Categoria: Hípias Maior

Hippias : Well, certainly, Socrates, if that is what he is looking for, nothing is easier than to answer and tell him what the beautiful is, by which all other things are adorned and by the addition of which they are made to appear beautiful. (289e) So the fellow is very simple-minded and knows nothing…

(282b) Socrates : Yours, Hippias, is a most excellent way, at any rate, of speaking about them and of thinking, it seems to me and I can bear you witness that you speak the truth, and that your art really has progressed in the direction of ability to carry on public together with private affairs.…

(285b) Socrates : Then the Lacedaemonians in not giving you money and entrusting their sons to you, act contrary to law. Hippias : I agree to that ; for you seem to be making your argument in my favour, and there is no need of my opposing it. Socrates : Then my friends, we find…

Socrates : Oh how good that is ! But come, since you tell me to do so, now let me try to play that man’s part, so far as possible, and ask you questions. For if you were to deliver for him this discourse that you mention, the one about beautiful pursuits, when he had…

Socrates : “Tell me, then, stranger,” he will say, “what is this, the beautiful ?” Hippias : Well, Socrates, does he who asks this question want to find out anything else than what is beautiful ? Socrates : I do not think that is what he wants to find out, (287e) but what the beautiful…

(291d) Hippias : I will tell you; for you seem to me to be seeking to reply that the beautiful is something of such sort that it will never appear ugly anywhere to anybody. Socrates : Certainly, Hippias; now you understand beautifully. Hippias : Listen, then ; for, mind you, if anyone has anything to…

Socrates : “You think, then, what you did not say just now, that to bury one’s parents and be buried by one’s offspring is sometimes and for some persons disgraceful ; (293c) and it is still more impossible, as it seems, for this to become and to be beautiful for all, so that the same…

Socrates : Ah, don’t boast, Hippias. You see how much trouble it has caused us already ; I’m afraid it may get angry and run away more than ever.(295b) And yet that is nonsense ; for you, I think, will easily find it when you go away by yourself. But for Heaven’s sake, find it…

Socrates : Then the beautiful is the cause of the good. (297a) Hippias : Yes, it is. Socrates : But surely, Hippias, the cause and that of which the cause is the cause are different ; for the cause could not well be the cause of the cause. But look at it in this way…

Socrates : But it seems to me that I am so eager to know that I cannot wait for you while you delay ; for I believe I have just now found a way out. Just see; how would it help us towards our goal if we were to say that that is beautiful which…

Socrates : And certainly many such cases appear before my mind, but I mistrust them because they do not appear to you, (300d) a man who has made more money by wisdom than anyone now living, but to me who never made any money at all ; and the thought disturbs me that you are…

Socrates : “Then tell us again,” he will say, “from the beginning, (303e) since you failed this time ; what do you say that this ‘beautiful’, belonging to both the pleasures, is, on account of which you honored them before the rest and called them beautiful ?” It seems to me, Hippias, inevitable that we…