–13): there is equivocation, then, on the notion of ‘deliberate’. In this case the Aristotelian objection strikes at the heart of Socrates’ ethical thought, which hinges on the mtellectualist view that virtue is an ability (see pp. 22—3, 25–6, 267).
The paradox comes across as extremely radical: it is an attack on the basis of all legal procedure and penology; but on this question and whether Plato believed the paradox, see pp. 24–5 and 268–70.
SOCRATES: Well, what I really want to do, Hippias, is investigate this new issue of whether those who make mistakes intentionally or those who do so unintentionally are better. I think the most promising line of investigation stems from this question: do you accept that there are good runners?
HIPPIAS: I Do.
SOCRATES: And bad ones? [d]
SOCRATES: A good runner is someone who runs well, a bad runner someone who runs badly?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Isn’t a slow runner a bad runner, a fast one good?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So in a race, speed is a good thing, slowness bad?
HIPPIAS: Of course.
SOCKATES: Is intentional or unintentional slow running a sign of a better runner?
HIPPIAS: Intentional.
SOCRATES: Now, isn’t running an action?
HIPPIAS: It is.
SOCRATES: And if it is an action, it achieves something?
HIPPIAS: Yes. [e]
SOCRATES: So what a bad runner achieves in a race is bad and contemptible?
HIPPIAS: Yes, of course.
SOCRATES: And slow running is bad?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So isn’t it the case that a good runner deliberately achieves this bad and contemptible result, but a bad runner doesn’t mean to?
HIPPIAS: Apparently.
SOCRATES: In a race, then, unintentional bad deeds are worse than intentional ones?
HIPPIAS: Yes, but maybe only in running. [374a]
SOCRATES: What about in wrestling? Which wrestler is best, the one who falls intentionally or the one who doesn’t mean to?
HIPPIAS: The one who does so intentionally, I suppose.
SOCRATES: And is falling or throwing worse and more contemptible in wrestling?
HIPPIAS: Falling.
SOCRATES: So in wrestling too, a wrestler who intentionally achieves bad and contemptible results is better than the one who doesn’t mean to.
HIPPIAS: I suppose so.
SOCRATES: What about any other employment of the body? Take two people, one better, the other worse at using his body. Isn’t the ability to achieve both sorts of results – effective and ineffective, contemptible and fine – the property of the one who is better at using his body? And therefore [b] aren’t bad physical results intentional in the one case, but unintentional in the other?
HIFPIAS: Yes, I suppose physical strength too produces no counter-examples.
SOCRATES: What about physical grace, Hippias? Isn’t the deliberate adoption of ugly, defective stances something only better bodies can do? What do you think?
HIPPIAS: I agree.
SOCRATES: So intentional gracelessness is a product of bodily excellence, but unintentional of defectiveness. [c]
HIPPIAS: I suppose so.
SOCRATES: What do you think about singing? Do you think intentional or unintentional tunelessness is better?
HIPPIAS: Intentional.
SOCRATES: And unintentional tunelessness is inferior?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Would you rather have good or bad things?
HIPPIAS: Good things.
SOCRATES: So would you rather have your feet limp intentionally or unintentionally?
HIPPIAS: Intentionally.
SOCRATES: But isn’t limping a form of defectiveness and gracelessness? [d]
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Now, isn’t weak sight a defect of the eyes?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Which sort of eyes would you rather have in your head? Ones you could use deliberately for weak, defective sight, or ones which allow you no choice in the matter?
HIPPIAS: Ones I could use deliberately.
SOCRATES: So you rate the organs of yours which perform badlyt hrough your choice higher than those which perform badly against your will?
HIPPIAS: Yes, in these sons of cases, anyway.
SOCRATES: So the same argument holds for ears, nose, mouth and all the senses: those which can’t help performing badly are not worth [e] having qua defective, while those which do so through choice are worth having qua good.
HIPPIAS: Agreed.
SOCRATES: Now, which kind of instruments is it better to work with, those which may be used deliberately for bad results, or those which allow you no choice? for example, which rudder is better: one which makes you steer off course when you don’t mean to, or the one which does so only when you mean to?
