Reviewer’s disclosure: I first read this book in a penultimate draft stage; Ravi kindly offered to exchange drafts when he learned that I was working on a piece about what the Hippias Minor can teach us about the historical figure it is named after. I am fortunate to have been able to read the book multiple times now and, as a result, am wandering less in my views about the Hippias Minor. I am confident that other readers, too, will find their time with this book time well spent.
This book is roughly equal parts a detailed commentary on Plato’s Hippias Minor (91 pp.) and an extended interpretation in the form of a robust introduction (110 pp.). It also includes Bruno Vancamp’s 1996 edition of the Greek text accompanied by Ravi Sharma’s new translation on facing pages. Sharma’s aim is to offer a unified interpretation of the dialogue (vii). The book succeeds in doing just that: it shows how different aspects fit together, combining philological and philosophical precision with sensitivity to the dialogue’s drama. This is one of those rare contributions to Platonic studies that I expect will not only be the starting point for future discussions of the Hippias Minor, but will also inform much other work on Plato and Socrates in the years to come.
Why care about Plato’s Hippias Minor? Sharma’s main answer is this: the dialogue depicts Socrates carefully setting up a central puzzle in his ethical outlook and challenging his followers to find a resolution. Socrates uses the conversation with Hippias as an opportunity to explore his own commitment to there being a moral skill or τέχνη. This involves first establishing the bivalence thesis, the claim that skills involve a capacity that enables the practitioner to offer both good and bad performances at will within the domain of that skill. As a result, the moral expert will be skilled in both moral and immoral actions. Furthermore—and even more paradoxically—the intentional wrongdoer will end up being better than the unintentional wrongdoer. But because the moral expert will never have an accompanying desire to do wrong, they will not in fact act immorally. As a subsidiary answer to why we should care about the dialogue, Sharma also shows how the Hippias Minor is part of an ongoing engagement on similar issues between multiple Socratic authors as can be seen from related discussions by Xenophon and Antisthenes.
Sharma likens the dialogue to a well-crafted two-minute-fifty single as opposed to the rock opera of Plato’s Gorgias (p. 5). Yet I find it puzzling when the book focuses on a single line of interpretation to the exclusion of other themes or upshots of this short dialogue. This sometimes leads to a strained reading or speculation about the characters’ inner thoughts. Sharma hears in the dialogue a single theme: that of the moral τέχνη and its attendant problems. But even a tightly crafted single can feature multiple melodic lines and layered harmonies—it can be economical without being monothematic. I do not want to overstate my reservations, however. The book is admirably careful, and when it rules out other interpretations, it does so with reasoning that enables readers to reach their own all-things-considered judgment.
Sharma’s unified interpretation
The commentary divides the dialogue into five main sections: the opening scene (363a1–365d5), the first argument (365d6–369b7), the interlude (369b8–373c5), the second argument (373c6–375d7), and the third argument and finale (375d7–376c6). Each has a corresponding section in the introduction except for the opening scene, though particularly relevant here is Section IV: “Characterization of Hippias and Choice of Him as Interlocutor”.
Sharma attends to details of the setting in the opening scene that dovetail with his interpretation of the dialogue’s main theme. Plato chooses Hippias, Sharma argues, for his famed polymathy: the polymath, it will turn out, lacks any sophisticated understanding of the moral τέχνη. The opening line juxtaposes the names of Socrates and Hippias and highlights their contrasting approaches: Hippias having just given a grand display and Socrates remaining silent. Socrates is not interested in a conversation with Hippias so instead uses Eudicus’ prompting as an excuse to set up some puzzles for the edification of his followers. Sharma interprets the claim at 363a4–5—that those remaining are used to philosophical discussion—as implying that Eudicus and the rest are followers of Socrates. He also argues that Hippias’ display may have said little if anything about what becomes the topic of their initial conversation: the relative merit of Achilles and Odysseus. Furthermore, the epithets given to each, including πολύτροπος for Odysseus, are not meant to capture Homeric usage. Some of these later moves I find strained and unnecessary for maintaining the importance of the central theme that Sharma identifies. Again, Plato may have also chosen Hippias as an interlocutor both for his role as interpreter of Homer and for his polymathy.
