Recent reading: Plato, "Greater Hippias." Via The Collected Dialogues of Plato, eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns. Socrates vs. a professional speaking coach on the nature of beauty. Interesting to note that Socrates, like Duchamp, immediately intuits that aesthetic beauty cannot definitively inhere in any material or thing:

Hippias: [I]f you reply to him: “This that you ask about, the beautiful, is nothing else but gold,” he will be thrown into confusion and will not attempt to confute you. For we all know, I fancy, that wherever this is added, even what before appears ugly will appear beautiful when adorned with gold.

Socrates: You don't know the man, Hippias, what a wretch he is, and how certain not to accept anything easily.

Hippias: What of that, then, Socrates? For he must perforce accept what is correct, or if he does not accept it, be ridiculous.

Socrates: This reply, my most excellent friend, he not only will certainly not accept, but he will even jeer at me grossly and will say: “You lunatic, do you think Pheidias is a bad craftsman?” And I shall say, “Not in the least.”

Hippias: And you will be right, Socrates.

Socrates: Yes, to be sure. Consequently when I agree that Pheidias is a good craftsman, “Well, then,” he will say, “do you imagine that Pheidias did not know this beautiful that you speak of?” “Why do you ask that?” I shall say. “Because,” he will say, “he did not make the eyes of his Athena of gold, nor the rest of her face, nor her hands and feet, if, that is, they were sure to appear most beautiful provided only they were made of gold, but he made them of ivory; evidently he made this mistake through ignorance, not knowing that it is gold which makes everything beautiful to which it is added.” When he says that, what reply shall we make to him, Hippias?

Hippias: That is easy; for we shall say that Pheidias did right; for ivory, I think, is beautiful.

Socrates: “Why, then,” he will say, “did he not make the middle parts of the eyes also of ivory, but of stone, procuring stone as similar as possible to the ivory? Or is beautiful stone also beautiful?” Shall we say that it is, Hippias?

& etc., until Mr. Self-Confident Professional Speaker blows his stack -- "But now, Socrates, what do you think all this amounts to? It is mere scrapings and shavings of discourse" -- and Socrates concludes, reasonably enough, "So it has come about, as I say, that I am abused and reviled by you. . . .But perhaps it is necessary to endure all this, for it is quite reasonable that I might be benefited by it. So I think, Hippias, that I have been benefited by conversation with. . .you; for I think I know the meaning of the proverb 'beautiful things are difficult.'"

(Image: Sam Kieth's and William Messner-Loebs' Epicurus The Sage, a terrific ancient philosophy-themed graphic novel)
- posted by cjb @ 10:37 AM