Protagoras

“ And Socrates appears to me to be more in the right than Protagoras; that is my view, and every man ought to say what he thinks.
When Alcibiades had done speaking, some one—Critias, I believe—went on to say: O Prodicus and Hippias, Callias appears to me to be a partisan of Protagoras: and this led Alcibiades, who loves opposition, to take the other side. But we should not be partisans either of Socrates or of Protagoras; let us rather unite in entreating both of them not to break up the discussion. ”

“ It is a glorious monument of the Weltflucht to which Pure Thought finds itself impelled whenever it is taken seriously. And its very patient and subtle researches into the problem of knowledge culminate in the frankest and sublimest confession of failure which adorns the annals of intellectualistic literature. Whether or not, therefore, it is possible to exhume from it the lost teachings of Protagoras, it is clear that in the study of Plato’s great dialogues, and particularly of the Theætetus, lies the master-key to the understanding of the whole intellectualistic position in philosophy. ”

“ Now, would Protagoras maintain that man is the measure not only of the present and past, but of the future; and that there is no difference in the judgments of men about the future? Would an untrained man, for example, be as likely to know when he is going to have a fever, as the physician who attended him? And if they differ in opinion, which of them is likely to be right; or are they both right? Is not a vine-grower a better judge of a vintage which is not yet gathered, or a cook of a dinner which is in preparation, or Protagoras of the probable effect of a speech than an ordinary person? ”

“ Socrates renews the attack from another side: he would like to know whether pleasure is not the only good, and pain the only evil? Protagoras seems to doubt the morality or propriety of assenting to this; he would rather say that 'some pleasures are good, some pains are evil,' which is also the opinion of the generality of mankind. What does he think of knowledge? Does he agree with the common opinion that knowledge is overcome by passion? or does he hold that knowledge is power? Protagoras agrees that knowledge is certainly a governing power. ”

“ When we entered, we found Protagoras taking a walk in the cloister; and next to him, on one side, were walking Callias, the son of Hipponicus, and Paralus, the son of Pericles, who, by the mother's side, is his half-brother, and Charmides, the son of Glaucon. On the other side of him were Xanthippus, the other son of Pericles, Philippides, the son of Philomelus; also Antimoerus of Mende, who of all the disciples of Protagoras is the most famous, and intends to make sophistry his profession. ”

“ Of Protagoras, calumniated by Plato,—though, it is interesting to observe that Plato’s own transcendental doctrine of Ideas has been regarded as an effort to escape from the solvent influence of Protagoras’ logic,—it is possible for the modern historian of philosophy to say that “the greatness of this man can scarcely be measured.” It was with measurement that his most famous saying was concerned: “Man is the measure of all things, of those which exist and of those which have no existence.” ”

“ The Protagorean doctrine is a logical contradiction; for according to it Protagoras must yield the question to every one who disputes with him, since, as he himself affirms, no one is incorrect, but every one judges only according to truth; the pretended truth of Protagoras is therefore true for no man, not even for himself. ”

“ But it is also possible either that Plato has not here reproduced the full subtlety of Protagoras’s argument, or that Protagoras was hindered from expressing himself fully only by the poverty of Greek philosophic language, not yet enriched by the genius of Plato. Anyhow, the difference between Protagorean and modern Humanism concerns only a subordinate point of terminology. [5]
What now, we may proceed to inquire, does Plato make of this important philosophic distinction he has attributed to Protagoras? It is astounding to find that he makes nothing of it whatsoever. ”

“ Protagoras, grown old and somewhat dull, appeared in the inner courtyard.
“There is Protagoras!”
“The Sophist! I do not like him,” said Aspasia. “He is a file who frets all will away; his endless hair-splitting robs one of all resolution.”
“You speak truly and rationally, Aspasia, and in an earlier age you would have sat upon the Pythoness’s tripod and prophesied. Like the priestess, you know not perhaps what you say, but a god speaks through you.”
“No, Socrates; I only utter your thoughts; that is all!”
Protagoras came forward. “Mourning in Athens! Mourning in Hellas! Alas!” ”

