Hippias

Hippias of Elis ( ancient Greek Ἱππίας Hippias; * in the 5th century BC in Elis ) was a Greek philosopher of antiquity. Within the history of philosophy, he is one of the sophists.

What we now know about him, is almost exclusively taken from the illustrations in three dialogues of Plato, the Hippias Minor, Hippias Maior and the Protagoras; with Plato's representation carries very strong charitable trains. It also exists in Xenophon Hippias on as a dialogue partner of Socrates.

Life

Hippias, son of Diopeithes, traveled frequently Athens, Sparta and other cities, where he represented his native city of Elis diplomatically. As a sophist he gave on these trips, lectures and holds a lesson, which he has partly earned a lot of money. As encyclopedic educated sophist he seems to have treated all former fields of knowledge, such as astronomy, natural philosophy, geometry, mathematics, linguistics, mythology, theory of art and music theory. He is also to have numerous journals, including seals, tragedy and dithyramb written. Xenophon described him as a man with " a versatile knowledge" that gives Suda sober on: " He wrote a lot. " Like other Sophists he considered important to be able to court in the Council and in front of the National Assembly occur and his ideas represented can. Plato says that Hippias could recite fifty names in the right order if he had heard it too, only once, and that he had all the clothing and jewelry that he had once worn in Olympia, itself produced.

Teaching

Maybe Hippias was the first Western author of a kind of encyclopedia. He is credited with a work called collection ( synagogue ), of which, however, only one set of the introductory chapter is obtained. In this sentence, Hippias expresses his intention, excerpts of older Greek and foreign publications together and according to the criteria of importance ( tà mégista ) and the relationship ( tà omóphyla ) assign. So well was a child by Lemmas encyclopedic lexicon.

According to Proclus Hippias has tried also to the three classical problems of ancient mathematics. To solve two of the three problems of squaring the circle and the trisection of an angle, he invented with the mathematician Nicomedes named after him quadratrix of Hippias.

In the Platonic dialogue Protagoras, Hippias explained in a very short speech ethical and political views. Like other contemporary sophists he is there nature (physis ) in opposition to the force in human society law ( nomos ). If things are similar to one another, so they are there by nature; some people are inherently relatives, friends and fellow citizens. The law, however, was a tyrant of the people and forcing people from unnatural.

In the dialog Memorabilia of Xenophon, Socrates and Hippias are talking about justice. Socrates believes that the person who is righteous, acts according to the laws in force in the State, so that justice of compliance with legal action depends. This contradicts the views of Hippias, Socrates goes on and what distinguishes the human laws of the laws of God. The divine laws are nowhere written down and can not have been made by people as they apply everywhere in the world and in different languages ​​peoples. Examples of such universal laws are to honor the gods, to honor their parents and to witness with their own children no children. On the basis of the last example shows Socrates that followed the breach of this divine law and divine punishment. Regardless of all human laws and penalties was a child conceived between parents and children child always a bad kid. At this point interrupts the conversation and Socrates concludes by pointing out that including the gods, the Legal and the just are one and the same.

Reception

Overall, the effect of Hippias is probably influenced by the bad opinion of Plato on the Sophists. "The majority of researchers tend [ to ] to regard him as a polymath without its own philosophical position ", which is, however, due to the fact that only a few testimonies of his teachings have been preserved. Georg Picht called Hippias. " The first intellectual history of the world " he " knew many things, talked about everything, everything taught ( against high fees ) -. , And believed nothing "

Modern researchers have attempted to reconstruct the contents of the collection, at least partially. So Bruno Snell has begun in 1944, due to the presentation of the teaching of Thales, Plato and Aristotle to a common source. The same he and others were doing in relation to the Heraclitean flux theory and extends beyond Thales doctrine of the water as the primal ground. After another such experiments has used other doxographers and tries to reconstruct whole passages of the collection, together with the lemmas, under which these passages are to be dropped in 1986 Andreas Patzer except Plato and Aristotle. Patzer starts from the following lexical cues in Hippias: "Water ", " Eros ", " everything flows ", "The One ", " In the beginning everything was together," " There is no false statement ", " thinking is perception", " earth and water ", " love and strife ", " the classification of the principles of being " and " Thargelia ". On the subject of "Water " is Hippias example, Thales have quoted, but also Orpheus, Hesiod and Homer, the river doctrine of Heraclitus, but also Epicharmus and Empedocles.

Patzer has tried to show that the ancient doxographies, so the ancient history of philosophy, is the work of Hippias dependent. Since Plato and Aristotle wrote about their predecessors, the collections of Hippias to have served as a source of lessons that such as the Thales had been set up to around 200 years before Plato yes. In the case of Heraclitus doctrine could it have come to a reinterpretation, as Hippias may already have asked the Heraclitean doctrine of eternal becoming in the foreground instead of the Heraclitean doctrine of the unity of opposites.