The Beautiful and the False: An Introduction to Plato’s Hippias

All unspecified citations are to Plato. For the Republic, I have used the text of Simon Slings, Platonis Rempublicam (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2003). For all other dialogues, I have used John Burnet, Platonis Opera Omnia, 5 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1903). I am grateful to John C. Gibert, Gregory A. McBrayer, and Travis Mulroy for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper.

Socratic dialectics takes on an utterly peculiar form in the Hippias Major, as Socrates splits in two between a version of himself that wishes to learn from Hippias and so answers in his style, on the one hand, and a version of himself that is critical of the former Socrates’ Hippian way of answering, on the other. Socrates is forced to displace himself qua questioner, so as not to offend Hippias, so little common ground is there between the two.

The case against the Hippias Major as a genuine work of Plato’s remains unpersuasive. Most arguments rely on preconceived notions of Plato’s seriousness. Such notions would be more reasonable, were the Hippias Major the most comic of the dialogues. But the example of the Euthydemus, which no one doubts to be genuinely Platonic, suffices to dismiss these grounds as, at best, inadequate. Helpful discussions of the history of the debate can be found in Paul Woodruff, Plato, Hippias Major (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1982), 94–105 and Ivor Ludlam, Hippias Major: An Interpretation (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991), 12–20. Suffice it to say that the case is weak enough that recent scholars have felt a decreasing need to discuss the issue. The case for its authenticity, as always, depends on the dialogue’s content and, therewith, our interpretation of it (as note Woodruff, xi–xii, 94; Ludlam, 11; Travis Mulroy, “On the Difficulty of Beautiful Things: Political Virtue and Wisdom in Plato’s Hippias Major,” Ancient Philosophy 39 [2019], 43–67, 44). That Aristotle explicitly discusses the Hippias Minor should be enough to establish it as a genuine work of Plato’s (see Aristotle, Metaphysics Δ.29 1025a1–13). Nevertheless, a very small minority have attempted to argue, on the basis of a few similar words and phrases, that it is the work of Antisthenes’ hand. More reasonable, however, is Kahn’s account of the Hippias Minor as Plato’s response to Antisthenes (see Charles Kahn, Plato and the Socratic Dialogue: The Philosophic Use of a Literary Form [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996], 121–124). As a result, the example of the Hippias Minor proves particularly instructive as to the futility of dismissing a dialogue on the basis of an apparently inappropriate style or unphilosophic content, for, “if Plato could create a conversation as delightfully odd as the Lesser Hippias, who is to say with confidence what Plato could and could not have written?” (Thomas Pangle, “Introduction,” in The Roots of Political Philosophy: Ten Forgotten Socratic Dialogues, ed. Thomas Pangle [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987], 1–20, 6). We should not demand of Plato such excessive seriousness as Plato attributes to Hippias.

The challenge is stated most directly by Woodruff: “Why is Hippias made the target of an attack unparalleled in Plato’s work? If we cannot answer that question satisfactorily, we will have to agree with critics of the dialogue that the attack is inappropriate” (Woodruff, 131). There must be some end, either moral or philosophical, at which Socrates’ treatment of Hippias aims, beyond mere abuse for its own sake.

Gorgias would appear to be an exception, inasmuch as he too served his native city of Elis in an official capacity, yet he famously distanced himself from the sophist’s claims to teach virtue. See Meno 95b9–c4, then Gorgias 459b6–460a4 with 461b3–c4.

