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Socrates Talks to Himself in Plato’s Hippias Major1
Halsten Olson
§1 Socrates Meets His Match At Last
It is almost a rule that the mature Socrates of Plato’s puzzle-raising dialogues
never converses with a philosophical equal. But it is not quite a rule: the exception is an
ongoing conversation with himself of which Socrates gives us fragments in the Hippias
Major.2 From the fragments we learn that in talking to himself, Socrates is, while of
course his own equal, also his own superior and his own inferior. He at once refutes his
interlocutor and gets refuted.
The central conversation of the Hippias Major is between Socrates and Hippias on
the question, “What is the fine?”. But during his questioning of Hippias Socrates alludes
to someone who has asked questions of Socrates. Socrates acts the part of this person,
who is first presented as an annoying questioner, “not refined” (ou kompsos) and “rabblerubbish” (surphetos, 288d4), “a real plague” (mermeros, 290e4), who would try to give
Socrates a thrashing if Socrates could not remember what question he was supposed to be
thinking about, then as someone who takes pity on Socrates and occasionally makes a
suggestion to help discussion along, then as the person Socrates would be most ashamed
to make pretensions to, then as the “son of Sophroniscus”, and finally as “a close relative
of mine”, who “lives in the same house”. Before the dialogue ends, readers realize that
Socrates’ annoying questioner is none other than Socrates himself.
The device of Socrates’ acting out these second-hand questions for Hippias
somewhat insulates Socrates from seeming discourteous to Hippias. The questions he
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relays from the third party can be more simple and straightforward than the questions
which the self-admiring Hippias would expect Socrates to address to his face. For his
part Hippias can more frankly grumble about the unadorned questioning of the absent
third party than would be polite for Hippias to grumble directly to Socrates.
Socrates’ acting out the annoying questioner’s questions in the Hippias Major
may be compared to and contrasted with Socrates’ acting out speeches of the Laws of
Athens in the Crito. In the conversation with the Laws Socrates imagines himself as
speaking briefly (50c) contrary to fact, as though he proposed to escape from prison; he
then speaks the Laws’ reasoning opposing escape. It seems that only one side of the
discussion gives Socrates’ actual views.3 The Hippias Major’s conversation is different in
that Socrates is narrator, questioner, and answerer.4 It may reveal Socrates’ own views
better than Socrates’ narrations of his conversations with others.5
My deliberately chosen modality ‘may’ presents a revelatory possibility, not a
certainty; for there is the further possibility that the depicted Socrates is, as we might
say, ironic. What Socrates says on occasion may not be directly revelatory of anything.
But I shall avoid the word ‘ironist’. Although it sounds like a straightforward translation
and hence a synomym of the Greek ειρων, its relation to its Greek ancestor, which
doesn’t have quite the flavor of our word ‘ironist’, is complicated and may be misleading.
Since neither ‘ironist’ nor words related to it occur in the Hippias Major, rather than
speak of irony, I will simply state what everyone would agree to -- that Socrates is not
always depicted as saying flatly and directly what Plato intends us, Plato’s readers, to
understand.6
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The sort of self-conversation Socrates reports will be familiar to many of us who
talk to ourselves and try out objections on ourselves. For example, the Socrates of the
Theaetetus (189e) says that the soul’s carrying on a discussion (dialegesthai), questioning
itself and answering itself, is what he calls ‘thinking’.7
Socrates’ report of what the annoying questioner has said to him, if we believe it,
gives us a rich picture of Socrates as a self-questioner. The report tells us what the
questioner has asked Socrates in the past (286d). The report tells us what the questioner is
in the habit of asking (287c). The report predicts what the questioner will say (293d;
303e-304). But in so predicting, Socrates is making use of prediction to reveal a
tendency, not just to point to an isolated future event. So even these future tense claims
give some information about how Socrates has questioned himself.
There is a complexity in the picture the dialogue gives us of Socrates as answerer,
for Socrates sometimes assumes the part of Hippias to give answers in the conversation.
For example, at 289c-d Socrates says, in effect, that if he said that the finest girl is
shamefully ugly compared with the gods (as Hippias has just agreed), and is no more fine
than shamefully ugly, then the annoying questioner would say that Socrates had only
answered the question ‘What is both fine and shamefully ugly?’, instead of answering the
question the questioner has asked. In this passage Socrates is not himself asserting the
view which he has taken over from Hippias. He is just considering what the questioner
would discover to follow if Socrates asserted the view of Hippias.
So we need to separate Socrates’ genuine answers, in his own person, to his
questioner from those answers that Socrates says he would give in the contrary to fact
condition that he were to answer as Hippias does. When we make that separation, we find
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that Socrates gives only a fragmentary picture of how, speaking for himself, he has
answered the questioner. But the fragmentary picture is, if we trust what Socrates says,
of great interest.
I will, in fact, trust Socrates; I will take as a starting point that there is some, but
not much, Socratic dissembling and indirection in Socrates’ report to Hippias. I will then
ask in the rest of this paper what we learn about Socrates from his description of his
conversation with himself. Others who take as a starting point the thought that there is a
great deal of dissembling in Socrates’ self-description will not find the Hippias Major as
informative as I do. My starting point that Socrates is reporting quite accurately how he
talks to himself has this interesting consequence: the Hippias Major gives us Plato’s
picture of how the most philosophically adept answerer responds to the most
philosophically acute questioner.
§2 Socrates, Self-Questioner, Asks ‘What is the fine?’
We learn from Socrates’ conversation with himself that Socrates questions
himself in just the way he questions others in the short dialogues of inquiry. Socrates
reports at 286c-d that the questioner has asked Socrates, “How do you know (pothen
oistha) what sorts of things (hopoia) are fine and ugly?” and “Are you able to say
(echois eipein) what the fine is?” At 287d, Socrates, who has proposed to question
Hippias in the same way the annoying questioner questions Socrates, asks Hippias what
the fine is. At 289c Socrates rephrases, asking, “Whatever is the fine itself?” Although
Socrates does not use the word ‘definition’ here, I’ll say that Socrates is asking for a
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definition in this sense: to ask what the fine itself is is to ask what it is for anything to be
fine.
That Socrates moves from the question “How do you know what sorts of things
are fine and ugly?” to the question, “What is the fine itself?” shows the point of the latter,
definitional, question. The answer to this definitional question will also give Socrates the
answer to his initial question, “How do you know what sorts of things are fine?”
The connection between a definitional question, such as the question what the fine
is, and a question about knowledge, such as, ‘How do you know when something is
fine?’, is straightforward to see in some cases. If a learner in an ordinary learning
situation asks of an acknowledged expert the question, ‘How do you know that that
figure is an octagon?’, the expert might answer, ‘Because the octagon itself -- that is,
what it is to be an octagon -- is a figure with eight sides. And this figure indeed has eight
sides.’ Here the person who knows that this is an octagon is able to say what an octagon
is, or what it is to be an octagon. To say what it is to be an octagon is to cite the octagon
itself in giving, as reasons for knowing that this is an octagon, what a teacher would say
in teaching someone else what an octagon is.
At the end of the dialogue, at 304d, after the failure of all their attempts to answer,
‘What is the fine?’, Socrates again makes the connection between ‘What is the fine
itself?’ and ‘How do you know what is fine?’ There Socrates says that if he tries to
converse (304d,dialegesthai) about fine activities when he is ignorant about what the fine
itself is, his questioner will ask him, “How will you know (pôs su eisê(i)) whose speech
or any other activity is finely presented or not, when you are ignorant of the fine?”
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§3 Socrates Asks ‘What is the fine?’ When Hippias Commends Fine Actions to the
Young
We learn from Socrates’ self-conversation, as well as from Socrates’ conversation
with Hippias, exactly what moves Socrates to ask about the fine by itself. Although
previous to 286c Socrates has used the word ‘fine’ or close derivatives several times, and
Hippias has used it once (282d6), these earlier uses have not moved Socrates to ask, in
general, what is the fine. The turning point in the conversation occurs when Hippias uses
‘fine’ to make life-guiding recommendations about pursuits for a life, practices
(epitêdeumata). At 285e10-286b5 there is this exchange.
