Plato's Greater Hippias

By: Plato

Narrated by: Ray Childs

Hippias of Elis travels throughout the Greek world practicing and teaching the art of making beautiful speeches. On a rare visit to Athens, he meets Socrates, who questions him about the nature of his art. Socrates is especially curious about how Hippias would define beauty. They agree that beauty makes all beautiful things beautiful, but when Socrates presses him to say precisely what he means, Hippias is unable to deliver such a definition. The more Socrates probes, the more absurd the responses from Hippias become.

This is one of Plato's best comedies and one of his finest efforts at posing the philosophical problem of the difference between particular things and universal qualities.

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What is Beauty???

This is an amazing dialogue between Socrates and Hippias about beauty. It is done wonderfully....all of Ray Childs' audiobooks.

Perfect Ending

Plato always seems to show us that the things we feel are the most understandable are the concepts we have the least understanding of.

The one in the many

One of the clearest dialogues, Plato expresses how unity and differences can both contain the idea of the beautiful.

The Good and the Beautiful. I think. I’m not sure

Ray Childs and his interlocutor bring Socrates and Hippias to life. Childs performance as Socrates is the excellent quality I have come to expect from his many performances in the role, and the part of Hippias is performed with such excellent timing and ironic comedy that it delights! I’d be tempted to say it is a beautiful piece, though I’m no longer quite certain what I would mean by that.