Abstract
This paper is written on the supposition that the main theme in the Protagoras is the nature of Protagoras’ teaching. This teaching, as it must have been displayed in his lessons, is, however, neither accounted for nor discussed directly in the dialogue. Instead of asking Protagoras for a trial lecture, Socrates from the start is set to challenge the underlying assumptions of his teaching; the structure of its moral underpinnings. This structure, I assume, is less formed by theoretical thinking on Protagoras’ part than by social and institutional factors, factors that to a large extent determine the professional role of Protagoras as a teacher. I will discuss this structure under four headings: (1) The expectations of a potential student. (2) The ambiguities of Protagoras’ position as a teacher. (3) Protagoras’ attitude to the virtues. (4) What is it to live well?
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Notes
- 1.
Which Protagoras is ready to deliver with great pleasure (217c).
- 2.
Yet Socrates seems to know quite a bit about Protagoras; he knows and finds reason to mention that he spends most of his time indoors (311a), that he is the first to teach for a fee (349a), and that he is renowned for his wisdom, something he refers to with several ironical remarks, for instance at 318b, 338c and 348e.
- 3.
Hippocrates belongs to “a great and prosperous family” (316b).
- 4.
The translation used is, with some abridgements, W.R.M. Lamb’s in the Loeb Classical Library (Plato 1999).
- 5.
Liddell and Scott translates ellogimos as “held in account, notable, famous”, in translations of the Protagoras rendered as “getting a reputation”, “become eminent”, “make a name for himself”, “to be a man of respect in the city”, “held in high regard”, “how to be most effective”. “Consideration” is Lamb’s translation. None of these versions points to any desire for wisdom or knowledge for its own sake.
- 6.
Liddell and Scott: “dunatos strong, mighty, able, powerful… oi dunatoi” the chief men of rank and influence”. McCoy (2008, 64) translates dunatotatos “most capable or powerful”. The ordering of one’s own household is not mentioned again. That it is mentioned at all together with political competence, however, indicates the level of expertise we should look for in the political teaching of Protagoras. It was generally assumed that these two kinds of “good judgment” had a common base (Xenophon 2002. Oeconomicus: 521, XXI. 2.). This adds weight to the assumption that Protagoras’ political teaching had a practical focus and that it consisted of advice on how to excel in speaking and acting. It would probably have included rhetoric, political strategy and tactics and all sorts of things pertaining to the workings of the polis.
- 7.
“No one now thinks of grudging or reserving his skill in what is just and lawful as he does in other expert knowledge (technêmaton); for our neighbours’ justice and knowledge, I take it, is to our advantage, and consequently we all tell and teach one another what is just and lawful” (327b). Here, in the great speech, where his own teaching is not directly in question, it is implied that moral and political skill is a technê. Note also that people teach it with an instrumental purpose in mind.
- 8.
Marina McCoy argues “…that Socrates’ questions to Protagoras are intended to bring out problems inherent in Protagoras’ own ideas…”. McCoy’s article restricts itself to the hedonism section of the dialogue. I contend that she hits the mark with regard to the rest of Socrates’ questioning too. – This article is indebted to McCoy’s approach to the Protagoras.
- 9.
It is not even a main concern for Socrates to show Protagoras up as a weak debater, or even as a mediocre thinker. That he appears to be so on both counts is a symptom of the intricacies of his position both as a teacher and of the situation Plato has placed him in here.
- 10.
Gonzalez (2014, 33–66) argues along the same lines as this paper, but thinks it possible to extract more of Socrates’ own thinking than is supposed here. Griswold (1999, 283–307) gives us a somewhat similar take on Protagoras’ thinking. He concludes, however, that the Protagoras is a failed dialogue. It fails to display fruitful philosophical conversation and little progress is made on philosophical issues such as the unity of the virtues. Yet these failures have much to teach the reader (303). My view is that since the aim of the Protagoras is not to try to make progress on such issues as the unity of the virtues, Griswold’s contention is beside the point.
- 11.
The relation between the knowledge terms are revisited several times in the rest of the dialogue. Socrates intention is thus not immediately obvious.
- 12.
Coby (1987, 77–83) finds Socrates argumentation on this point fallacious. And so it obviously is. It proceeds on the premise that each thing has only one opposite. If it had been of interest to Protagoras to keep wisdom and sôphrosunê apart, he could easily have pointed that out. But he is happy with the lack of clarity the amalgamation of the knowledge terms creates; he can then more easily hide the nature of his own “wisdom” from view.
- 13.
It is tempting to see retorts like this (see also 334a–c) on Protagoras’ part, as expressions of the historical Protagoras’ relativism. The Protagoras Plato gives us in this dialogue does not, however, seem to be strong on sustained abstract conceptual thinking. Here he seems to take refuge in relativistic notions when he finds himself in a difficult spot.
- 14.
Dover observes: “The consequence of the tendency towards identification of the patriotic, the law-abiding and the pious is that it becomes difficult to think of any conduct which could attract any kind of ‘secular’ valuation and yet could not be called ‘pious’ or ‘impious’” (Dover 1994, 252).
- 15.
Woodruff (2013) contends that Protagoras’ eubolia is about what is good for society. Woodruff thinks that it is answerable to the virtues. I think that eubolia in Protagoras practice is committed to the values.
- 16.
“So aretê, the abstract noun corresponding to agathos, was often applied …to that combination of bravery and skill which we looked for in a fighter, …” (Dover 1994, 164).
- 17.
This goes for the aristocracy as for the many. According to Denyer (2008, 173), it was commonly acknowledged that there could be unwise people who were courageous.
- 18.
