Protagoras

Summary

Socrates tells an unnamed companion about the morning he spent at the house of Callias, the richest patron of the sophists in Athens. Before dawn the young Hippocrates had pounded on his door, wild to become a pupil of Protagoras of Abdera, newly arrived in the city. On the walk over Socrates asks him what he expects to become by studying with a sophist, and offers a warning that governs the whole dialogue: knowledge is the food of the soul, and unlike meat bought at market it cannot be carried home in a jar and inspected before it is swallowed. Whatever one learns goes straight into the soul. At Callias' house the visitors find Protagoras pacing a cloister with a train of admirers, Hippias of Elis lecturing on astronomy from a high chair, and Prodicus of Ceos still in bed, wrapped in sheepskins. Protagoras claims openly to be a sophist and promises that a pupil will go home a better man each day, skilled in managing his household and the affairs of the city. Socrates doubts that such civic excellence can be taught: the Athenian Assembly takes advice on ships from shipwrights but lets any citizen speak on justice, and Pericles could not make his own sons good. Protagoras answers with his celebrated myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus, in which Zeus sends reverence and justice to all human beings, and then with an argument from punishment, schooling and the laws: the whole city is a teacher of virtue, as it is a teacher of Greek. Socrates then asks whether justice, temperance, holiness, wisdom and courage are parts of one virtue or names for one thing. The questioning grows tense, Protagoras answers with a long speech about how a thing good for one creature is bad for another, and Socrates threatens to leave unless answers become short. The company brokers a truce. Protagoras turns to the interpretation of a poem by Simonides, and Socrates replies with a mischievous reading of his own before dismissing poetry-quarrels as entertainment for people who cannot converse. In the last movement Socrates leads Protagoras, under the assumption that the pleasant is the good, to the conclusion that being "overcome by pleasure" is really ignorance, that right living needs an art of measurement, and that courage is knowledge of what is and is not to be feared. The dialogue ends with the two men having changed places: Socrates, who doubted that virtue could be taught, has argued that it is knowledge and so teachable, while Protagoras, who promised to teach it, has resisted calling it knowledge. Socrates imagines the argument itself laughing at them. For students the work is a vivid model of disputation and a sobering one: brilliance, reputation and fees settle nothing about whether a teacher can make the soul better, and the question of whether knowing the good is enough to do it remains open at the close.

Plot or Argument

• Hippocrates at the door before daybreak (309a-314c)

  Socrates narrates to a companion who teases him about Alcibiades. Hippocrates rouses him before dawn to seek out Protagoras; in the courtyard Socrates makes him admit he does not know what a sophist is, and compares the sophist to a merchant in food for the soul whose wares cannot be tested before purchase.

• The scene at Callias' house (314c-319a)

  A eunuch porter slams the door on them as more sophists. Inside, Protagoras walks with his chorus of listeners, Hippias answers physical questions from a chair of state, and Prodicus booms from his bed. Protagoras claims the title of sophist proudly and says a pupil will grow better every day in the art of citizenship.

• Socrates' doubt and Protagoras' Great Speech (319a-328d)

  Socrates points to the Assembly and to Pericles' sons as evidence that virtue is not taught. Protagoras answers with the myth of Epimetheus' forgetful distribution of gifts, Prometheus' theft of fire and the arts, and Zeus' gift of reverence and justice to all; he adds that rational punishment looks to the future, and that parents, teachers, poets and laws all instruct the young.

• One virtue or many parts (328d-334c)

  Socrates asks whether the virtues are like the parts of a face or like parts of gold. He argues that justice and holiness resemble each other and that wisdom and temperance share a single opposite, folly. When pressed on whether the unjust can be temperate, Protagoras breaks off into a speech on how the beneficial is relative to the creature, with olive oil as his example.

• The quarrel over method and the Simonides poem (334c-348c)

  Socrates refuses long speeches and rises to go; Callias, Alcibiades, Critias, Prodicus and Hippias negotiate rules. Protagoras charges Simonides with contradicting himself about whether it is hard to be good. Socrates defends the poet with a playful theory of secret Spartan philosophy and the sayings of the Seven Sages, then proposes that the company leave the poets, who cannot be questioned, and test one another directly.

• Knowledge, pleasure and the art of measurement (348c-357e)

  Protagoras now grants that four virtues are alike but holds courage apart. Socrates asks whether knowledge can be dragged about like a slave by pleasure and fear, and then, speaking to 'the many', argues that if pleasure is the good, choosing the worse means misjudging distant and near pleasures. What saves life is an art of measuring, so being overcome by pleasure is ignorance.

