HIPPIAS MAIOR or ON THE BEAUTIFUL: A dialogue between Socrates and the sophist Hippias on the definition of the beautiful. The beautiful and the useful. The purpose of human existence is the search for truth and knowledge.

HIPPIAS MINOR or ON FALSEHOOD: Prompted by a statement that comparatively evaluates the Iliad and the Odyssey, Socrates, Hippias, and Eudicus discuss falsehood. The knowledge of the truth is a prerequisite for voluntary falsehood. The paradoxes of the conclusions of the dialogue are rejected by the interlocutors.

Plato was born in 427 B.C., a scion of a prominent Athenian family. He received a great education and was introduced to Greek philosophical currents. However, what decisively shaped his moral and spiritual being was Socrates, with his life, philosophy, and death. The great philosopher was the reason why the young Plato turned to philosophy, and Socratic concepts formed the basis for the subsequent Platonic theory of Ideas.

Plato deeply interpreted Socrates as a man and teacher and captured his personality in many of his works. He traveled to Egypt, Cyrene, and Greater Greece, where he unsuccessfully tried to apply his political principles to the organization of the Greek cities of Sicily. In 387 B.C., he founded the Academy in Athens, a famous center of philosophy and the Muses, which lasted nearly ten centuries, until the times of Justinian.

Plato dedicated himself to teaching and writing until his death (348 B.C.). His works, all preserved, were classified by Thrasyllus into nine tetralogies. Almost all belong to the genre of dialogue, through which Plato emerged not only as a leading philosopher but also as a true poet.

His teaching derives from the doctrines of Greek thought, Orphism, Pythagoreanism, and Ionian philosophy, and, of course, the Socratic discourse, and ultimately shapes, as Plato’s personal creation, a colossal philosophical system. His philosophy - ethics, ontology, politics - is the foundation of global Idealism and perhaps influenced the thought of all ages more than any other.