It is easier for Socrates to appear courageous. Since he is not soliciting paying students, he can say the most outrageous things. – Whatever the exact kind or amount of knowledge Socrates could find in courage, it would be strange indeed, if he would deny that it must have an element of boldness, or what you want to call it, that makes you stand up for a worthy cause and risk the consequences.
- 19.
“I fancy, I replied, that this will be a step towards discovering how courage is related to the other parts of virtue” (353b).
- 20.
Which also includes a reduction of the number of moral terms. Socrates suggests that they should “…refrain from using a number of terms at once, such as pleasant, painful, good and bad; and as there appeared to be two things, let us call them by two names – first good and evil, and then later on, pleasant and painful…pleasure – for this has exchanged its name for ‘the good’ (355b–c).
- 21.
Aischros is a wider word than aidôs. It could mean disgraceful, shameful, and scandalous. And it could be opposite of kalos, noble, which connects to honour. See Dover (1994, 70). Shame in Protagoras’ case has often to do with honour. At 348b Alcibiades says that Protagoras is not acting honourable (kalos) when he refuses to go on with the discussion. “Then Protagoras was ashamed (aischuntheis) as it seemed to me, at these words of Alcibiades…” Socrates says.
- 22.
That Hippocrates’ blush is an expression of an internalized sense of shame, something like what we in our culture could call guilt, is indicated by the fact that the only person present is Socrates, and that he can see it because the morning light has just made it possible. – Paul Woodruff names piety ‘reverence’. He discusses this rather complex virtue in Woodruff (2014).
- 23.
It can be shameful to loose in a verbal contest, even if what you have said and done in the competition is not shameful in itself.
- 24.
At 354c Protagoras says that he agrees with the many that you cannot find any other candidate for the good than pleasure. He tries half-heartedly to make a place for the honourable (351c), but Socrates ignores that, and so closes an avenue that the young ambitious men could have found promising.
See also Denyer (2008, 195) on the ambiguities in the text concerning what the Protagoras and the two other sophists assented to during Socrates’ questioning of the many.
- 25.
At 335a he refers both to his great renown and to his fear of losing his contest of words with Socrates.
- 26.
Plato presents Prodicus together with Protagoras as a “teacher of these things” in the Republic 600c. He was, however, mostly known as a teacher of the precise meanings of words. He makes a distinction at 337c between being comforted, or cheered (euphrainoimetha) and being pleased (hêdesthai). The first has to do with learning something and becoming sensible (manthanonta ti kai phronêseôs), while the latter has to do with eating and “some other pleasant sensation in his body”. This distinction is disregarded by Socrates, who throughout his conversation with Protagoras has been bent on destroying distinctions in the field of moral discourse and on simplifying its vocabulary. Hippias seems to have thought ethics and rhetoric among his sundry activities. For both, see Nails (2002).
- 27.
Socrates may give us the information that the three famous sophists each had their own students around them in order to show that Protagoras’ pre-eminence and reputation was not so secure after all. He first gets everybody’s attention when a contest between him and Socrates is decided on. He would naturally have seen this as an opportunity to solicit the students of his rivals for himself. This motive could have made him even more cautious than otherwise would be the case.
- 28.
Information on the men present in addition to what the dialogue itself gives is taken from Nails (2002).
- 29.
- 30.
Hippias’ words at 337d.
- 31.
Nails has 433/2 for the dramatic date. We don’t know the date of writing, but it must be after Socrates death in 399. Callias lived from about 450–367/6 according to Nails (2002, 309).
- 32.
Jeremy Bentham, as we know, thought it perfectly believable.
- 33.
“It was arguably the failure of the elite to control political ideology that led them to devise and write formal political theory which would explain what was wrong with the system they failed to dominate” (Ober 1989, 338–339). One interesting text in this connection is The Old Oligarch’s constitution of Athens. Robin Osborne write in his Introduction: “The overall argument of the work is that although democracy may not be good absolutely, good for the wealthy, or even good for the polis, it is nevertheless good for itself.” (The Old Oligark 2004, 17) The author has to admit that democracy works.
- 34.
This would be in tune with the drift of the great speech too.
- 35.
Stokes writes that “Protagoras has the makings of an intellectual snob” (Stokes 1986, 197).
- 36.
Referring to Xenophon and Isocrates, Denyer writes: “Popular opinion held the opposite, speakers could expect audiences to agree without argument that those who are temperate are just” (Denyer 2008, 133).
- 37.
Hemmenway (1996, 2) presents Protagoras’ attitudes thus: “Demotic virtue, mainly for the many, is simple-minded restraint and law-abidingness. It produces civil order and is primarily associated with the cardinal virtues of moderation and justice. Elite virtues, for the few, consist of daring and cleverness. It is the instrument of political success and it is primarily associated with courage and wisdom.”
- 38.
In his unsuccessful attempt to warn Hippocrates from approaching Protagoras, Socrates mentions money 11 times (311b–e). See also 328b, 349a and 357e. For the topic of wisdom vs. money in the Protagoras, see Nightingale (1995, 48–49). Nightingale discusses this theme and makes a point of the difference between the sophists (and Protagoras especially) and Plato: “For wisdom and money, in Plato’s view, operate in totally different spheres” (49).
- 39.
Moderation and self-control which traditionally were parts of sôphrosunê, have disappeared from the text. It is not easy to see this part as divorced from character, in contradistinction to the part highlighted in the conversation between Socrates and Protagoras, sound deliberation, which could easier be perceived as a competence unconnected to moral character.
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Ågotnes, K. (2017). Socrates’ Sophisticated Attack on Protagoras. In: Pettersson, O., Songe-Møller, V. (eds) Plato’s Protagoras. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 125. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45585-3_3
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