“ Of the merely useful they have the scorn of young and inexperienced minds; and Hippocrates proclaims himself ready to give Protagoras, not only whatever he himself possesses, but also the property of his friends, if he will but teach him wisdom. Superior knowledge was to them of all things the most admirable and the most to be desired. ”

“ The harsh epithets applied by critics to Protagoras are not borne out by the dialogue. He stands on the same ground as the common consciousness.
As to the arrogant and exorbitant pretensions which the Platonic commentators ascribe to Protagoras, more is said than the reality justifies. He pretends to know what virtue, justice, moderation, courage, &c., are, and he is proved not to know. ”

“ When he affirms that Protagoras by his equalising doctrine acknowledged himself to be no better in point of wisdom and judgment than a dog or a child, this inference must be denied.64 The Protagorean doctrine is perfectly consistent with great diversities of knowledge, intellect, emotion, and character, between one man and another. Such diversities are recognised in individual belief and estimation, and are thus comprehended in the doctrine. Nor does Protagoras deny that men are teachable and modifiable. ”

“ Protagoras seems to have been the most philosophical of them all, Gorgias the best orator and the chief professor of rhetoric, Prodicus the most eminent moralist and poet. Protagoras rejected all metaphysics—that is, all investigation of first causes and of the universe—and reduced all philosophy to the science of self-control with a view to happiness, and control of others with a view to their happiness. ”

“ And even if we were to admit further,—and this is the view of some who are not thorough-going followers of Protagoras,—that right and wrong, holy and unholy, are to each state or individual such as they appear, still Protagoras will not venture to maintain that every man is equally the measure of expediency, or that the thing which seems is expedient to every one. ”

“ For he who sees with one eye only cannot be truly said both to see and not to see; nor is memory, which is liable to forget, the immediate knowledge to which Protagoras applies the term. Theodorus justly charges Socrates with going beyond the truth; and Protagoras has equally right on his side when he protests against Socrates arguing from the common use of words, which 'the vulgar pervert in all manner of ways.'
III. The theory of Protagoras is connected by Aristotle as well as Plato with the flux of Heracleitus. ”

“ Protagoras began by asserting, and Socrates by denying, the teachableness of virtue, and now the latter ends by affirming that virtue is knowledge, which is the most teachable of all things, while Protagoras has been striving to show that virtue is not knowledge, and this is almost equivalent to saying that virtue cannot be taught. ”

“ Now Plato, to make the victory over Protagoras more complete, first shows, in the Theætetus, that he, Protagoras, by his doctrine of μέτρον ἄνθρωπος, virtually holds the same opinion as those (1) who make αἴσθησις the sole test of truth; (2) who, like Heraclitus, allow of no fixed existence, but hold that πάντα γίγνεται, states of things are always coming into being, because everything is in a state of perpetual flux. For it is evident that each of these views denies any permanent, stable, or objective existence of anything. ”

“ But the reply is in the end shown to be inconsistent with the Heraclitean foundation, on which the doctrine has been affirmed to rest. For if the Heraclitean flux is extended to every sort of change in every instant of time, how can any thought or word be detained even for an instant? Sensible perception, like everything else, is tumbling to pieces. Nor can Protagoras himself maintain that one man is as good as another in his knowledge of the future; and 'the expedient,' if not 'the just and true,' belongs to the sphere of the future. ”

“ How great would be the disgrace then, if we, who know the nature of things, and are the wisest of the Hellenes, and as such are met together in this city, which is the metropolis of wisdom, and in the greatest and most glorious house of this city, should have nothing to show worthy of this height of dignity, but should only quarrel with one another like the meanest of mankind! I do pray and advise you, Protagoras, and you, Socrates, to agree upon a compromise. ”