SOCRATES: And isn’t the same true for a bow, lyre, twin-pipes, and so on and so forth?
HIPPIAS: Yes, you’re right. [375a]
SOCRATES: Now, is it better to have a horse whose temperament allows you to ride badly on purpose, or one which gives you no choice?
HIPPIAS: The one which allows intentional bad riding.
SOCRATES: That’s the better horse, in fact.
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So, given a horse with a better temperament, you can get bad results from this temperament intentionally; but only unintentionally from a bad temperament. Is that right?
HIPPIAS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: And the same goes for dogs and all other creatures?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Now, let’s move on to human beings. Is it better to have the mind of an archer who misses the target deliberately or unintentionally?
HIPPIAS:Deliberately. [b]
SOCRATES: And this is the better mind for archery?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So a mind which unintentionally makes a mistake is worse than one which does so intentionally?
HIPPIAS: Yes, in archery, anyway.
SOCRATES: What about in medicine? Isn’t a mind which intentionally achieves bad results on bodies more of a medical mind?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So in this area of expertise it is a better mind than the alternative?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Now, take playing the lyre or the pipes – in fact, take any skill or branch of knowledge. Isn’t it the case that only better minds [c] can deliberately produce bad or contemptible results and make intentional mistakes?
HIPPIAS: I suppose so.
SOCRATES: In fact, you know, even if we had the minds of slaves, we would rather have ones which intentionally make mistakes and do wrong than ones which do so unintentionally, on the grounds that the former are better at what they do.
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: Now, wouldn’t we prefer to have our own minds in the best possible condition?
SOCRATES: And won’t they be better if they deliberately do wrong and [d] make mistakes than if they do so without meaning to?
HIPPIAS: It would be monstrous, Socrates, if deliberate criminals are to be better than those who don’t mean any harm.
SOCRATES: But that’s what the argument suggests.
HIPPIAS: Well, I can’t accept it.
SOCRATES: Oh, I thought you agreed with me, Hippias. Let’s try again: isn’t being just either an ability or a branch of knowledge or both? Justice must be one of these, mustn’t it?
HIPPIAS: Yes. [e]
SOCRATES: If justice is a mental ability, then the more able a mind, the more just it is. Right, my friend? I mean, we have agreed that greater ability is better.
HIPPIAS: Yes, we have.
SOCRATES: And if it is a branch of knowledge, then a more knowledgeable mind is more just, and a more ignorant one more criminal, isn’t it?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: And if it is both, then a mind with both knowledge and ability is more just than a less knowledgeable mind. Doesn’t that follow?
HIPPIAS: I suppose so.
SOCRATES: And didn’t we find that the more able and expert a mind is, the better it is, and more capable, whatever the activity, of acting both well and badly? [376a]
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So when it acts in a contemptible manner, it does so deliberately thanks to its ability and skill; and now we find that justice is characterized by one or both of ability and skill.
HIPPIAS: Apparently.
SOCRATES: And to act criminally is to do bad deeds, not to act criminally is to do fine deeds.
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: So aren’t crimes committed by a more able and better mind intentional, while those committed by a worse mind are unintentional?
HIPPIAS: I suppose so.
SOCRATES: Now, a good person is someone who has a good mind, a [b] bad person the opposite?
HIPPIAS: Yes.
SOCRATES: It follows from the fact that a good person has a good mind that it is the property of a good person to commit deliberate crimes, but of a bad person to do so unintentionally.
HIPPIAS: Well, it’s true that a good person has a good mind, anyway.
SOCRATES: Therefore, Hippias, the person, if he exists, who deliberately makes mistakes and acts contemptibly and criminally, can only be the good person.
HIPPIAS: I can’t agree with you on this, Socrates.1
SOCRATES: Nor can I with myself, Hippias. But this is the conclusion the argument inevitably suggests. As I have remarked before, however, I [c] chop and change and continually modify my opinion.2 Inconsistency is to be expected in me and any other amateur: but if you experts are inconsistent, and we can’t get relief from our vacillation even by coming to you, then that is monstrous,3 for us as well as for you.