S: The Spartans enjoy you, predictably, because you know a lot of
things, and they use you the way children use old ladies, to tell stories
for pleasure.8
H: Yes, and by God, Socrates, about fine pursuits. Just now I made a
great impression there speaking about the pursuits which a young man
should take up. I have a speech about that that I put together really finely.
... My setting and the starting point of the speech are something like this:
after Troy was taken, the tale is told that Neoptolemus asked Nestor what
sort of pursuits (epitêdeumata) are fine (kala) -- the sort of pursuits that
would make someone most famous if he adopted them while young. After
that, the speaker is Nestor, who teaches him a great many altogether fine
(pagkala) customs.
Hippias’ speech presents the advice of Nestor, a Greek elder, to the young
Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. The advice hints at an account of one type of fine
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things, namely, “fine pursuits”, or, apparently equivalently, “the sort of activities that
would make someone most famous if he adopted them while young”. That Hippias is,
by telling his story, giving advice to the young is what moves Socrates to the general
inquiry at 286c. Socrates recalls that the questioner has questioned Socrates precisely
when Socrates has praised or found fault with speeches. The speeches that Socrates has
in mind are the instruments of political advice, as his reference at the end of the
dialogue to speeches and getting things done “in court or some other gathering” (304c8d1) implies.
It’s a fine thing you reminded me. Just now someone got me badly
stuck when I was finding fault with parts of some speeches for being
shameful, and praising other parts as fine. He questioned me ...,
‘Socrates, how do you know what sorts of things are fine and
shameful? Look, would you be able to say what the fine is?’ So it’s
a fine thing you came now. Teach me enough about what the fine is
itself, ... so I won’t be a laughingstock. Of course you know it
clearly.(286c4-e3)
At 287b5-8 Socrates emphasizes that what would provoke the questioner to ask the
question about the fine itself is Hippias’ recommendation of fine pursuits.
If you displayed that speech to him, the one you mentioned about the
fine pursuits, he’d listen, and when you stopped speaking, he’d ask
not about anything else but about the fine.
When Hippias says that doing what will lead to becoming famous is a fine pursuit,
Hippias is recommending conduct, or even a way of life, to his hearer. If you, the hearer,
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believe that what Hippias says is fine is fine, you have some reason to undertake the
commended activity yourself. But on the important topic of life-absorbing activities in
which you will invest yourself, it seems a bad idea to trust in a recommendation of
examples without having something to say about what explains why the examples of the
fine are fine. For life-guiding recommendations you want, from someone who presents
himself as an expert, a way to understand his examples. You do not want to take his
word for one example after another. That is why Socrates asks Hippias how he knows.
§4. Socrates Wants A Certain Kind of Explanatory Answer to “What is the fine itself?”
We learn from Socrates’ self-conversation that he wants, from himself as well as
from Hippias, a certain kind of answer to the question what the fine is. At 293d-294
Socrates gives for Hippias an example of an adequate answer to a different definitional
question, ‘What is the large?’ The large, or that by which something is large, is the
going-beyond. That is, if something goes beyond (some other thing), then it is a
necessity that it is large (that is, larger than that other thing).
What all large things are large by is by the going beyond. For by that,
they are all large. ... If they go beyond... it is a necessity [anagke] for them
to be large. (294b2-4)
Socrates would ask himself, “All those things you say are fine, will they be fine if the
fine itself is what ?” (288a6-10). He wants to know that by which or in virtue of which
or because of which all fine things are fine. The answer to ‘What is the fine?’ will tell us
something that necessitates being fine. The answer Socrates expects is what we would
call a necessary truth that is somehow explanatory.
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In giving his example of that by which or because of which things are large,
Socrates does not here say what entitles his example to count as explanatory of why
something is large. Examples that the Socrates of other dialogues has accepted as
adequate definitions suggest that explanatory analyses are fuller, simpler, and more
obvious than what they analyse. Theaetetus 147c tells us helpfully that mud is earth
mixed with moisture. The Laches 192b tells us that quickness is the power of doing
much in a short time. The Hippias Major’s account of the large as the going beyond does
not, however, seem especially explanatory or helpful, although it is a necessary truth.
‘Large’ (or ‘big’) is a part of our vocabulary so basic that we all learn it as toddlers,
before we learn much else. It is then difficult to see what could be simpler and more
obvious than it. (And thus it is understandable that Phaedo 102 analyses in the other
direction, apparently explaining going beyond by being large.)9
So some questions remain about what counts as explanatory. We can nonetheless
see how an analysing answer to the question ‘What is the fine?’ would be a helpful step
in the direction of answering the question ‘How do you know what is fine?’. The answer
to ‘What is the fine?’ would be helpful because it would give the answer to two further
questions which in turn help with answering ‘How do you know?’.
First, it would answer, ‘What is the reason why you believe that such and such is
fine?’ But second, it would answer ‘What is the reason why it is true that such and such
is fine?’ Compare our answer to ‘What is an octagon?’ Our answer gives reasons why
someone might believe that something is an octagon which also explain why it is true that
that something is an octagon.
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Not all answers to ‘What is the reason why you believe that that is fine?’ answer
‘What is the reason why it is true that that is fine?’. Answers such as ‘Someone I trust
told me’ or ‘Experts on the fine have recommended it’ might explain why you believe
that something is fine, but do not explain why it is true that that thing is fine. Socrates’
example reveals that Socrates wants reasons to believe which are also reasons why what
is to be believed is true.
§5 Socrates Worries about “Nothing But the Truth”, But Says Some False Things
We learn from Socrates’ conversation with himself that he is after the truth about
the topic at hand. At 288d5 Socrates says of the questioner, “He cares about nothing but
the truth.”
But this seems odd. Socrates, as questioner of Hippias, seems actually to say
some false things. Since the Socrates who questions Hippias is also that annoying
questioner who questions Socrates, if the latter cares only for the truth, so should the
former. So how can Socrates consistently say false things to Hippias?
An example of what is arguably a Socratic falsehood about himself is at 286c7-8
where Socrates reports that the questioner asks questions of Socrates “quite insultingly”
(286c7-8 mala hubristikôs). However, Socrates’ reports of the questioner’s questions
give us no details which would be evidence that the questions ‘How do you know?’ and
‘Are you able to say?’ were asked in an insulting manner. Socrates does say things to
himself later which are insulting -- at 298d, “millstone, with no ears and no brain”. The
questioner would hit Socrates with a stick if Socrates gave certain answers (292a-b). So
the questioner is insulting to Socrates. But all Socrates gives us to initiate the central
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discussion with Hippias is the bare questions. And the questions by themselves
obviously are not insulting. Socrates offers the qualification “insultingly” without more
details because he knows Hippias will accept it. Hippias would think the questions
insulting. To ask Hippias, ‘How do you know that what you said is fine is fine?’ would
challenge, improperly, as Hippias doubtless thinks, his claims to expertise and authority
(282d, 286 a-c). But Socrates takes these questions to be important and appropriate.
Socrates accepts the questions as proper for himself (291a: “It’s nothing much for me”).
Having been challenged with these questions does not strike him as insolent treatment to
complain about. Instead of taking offense at the questions, Socrates reproaches himself
(286d-e) for his inability to answer them. These are the challenges -- ‘How do you
know?’ and ‘Say what it is!’ -- that Socrates expects himself to be able to answer if he is
going to commend and hence recommend life-absorbing activities as fine to others.
So Socrates speaks falsely of himself when he says the questioner asked
insultingly. In addition, Socrates speaks falsely of Hippias; for example, at 286e
Socrates says of Hippias, “You know it clearly”, and Socrates then implies that Hippias
will teach Socrates how to avoid being refuted. Is Socrates’ uttering such falsehoods
compatible with Socrates’ interest in the truth? If Socrates is interested in arriving at the
truth, should he not be saying true things?
