[68] Plato, Hipp. Min. 376 C.
I will here again remind the reader, that in this, as in the other dialogues, the real speaker is Plato throughout: and that it is he alone who prefixes the different names to words determined by himself.
Remarks on the dialogue. If the parts had been inverted, the dialogue would have been cited by critics as a specimen of the sophistry and corruption of the Sophists.
Now, if the dialogue just concluded had come down to us with the parts inverted, and with the reasoning of Sokrates assigned to Hippias, most critics would probably have produced it as a tissue of sophistry justifying the harsh epithets which they bestow upon the Athenian Sophists — as persons who considered truth and falsehood to be on a par — subverters of morality — and corruptors of the youth of Athens.[69] But as we read it, all that, which in the mouth of Hippias would have passed for sophistry, is here put forward by Sokrates; while Hippias not only resists his conclusions, and adheres to the received ethical sentiment tenaciously, even when he is unable to defend it, but hates the propositions forced upon him, protests against the perverse captiousness of Sokrates, and requires much pressing to induce him to continue the debate. Upon the views adopted by the critics, Hippias ought to receive credit for this conduct, as a friend of virtue and morality. To me, such reluctance to debate appears a defect rather than a merit; but I cite the dialogue as illustrating what I have already said in another place — that Sokrates and Plato threw out more startling novelties in ethical doctrine, than either Hippias or Protagoras, or any of the other persons denounced as Sophists.
[69] Accordingly one of the Platonic critics, Schwalbe (Œuvres de Platon, p. 116), explains Plato’s purpose in the Hippias Minor by saying, that Sokrates here serves out to the Sophists a specimen of their own procedure, and gives them an example of sophistical dialectic, by defending a sophistical thesis in a sophistical manner: That he chooses and demonstrates at length the thesis — the liar is not different from the truth-teller — as an exposure of the sophistical art of proving the contrary of any given proposition, and for the purpose of deriding and unmasking the false morality of Hippias, who in this dialogue talks reasonably enough.
Schwalbe, while he affirms that this is the purpose of Plato, admits that the part here assigned to Sokrates is unworthy of him; and Steinhart maintains that Plato never could have had any such purpose, “however frequently” (Steinhart says), “sophistical artifices may occur in this conversation of Sokrates, which artifices Sokrates no more disdained to employ than any other philosopher or rhetorician of that day” (“so häufig auch in seinen Erörterungen sophistische Kunstgriffe vorkommen mögen, die Sokrates eben so wenig verschmaht hat, als irgend ein Philosoph oder Redekünstler dieser Zeit”). Steinhart, Einleitung zum Hipp. Minor, p. 109.
I do not admit the purpose here ascribed to Plato by Schwalbe, but I refer to the passage as illustrating what Platonic critics think of the reasoning assigned to Sokrates in the Hippias Minor, and the hypotheses which they introduce to colour it.
The passage cited from Steinhart also — that Sokrates no more disdained to employ sophistical artifices than any other philosopher or rhetorician of the age — is worthy of note, as coming from one who is so very bitter in his invectives against the sophistry of the persons called Sophists, of which we have no specimens left.
Polemical purpose of the dialogue — Hippias humiliated by Sokrates.