Plato: Hippias Major (review)

Book Reviews Paul Woodruff, trans. Plato: Hlppias Major. Indianapolis and Cambridge: Hackett, 1982. Pp. XVI + ~ll. $19.50 (cloth). Mr. Woodruff's translation as a whole is excellent--readable, fast-paced, consistent, and in most respects superior to other available English translations of the Hzppias Major. Every translation is an interpretation, and Woodruff's interpretation of the dialogue--that Socrates' search for a definition of to kalon (the fine) is not necessarily part of a larger ontological or ethical concern---comes through loud and clear in his translation. The following points about the translation deserve mention: (t) The consistent use of "line" to translate all instances of kalos works out fine. In only one place is this rule broken: ~a~xdX0~g (Hippias' word) at 296b'~ is rendered as "really well," and the author thus misses a chance to bring off a fine irony. (~) The only two instances of apr.--at 296d8 and 3ooclcr--are both rendered as "mind" rather than as "soul." Not only does this confuse the functions of noTzs and psych~, but it has the cflect of watering down the wholeheartedness of Socrates' enthusiasm for his search. (3) Oaths are inconsistently rendered. Though "by Zeus" and "by Hera" are loosely translated without proper names or omitted, "by Dog" is translated precisely throughout. (4) At 298a6 the vocative ~o yew~tE is curiously translated as "your honor," so that the Greek honorific is made to bear the weight of a.juridical connotation it scarcely deserves. That the "tough marF' whom Socrates so addresses--himself in thin disguise --is set up to act as judge of these proceedings is true enough, but that point is made a few lines earlier with dtyt0vt~o~p.e0c~ at ~97e7-'298al. (5) At 3o2c, where Socrates is describing how the fine makes things line, the translation "adhere" for various forms of ~aco0ctt, "follow upon," strikes me as overly abstract and logical--though one of Woodruff's chief contentions is that the fine makes things fine in and only in an abstract and logical way. (6) Ahhough Woodruff promises in the Introduction to translate q2ct~veo0c~tconsistently as "to be seen," and never translates it as the more usual "'seems," at the end of the dialogue he renders fi)ur of its forms in the active: "we see" for q~vExctt at 3o2b6 and 3o3at, "'we saw" for ~qx~tvrloctvat 3ozd6 and fi)r ~t~v'q at 3o3et~. So far as I can see, consistency with the proposed translation of "to be seen" at these four places would prove no bumpier than it does elsewhere. More important, the essential relation for Plato of q~c~/wo0r to "seeming," "shining out," and apparentness in general becomes lost in the translation. [,2,.,9] 230 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY 22"2 APR 198 4 (7) Finally, Socrates maintains at 3o4cl that 60tLVtov(a~g la)XT I seems to hold him back from engaging in the activities whose practice Hippias recommends. Woodruff translates the phrase as "my crazy luck," but it strongly suggests that Socrates is referring to his famous daimonion,' which prevented him from taking part in conventional politics and other unsavory enterprises. No one seemed to consider the daimonion a sign that Socrates was crazy, least of all Socrates himself. Perhaps it is the same instinct toward the strictly logical and secular which renders "mind" for "soul" and "crazy luck" for "divine fortune" and omits the names of Zeus and Hera. The Commentary and Essay center on Socrates' search for definition, and are founded upon a set of assumptions which have come to stand as the general principles of the modern analytic approach to Plato scholarship: (1) that Plato's thought developed from an exciting early searching phase through a glorious middle metaphysical phase to a dull late analytical phase, and that his dialogues can be ordered to reflect that development; (2) that the Socrates of the dialogues is a mouthpiece for Plato's "doctrines" and quandaries, and that his interlocutors are wrong or wrongheaded ; and (3) that forms, about which Plato developed a "theory" (the phrase "theory of forms" has no parallel in the corpus), are logical causes of some...