Not necessarily. For one thing, uttering truths would not serve an interest in the
truth in the circumstance of discussion with Hippias. If Socrates said truths about himself
such as, ‘I am asking useful questions’, or if Socrates said truths about Hippias such as,
‘You might make better progress if you were humbler’, uttering such truths would not
advance either Socrates’ or Hippias’ progress toward the truth. Hippias is depicted as
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having a conceit and self-satisfaction that make him impervious to such accurate
descriptions.10 And Socrates does not need them.
Yet the false descriptions, which encourage Hippias, thus help to keep the
conversation going. So the answer to our question about consistency is that Socrates’
making false statements actually serves his interest in truth about the fine itself as it bears
on life conduct, because it keeps the truth-seeking conversation going.
But this answer raises a new question: what is the use of sustaining a conversation
with Hippias at all? How would a conversation with anyone like the depicted Hippias
serve an interest in the truth in the first place?
§6 Talking with Hippias Is Training for Socrates
From a consideration of that question we learn something more about Socrates as
self-questioner and self-answerer. At 287a 2-5 Socrates wants to learn by questioning
Hippias so that Hippias will give him the most training (me ekmeletêsês): Socrates says
he already has experience as an answerer.11 We readers are not familiar with Socrates as
answerer. Other dialogues show us Socrates mostly as questioner. Socrates’ saying here
that he has experience as answerer then seems an allusion to that practice of being
answerer to himself as questioner of which the Hippias Major gives us a small glimpse.
I take the statement that Socrates wants to get training as a partly accurate
description; it is not a description tailored simply to fit Hippias’ point of view. Taken as
a sincere statement, it tells us that Socrates expects some benefit from questioning
Hippias. At the end of the dialogue Socrates says that he has been benefited both by
conversation with Hippias and by conversation with his questioner.
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Yet if Hippias, as depicted, is completely self-satisfied and utterly incapable of
considering any new thoughts that challenge his current picture of himself, he is unlikely
to have any insights into how to live to bring into the conversation. For the same reasons,
Socrates cannot be expecting to benefit Hippias by inspiring any thought in Hippias.
Further, Socrates is not trying to benefit any onlookers to the conversation, since the
Hippias Major mentions no onlookers within the drama. So it looks as though there is no
answer to our question in what direction Socrates could be expecting benefits from the
conversation to flow.
The question is a serious one. Someone might propose the answer that Socrates
likes to amuse himself by watching pompous people make fools of themselves. I do not
think so. A person taking care to live his life best would hardly waste time in that way.12
Our own observations of Socrates in conversation may of course benefit us as
readers. But that only explains why Plato might have written a dialogue with Hippias for
readers to observe. It does not explain why Socrates, as depicted,would engage in a
private unobserved conversation with Hippias. It looks as though Socrates could more
profitably just have talked to himself, as he does in the conversation with the annoying
questioner that he reports to us. Why was that not enough?
A possible answer is this. Here again I suggest a possibility, not a certainty. But I
have heard no better offers, and the proposal above is certainly worse. Suppose that
Socrates is interested in finding out the effects of self-satisfaction. Well, either Socrates
is self-satisfied or he is not. If he is not, then conversation with himself will not show
him the bad effects of self-satisfaction, since the effects will not ensue. If he is selfsatisfied, then again, talking to himself will not show him the bad effects of self-
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satisfaction: for a person does not easily see his own self-satisfaction, and in fact selfsatisfaction blinds one to its bad effects. It stands in the way of one’s being self-critical.
(Love is blind, and self-love the blindest.) So in either case, for assessing the effects of
self-satisfaction it would not be useful for Socrates to talk to himself. But it might be
useful for Socrates to talk to someone else who is self-satisfied. In another person
Socrates can observe more clearly the bad effects of total self-satisfaction. So we have
learned that Socrates has reason to converse with Hippias.13
§7 Socrates Is Always Tempted to Give A Certain Sort of Answer
About Socrates the self- answerer we learn that he is always tempted by a certain
sort of answer to the question ‘What is the fine?’ At 293e, Socrates reports that his
annoying questioner has suggested candidate definitional answers to Socrates. Apparently
out of pity for Socrates, who has been unable to come up with answers, the questioner has
suggested such answers as that the fine might be the appropriate. Socrates does not say
whether the questioner has offered the exact suggestion that the fine is the appropriate, or
whether the questioner’s suggestions have been other than that, but similar in some way
to it. Whatever the questioner’s suggestions have been exactly, Socrates says that he is
“in the habit of (eiôtha) agreeing with such things (ta toiauta) every time (hekastote),
because I don’t know what to say.” Apparently Socrates always falls for the type of
account the questioner, trying to be helpful, suggests.
A noticeable feature of the suggestion that the fine is the appropriate, the feature
that perhaps “such things” as Socrates is inclined to agree with all have, is that the
appropriate has more than a very good chance of being necessary and sufficient for the
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fine. ‘Appropriate’ is a very general adjective of commendation, just as ‘fine’ is. It is
therefore very plausible that it is, as we might say, a necessary truth that something is
fine if and only if it is appropriate. Perhaps such statements as Socrates has been “every
time” agreeing with are those that not only give necessary and sufficient conditions but
that are also necessary truths.
But the questioner has then gone on to refute all such helpful suggestions to which
Socrates has agreed.
§8 Socrates Has Always Refuted Himself in the Past
About Socrates the self-answerer we learn that he regularly gets refuted by his
questioner. Socrates has gotten “badly stuck” (286c: eis aporian; 286d: êporoumên); he
thinks that is because he was totally worthless (dia tên emên phaulotêta). He does not
want to be refuted (286e: exelegtheis) a second time, that is, by a second person. One of
the points of learning what the fine itself is is that “no one will ever refute me again”
(286e). His critic is “that man who has always (aei) been refuting me” (304d). The point
is worth dwelling on. Socrates as questioner has refuted himself, and regularly; he has
been at an impasse (aporia); he has driven himself into contradiction.
I think we are given a clue to one sort of argument that has refuted Socrates in the
past. The clue is Socrates’ own arguments, now given as he takes on the role of
questioner in his own person to Hippias. Here he does not quote the annoying questioner
as he argues against the questioner’s imagined helpful suggestion that the appropriate is
the fine. Though Socrates does not quote the questioner, it is quite natural to suppose that
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Socrates’ argumentative moves against the helpful suggestion are ones that he has learned
from the annoying questioner.
Although there are several arguments against candidate definitions that occur
toward the end of the dialogue, after Socrates has referred to “the man who is always
refuting me”, all of which strike me as subtle and important, I choose to explore here as
part of my inquiry into how Socrates has been talking to himself only two arguments
against the proposal that the fine is the appropriate. The arguments do not strike only
against the proposed definition. Rather, they show that given certain other premises to
which Hippias agrees, the appropriate cannot be the fine.
The first of the two arguments from 293e11-294e9 is a simple two-premise
argument.
First Premise: The appropriate makes things seem fine when they are not
fine.
Second Premise: What makes things seem to be fine even when they are
not fine cannot be the fine.
Conclusion: The fine is not the appropriate. (294a7-8: “It wouldn’t be
what we are looking for” and 294e6, “It wouldn’t be the appropriate.”)
The first premise is given when Socrates says that the appropriate makes things seem
finer than they are and it won’t let them be seen as they are.14 Socrates is recording
Hippias’ assertion at 294a4-5 that the appropriate makes things be seen to be fine; when
someone puts on appropriate clothes and shoes, he looks finer, even if he is ridiculous. I
think this amounts to my shorter formulation that the appropriate makes things that are
not actually fine --they may even be ridiculous -- seem fine. They of course then seem
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finer than they actually are. I take the word “makes” here to have the same perfectly
ordinary role it has when we say that its eight sides make this an octagon.
Hippias’ example shows that he has in view a shallow notion of the appropriate.
