Plato S Hippias Minor

One of Plato's most controversial dialogues, Hippias Minor details Socrates's confounding arguments that there is no difference between a person who tells the truth and one who lies, and that the good man is the one who willingly makes mistakes and does wrong and unjust things. But what if Socrates wasn't championing the act of lying-as it has been traditionally interpreted-but, rather, advocating for a novel way of understanding the power of the creative act? In this exceptional translation by Sarah Ruden, Hippias Minor is rendered anew as a provocative dialogue about how art is a form of wrongdoing, and that understanding it makes life more ethical by paradoxically teaching one to be more cunning. An introduction by artist Paul Chan situates Hippias Minor in a wider philosophical and historical context, and an essay by classicist Richard Fletcher grapples with the radical implications of this new translation in light of Chan's work and contemporary art today.

Philosophers accuse Socrates of advancing unfair, if not fallacious, arguments in Plato’s Hippias Minor more than in most other dialogues. In Hippias Minor, Socrates appears to defend the trickster Odysseus, and in the course of doing so he argues for outrageous claims: the honest person and the liar are no different, and the good person is one who does wrong voluntarily. In Plato’s Hippias Minor: The Play of Ambiguity, Zenon Culverhouse argues that Socrates’ questionable behavior is no coincidence in a dialogue about deception and that Socrates is examining what counts as deception and how it reflects one’s excellence. More broadly, the dialogue is about the relationship between the speaker and what is said, between agent and action. Thus, the dialogue marks an important contribution not only to Socrates’ thinking about virtue and voluntary action but also to Plato’s portrait of Socrates. For the latter, Culverhouse argues that the dialogue further defines the sometimes thin line between Socrates and his contemporaries, the sophists. Rather than exploiting ambiguity in key terms of the argument to trip up his opponent, Socrates playfully explores these ambiguities to illuminate Hippias’—and perhaps our own—serious commitments about human excellence.

Hippias Minor, or On Lying, is thought to be one of Plato's early works. Socrates matches wits with an arrogant polymath who is also a smug literary critic. Hippias believes that Homer can be taken at face value, and that Achilles may be believed when he says he hates liars, whereas Odysseus' resourceful behavior stems from his ability to lie well (365b). Socrates argues that Achilles is a cunning liar who throws people off the scent of his own deceptions, and that cunning liars are actually the "best" liars. Consequently, Odysseus was equally false and true and so was Achilles (369b). Socrates proposes, possibly for the sheer dialectical fun of it, that it is better to do evil voluntarily than involuntarily. His case rests largely on the analogy with athletic skills, such as running and wrestling. He says that a runner or wrestler who deliberately sandbags is better than the one who plods along because he can do no better.

The Lesser Hippias may be compared with the earlier dialogues of Plato, in which the contrast of Socrates and the Sophists is most strongly exhibited.

Lesser Hippias By Plato Greek Classics Translated by Benjamin Jowett Plato was a philosopher in Classical Greece. He was also a mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the foundations of Western philosophy and science. In the words of A. N. Whitehead: The safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato. I do not mean the systematic scheme of thought which scholars have doubtfully extracted from his writings. I allude to the wealth of general ideas scattered through them. Plato's sophistication as a writer is evident in his Socratic dialogues; thirty-six dialogues and thirteen letters have been ascribed to him. Plato's writings have been published in several fashions; this has led to several conventions regarding the naming and referencing of Plato's texts. Plato's dialogues have been used to teach a range of subjects, including philosophy, logic, ethics, rhetoric, religion and mathematics. Plato is one of the most important founding figures in Western philosophy.

R.E. Allen's superb new translations of four Socratic dialogues—Ion, Hippias Minor, Laches, and Protagoras—bring these classic texts to life for modern readers. Allen introduces and comments on the dialogues in an accessible way, inviting the reader to reexamine the issues continually raised in Plato's works. In his detailed commentary, Allen closely examines the major themes and central arguments of each dialogue, with particular emphasis on Protagoras. He clarifies each of Plato's arguments and its refutation; places the themes in historical perspective; ties each theme to interpretations of rival translations; and links the philosopher's thought to trends in late modern philosophy. Topics discussed include: whether virtue is an art, whether wisdom and courage are logically equivalent, whether virtue is knowledge, and whether to know the good is to do it. Allen connects his discussion of these issues to the Benthamite tradition of hedonism and utilitarianism and to the ethical theories of Mill, Sidgwick, Moore, and Freud.

Hippias of Elis travels throughout the Greek world practicing and teaching the art of making beautiful speeches. On a rare visit to Athens, he meets Socrates who questions him about the nature of his art. Socrates is especially curious about how Hippias would define beauty. They agree that "beauty makes all beautiful things beautiful," but when Socrates presses him to say precisely what he means, Hippias is unable to deliver such a definition. The more Socrates probes, the more absurd the responses from Hippias become. This is one of Plato’s best comedies and one of his finest efforts at posing the philosophical problem of the difference between particular things and universal qualities. Plato lived in Athens, Greece. He wrote approximately two-dozen dialogues that explore core topics that are essential to all human beings. Although the historical Socrates was a strong influence on Plato, the character by that name that appears in many of his dialogues is a product of Plato’s fertile imagination. All of Plato’s dialogues are written in a poetic form that his student Aristotle called "Socratic dialogue." In the twentieth century, the British philosopher and logician Alfred North Whitehead characterized the entire European philosophical tradition as "a series of footnotes to Plato." Philosophy for Plato was not a set of doctrines but a goal — not the possession of wisdom but the love of wisdom. Agora Publications offers these performances based on the assumption that Plato wrote these works to be performed by actors in order to stimulate additional dialogue among those who listen to them.

Hippias Major (or What is Beauty? or Greater Hippias, to distinguish it from the Hippias Minor, which has the same chief character) is one of the dialogues of Plato. It belongs to the Early Dialogues, written while the author was still young. Its precise date is uncertain, although a date of c. 390 BCE has been suggested; its authenticity has been doubted. In the Hippias Major, Socrates and Hippias set out to find a definition for "beauty," but are destined to fail due to their inability to formulate an answer which encompasses the entire concept. The actual Greek term that is used in the dialogue often means fine or noble as well as beautiful. For this reason, translators such as Paul Woodruff typically translate the term as "the Fine" (things) instead of "Beauty." As in Charmides, Lysis and Euthyphro, Hippias Major has an "anatreptic" purpose, that is, the result of the dialogue is to defeat commonly held opinions, without necessarily offering a resolution. The concept of something good in and of itself (if only obliquely) makes its first appearance in this work. The dialogue can be read as much as a serious philosophical work as a light satirical comedy with two actors. The astuteness of Socrates in taking refuge under the authority of a supposed third protagonist in order to direct biting criticism at Hippias, endows the dialogue with humour.