An-other Socratic Method

Socratic mimēsis in the Hippias Major

Abstract

There is another Socratic method, Socratic mimēsis, and an instance of this is when Plato has Socrates play ‘the annoying questioner’ in the Hippias Major. Other interpreters have suggested that the reasons for Socrates’s dramatic play are depersonalization and distance. I argue for viewing Socrates’s role-playing as a way to dramatize the inner dialogue that happens inside one’s mind in what we may call conscience. Hippias the sophist lacks a conscience: his focus is acquisitive as opposed to inquisitive. Plato has staged a pedagogical theater of Hippias’s failed lesson for the benefit of Plato’s audience, the listeners/readers of the dialogue.