Lesser Hippias CommentaryLike Phaedrus subtle design, the Lesser Hippias dialectic will reflect on the authors ken. The work begins with Socrates and Hippias, the sophist from Elis, comparing the characteristics of Odysseus and Achilles, which leads to the seemingly paradoxical statement that the truest man is capable of the greatest deception. However, this idea follows intrinsically from the foundations of logic: one recognizes falsehoods when one has gained truthful insight and thence is able to disguise his lies. The subject moves away from the Homeric comparison, and explores the question, which are the better, those who err voluntarily or those who err involuntarily? (373C). Socrates performs his peculiar inductive reasoning and discovers in all cases- whether involving physical feats or mental skills- the man who errs voluntarily must ipso facto possess the possibility of excellence, and thus be better than the man who errs involuntarily. Broadening his propositions, Socrates concludes with the unsettling casuistry that the man who commits injustice voluntarily is better than the man who commits injustice involuntarily; moreover, that the man who commits injustice voluntarily can be no other than the good man.It is of my opinion that the author wrote this work with either one or the other of these intentions: to serve as an introduction to logic or to blaspheme Socrates (however this latter aside will extend the scope of this work.) One of Socrates mistakes is his misunderstanding of set theory: specifically, the presentation of a false dichotomy. The entire universe of possibilities is as follows: (A) a man does injustice voluntarily, (B) a man does injustice involuntarily, (C) a man does justice voluntarily, or (D) a man does justice involuntarily. Now Socrates is concerned solely with the comparison between (A) and (B); however, this leads to his second and greater mistake: the sly interchangeability of better in two different meanings: one denoting a greater possession of the processs underlying faculty, the other exhibiting a moral connotation. We see then that the unsatisfactory conclusion is designed through a mix between the limited universe of possibilities and the comparison of incompatible terms.With the above in mind, I will endeavor to show where the good man lies. But to start, who is better, the man who does injustice voluntarily or involuntarily? The man who does injustice voluntarily is better than the man who does injustice involuntarily in the sense that he possesses more knowledge and/or power than his counterpart. But on a moral relation, the two are relatively incomparable: the man who does injustice involuntarily does not partake in the moral sphere in the same fashion as the man who does injustice voluntarily. This is why we see in a court of law- as noted by Hippias (372A)- that he who commits a crime involuntarily is punished less severely than one who commits a crime voluntarily. Turning back to the search for the good man and holding ignorance as a vice, the good man must either be a man who does injustice voluntarily or a man who does justice voluntarily. Since a good man must be free from internal strife, he cannot will benevolence (his overarching purpose) whilst deliberating malevolently and is thus rendered incapable of voluntary injustice. Therefore, the good man is no other than the one who commits justice voluntarily as Aristotles Nicomachean Ethics relays: a virtue in practice is the optimal good whereas an unused virtue is deplorable.