Protagoras
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Protagoras
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Protagoras
The Greek philosopher Protagoras (ca. 484-ca. 414 B.C.) was one of the best-known and most successful teachers of the Sophistic movement of the 5th century B.C.
Protagoras was born in Abdera, the native city of Democritus, and spent much of his life as an itinerant Sophist, traveling throughout the Greek world. He was a frequent visitor to Athens, being a friend of Pericles, and was said to have aided in framing the constitution for the colony of Thurii, which the Athenians established in southern Italy in 444/443 B.C. Plato said that Protagoras spent 40 years teaching and that he died at the age of 70. Stories about an indictment against Protagoras by the Athenians, the burning of his books, and his death at sea are probably fictitious.
Sophist Philosophy
Protagoras earned his livelihood giving lectures and instruction to individuals and groups. The system he taught had little to do with philosophy or the pursuit of an absolute truth; instead it imparted to its adherents the necessary skills and knowledge for success in life, especially in politics. These skills consisted mainly of rhetoric and dialectic and could be used for whatever ends a person desired. It was for this reason, for teaching people "to make the weaker cause the stronger, " that Protagoras came under attack, indirectly by Aristophanes in The Clouds and directly by Plato in several of his dialogues.
Protagoras wrote on a wide variety of subjects. Fragments of some of his works survive, and the titles of others are known through later comments on them. His famous dictum "man is the measure of all things" is the opening sentence of a work variously called Truth or Refutatory Arguments. He also wrote On the Gods, a fragment of which survives. In it he says that the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of human life prevent any definite conclusions. Other works include The Great Argument, Contradictory Arguments, On Mathematics, and The Art of Eristics. The list of titles preserved in the works of the Greek biographer Diogenes Laertius may represent sections of larger works, whereas such titles as On Ambition, On Virtues, On Human Errors, and Trial Concerning a Fee almost certainly represent discussions of the common themes of Sophistic speeches. The chronology of these works is unknown.
Protagoras was a perfect example of the 5th-century Sophist. Careful thinkers could, of course, easily undermine the basis of his relative theory of knowledge; but the attractiveness of his theory and the pervasive influence of his teachings were so great that no less an opponent than Plato went to great lengths to expose the fallacies and potential evil of what he represented.
Further Reading
The surviving fragments of Protagoras's works are collected in H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, translated in Kathleen Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (1948), and discussed in her The Pre-Socratic Philosophers (1946; 3d ed. 1953). An excellent discussion of the Sophists and their contributions to Greek culture is in Werner Jaeger, Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture, translated by Gilbert Highet, vol. 1 (1939; 2d ed. 1945). A brief but useful account of Protagoras's importance can be found in Albin Lesky, A History of Greek Literature (1966).
Oxford Companion to Classical Literature:
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Protagoras
Protagoras, dialogue by Plato in which the interlocutors are, besides Socrates, the sophists Protagoras (see above), Hippias, and Prodicus. It is a dialogue on the nature of ‘virtue’ (or ‘goodness’; see above), what it is and how it is to be acquired. Protagoras argues that virtue (in his sense) is something that can be taught just as well as any other subject. The dialogue reaches the conclusion that all the virtues are essentially one, founded upon knowledge of the good, and that virtue is in fact knowledge. In the course of the dialogue a poem of Simonides is analysed, an encomium on ‘the good man’ this dialogue remains its only source (see PITTACUS).
Protagoras is presented as a reasonable man, sincere in his arguments and of equable temperament, not provoked by Socrates' sometimes biting irony at his expense. His arguments are thoughtful and based on common sense; those of Socrates more searching and also paradoxical. The dialogue contains a noteworthy declaration by Protagoras that under a rational system criminals are punished to deter them from doing wrong again, not as retribution for past misdeeds.
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Protagoras
Protagoras (prōtăg'ərəs), c.490-c.421 B.C., Greek philosopher of Abdera, one of the more distinguished Sophists. He taught for a time in Athens, where he was a friend of Pericles and knew Socrates, but was forced to flee because of his professed agnosticism. Protagoras was the author of the famous saying, "Man is the measure of all things." He held that each man is the standard of what is true to himself, that all truth is relative to the individual who holds it and can have no validity beyond him. Thus he denied the possibility of objective knowledge and refused to differentiate between sense and reason. None of his works have survived, but one of Plato's most famous dialogues bears his name.