“ SOCRATES: The true way is to have the assistance of those who know, and you must pay them well both in money and in thanks; these are the Sophists, of whom your brother, Callias, has—rather dearly—bought the reputation of wisdom. But you have not yet come into your inheritance, and therefore you had better go to him, and beg and entreat him to tell you what he has learnt from Protagoras about the fitness of names.
HERMOGENES: But how inconsistent should I be, if, whilst repudiating Protagoras and his truth (“Truth” was the title of the book of Protagoras; compare Theaet.) ”

“ In the Protagoras the ancient poets are recognized by Protagoras himself as the original sophists; and this family resemblance may be traced in the Ion. The rhapsode belongs to the realm of imitation and of opinion: he professes to have all knowledge, which is derived by him from Homer, just as the sophist professes to have all wisdom, which is contained in his art of rhetoric. Even more than the sophist he is incapable of appreciating the commonest logical distinctions; he cannot explain the nature of his own art ”

“ The doctrine of Protagoras maintains that all things are relative to the percipient, cogitant, concipient, mind: that all Object is implicated with a Subject: that as things appear to me, so they are to me — as they appear to you, so they are to you. Plato denies this, and says: “All things have a fixed essence of their own, absolutely and in themselves, not relative to any percipient or cogitant — nor dependent upon any one’s appreciative understanding, or emotional susceptibility, or will. ”

“ The growth of Science and the application of Knowledge to Life are too stupendous facts to be ignored even in the seclusion of academic lecture-rooms. And so, though philosophers as a body will naturally be the last persons to admit it, it must eventually be recognized that Protagoras’s vision of a Truth that did not shun commerce with man was truer than Plato’s dream of an Eternal Order that transcends all human understanding. ”

“ The Platonic Protagoras, spokesman of King Nomos, represents common sense, sentiment, sympathies and antipathies, written laws, and traditional customs known to all as well as reverenced by the majority: the Platonic Politikus repudiates all these, as preposterous fetters to the single Governor who monopolises all political science and art. Let us add too, that the Platonic Protagoras (whom many commentators teach us to regard as a person of exorbitant arrogance and pretensions) is a very modest man compared to the Eleate in the Platonic Politikus. ”

“ When Protagoras uttered the maxim which brought upon him so much vituperation, that 'opposite assertions are equally true,' he simply meant to affirm men's differences to be so great, that what was subjectively true to the one might be subjectively untrue to the other. ”

“ The Greek word, in short, meant an able cultivated man in any branch of the arts; and the development of practical capacity was doubtless what Protagoras {86} intended to indicate as the purpose of his teaching, when he called himself a Sophist. But the ability he really undertook to cultivate was ability to persuade, for Greece at this time was nothing if not political; and persuasive oratory was the one road to political success. And as Athens was the great centre of Greek politics, as well as of Greek intellect, to Athens Protagoras came as a teacher. ”

“ It is this perverted form of the Heraclitean philosophy which is supposed to effect the final overthrow of Protagorean sensationalism. For if all things are changing at every moment, in all sorts of ways, then there is nothing fixed or defined at all, and therefore no sensible perception, nor any true word by which that or anything else can be described. Of course Protagoras would not have admitted the justice of this argument any more than Heracleitus would have acknowledged the 'uneducated fanatics' who appealed to his writings. ”

“ An eminent modern scholar has therefore advanced the conjecture that Protagoras distinguished between belief and knowledge, and that his work on the gods only aimed at showing that the existence of the gods could not be scientifically demonstrated. ”

“ Protagoras describes in Plato the rise of his own art; where, though a side blow be wrongfully aimed at poetry itself, the truth of the accusation against a 244number of poets cannot be denied. He makes good at the very outset what I have asserted above. They travelled, he says, over all Greece, alluring the noblest youths to abandon the company of their friends and fellow-citizens, to become their pupils, and be guided wholly by their maxims, the nature of which I shall presently unfold. ”