Making Something from Nothing: On Plato's Hipparchus

Abstract

Plato's Hipparchus is generally not taken particularly seriously; it is thought either spurious or negligible. Yet its theme, love of the good, places it at the summit of philosophy, at least as Socrates presents it in the Republic. Why, then, is such a slight writing the locus of the discussion of so monumental a question? As is so often the case in Platonic dialogues, in the Hipparchus, we find our way to the deepest questions by way of reflecting on the puzzles revealed in apparently superficial particulars. The most obvious such puzzle in the Hipparchus is its title, for Hipparchus is not a participant in the dialogue but rather the famous, or perhaps infamous, character for whom it is named.