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Protagoras
For other uses, see Protagoras (disambiguation).
 Democritus (center) and Protagoras (right) by Salvator Rosa |
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| Born | c. 490 BC Abdera |
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| Died | 420 BC |
| Era | Pre-Socratic philosophy |
| Region | Western Philosophy |
| School | Sophism |
| Main interests | language, semantics, relativism, rhetoric, agnosticism, ethics |
| Notable ideas | 'Sophist' as teacher for hire, 'Man is the measure of all things' |
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Protagoras (
/ˈproʊtæɡərəs/; Greek: Πρωταγόρας, ca. 490 BC – 420 BC)[1] was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with having invented the role of the professional sophist or teacher of virtue. He is also believed to have created a major controversy during ancient times through his statement that "man is the measure of all things". This idea was revolutionary for the time and contrasted with other philosophical doctrines that claimed the universe was based on something objective, outside the human influence.
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Background
Protagoras was born in Abdera, Thrace, in Ancient Greece. According to Aulus Gellius, he originally made his living as a porter, but one day he was seen by the philosopher Democritus carrying a load of small pieces of wood tied with a short cord. Democritus discovered that Protagoras had tied the load himself with such perfect geometric accuracy that it revealed him to be a mathematic prodigy. He immediately took him into his own household and taught him philosophy.[2]
In Plato's Protagoras, before the company of Socrates, Prodicus, and Hippias, he states that he is old enough to be the father of any of them. This suggests a date of not later than 490 BC. In the Meno he is said to have died at about the age of 70 after 40 years as a practicing Sophist.[3] His death, then, may be assumed to have occurred circa 420. He was well known in Athens and became a friend of Pericles.[4]
Plutarch relates a story in which the two spend a whole day discussing an interesting point of legal responsibility, that probably involved a more philosophical question of causation:[5] "In an athletic contest a man had been accidentally hit and killed with a javelin. Was his death to be attributed to the javelin itself, to the man who threw it, or to the authorities responsible for the conduct of the games?"[6]
Philosophy
Protagoras was also renowned as a teacher who addressed subjects connected to virtue and political life. He was especially involved in the question of whether virtue could be taught, a commonplace issue of 5th century Greece related to modern readers through Plato's dialogue. Rather than educators who offered specific, practical training in rhetoric or public speaking, Protagoras attempted to formulate a reasoned understanding, on a very general level, of a wide range of human phenomena, including language and education. In Plato's Protagoras, he claims to teach "The proper management of one's own affairs, how best to run one's household, and the management of public affairs, how to make the most effective contribution to the affairs of the city by word and action" [7]
He also seems to have had an interest in “orthoepeia” - the correct use of words, although this topic is more strongly associated with his fellow sophist Prodicus. In his eponymous Platonic dialogue, Protagoras interprets a poem by Simonides, focusing on his use of words, their literal meaning and the authors original intent. This type of education would have been useful for the interpretation of laws and other written documents in the Athenian courts. [8] Diogenes Laërtius reports that Protagoras devised a taxonomy of speech acts such as assertion, question, answer, command etc. Aristotle also says that Protagoras worked on the classification and proper use of grammatical gender.[9]
The titles of his books such as The Technique of Eristics (Technē Eristikōn, literally "On wrestling", with wrestling here used as a metaphor for intellectual debate) prove that Protagoras was also a teacher of rhetoric and argumentation. Diogenes Laërtius states that he was one of the first to take part in rhetorical contests in the Olympic games.[9] Protagoras also said that on any matter there are two arguments (logoi) opposed to one another and according to Aristotle he was criticized for having claimed to "make the weaker logos stronger (ton hēttō logon kreittō poiein)". [9]
His most famous saying is: "Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not".[10][11] Like many fragments of the Presocratics, this phrase has been passed down to us without any context, and its meaning is open to interpretation. However, the use of the word χρήματα (chrēmata) instead of the general word ὄντα (onta, entities) signifies that Protagoras was referring to things that are used by or in some way related to humans. This makes a great difference in the meaning of his aphorism. Properties, social entities, ideas, feelings, judgements, etc. are certainly χρήματα and hence originate in the human mind. However, Protagoras has never suggested that man must be the measure of the motion of the stars, the growing of plants or the activity of volcanoes. Such views (together with his views about the gods) were considered subversive by the contemporary political elites. Like many modern thinkers, Plato ascribes relativism to Protagoras and uses his predecessor's teachings as a foil for his own commitment to objective and transcendent realities and values particularly those that relate to his aristocratic background. His major effort, through the words of Socrates, is to convince his contemporaries that ἀρετή (aretē, virtue) is a present from the gods, which one either has or has not and that no sophist can teach virtue to people that do not already possess it. Plato ascribes to Protagoras an early form of phenomenalism,[12] in which what is or appears for a single individual is true or real for that individual. However, as it is clearly presented in the Theaetetus, Protagoras explains that some of such controversial views may result from an ill body or mind. He stresses that although all views may appear equally true, and perhaps should be equally respected, they are certainly not of equal gravity. One may be useful and advantageous to the person that has it while another may prove harmful. Hence, the sophist is there to teach the student how to discriminate between them, i.e. to teach virtue.