In the first argument, Hippias assumes that there is a negatively-valenced deceptive capacity that makes Odysseus—but not Achilles—πολύτροπος and ψευδής (“wily” and “a liar” in Sharma’s translation). Socrates counters by showing that those who reliably speak falsely and those who reliably tell the truth in a given domain are of the same intellectual type: they are the ones who are wise and capable in that domain. This is the bivalence thesis mentioned above. The conclusion is sincerely held by Socrates and does not rely on any logical slip or equivocation as is often claimed in the literature. It does, however, rely on understanding deception in a peculiar way. In a nice touch, Sharma shows how Plato signals another option by the dramatic connection to Plato’s Gorgias, which explores the problems with understanding deception as a general capacity for manipulating one’s audience. Along the way, he makes an intriguing suggestion that 368b–d closely parallels an actual speech of the historical Hippias, including a near quotation of its opening line.
The second and third arguments extend the bivalence thesis from speech to all forms of bodily activity and then apply it to the moral τέχνη. Here Sharma fills in details about the nature of Socrates’ inner conflict, his “wandering” referenced twice in the dialogue (first in the interlude at 372d8 and second in the closing lines at 376c2). On Sharma’s view, Socrates has a distinctive understanding of the ἑκών/ἄκων distinction—the distinction between willing and unwilling action—that implies that the willing wrongdoer is better than the unwilling one. That being said, Socrates recognizes that this does not comport with ordinary usage or with ordinary judgments about moral responsibility. Hippias uses the terms in the ordinary way and presses the concerns about moral responsibility. Socrates speaks of his view as being the opposite of Hippias’, but we must qualify that as meaning that he gives an opposite judgment only when one uses the terms differently. Accordingly, Sharma updates the view put forward in his 2017 article with Rusty Jones, suggesting that Socrates’ wandering does not indicate that he sometimes thinks his own view wrong, but rather only that he is at times uncertain due to the tension with ordinary usage. I would have liked to see more support for the idea that Socrates (or Plato) is concerned with conflicts between different uses of these terms. Perhaps this could be tied to the way that other key terms might be heard differently at different points in the dialogue or by different interlocutors (e.g. πολύτροπος, ψευδής, σοφός, and ἀγαθός).
The book also highlights how the discussion of Homer in the interlude reveals Hippias as a rather oblivious and superficial interpreter. On this view, Socrates presses an interpretation of Homer that he himself does not endorse in order to drill home just how implausible Hippias’ interpretation is. Sharma supposes that Hippias’ failure stems from his lack of independent moral reflection, thereby connecting it to the dialogue’s broader theme (49, 215). This is another place where the book passes over an opportunity to reflect more on the theme of Homeric interpretation woven through the dialogue. Relatedly, the book does little to connect Plato’s engagement with Hippias to his reception of the sophistic movement more broadly. But Sharma posits an influence from Antisthenes that does allow him to explain why this theme arises in the dialogue even if it has less to do with Hippias himself (108).
Hippias Minor in context
In the opening and closing sections of the introduction, Sharma situates the Hippias Minor in the context of other Platonic dialogues and the work of other Socratic authors. The connections with Gorgias are particularly useful for understanding an unexplored avenue in the first argument of the Hippias Minor as mentioned above. He also considers Hippias Minor and Ion “the most closely intertwined pair in the Platonic corpus” and offers an impressive list of dramatic parallels. He briefly suggests that the connection has to do with an interest in τέχνη but adds that further discussion “will have to await a detailed study of Ion” (7–8). Sharma argues that the connections with these two dialogues are more intimate than those with the Protagoras and thereby does not take advantage of connections to the latter in his interpretation (another missed opportunity in the eyes of this reader).
