Hippias Minor - A Conversation About Lies

A Conversation About Lies

In Hippias Minor, Socrates argues with Hippias about which kind of liar is the best, the man who deliberately contrives a lie, or the man who lies unwittingly, from not paying attention to what he is saying, or changing his mind. Socrates argues that the voluntary lie is better than the involuntary lie.

The debate is rooted in a literary question about who Homer intended to portray as the better man, Achilles or Odysseus. Socrates says he has heard Eudicus' father, Apemantus, declare that there is a parallel analogy between the artistic quality of the Iliad and the moral quality of its main character, Achilles, and the quality of the Odyssey and the quality of its main character, Odysseus. The men do not pursue this thesis, that the moral status of the characters in a work of literature has some bearing on its artistry. Socrates does resurrect the idea in the Republic, however, when he argues that Homer's classics would be better books if Achilles and the other warriors were presented as always righteous. Socrates says that they ought to be rewritten to this effect.