Note 69 — Chapter XIII · HIPPIAS MAJOR — HIPPIAS MINOR.

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.