The introduction also contains two sections—best understood as appendices—with thorough and helpful discussions of the connections with Xenophon’s Memorabilia 4.2 and Antisthenes fr. 187 Giannantoni/Prince = 51 Caizzi. Sharma argues that Memorabilia 4.2 contains a similar puzzle to that of the Hippias Minor and hints at a similar solution. The connections speak to a shared conversation but, since neither work is simply derivative of the other, no direct lines of influence can be drawn on this basis alone. Based on a detailed re-examination of the related fragment of Antisthenes—in this case about the epithet πολύτροπος—Sharma cautiously suggests that Plato is alluding to Antisthenes rather than the other way around.
Text and translation
This edition reprints Vancamp’s 1996 Greek text, with one minor punctuation change and some updates to the critical apparatus by Vancamp himself. Vancamp’s was the first direct collation of manuscript F for the Hippias dialogues; Burnet’s OCT had relied on the Král collation, which has been shown to be systematically unreliable (cf. Dodds 1959, 42–3; Vancamp 1996, 33 n.49; Venturelli 2020, 49 with n.130). Sharma’s translation is lively and effectively communicates his understanding of the Greek while avoiding a more stilted translationese. It is informed by a careful analysis of philological detail as reported in the commentary. There are only a few points where I thought it veered towards overtranslation (e.g. “What is this nonsense you’re spouting, Socrates?” for “Ποῖα δὴ ταῦτα λέγεις, ὦ Σώκρατες;” at 371b2), or overly determining the English when the Greek can be understood in multiple ways (e.g. “liar” for ψευδής and “wily” for πολύτροπος, especially when they first appear in the dialogue). I noticed two—but only two—small inconsistencies that risk nudging the reader in the direction of Sharma’s interpretation: the translation of ὁ αὐτός as “the same person” at 367c2, d7, and 368a6, but then as “the same sort of person” at 369b3,[1] and the rather indefinite “whoever injures” at 372d4–5 for οἱ βλάπτοντες, before switching to “people who” and “ones who” for the same construction just afterwards.
Secondary literature and production
The engagement with secondary literature in English, French, German, and Italian is thorough, making the book an especially helpful first reference. My only complaint is that Sharma’s own view is often postponed to the end of the discussion, which can be cumbersome.
The volume’s cost, currently listed at $185 on the OUP website, is disappointing. For a first edition, it is surprisingly devoid of misprints, though there appears to be a typesetting issue on page 115. There is also a puzzling terminological switch: the introduction refers to “first argument”, “second argument”, and “third argument”, while the commentary uses “first argument”, “second dialectical exchange”, and “third dialectical exchange”. Each commentary section is helpfully highlighted in the upper margin, though the same for the introduction would allow for easier navigation, as would Stephanus page ranges in the upper margin of the text and translation. This is important because the introduction and commentary really ought to be read together. Despite the ordering in the book, my recommended reading order would be text first, then commentary, then introduction for each of the dialogue’s five sections.
Nonetheless, the book is an enjoyable read, especially when it highlights nuances of Plato’s original. It also has a series of indices that are both thorough and useful.
Bibliography
Burnet, John. 1900–7. Platonis Opera. 5 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Caizzi, Fernanda Decleva. 1966. Antisthenis fragmenta. Milan-Varese: Istituto Editoriale Cisalpino.
Dodds, E. R. 1959. Plato: Gorgias. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Giannantoni, Gabriele. 1990. Socratis et Socraticorum reliquiae. 4 vols. Naples: Bibliopolis.
Jones, Russell E. and Sharma, Ravi. 2017. “The wandering hero of the Hippias Minor: Socrates on virtue and craft.” Classical Philology 112: 113–37.
Prince, Susan. 2015. Antisthenes of Athens: Texts, Translations, and Commentary. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Vancamp, Bruno. 1996. Platon, Hippias Maior, Hippias Minor. Palingenesia, Band 59. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag.
Venturelli, Silvia. 2020. Platone, Ippia minore. Baden-Baden: Academia Verlag.
Notes
[1] When reported in the introduction the translation here reads “the same [type of] person” (37).