• Courage and the reversal (358a-362a)

  The sophists agree that no one willingly pursues what he believes evil. Courage is shown to be wisdom about what is and is not to be feared, and Protagoras reluctantly concedes. Socrates notes that their positions have crossed, says he prefers Prometheus to Epimetheus, and the meeting breaks up politely with the question of what virtue is still unsettled.

Characters

• Socrates, narrator and questioner

  Retells the meeting to a friend. Ironical and stubborn, he professes a bad memory to force short answers and ends by arguing the position he began by doubting.

• Protagoras of Abdera, sophist

  The most celebrated paid teacher in Greece, proud to call himself a sophist. A gifted storyteller and orator who is courteous in defeat and unwilling to have virtue reduced to knowledge.

• Hippocrates, young Athenian, son of Apollodorus

  An eager youth ready to spend his and his friends' money on Protagoras without knowing what he will be taught; he blushes when he realises he is aiming to become a sophist.

• Callias, host

  Wealthy Athenian whose house is filled with sophists and their followers; he begs Socrates not to break off the conversation.

• Hippias of Elis, sophist

  Polymath who lectures on astronomy and nature and urges a middle course between long speeches and short questions.

• Prodicus of Ceos, sophist

  Specialist in fine distinctions between near-synonyms, whom Socrates teases while enlisting him to interpret Simonides.

• Alcibiades and Critias, young aristocrats

  Members of the audience who intervene in the quarrel over method; readers in Plato's time knew the later careers of both men.

Lessons

• Ask what a teacher will make of you

  Before Hippocrates hands himself over, Socrates asks what he will become. Learning is not a neutral purchase: whatever is taught enters the soul and shapes it, so a student needs some judgment of good and evil before choosing a master.

  • Why does Socrates say buying knowledge is more dangerous than buying food and drink?
  • Hippocrates blushes when he admits he wants to become a sophist. What has he realised?
  • What questions should a student ask before trusting a teacher, a school, or a source online?

• Reverence and justice are given to all

  Protagoras' myth claims that every citizen shares in reverence and justice, which is why the Assembly hears anyone on public questions; the city teaches virtue through parents, schools, poets, laws and punishment. It is a strong defence of moral education carried by a whole community, even if Socrates doubts its account of what virtue is.

  • Why does Zeus give justice to all rather than to a few experts, as with medicine?
  • Protagoras says rational punishment looks to the future rather than the past. Is that a full account of justice?
  • Where in your own upbringing has a community, not a single teacher, taught you right and wrong?

• Short answers and the duty to be examined

  The near-collapse of the conversation shows that method is a moral matter. Long speeches can win applause while escaping refutation; question and answer exposes a claim to testing. Socrates' complaint about poets who cannot be questioned extends to any authority we quote but cannot cross-examine.

  • Is Socrates being fair when he threatens to leave unless Protagoras answers briefly?
  • What does the company's negotiation over rules show about the conditions for honest argument?
  • Socrates' reading of Simonides is clever and probably mischievous. What is he showing about interpreting poems?

• Can knowledge be dragged about like a slave?

  Socrates argues that no one does what he believes worse when the better is available, so 'giving in to pleasure' is a mismeasurement of near and distant goods. Students should follow the argument carefully, notice that it runs on the premise that the pleasant is the good, and weigh it against the experience Paul describes in Romans 7, of seeing the good and not doing it.

  • What premise does Socrates ask 'the many' to accept before he proves that being overcome by pleasure is ignorance?
  • How does the illusion of size at a distance help explain bad choices?
  • Is weakness of will a failure of knowledge, of desire, or of both? Support your answer from the text and from experience.

Context

The dramatic date is shortly before the Peloponnesian War, around 433-432 BC, when Socrates was in his late thirties, Alcibiades was just growing a beard, and Pericles was still alive. Protagoras of Abdera was the most famous of the sophists, itinerant teachers who charged fees to train ambitious young men in speaking and public life. Athenian democracy rewarded persuasive speech in the Assembly and courts, and the sophists' claim to teach political excellence raised the question the dialogue pursues: whether civic virtue is a craft that can be sold. Several figures present, including Alcibiades and Critias, later became notorious in Athenian politics, which Plato's first readers would have remembered.