In support of this view, see Woodruff, 85–86. If Hippias (one might ask) is convinced of the veracity of this public mode of speech, then why does he accept as true what is to his advantage more readily than what is lawful (Hippias Major 285b3–4)? But clearly Hippias isn’t simply concerned with his advantage, since he happily gives up money in exchange for praise. The situation is much stranger, as his determination of truth relies not on his private advantage so much as on his audience (see Hippias Major 292a6–c2). It’s a peculiarly humorous bit of playfulness, on Plato’s part, that Hippias is famous for his incredible memory yet seems unbothered by his own inconsistency. In the Hippias Major, he puts his reputation on the line more than once, as though one can still wager what one has already lost (see Hippias Major 286e8–287a1, 291d6–7, after which Socrates’ alter ego threatens him with violence), and the Hippias Minor ends with him agreeing to every proposition in an argument while rejecting its necessary conclusion (see Hippias Minor 376b7–c1). Alone, as it seems, with Socrates in the Hippias Major, Hippias is content to agree with him when it redounds to his advantage. Before others in the Hippias Minor, however, he will not so readily transgress ordinary opinions about lying. The audience is primary.

This thesis aims to establish a connection between these dialogues that has not yet received attention, though one interpreter does suggest something similar in passing: “Hippias parodies together the compulsory descent of the philosopher into the cave and the noble lie” (Seth Benardete, The Being of the Beautiful: Plato’s Theaetetus, Sophist, and Statesman [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984], xxiii). Accordingly, my engagement with the secondary literature is necessarily restricted to significant details of interpretation, establishing precedence for certain questions or observations, and relevant and illuminating insights.

Socrates never explicitly identifies luxury as a species of τὸ καλόν, though he does say it is no longer concerned with necessity (see Republic 373b1–3). Likewise, his list includes many refinements readily offered as examples of τὸ καλόν elsewhere in Plato, most notably, as we will see, in the Hippias Major. Socrates perhaps hesitates to explicitly call them καλά, as he is about to identify τὸ καλόν as the end of the guardians’ education. The problem of τὸ καλόν must be suppressed if the guardians are to stay in their job and, in turn, Glaucon is to be satisfied with the city in speech. The whole discussion of the guardians’ education ends on precisely this point (see Republic 416d4–417b9).

See Seth Benardete, Socrates’ Second Sailing: On Plato’s Republic (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 51, 54, 74.

Indeed, Socrates appears in the course of his discussion to slide from the guardians to the poets as though they were one and the same (see Republic 394d1–e2). Annas raises a similar objection from the perspective of actors, though she goes a step too far, I think, in arguing that Plato “is not concerned with the dangers of life imitating art” (Julia Annas, An Introduction to Plato’s Republic [Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981], 96). The problems in the critique of poetry here are real and necessitate the second treatment in Book 10, where, as Annas also notes, μίμησις takes on another connotation. See footnote 12.

This split seems to govern Thucydides’ twofold complaint in History I.20–21.1. For a fuller and more nuanced account of this restricted purpose of poetry, see Benardete 1989, 61, 69–72. Compare Annas, 94.

Many have noted the connection between the guardians’ education in τὸ καλόν and the need for the noble lie. See, for example, Leo Strauss, The City and Man (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964), 100–3; Benardete 1989, 77–78. I have tried to augment those accounts by spelling out the specific defects or tensions within it that make the noble lie’s patchwork necessary. By far, however, the principal focus of the scholarship on the noble lie has been on Plato’s endorsement of lying both here and elsewhere. Readers tend to take offense at the paternalism, the denial of autonomy, and the eugenic aims of these lies. The most famous and extreme of these critics is certainly Karl Popper, The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 Vols. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1945), 1:120ff. A few scholars have attempted to moderate or refocus the debate, as, for example, Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith, “Justice and Dishonesty in Plato’s Republic,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 21 (1983): 79–95. By far the most impressive and successful attempt, to my knowledge, to challenge the typically modern assumptions of these critics is Carl Page, “The Truth About Lies in Plato’s Republic,” Ancient Philosophy 11 (1991): 1–33.

“The soil makes the city one, the metals structure it” (Benardete 1989, 78).

Page usefully connects the tension between classes to the regime decline (see Page, 22).

Interestingly, Sider reads the Hippias Major as Plato’s early aesthetics, which Plato would flesh out more fully only later in the Symposium, Phaedrus, Philebus, and Timaeus (David Sider, “Plato’s Early Aesthetics: The Hippias Major,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 35 [1977]: 465–470). We might add to this list the Republic. On this developmental reading, see footnote 22.

