The Wandering Hero of the Hippias Minor: Socrates on Virtue and Craft

2017 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Russell E. Jones ◽  
Ravi Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Hippias Minor

Ο 'Αγαθός As ΌΔυνατός in the Hippias Minor

1981 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roslyn Weiss
Keyword(s):  
Proper Understanding ◽  
Intentional Agent ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Unintentional Action ◽  
Hippias Minor ◽  
Better Than

This paper is an attempt so to construe the arguments of the Hippias Minor as to remove the justification for regarding it as unworthy of Plato either because of its alleged fallaciousness and Sophistic mode of argument or because of its alleged immorality. It focuses, therefore, only on the arguments and their conclusions, steering clear of the dialogue's dramatic and literary aspects. Whereas I do not wish to deny the importance of these aspects to a proper understanding of the dialogue – on the contrary, in a dialogue so heavily laden with irony and caricature, these aspects are necessarily more significant than they are in other dialogues – I do think there is something to be gained from concentrating on the arguments themselves. Although there can be little doubt that Socrates is up to something in the Hippias Minor, the task of determining just what he is up to can only be simplified by clarifying the arguments first.The Hippias Minor has traditionally been thought to contain two independent arguments, each having its own paradoxical conclusion. The first argument begins, it is said, when Hippias characterizes the two Homeric heroes Achilles and Odysseus as the true man (⋯ ⋯ληθ⋯ς) and the false man (⋯ ψευδ⋯ς) respectively. Through its discovery that both the false man and the true man have δύναμις, it results in the paradox that the false man and the true are identical. The second argument, on this view, leaves the subject of ⋯ ⋯ληθ⋯ς and ⋯ ψευδ⋯ς and compares instead all sorts of agents in intentional and unintentional action. Finding that the intentional agent is in every case better than the unintentional, the argument concludes that the intentional evil-doer is also better than the unintentional. Viewing the dialogue as thus containing two distinct topics treated in two self-sufficient arguments is perhaps not the best way to understand it.

scholarly journals THE HIPPIAS MINOR AND THE TRADITIONS OF HOMERIC CRITICISM

2016 ◽  
Vol 62 ◽  
pp. 85-107
Author(s):  
Richard Hunter
Keyword(s):  
Important Influence ◽  
Critical Tradition ◽  
Hippias Minor

Homer plays an important role in the discussion in the Hippias Minor of voluntary and involuntary action and their relation to knowledge and goodness. This paper argues that the Hippias Minor sheds light on the Homeric criticism of the late fifth and early fourth centuries, and that it looks forward to, and significantly influenced, the tradition of Hellenistic and later Homeric criticism, for which our best witnesses are the Homeric scholia. This article considers Socrates' presentation of Achilles and Odysseus in the Hippias Minor and makes the case, more strongly than it has been made before, that this dialogue was an important influence on the later critical tradition.

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