His notion amounts to something like the fashionable or the superficially attractive. But
given his notion, we can understand the example from which Socrates gets the first
premise.
The second premise comes from 294b6-8, where Socrates again uses the
comparative ‘finer’ as Hippias did in his contribution. The appropriate cannot be the fine,
what fine things are fine by, because the appropriate “makes things to be finer than they
are ... and it won’t let things be seen to be as they are.” Again I think that the point may
be put more simply, without the comparative. This argument decisively defeats the
proposal that the fine is the appropriate when that proposal is combined with Hippias’
thought that the appropriate can make things seem finer than they are.
This first argument would, of course, defeat any candidate definition of the fine
whose candidate definiens might also be cited as the explanation of why something, like
the ridiculous figure in becoming clothes, seemed fine when it was not fine. That is, it
would defeat any candidate definiens which picked out a feature not actually coextensive
with the fine but which someone might mistake for a fine-making feature.
It is useful to consider why argument of the pattern above would not work against
a good definition. For example, the argument would not work against the analysis of an
octagon as a figure having eight sides. That something has eight sides, though
presumably it is often an important part of the explanation why that thing seems to be an
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octagon, could not be an explanation why that thing seems to be an octagon when it is not
in fact a octagon.
So, so far, the first argument Socrates gives here against the proposal that the fine
is the appropriate seems a long-winded way of saying that the appropriate -- conceived
of, as Hippias inadequately conceives of it here, as the fashionable -- is not coextensive
with the fine.15
Hippias now changes his mind and proposes that the appropriate makes things
both be and be seen to be fine when it is present. Hippias, thus retracting his example
about the ridiculous (and hence not actually fine) figure who looks finer in appropriate
clothes and footwear, reveals another assumption of his which he cannot hold in
conjunction with the proposal that the fine is to be defined as the appropriate. Socrates’
second argument, against this new configuration of Hippias’ premises, is another short
one.
First Premise. The appropriate makes things both be fine and be seen to be
fine, when it’s present. (Hippias’ proposal at 294c3-4)
Second Premise. The fine by itself (or perhaps the fine, itself) could not
make things both be and be seen to be fine (294e2-4)
Conclusion. The appropriate has been seen to be something other than
fine. (294e8-9)16
Socrates argues for the second premise. He gets Hippias’ assent that there is disagreement
about fine things, e.g. fine customs and pursuits (294c8-9), even when they really are
fine. Hippias concurs that the presence of the fine in the case of fine things does not
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always make them seem fine. Fine things often go unrecognized: “They are unknown.”
(294d4)
Guthrie comments on this second argument. (Guthrie’s translation uses ‘beautiful’
instead of ‘fine’.)
“[The suggestion that the fine is the appropriate] is finally dismissed by
an argument using the distinction between reality and appearance. This is
a very curious argument, for it would apply not only to appropriateness
but to whatever else might be alleged to be a definition or description of
beauty. Does the appropriate make things to be beautiful or only to appear
so? It cannot do both, for otherwise everything that possesses that
attribute (i.e. if appropriateness =beauty, everything that is beautiful)
would both be and appear beautiful, and there could be no difference of
opinion about what is beautiful.”17
Guthrie says further of Plato, “Presumably ... he was aware that it disqualified not only
‘the appropriate’ but anything else one could think of, from consideration as a definition
of beauty.’18
What Guthrie says is instructive, though wrong: contrary to what Guthrie says,
the argument does not disqualify every possible definition. Rather, the argument
disqualifies the conjunction of any proposed definition with an assumption like Hippias’
new first premise. That new first premise asserts the wrong sort of connection between on
the one hand possessing the attribute that falls under the analysans and on the other hand
seeming, or being seen, to fall under the analysandum. Hippias has asserted that
possessing the analysans-attribute always makes for seeming to possess the analysandum
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-attribute. Hippias’ proposal requires, unacceptably, that the presence of what the
analysans of the fine describes should make it unmistakeably obvious that whatever falls
under the analysans falls under the analysandum .
Consider again the octagon. Though having eight sides is what makes a plane
figure an octagon, having eight sides does not always make such a figure seem, or be
seen, to be an octagon. Some octagons are entirely unobserved. And some observers are
inattentive. Someone who fails to notice the presence of eight sides as he observes a
plane figure will not take even the first step toward recognizing it as an octagon, even if
he has firmly in mind the analysis that an eight-sided figure is an octagon. Even
possession of an analysis cannot protect us against errors of inattention. That is the
simplest case which vividly shows that Socrates has a decisive argument against the
current candidate definition plus Hippias’ extra assumption. This simplest case reminds
us that between the presence of the analysans -attribute and the being seen to fall under
the analysandum -attribute there intervenes a person to whom seeming occurs or fails to
occur.19
Moreover, there are some less simple cases in which the presence, even the
recognized presence, of an analysans -attribute will not guarantee recognition of the
presence of the analysandum-attribute. Imagine a geometer-in-training who antecedently
believes that eight-sided figures are definitely not octagons. Turning his attention to what
he sees to be an eight-sided figure, he will think that it is not an octagon. Granted, his
confusion is maximal. But such confusion is one possible source for a disconnection
between the recognition of an analysans -attribute and the recognition of an analysandum
21
-attribute. Our error can stand in the way of our matching up an analysans -attribute with
what it analyses.
Here is another way in which even recognizing the presence of an analysansattribute can fail to trigger recognition of its analysandum -attribute. Imagine a person
searching for a definition of justice who believes strongly in advance that nothing just
could greatly inconvenience him or that nothing just could disrupt traditional familiar
social arrangements. Suppose he is even contemplating the correct, but at present
unrecognized by him to be correct, analysans of justice, whatever that may be. Suppose
he notices that if that were what just is, it would follow that freeing his slaves would be
just. He is already convinced that freeing his slaves cannot be just, since it would be
obviously inconvenient. So he will conclude that the (analysans-) attribute he is dwelling
on cannot be justice.
Socrates’ argument against Hippias’ way of connecting the proposed analysans
of the fine with what makes things seem to be fine is a stimulus to reflection on the ways
in which we can fail to make the connection between analysans and analysandum. We
can fail because related convictions impede us. The finest analysis will not strike the
otherwise unreceptive.
§9 Socrates Omits to Mention a Possibility
If this argument against the proposal that the fine is the appropriate has its source,
as I am supposing, in Socrates’ self- questioning, consideration of that argument teaches
us a further detail about Socrates the self-questioner: he thinks it important to explore
22
one’s assumptions about being seen to be -- which includes seeming -- as one tests a
definition, but he omits to consider a certain possibility.
It is Socrates who introduces the topic of seeming into the discussion in the first
place when he offers Hippias some alternatives: does the appropriate make things “be
seen to be fine, or be fine, or neither” (293e11-294a2)?
It is not strange that Socrates and Hippias do not go on to consider the alternative
“neither”, since they agreed earlier that the fine itself is what makes things be fine
(287c8-d3), and they will agree so again: (294b4-6) “The fine is what all things are fine
by, whether or not they are seen to be fine” (similarly 294b8-c1)). It is strange, however,
that they test only two alternatives: first, that the appropriate makes things seem (and
merely seem) fine and second, that the appropriate always makes things be seen to be, as
well as be, fine. It is strange also that as the conclusion of this phase of their discussion,
Socrates again offers Hippias the meager choice ( 294e4-5), between saying that the
appropriate is what makes things be seen to be fine, or saying that the appropriate is what
makes things be fine. Hippias chooses the former, and the topic of the appropriate is then
abandoned.
But why did Socrates not give Hippias another choice? Why did Socrates not ask
Hippias to consider some more complex connections between being made to be, and
being made to seem, fine? There is at least a third possible connection between the
analysans -attribute and the recognition of the analysandum -attribute that Socrates is
omitting. The appropriate, properly understood (although this might have been beyond
the depicted Hippias) as the genuinely appropriate instead of the merely superficially
appropriate, might always and only make things be fine and yet might merely sometimes,
23
but not always, make things seem fine to us. (Our receptivity to recognition will of course
also enter in.) Would Socrates also have an argument against that more complex
suggestion?
