HIPPIAS (major) by Plato - Complete text

Page 34

Soc.: Is it, then, for this reason, because each is a pleasure and both are pleasures, that they would be beautiful? Or would all other pleasures be for this reason no less beautiful than they? For we saw, if you remember, that they were no less pleasures.

Hip.: Yes, I remember.

Soc.: But for this reason, because these pleasures were through sight and hearing, it was said that they are beautiful.

Hip.: Yes, that is what was said.

Soc.: See if what I say is true. For it was said, if my memory serves me, that this "pleasant" was beautiful, not all "pleasant," but that which is through sight and hearing.

Hip.: True.

Soc.: Now this quality belongs to both, but not to each, does it not? For surely each of them, as was said before, is not through both senses, but both are through both, and each is not. Is that true?

Hip.: It is.

Soc.: Then it is not by that which does not belong to each that each of them is beautiful ; for "both" does not belong to each ; so that it is possible, according to our hypothesis, to say that they both are beautiful, but not to say that each is so ; or what shall we say? Is that not inevitable?

Hip.: It appears so.

Soc.: Shall we say, then, that both are beautiful, but that each is not?

Hip.: What is to prevent?

Soc.: This seems to me, my friend, to prevent, that there were some attributes thus belonging to individual things, which belonged, we thought, to each, if they belonged to both, and to both, if they belonged to each — I mean all those attributes which you specified. Am I right?

Hip.: Yes.

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Plato : HIPPIAS (major)

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