Hippias Major — situation supposed — character of the dialogue. Sarcasm and mockery against Hippias.
Both these two dialogues are carried on between Sokrates and the Eleian Sophist Hippias. The general conception of Hippias — described as accomplished, eloquent, and successful, yet made to say vain and silly things — is the same in both dialogues: in both also the polemics of Sokrates against him are conducted in a like spirit, of affected deference mingled with insulting sarcasm. Indeed the figure assigned to Hippias is so contemptible, that even an admiring critic like Stallbaum cannot avoid noticing the “petulans pene et proterva in Hippiam oratio,” and intimating that Plato has handled Hippias more coarsely than any one else. Such petulance Stallbaum attempts to excuse by saying that the dialogue is a youthful composition of Plato:[1] while Schleiermacher numbers it among the reasons for suspecting the dialogue, and Ast, among the reasons for declaring positively that Plato is not the author.[2] This last conclusion I do not at all accept: nor even the hypothesis of Stallbaum, if it be tendered as an excuse for improprieties of tone: for I believe that the earliest of Plato’s dialogues was composed after he was twenty-eight years of age — that is, after the death of Sokrates. It is however noway improbable, that both the Greater and Lesser Hippias may have been among Plato’s earlier compositions. We see by the Memorabilia of Xenophon that there was repeated and acrimonious controversy between Sokrates and Hippias: so that we may probably suppose feelings of special dislike, determining Plato to compose two distinct dialogues, in which an imaginary Hippias is mocked and scourged by an imaginary Sokrates.
[1] Stallbaum, Prolegg. in Hipp. Maj. p. 149-150; also Steinhart (Einleitung, p. 42-43), who says, after an outpouring of his usual invective against the Sophist: “Nevertheless the coarse jesting of the dialogue seems almost to exceed the admissible limit of comic effect,” &c. Again, p. 50, Steinhart talks of the banter which Sokrates carries on with Hippias, in a way not less cruel (grausam) than purposeless, tormenting him with a string of successive new propositions about the definition of the Beautiful, which propositions, as fast as Hippias catches at them, he again withdraws of his own accord, and thus at last dismisses him (as he had dismissed Ion) uninstructed and unimproved, without even leaving behind in him the sting of anger, &c.
It requires a powerful hatred against the persons called Sophists, to make a critic take pleasure in a comedy wherein silly and ridiculous speeches are fastened upon the name of one of them, in his own day not merely honoured but acknowledged as deserving honour by remarkable and varied accomplishments — and to make the critic describe the historical Hippias (whom we only know from Plato and Xenophon — see Steinhart, note 7, p. 89; Socher, p. 221) as if he had really delivered these speeches, or something equally absurd.
How this comedy may be appreciated is doubtless a matter of individual taste. For my part, I agree with Ast in thinking it misplaced and unbecoming: and I am not surprised that he wishes to remove the dialogue from the Platonic canon, though I do not concur either in this inference, or in the general principle on which it proceeds, viz., that all objections against the composition of a dialogue are to be held as being also objections against its genuineness as a work of Plato. The Nubes of Aristophanes, greatly superior as a comedy to the Hippias of Plato, is turned to an abusive purpose when critics put it into court as evidence about the character of the real Sokrates.
K. F. Hermann, in my judgment, takes a more rational view of the Hippias Major (Gesch. und Syst. der Plat. Phil. p. 487-647). Instead of expatiating on the glory of Plato in deriding an accomplished contemporary, he dwells upon the logical mistakes and confusion which the dialogue brings to view; and he reminds us justly of the intellectual condition of the age, when even elementary distinctions in logic and grammar had been scarcely attended to.
Both K. F. Hermann and Socher consider the Hippias to be not a juvenile production of Plato, but to belong to his middle age.
[2] Schleierm. Einleitung. p. 401; Ast, Platon’s Leben und Schriften, p. 457-459.
Real debate between the historical Sokrates and Hippias in the Xenophontic Memorabilia — subject of that debate.
One considerable point in the Hippias Major appears to have a bearing on the debate between Sokrates and Hippias in the Xenophontic Memorabilia: in which debate, Hippias taunts Sokrates with always combating and deriding the opinions of others, while evading to give opinions of his own. It appears that some antecedent debates between the two had turned upon the definition of the Just, and that on these occasions Hippias had been the respondent, Sokrates the objector. Hippias professes to have reflected upon these debates, and to be now prepared with a definition which neither Sokrates nor any one else can successfully assail, but he will not say what the definition is, until Sokrates has laid down one of his own. In reply to this challenge, Sokrates declares the Just to be equivalent to the Lawful or Customary: he defends this against various objections of Hippias, who concludes by admitting it.[3] Probably this debate, as reported by Xenophon, or something very like it, really took place. If so, we remark with surprise the feebleness of the objections of Hippias, in a case where Sokrates, if he had been the objector, would have found such strong ones — and the feeble replies given by Sokrates, whose talent lay in starting and enforcing difficulties, not in solving them.[4] Among the remarks which Sokrates makes in illustration to Hippias, one is — that Lykurgus had ensured superiority to Sparta by creating in the Spartans a habit of implicit obedience to the laws.[5] Such is the character of the Xenophontic debate.