The more complex suggestion seems initially more promising. For very general
evaluative predicates such as ‘fine’, ‘good’, or ‘valuable’ it seems a strongly important
truth about what is good, fine, or valuable that someone somewhere appreciates
something good or otherwise valuable. Whatever is the correct analysis of the good or the
fine, that analysis, which says what makes things good or fine, should bring out that
strongly important truth. The correct analysis, whatever it might be, should bring out
somehow the appeal of the good, that is, to its seeming good or fine to us. Whatever
makes things good should make good things somewhere, sometime, seem good -- appeal
-- to us. Being good or otherwise valuable is then rather different from being a rock or a
galaxy or an octagon; there might be rocks, galaxies, and octagons without their ever
getting noticed in the history of the universe. But if no sentient being could ever
appreciate anything, there would be no fine things. (Any particular fine thing, though not
all of them, might nevertheless escape the notice of all of us for all time.) Hippias’
inclination to connect his attempted analysis of the fine with what makes things seem fine
is, to give even the depicted Hippias some credit, natural.20
I think that Socrates’ omission of any more complex proposal for the relation
between the appropriate and what seems fine must mean something. It may simply mean
that it is too much to expect Hippias to understand a more complex proposal. Or the
omission may mean that Socrates in his self-questioning has not so far defeated that sort
of proposal. Or the omission may mean that Socrates, or even Plato, is not yet ready to
24
talk about such a proposal. Perhaps the lesson is that the connection is a hard one even
for an acute philosopher to articulate clearly.21
§10 A Major Lesson of Socrates’ Self-Questioning
From Socrates’ depiction of his ongoing self-conversation, we learn what strikes
me as an especially important thing about him. Socrates presents his conversation with
himself as a conversation between people who are utterly focussed on the topic, who are
utterly serious and plain speaking, who are utterly open to the severest criticism, but who
yet arrive at no grand positive concluding statements.
It is of course Plato who depicts Socrates as so depicting himself. I have put it
previously that in Socrates’ self-conversation we are given Plato’s picture of the most
philosophically acute questioner examining the philosophically most adept answerer. I
would like to emphasize as strongly as possible the sort of picture Plato has drawn, and
the importance I think he must have attached to it. I am tempted to try to make
comparisons to other legendary contests; I think of matches that stand out in the history
of boxing or of chess. Casting about for comparisons to convey the magnitude that I
believe Plato saw in Socrates’ conversation with himself, I think also of mythic
combatants locked in struggle. I imagine perhaps Fafner vs. Godzilla. But though that
fantasy would approach a suitable magnitude, it is in other ways not appropriate. One
reason is that Socrates’ self-conversation is not a battle. It is part of his customary search
for the truth about how to live. So, after all, the barest statement is best. The conversation
gives us Socrates facing Socrates. That says enough about the importance that Plato saw
in this ongoing conversation of which he gives us fragments. It says, in fact, that we are
25
here given Plato’s picture of what we might call the Platonic ideal of a philosophical
examination.22
So we learn something also about Plato from Socrates’ conversation. We learn
that as Plato imagines an examining-conversation between the best possible philosophical
equals, he imagines a conversation in which the participants do not put knowledge on
display.23 The conversation, so far as we are told, may be only humbling.24
§ 11 A Condition That Repels Socrates
Finally, and most importantly, we learn from Socrates’ self-conversation just how
very seriously he takes discussion of the fine. He thinks it shameful to discuss the fine
under certain conditions.
Socrates tells us at at 304 d how, as self-questioner, he reproaches himself.
When I go home (epeidan oun eiselthô oikade) to my own place (eis
emautou) and he hears me saying those things, he asks if I’m not ashamed
that I dare discuss (dialegesthai) fine activities when I’ve been so plainly
refuted about the fine, and it’s clear I don’t even know at all what that is
itself! ‘Look’, he’ll say, ‘How will you know whose speech -- or any other
action -- is finely presented or not, when you are ignorant of the fine?’
The final question which Socrates reports from the questioner is (304e1-2),
Whenever you are in a state like that (hopote houtô diakeisai) do you
think it is any better (kreitton) for you to live (zên) than to die (tethnanai)?
It is a rhetorical question. I take it that Socrates would answer, ‘No, I think it
is not any better for me to live than to die when I am in a state like that’. In
26
contrast to other dialogues in which Socrates as questioner gives no clues to his
own beliefs, here we may confidently ascribe the answer to the depicted Socrates,
who is answerer as well as questioner.25
The putative answer bears some scrutiny. I take it that the answer would not
be merely a report on Socrates’ state of mind. It would convey something about
the value of a certain way of life: when Socrates is in a state like that, it is no
better for him to live than to die. We may then treat as a direct assertion from
Socrates the statement,
Whenever I am in such a condition, it is no better for me to be alive than
dead.
The statement is riveting, despairing, and puzzling. There are rare circumstances in
which someone might seriously say of a person that life is no better than death for that
person. But such circumstances -- for example, extreme permanent suffering or
permanent criminality-- do not seem to be present here.26
Gregory Vlastos says of the statement, “the gravity of the denouement ... has
never been properly appreciated in the scholarly literature.”27 He then comments and
paraphrases thus:
At the last moment the comedy turns tragic. Socrates sees the failure of
the definitional search as his personal disaster: if he has no viable answer
to the question, “What is the fine?”--and the long preceding discussion has
shown that he hasn’t--his life has lost its value, he might as well be
dead.(p.71)
27
Socrates sees catastrophe. He says that if this is to be his condition -- that
of not knowing what is the fine and, therefore, not knowing if any
particular action whatsoever is fine -- he might as well be dead: his life is
worthless. We know what would make life worthless for Socrates:
forfeiture of virtue. Thus Socrates is implying that since he cannot know
if any particular action is fine so long as he has no definition of the “fine”,
he will be unable to tell if any action whatever, be it the noblest deed or
the foulest crime, is fine or foul: all his practical moral judgements will be
at sea; so he will be unable to make correct moral choices in his daily life
and thus to act virtuously. He is morally bankrupt. (p. 72)
Vlastos says that “Socrates’ critic tells him that not knowing” if any particular action is
fine “would spell moral disaster”. (p. 73)
I think, however, that that is not what Socrates’ critic tells him. Although
Socrates’ statement has as much gravity as Vlastos claims, its gravity is different in kind
from what Vlastos finds.
To explain its gravity I will ask here: what, exactly, are the conditions under
which Socrates might as well die as live? I look again at the passage in which the
questioner asks if Socrates is not ashamed:
When I’m convinced by you and say what you say, that it’s much the most
excellent thing (polu kratiston) to be able to present a speech well and
finely (kalôs) and get things done in court or any other gathering, I hear
every insult from that man. ... When ... he hears me saying those things, he
asks if I’m not ashamed that I dare discuss (dialegesthai) fine pursuits
28
(kalôn epitêdeumatôn) when I’ve been so plainly refuted about the fine,
and it’s clear I don’t even know what that is itself! ‘Look,’ he’ll say,
‘How will you know whose speech -- or any other action -- is finely
presented or not, when you are ignorant of the fine? And when you’re in a
state like that, do you think it is any better for you to live than die?’
(304c-e)
I take it that here for Socrates to say that a certain speech was presented finely amounts to
his saying that the action of presenting the speech was a fine thing to do. Ordinarily,
saying ‘That’s a fine speech’ is distinct from saying ‘Your giving that speech is a fine
action’. But I gather that Socrates does not want to make that distinction here, since he
reproaches himself also in the passage for having discussed “fine pursuits” (or, in
Woodruff’s translation, “fine activities”). That is, the annoying questioner locates as the
source of shame that Socrates “dares” to say that activities such as getting things done in
court are fine although Socrates cannot answer ‘How will you know what is fine?’;
Socrates has no answer to ‘What is the fine?’, to give to someone else.
