In his article in a recent issue of the Classical Quarterly Mr. G. M. A.Grube attempts to vindicate the authenticity of the Hippias Maior, concentrating his attention upon an article by me as ‘embodying most of the objections of earlier scholars’ against the genuineness of the dialogue. I believe that I am still ‘the latest exponent,’ in any detail, of this view; but I may claim at least some good company in the heresy, and to the names already cited by (...) Mr. Grube or myself may be added in particular that of Wilamowitz, who also believes the Hippias Maior to have been written in the Academy within Plato's lifetime. I was not aware when writing my previous article of this noteworthy support in a work just then appearing. (shrink)

Grote's powerful defence of Thrasyllus' canon should have taught us at least not to reject lightly any dialogue which, like the Hippias Maior, is there classed as genuine. The burden of proof lies with those who attack our dialogue. Raeder, Ritter, and Apelt consider it to be genuine, while Ast, Jowett, Horneffer, and Röllig declare against it, as also Gomperz, Zeller, and Lutoslawski.

It is said that when Socrates is made to ask questions like "What is the pious and what the impious?", "What is courage?", or "What is the beautiful?", he is asking for the definition of a universal. For the "average" Greek of his time, however, this is a radically new question about a radically new sort of object, and Socrates’ interlocutors do not understand it. They usually answer it as if it were a different, if related, question: they tend to (...) provide concrete instances of the universal in question rather than a definition, however inadequate, of the universal itself. Socrates always tries, but does not always succeed, to make himself clear: Meno, for example, is supposed never to get the point. (shrink)