Composition

Plato wrote the Protagoras after Socrates' death in 399 BC; it is usually grouped with the earlier dialogues and dated somewhere in the 390s or 380s BC, though the date cannot be fixed. It is narrated by Socrates in the first person to an unnamed companion. The library's text is Benjamin Jowett's translation (3rd ed., 1892) from Project Gutenberg #1591; locators below use Stephanus page numbers, which Jowett's text does not print, so they are approximate guides.

Reception

Ancient readers prized the dialogue's portrait of the sophists, and the Great Speech is a principal source for Protagoras' views. Aristotle's discussion of incontinence (akrasia) in Nicomachean Ethics VII answers the Socratic claim that no one knowingly does wrong. Modern scholarship has debated whether Socrates endorses the hedonism he uses in the final argument. The work was included in the Great Books of the Western World (2nd ed., 1990), volume 6.

Comparisons

• Meno

  Meno opens with the same question of whether virtue can be taught and repeats the evidence of famous fathers with undistinguished sons; it adds the distinction between knowledge and true opinion that the Protagoras lacks.

• Gorgias

  Gorgias carries the contest with the sophists into open hostility: where Protagoras is courteous and the hedonism is offered as a premise, Callicles champions pleasure outright and Socrates attacks it as disorder of the soul.

• Charmides, Lysis and Laches

  Laches tests courage with generals and ends in perplexity; the Protagoras pushes further, defining courage as knowledge of what is and is not fearful, an answer Laches had glimpsed and failed to secure.

• The Nicomachean Ethics

  Book VII of Aristotle's Ethics names the Socratic thesis of the Protagoras directly and argues against it, distinguishing knowledge held from knowledge used in the moment of temptation.

• The Republic

  The Republic's divided soul, in which appetite can rebel against reason, gives Plato a way to explain the conflict Socrates here reduces to miscalculation, and its programme of education answers Protagoras' claim that the city already teaches virtue.

Quotes

Medical Lens

Medicine is Plato's recurring model of an expert craft in this dialogue: Socrates imagines a 'physician of the soul' who could judge a sophist's wares, Zeus distributes medicine to a few but justice to all, Protagoras cites physicians' dietary rules about oil, and the hedonist argument treats burning, cutting, drugging and starving as painful goods justified by later health. The final argument about being 'overcome by pleasure' is often read alongside modern discussions of impulsivity and addiction, but that is an interpretive bridge; the dialogue itself analyses ordinary choices among pleasures and pains, not a disease.

• Stephanus 311b-c and 313c-e

  Socrates asks what Hippocrates would become by paying his namesake Hippocrates of Cos, and answers 'a physician'; he then contrasts trainers and physicians, who can judge food for the body, with the rare physician of the soul who can judge teaching.

  Physicians Doctors Ancient Medicine Philosophy AS Therapy
• Stephanus 322c-d (the Great Speech)

  Hermes asks whether justice should be distributed like medicine, one skilled practitioner serving many laymen; Zeus answers that justice must be shared by all.

  Physicians Doctors
• Stephanus 334a-c

  Protagoras' speech on the relativity of benefit: manure helps roots and harms shoots, oil is good for human skin and hair but bad inwardly, so physicians forbid more than a little oil in a patient's food.

  Ancient Medicine Physicians Doctors
• Stephanus 353c-354b

  Socrates lists pleasures that are bad because they later cause disease and poverty, and painful goods such as gymnastics and the physician's burning, cutting, drugging and starving that bring health afterward.

  Surgery Ancient Medicine

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Write the conversation between Hippocrates and Socrates on the walk home from Callias' house. Does Hippocrates still want to study with Protagoras, and what has he learned about himself?

• Essay

  Protagoras says the whole city teaches virtue as it teaches the mother tongue. Using his examples of parents, schools, poets and laws, argue whether that account is true of your own community.

• Classroom

  Stage the quarrel over method: one student must defend a position only in uninterrupted speeches, another only by short questions. Afterward, the class writes the rules Callias and Hippias should have proposed.

• Fiction

  Retell Protagoras' myth of Epimetheus and Prometheus as a short fable for younger students, keeping the point that justice and reverence were given to everyone.

Further Reading

• Plato: Protagoras, C. C. W. Taylor

  Translation with detailed philosophical commentary (Clarendon Plato Series).

• The Fragility of Goodness, Martha C. Nussbaum

  Includes an influential chapter reading the Protagoras' art of measurement as a 'science of practical reasoning'.

• Meno, Plato

  The natural sequel on whether virtue is teachable.

• Nicomachean Ethics, Book VII, Aristotle

  Aristotle's response to the Socratic denial of incontinence.