I am uncertain whether Socrates is conveying that he actually at some time did
say that presenting a speech or getting things done in court was a fine thing to do.
However, it seems to me unlikely that Socrates is here confessing to an inclination to
make such an observation. It seems to me more likely that Socrates is conveying to
Hippias the conditional thought that if Socrates were to say such a thing, the annoying
questioner would tell Socrates that that was shameful.28
29
Our question is: what is the gravity here? why would it be shameful enough to
render life no better than death to ‘dare discuss’ fine activities or pursuits without an
answer to the question, What is the fine?
It is helpful here to look back at what prompted Socrates to ask ‘What is the
fine?’ in the first place. What prompted him was Hippias’ mentioning his speech about
fine pursuits. Hippias was in effect recommending a way of life to young men. Socrates’
challenge to Hippias suggests that Socrates has this objection: it would be shameful if
Socrates were to recommend to others, as fine, certain life pursuits without being able to
answer ‘What is the fine?’ Such recommendations about a fine way to live, without a
supporting definition, would not help the hearer to arrive at his own reasons to believe -which are also reasons that explain why it is true -- that the recommended way of life is
fine. Since a way of life is the most important thing that the hearer can endorse as fine,
such a recommendation may in fact be damaging to a hearer if it inspires him to follow a
pursuit but does not help him to explore his own reasons for it.
In contrast, Socrates shows that he is not troubled that he recommends pots or
soup ladles as fine without having a very general account of the fine. He can still give
perfectly good reasons, specific to pots, why something is a fine pot, as he does at 288e:
If the pot should have been turned by a good potter, smooth and round and
finely fired, like some of those fine two-handled pots that hold six choes,
very fine ones -- if he’s asking about a pot like that, we have to agree it’s
fine. How could we say that what is fine is not a fine thing?
It does not occur to Socrates to ask here what, in general, the fine is as a preliminary to
talking about fine pots. They are not as important or as far reaching a topic as fine
30
pursuits for a life. (And there are pot experts, such as the good potter Socrates alludes to.
This potter no doubt has no general definition of the fine, but Socrates is untroubled in
getting his fine pots, and his fine pot standards, from the good potter.)
My understanding of the condition under which Socrates would be ashamed is
confirmed by 298b7-c1. Hippias had suggested that some answers Socrates finds flawed
might “slip right past” (paralathoi) the questioner, that is, that they might not get tested.
But Socrates says, emphasizing that it would be bad for him to put up a façade of
knowing when he did not know,
not past the person I’d be most ashamed to babble at or pretend
(prospoioumenos) to say something when I’m not saying anything. ... He
wouldn’t easily let me say those things without testing them, any more
than he’d let me talk as if I knew what I didn’t know.29
The question might now be raised if Socrates is not, in talking to Hippias, doing
just what Socrates says is shameful. Is Socrates not making recommendations to Hippias
by calling pursuits fine and shameful (the opposite of fine) in the absence of a definition
of the fine? I think the answer is that Socrates is not. He is definitely not urging Hippias
to avoid doing the thing that Socrates would be most ashamed to do. In fact Socrates, in
his last response to Hippias in the dialogue, congratulates Hippias, of course archly, that
Hippias knows the things a man ought to practise (epitêdeuein: 304b8). But, Socrates
says, when he himself repeats what Hippias says, and hence makes recommendations to
others, Socrates’ self-questioner asks Socrates if Socrates is not ashamed. Socrates’
reproaches seem to be confined to himself.
31
There is one surprising thing about Socrates’ self-reproach which I note. The
questioner asks Socrates if Socrates is not ashamed to converse -- dialegesthai-- about
fine pursuits when he has been so plainly refuted about the fine 304d5-8). The verb
dialegesthai can refer, very broadly, to conversing of all kinds. It can also refer, more
narrowly, to the exchanges of short questions and short answers, the examining
discussions, in which Socrates customarily engages. It would seem odd for Socrates to
object to himself for engaging in these questioning discussions in the absence of a
definition, since it is the absence of a definition that gets the conversations going in the
first place; the point of the conversations is often to search for a definition. Socrates could
hardly object to himself for looking for a definition when he does not have a definition.
So perhaps ‘converse’ in its wider sense is the appropriate translation for dialegesthai
here. Or perhaps we are to gather that Socrates is indeed, and not surprisingly, at least
raising the reflexive and self-critical question whether he should be having examining
conversations at all if they in fact presuppose some ability to classify things as fine and
shameful. The question of what Socrates thinks he should be ashamed of is worth more
thought.
I conclude, however, that Socrates does not represent mere ignorance of
definitions as moral disaster. He might even be thinking that such ignorance is the
normal moral condition. His concluding response of the dialogue is not that simply
because of not knowing what the fine is, it would be as well for him to die as to live.
Rather, Socrates’ actual concern is somewhat less self-centered than a concern about his
own acting in ignorance of definitions. He is looking outward at the effect of ignorant
recommendations on ignorant others when, revealing the most serious insight of his self-
32
conversation, he paints the conditions under which he might as well die as live. The
condition that repels Socrates is not ignorance. It is ignorance plus pretension, that is,
fraud.30
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Minneapolis, MN 55455
33
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Benson, Hugh 1990. ‘Meno, the Slave Boy, and the Elenchus’. Phronesis 35: 128-158.
Benson, Hugh 1996. ‘The Aims of the Socratic Elenchus’ 21-33 in Lehrer.
Burnet, John 1903. Platonis Opera vol III. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Brickhouse, Thomas C. and Smith, Nicholas 1994. Plato’s Socrates. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Freeman, Kathleen 1959. Companion to the Presocratic Philosophers. Oxford: Basil
Blackwell.
Frede, Michael 1992. ‘Plato’s Arguments and the Dialogue Form’. Oxford Studies in
Ancient Philosophy Supplementary volume IX: 201-219.
Guthrie, W.K.C. 1986. A History of Greek Philosophy vol IV. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Hyland, Drew 1995. Finitude and Transcendence in the Platonic Dialogues. Albany:
SUNY Press.
Inglessis-Margellos, Cécile 1994. ‘Socrate et Son Double’. Revue des Études Grecques
105: 85-106.
Lehrer, K. et al., eds. 1996. Knowledge, Teaching, and Wisdom. Philosophical Studies
Series vol 67. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
McGinn, Colin 1983. The Subjective View. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Miller, Mitchell 1996. ‘The Arguments I Seem to Hear: Argument and Irony in the
Crito’. Phronesis 41: 121-137.
Moreau, Joseph 1941. ‘Le Platonisme de L’Hippias Majeur’ Revue des Études Grecques
54: 19-42.
34
Palmer, John A. 1999. Plato’s Reception of Parmenides . Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Prior, William J. 1997. ‘Why Did Plato Write Socratic Dialogues?’ Apeiron 30: 109123.
Saunders, Trevor J. 1987. Plato’s Early Dialogues. New York: Penguin.
Sedley, David 1998. ‘Platonic Causes’ Phronesis 43: 114-132.
Smith, Angela M. 1998. ‘Knowledge and Expertise in the Early Platonic Dialogues’.
Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie. 80: 129-161.
Szlezák, Thomas Alexander 1985. Platon und die Schriftlichkeit der Philosophie. Berlin:
Walter de Gruyter.
Tarrant, Dorothy 1976. The ‘Hippias Major’ Attributed to Plato. New York: Arno Press,
reprint of 1928 edition of Cambridge University Press.
Tarrant, R.S. 1994. ‘The Hippias Major and Socratic Theories of Pleasure’ in Vander
Waert 1994: 107-126.
Teloh, Henry 1986. Socratic Education in Plato’s Early Dialogues. Notre Dame:
University of Notre Dame Press.
Tigerstedt, E.N. 1977. Interpreting Plato: Acta Universitatis Stockholmiensis 17.
Uppsala: Amquist and Wicksell.