Protagoras was a proponent of agnosticism. In his lost work, On the Gods, he wrote: "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be, because of the obscurity of the subject, and the brevity of human life."(DK80b4)[13][14] According to Diogenes Laërtius, the outspoken agnostic position taken by Protagoras aroused anger, causing the Athenians to expel him from the city, and all copies of the book were collected and burned in the marketplace; this is also mentioned by Cicero.[15] However, the Classicist John Burnet doubts this account, as both Diogenes Laërtius and Cicero wrote hundreds of years later and no such persecution of Protagoras is mentioned by contemporaries who make extensive references to this philosopher.[16] Burnet notes that even if some copies of Protagoras' book were burned, enough of them survived to be known and discussed in the following century.
Very few fragments from Protagoras have survived, though he is known to have written several different works: Antilogiae and Truth. The latter is cited by Plato, and was known alternatively as The Throws (a wrestling term referring to the attempt to floor an opponent). It began with the "man the measure" pronouncement. According to Diogenes Laërtius other books by Protagoras include: On the Gods, Art of Eristics, Imperative, On Ambition, On Incorrect Human Actions, On those in Hades, On Sciences, On Virtues, On the Original State of Things and Trial over a Fee. [9]
The crater Protagoras on the Moon is named in his honor.
Notes
- ^ Guthrie, p. 262–263.
- ^ Aulus Gellius, Noctes Atticae, V.iii.
- ^ Plato, Meno, 91e
- ^ O'Sullivan, Neil. (1995) "Pericles and Protagoras". Greece & Rome, Vol. 42 (1): 15-23
- ^ Guthrie, p. 263.
- ^ Plutarch, Life of Pericles
- ^ Plato, Protagoras, (319a)
- ^ The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Protagoras (c. 490 - c. 420 BCE)
- ^ a b c d "The Sophists (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/sophists/#Pro. Retrieved 2012-5-1.
- ^ (80B1 DK).
- ^ This quotation is recapitulated in Plato's Theaetetus at 152a. Sextus Empiricus gives a direct quotation in Adv. math. 7.60: πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἐστὶν ἄνθρωπος, τῶν μὲν ὄντων ὡς ἔστιν, τῶν δὲ οὐκ ὄντων ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν. The translation "Man is the measure..." has been familiar in English since before the rise of gender-neutral language; in Greek, Protagoras makes a general statement, not about men, but about human beings (his word is anthrōpos).
- ^ See e.g. John Wild, "On the Nature and Aims of Phenomenology," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 3 (1942), p. 88: "Phenomenalism is as old as Protagoras."
- ^ The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Protagoras (c. 490 - c. 420 BCE), Accessed: October 6, 2008. "While the pious might wish to look to the gods to provide absolute moral guidance in the relativistic universe of the Sophistic Enlightenment, that certainty also was cast into doubt by philosophic and sophistic thinkers, who pointed out the absurdity and immorality of the conventional epic accounts of the gods. Protagoras' prose treatise about the gods began "Concerning the gods, I have no means of knowing whether they exist or not or of what sort they may be. Many things prevent knowledge including the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life."
- ^ (80B4 DK)
- ^ Cicero, de Natura Deorum, 1.23.6
- ^ John Burnet, "Greek Philosophy: From Thales to Plato", 1914
References
- Guthrie, W. K. C., The Sophists. New York: Cambridge University Press (May 27, 1977). ISBN 0-521-09666-9.
External links
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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Protagoras |
- Protagoras entry in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy by Carol Poster
Diogenes Laërtius, Life of Protagoras, translated by Robert Drew Hicks (1925).
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