I owe this observation to Travis Mulroy. For his detailed account, see Mulroy, esp. 65.

Consider how many museums have informative text or offer audio guides to augment our enjoyment of the art, as well as how uninteresting portraits can be when you know nothing of the individual’s story. Likewise, “the combination that he has in mind would be somewhat better illustrated by our enjoyment, whether of a musical performance or a painting, where that enjoyment has been enhanced by the fact that it is said to be admirable to enjoy such things” (Christopher Bruell, On the Socratic Education: An Introduction to the Shorter Platonic Dialogues [Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1999], 90).

See Benardete 1984, xlvi.

“Inasmuch as Socrates chooses to speak with Hippias alone and willingly keeps up the discussion long after Hippias seems to have lost all interest in it, Socrates must somehow need Hippias and what he represents in order to complement his own way. Could this complement be Hippias’ dumb vision of the beautiful as a being?” (Benardete 1984, xxi).

The strand of scholarship most relevant to our question approaches the Hippias Minor as a criticism of the Homeric worldview, with Apemantus and Hippias’s view—their differences aside—intended to reflect the typical opinion of the time (see Richard Hunter, “The Hippias Minor and the Traditions of Homeric Criticism,” The Cambridge Classical Journal 62 [2016]: 85–107, 86 n. 5). The most extensive treatment of this question in relation to the Republic is Ruby Blondell, The Play of Characters in Plato’s Dialogues (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), who presents the Republic as developing on the criticisms advanced in the Hippias Minor. My discussion differs from this general approach in two respects: first, because Hippias is so laughable, it is unclear to what extent the Hippias Minor adds anything to the criticism of Homer found in the Republic, unless there is something quite serious and unique in Hippias’s ridiculousness; second, by using the language of the argument in the drama—as, for example, when Socrates remarks that, like Achilles, he does evil involuntarily—Plato suggests that he finds guidance in his writing from Homer’s characters. Accordingly, I incline against taking the Hippias Minor as preparatory for or an earlier version of the critique of poetry in the Republic and in favor of seeing it as offering something distinct from, though complementary to, what is offered in the Republic.

Pierre Destrée, “‘Hippias, Handsome and Wise’: A Note on a Bon Mot in Plato, Hp. Mai. 281a1,” The Classical Quarterly 67 (2017): 653–655, notes that the phrase καλός τε καὶ σοφός from the first line of the Hippias Major is a quip meant to contrast with the usual καλός τε καὶ ἀγαθός, as does Benardete 1984, xxi. The meaning of the substitution is evident: Hippias attempts to bridge moral excellence with wisdom, without ever asking whether wisdom cannot be beautiful if it is to be good.

One manuscript has εὐνοίας instead of εὐηθείας. While I prefer the latter, the above argument doesn’t rely on one reading over another.

Hippias finds nothing odd in the notion of preferring to possess this or that soul, as though the act of preferring did not require a further soul that could in turn taint the choice (Hippias Minor 375c3–6). This is the basic absurdity of Hippias’s goal of omnicompetence: it requires self-generation, effectively replacing one’s father (Hippias Major 282e4–6; compare Genesis 37:9–10).

Was Socrates silent at the beginning of the Hippias Minor so as to provoke Eudicus into starting the conversation, in anticipation of the possibility that his line of questioning would anger Hippias? Hippias’s terseness at the beginning of the dialogue seems to be a carryover from the tense ending of the Hippias Major (see Hippias Minor 363c7–d4, 364a7–9, d3–6, 365d5). Eudicus may be necessary, it seems, to keep things civil after the stalemate in which the Hippias Major culminated, so little common ground is there between the men. See Bruell, 94.

Compare Hippias Major 303c3–7 and Hippias Minor 366b7–c4 with Republic 415a3.