Vander Waert, Paul A. 1994. The Socratic Movement. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
Vlastos, Gregory 1991. Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher. Ithaca: Cornell
University Press.
Vlastos, Gregory 1994. Socratic Studies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Waterfield, Robin 1987. Translation of Hippias Major in Saunders 1987.
35
Whitaker, Albert Keith 1998. Plato’s ‘Parmenides’. Newburyport, MA: Focus
Publishing.
Woodruff, Paul 1982. Plato: ‘Hippias Major’: Translated with Commentary and Essay.
Indianapolis: Hackett.
1
I use the translation of Woodruff 1982, and I have benefited from the commentary and essays. I have
occasionally made a change in the translation, using the edition of Burnet 1903. At 294e3 I would keep
Burnet’s reading.
2
Hyland 1995, p. 5 proposes an even more sweeping rule: “It is instructive, as others have observed, that
Plato never presents a dialogue between two mature philosophers, much less between two ‘wise’ people.”
Whitaker 1998 p. 2 says, “The Parmenides is the only example we possess of a conversation between
Socrates, albeit a very young Socrates, and another philosopher.” Socrates’ conversation with himself in the
Hippias Major is an exception, though a very brief one.
Noticing the same thing as Hyland and Whitaker do, but describing it more accurately, even given
the Hippias Major’s self-conversation, Prior 1997 p. 116 says, “Philosophy, for Socrates in these [early and
middle] dialogues, is a way of life. In the dialogues written before the Parmenides, Socrates is the only
representative of that way of life.”
3
There seems still to be some reasonable controversy here about what Socrates believes. A study of the
speeches of the Laws in the Crito by Miller 1996 raises the question whether Socrates’ enactment of the
Laws’ speech tells us Socrates’ own views, or whether these remain unspoken. For more complexities of
the Crito, see Inglessis-Margellos 1994.
36
4
The conversation in the Hippias Major then is also a counter-example, but a special and not quite
threatening one, to the thesis on p. 146 of Smith 1998: “Socrates’ interlocutors all claimed to be experts”.
Socrates of course famously claims not to be an expert. This essay will explain why he interrogates himself
anyway.
5
Tarrant 1994 suggests that neither of the two representations of Socrates is quite the real Socrates. Tarrant
describes Socrates (p. 113) in the Hippias Major with “the surface Socrates having neither the urgent
desire for truth nor the guts to ask tricky questions for himself, and the alter ego being all too hostile in his
interrogations.” That I object to Tarrant’s description will become clear later.
6
There is a thought-provoking discussion of irony in Vlastos 1991. Vlastos says that when we speak today
of a comment as ironic, we have in mind that its falsity will be obvious to its audience. But, he claims, the
ancient Greek eirôn, ‘ironist’, as explained in e.g. Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, conveys deliberate lying
and the aim of deceiving the audience. I do not entirely agree with Vlastos that we today think that irony
must be obviously false to its audience, since I don’t think he takes into account that there may be more
than one audience for the same irony, and some audiences may be obtuse, and be known to be. But the
matter is complicated, and I will anyway avoid the word ‘irony’.
Tigerstedt 1977 p. 95 says, “We can seldom be absolutely sure that Plato is not speaking
ironically.” (Presumably by ‘Plato’, he means ‘certain characters in Plato’s dialogues’.) I appreciate the
difficulty of discerning when a statement in a dialogue is or is not ironic. But it seems appropriate, and
even necessary, to ask ourselves what follows if certain statements -- such as the questions and comments
of Socrates in his self-conversation in the Hippias Major-- are taken seriously.
7
The Editor reminds me that Socrates talked to himself after he was told what the Delphic Oracle had said
about him.
8
Woodruff points out that athetizers of the dialogue have said that Hippias is “mercilessly ridiculed” in a
way that is uncharacteristic of Plato’s Socrates (p.97). Woodruff replies that the Socrates of the Hippias
Major, “sharp, ironic, and not without a streak of cruelty” is consistent with the goading and irritating
Socrates elsewhere portrayed by Plato (p. 97). But Woodruff’s example of the “streak of cruelty” is solely
what he calls the “naked insult at 286a” (p. 119). There Socrates says to Hippias that the Spartans use
37
Hippias “the way children use old ladies, to tell stories for pleasure.” Woodruff’s note 42 compares the
remark to a Thrasymachean insult in the Republic . But it seems to me that at 286a Socrates is giving a
mild barb: the Spartans have located Hippias in the wrong performance genre. I would need more
evidence that Socrates or Hippias has the degree of total contempt for old ladies and children’s stories that
would render Socrates’ description a positive cruelty.
9
Woodruff, p. 65 note 119 comments on the relation to the Phaedo passage. In contrast, Sedley 1998 p.
128 sees the Phaedo passage as defining large via going beyond (or exceeding), that is, as giving the same
analysis as the Hippias Major, and notes that the same account is given at Parmenides 150c-d.
10
The character of Hippias as portrayed in this dialogue as self-satisfied is, so far as I know, universally
acknowledged. Tarrant 1976 comments, “His first words breathe self-importance and he continues to boast
without shame,” and she speaks of his “arrogant self-confidence” (p. xxix). Guthrie 1986 p. 176 says that
the dialogue is “a burlesque of Hippias as an insensitive and stupid man with an impenetrable complacency
and an insatiable appetite for flattery.” I don’t think that Hippias is stupid, although he is often wrong; but
I won’t discuss that point here. Teloh 1986 p. 179 says, “Hippias’ ignorance is matched only by his
confidence and insolence.” See also Freeman 1959 p. 389 –390. Hippias’ character is unchanged two days
later in the conversation depicted in the Hippias Minor.
Some readers of this paper have expressed
sympathy for the actual Hippias, but I obviously do not take a stand on what he was like.
11
Here with a personal object ekmeletêsês means “train”. Woodruff translates “practice”, which is the
translation Liddell-Scott gives for the verb with a non-personal object (to practice something, to study it),
as at 286d6, which Woodruff translates “study”.
12
Prior p. 117, makes a similar point about why Plato wrote descriptions of conversations with such people
as Hippias. “The interlocutors don’t fail because they are stupid, though commentators often allege this.
Plato was not interested in writing works that simply made fun of foolish views and the people who held
them.”
13
Compare Aristotle’s saying that we can contemplate our neighbors better than ourselves and their actions
better than our own. (Nicomachean Ethics Bk IX ch 9 1169b33-34). Compare also Socrates’ observation in
38
Alcibiades Major (133a) that an eye looking into another eye will see itself, which precedes his suggestion
that if a soul is to see itself, it should look at a soul (133b).
14
The verb I am rendering ‘seem’ [phainesthai] has an important ambiguity between ‘is plainly’ and ‘is
apparently’, as Woodruff points out note 80, p. 54. Woodruff renders it “to be seen to be” in order to
preserve the ambiguity. I have mostly used ‘seem’ here to emphasize that that is the force that is important
in this argument. The argument points out that appropriateness can give the mere appearance of being fine.
15
On this point I am indebted to Gale Justin for comments on a shorter version of this paper that I presented
at the Pacific Division Meetings of the American Philosophical Association in April 1999. She made it
clear to me that the genuinely appropriate -- the appropriate in that sense of ‘appropriate’ in which it is a
perfectly general word of commendation - is different from Hippias’ understanding of the word. The
argument that Socrates gives here works only against Hippias’ rather shallow conception of the appropriate.
Teloh p. 178, puts it: “Hippias operates only at the level of superficial appearances and public opinion.”
Hippias’ example of shoes and clothes as appropriate suggests that for him the appropriate is the
fashionable.
16
One might also state the conclusion, “The appropriate is plainly something other than fine.” Translating
the verb ephanê, from phainesthai,
by ‘is plainly’, is warranted by the following participle, on.
17
Guthrie p. 185.
18
Guthrie, p. 185.
