The Plato Paradigm

Ivor Ludlam: A Critical Analysis of Plato’s Hippias Major

Click here for a structural diagram and summary of the dialogue, and an extract from Hippias Major: An Interpretation.

Traditional View

• It is disputed whether Plato is the author of this poor attempt at comedy.
• The subject of the dialogue is beauty.
• The philosophical arguments are appalling, or deliberately amusing.
• The dialogue is aporetic. No serious conclusion is reached.

This Analysis

• Plato is certainly the author.
• The dialogue dramatizes the concept of The Good, which is The Fitting.
• What appears to be Fitting, the Apparent Fitting, is The Fine/The Beautiful.
• The dialogue is a dialectic exercise exploiting eristic devices.
• Hippias represents the Eristician, apparently fine but pragmatically unfitting.
• Socrates represents the Dialectician, apparently ugly, but pragmatically fitting.