19
Woodruff, p. 64, also thinks, in contrast to Guthrie, that Socrates’ argument is a good one, but he
identifies the flaw that the argument reveals in Hippias’ proposal differently. Woodruff says, “The
argument would discredit any definition of the fine that was intended to suffice for some other definiendum
as well. Two different things cannot have the same logical cause . . . unless the two always occur together.
... So the argument is not a trick; it serves to show that Hippias himself conceptually separates the
appropriate from the fine.” Woodruff’s principle about logical cause seems unobjectionable, but I think it is
especially of interest to notice that the argument is calling attention to the connection between being and
seeming.
39
20
Robin Waterfield, p. 249 in Trevor J. Saunders, ed., Plato: Early Dialogues (Penguin: New York 1987)
comments on the argument by which Socrates disqualifies Hippias’ second proposal in a way that makes,
but I think somewhat too simply, the important connection between seeming and being fine. “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 -- 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.” Because Socrates is
especially concerned about fine activities, I think it is clear that he is not interested in what is fine for some
particular individual. Socrates, unlike Waterfield, could say that a particular fine thing might go
universally unrecognized.
21
For some complicated ways of stating the connection that are ultimately discarded, see McGinn 1983 pp.
145-155.
22
Palmer 1999 p. 63 suggests the possibility that Socrates the questioner and Socrates the answerer “make
crucially different assumptions about the definitional project.” It will be clear that, in taking the
conversation of which Socrates reports fragments to be a serious conversation of Socrates with himself, I
disagree with that.
23
On this point I disagree strongly with Szlezák 1985 ch. 7, “Hippias maior: Sokrates und sein
Doppelgänger”. According to Szlezák, when Socrates “splits” into two, one of the results of the split, the
questioner, is someone whose speech “betrays knowledge of the ideas”; the other result is the unknowing
answerer.
But in the Hippias Major the knowledge of the fine itself that is sought is first of all an analysis of
the fine. I see no evidence that Socrates the questioner has that analysis. Talking about the fine itself shows
an interest in a definitional question. It does not show a grasp of the answer. Moreover, if Socrates the
answerer were to answer the questioner by mentioning “the ideas” in the sense of a realm of transcendent
beings graspable only by a few people who had special access to them, my impression of Socrates the
questioner is that he would get out his cudgel in earnest. Socrates objects to Hippias’ advice to make
yourself famous by making speeches not because Hippias cannot reinforce his advice by speaking of the
40
theory of ideas in this latter sense. Rather, Socrates is objecting that Hippias gives no straightforward
reasons to believe that the advice is good advice. Plato hints that Hippias’ advice is not good by making
that advice originate with Nestor, who has some character flaws that may indicate his untrustworthiness.
(The Oxford Classical Dictionary credits Nestor with “platitudes”.)
On the point that the questioner is somehow alluding to the theory of ideas, I disagree also with
the helpful though athetizing article of Moreau 1941. Moreau finds that the questioning Socrates (pp. 4142) asks questions in a way that only “initiates of Platonism” will see the point of. If “initiates of
Platonism” need to do more than to understand what it is to ask for an analysis, I disagree.
There is room for dispute whether or not Plato moved -- and if so, how much -- from this picture
of the ideal conversation about philosophy in other works. I do not take up that question here.
24
The conversation in the Hippias Major provides a corrective worth dwelling on to a statement of Prior p.
117. Prior says, “The dialogues are unhappy encounters between the philosopher and non-philosophers,
and the point of the encounters is to show the incompatibility between the life of philosophy and that lived
by non-philosophers.” Socrates’ self-conversation in the Hippias Major is an encounter also somewhat
unhappy -- in that no positive answer to the main question is arrived at. But it is an encounter between a
philosopher and a philosopher. The Hippias Major might then have another point: to show that a life of
philosophy involves pretty constant self-questioning and pretty constant failure to define the most
important things. Waterfield 1987 p. 226 raises the question why, “if the dialogue is scarcely informative
on the nature of fineness, ... did Plato write it?” Waterfield pp. 226-228 gives some reasons to find the
dialogue useful. Prior’s idea gives another answer to the question: the encounter between Socrates and
Hippias shows the incompatibility of their two ways of life. Adding to Prior’s idea the thought that the
dialogue displays the encounter between Socrates and himself gives another answer to Waterfield’s
question.
25
In most dialogues the dialogue form prevents us, as, for example, Frede 1992 points out, from finding
direct evidence for any views to ascribe to Socrates the questioner, let alone to Plato. We only have what
the answerer believes in a question and answer discussion. In Alcibiades Major Alcibiades states this.
Socrates asks, (112e- 113a) “Do you see again, Alcibiades, how you aren’t saying that well... that I am
41
saying these things? ...Concerning these things, surely, it’s not that I, the one questioning, am evidently
saying [them]; rather, [is it] you, the one answering?” Alcibiades responds, “The one answering, it seems
to me, Socrates.” But here in the Hippias Major, if Socrates would answer ‘No’ to the question, we have the
view of Socrates the answerer, who happens also to be the questioner.
26
Other passages in which what Socrates says seems to have the implication that under certain conditions it
would be better to die than to live are discussed in Brickhouse and Smith 1994, pp. 201-212.
An anonymous referee has made the thought-provoking and correct comment that there is some
room for dispute about what Socrates’ response would be. Suppose, as is possible, that Socrates’ response
would be, ‘No, I do not think that it is any better for me to live than to die when I am in a state like that.’
That response is logically different from, and milder than, the response, ‘I think that it is not …’. The
response, ‘I do not think…’ would be a report simply about the content of Socrates’ thoughts. It would not
be a comment on the value of a certain way of living. It would be a further report of Socratic ignorance.
Socrates’ putative response would not then be as riveting as I find it to be later on in this essay. I don’t see
a way to settle this dispute definitively. At the moment I am more inclined to believe that Socrates’ answer
is intended as a comment on the value of a way of life, not just as a comment about the contents of his
thought.
27
Vlastos 1994, p. 72.
28
It would also be relevant to look at passages in other dialogues in which Socrates says (and not
ironically) that someone has said something fine. For example, at 19e in the Apology Socrates says that he
thinks it is a fine thing if someone is able to teach people, as Gorgias, Prodicus, and Hippias profess to do.
Is this statement the sort of recommendation that the Socrates of the Hippias Major would be ashamed to
make in the absence of an account of the fine? I think that the answer is ‘No’, but I will not pursue that
question here.
Gale Justin has suggested that since Socrates mentions ‘court or any other gathering’, Socrates has
in mind the sort of recommendations he would put himself in the position of making if he were to go into
politics.
42
29
Benson 1990 p. 152 also objects to Vlastos’ account of 304d5-e3, but differently from the way I have
objected. “To read the Hippias Major passage ... as ... a message of the futility of the quest for knowledge
is, I think, to seriously misread it. [It] is of a piece with those passages in which Socrates testifies to the
value of eliminating one’s conceit. It is just another passage in which Socrates exhorts others toward
philosophy. Once one recognizes one’s ignorance, one must recognize that a life in such a state is not
worth living.” Benson relates the Hippias Major passage to the Apology’s claim that the unexamined life is
not worth living for a man. I think Benson’s account is compatible with my account. The Hippias Major
passage, as I’ve explained it, says only that the pretentious or fraudulent life is not worth living. The
connection with the unexamined life is perhaps that an unexamined life leads to self-satisfaction; selfsatisfaction may lead to pretension and fraud. Self-examination may help Socrates ward off selfsatisfaction. But the connection is worth more exploration.
30
I thank two anonymous referees and the Editor for very thought provoking comments. I thank my
colleague, Elizabeth Belfiore, for informing me about Nestor and for convincing me that Socrates is
genuinely insulting to himself. I thank my colleague Norman Dahl for reminding me that making
objections to oneself about one’s current philosophical projects is a very ordinary thing to do. I thank
Constance Meinwald and Marie Pannier for helpful reactions and comments, and I especially thank Hugh
Benson and Gale Justin for some objections. I thank John Wallace and my sons John and Peter for their
encouraging attention to a very early draft of this.