Plato’s Protagoras
Plato
Plato lived in a world where the study of logic and reason was in its infancy, and yet to this day he is one of the most influential thinkers in human history. He was the founder of philosophical idealism and through his work and instruction helped lay the foundation for Greek philosophy and education, which in turn influenced the rest of the western world. He had celebrated students in his own time, like Aristotle, whose work and fame rival that of his teacher. But those were not his only students — thousands more have followed in Aristotle’s footsteps through Plato’s dialogues, including author and critic Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who said of the philosopher:
Plato’s works are preparatory exercises for the mind. He leads you to see, that propositions involving in themselves contradictory conceptions, are nevertheless true; and which, therefore, must belong to a higher logic — that of ideas. They are contradictory only in the Aristotelian logic, which is the instrument of understanding. I have read most of the works of Plato several times with profound attention, but not all his writings. In fact, I soon found that I had read Plato by anticipation. He was a consummate genius (56).
Evident in this passage by Coleridge are both principles of Platonic idealism and its striking contrast to the philosophy of Plato’s renowned protégé, Aristotle. There is far more similarity to Plato’s philosophy in the philosophy of his mentor, Socrates.
Plato was born of a noble family in 427 BCE. His early literary pursuits were in poetry, “but meeting Socrates in 407 BC turned his attention to philosophy” (Howatson 442). Socrates left no texts, so we must interpret his philosophy through the writings of others, namely Plato, who places Socrates as a “major figure in all of [his] works except Laws” (Williams 108). Plato was greatly affected by Socrates’ death, which he found unjust, and afterwards for several years traveled the Mediterranean. Perhaps the most intellectually lucrative leg of his journey was a stay in Egypt, where he made “the acquaintance of the Pythagoreans in Magna Graecia” (Howatson 442). According to the disciples of Pythagoras,
the abiding essence of the world is to be found in mathematics, which gives shape or form to corporeal bodies; consequently, the Being of physical reality must consist of mathematical forms, and the world must be regarded as a harmony of numbers. The supreme value in the universe is something unchangeable, a permanent value found only in the mathematical formula governing all things that exist (Sahakian 125).
Plato likely gleaned as much knowledge as he could from the Pythagoreans, and his idealism evinces some linguistic parallels to the Pythagoreans’ mathematical philosophy. It was perhaps the combination of his studies in verse, his tutelage under Socrates, and his encounter with the Pythagoreans that helped him to consummate his theory of philosophical idealism. Plato returned to Athens and founded the Academy, where he actively taught this philosophy until, after much political turmoil, he died in 347.
Philosophy
I will attempt to introduce Plato’s philosophy with my own interpretation of his cave allegory, perhaps one of the most well-known of his works and certainly the most celebrated of his allegories. We human beings live inside a cave, cut off from full view of the reality. Instead of the real world, we see shadows on a cave wall, mere reflections that we think are reality. In summary, Plato’s cave is the mind, and the shadows on the walls are consciousness. We know this to be an accurate depiction of perception — the conscious mind in fact is merely a representation of the reality in which we live. And consciousness is based on language.
Plato “was the first to try to erect an integral system of philosophy” (Snell 223) in what is known as Idealism. Idealism asserts that what we experience and what we name as experience exist as two separate entities, one in reality and one in the mind. Plato maintained that instead of experiencing and observing an actual universal reality, we “think of isolated mental entities or abstractions and [...] we use abstract language in describing or explaining experience” (Havelock 257). The experience is the thought, the word, the description. Human perception, therefore, is inferior because it is merely a model of reality, a consciousness created not from actual experience, but its linguistic signifiers. Plato argued,
human perception reveals phenomena as transient or relative surface reality, whereas reason detects an absolute, permanent, universal, homogeneous reality or real laws of nature. The changing facts of phenomenal existence we perceive (sense), but the principles of reality we conceive (think). Sensory objects exist in the perceptual world, while the principles of reality exist in the metaphysical world of thought (Sahakian 125).
He was looking for the Pythagoreans’ supreme value through reason rather than math. One cannot trust one’s senses to reveal the truth of reality. It will always be a construct of the mind. Plato’s strategy for discovering truth is an exploration of the mind as a means of transcending its linguistic barriers, of “thinking” outside of consciousness. This led him to belie the power of words, for ultimately they are meaningless; and moreover, to belittle the Sophists, whose principle of “dissoi logoi, or ‘two sides,’ argument, attributed to Protagoras” (Williams 22), corroborated Plato’s assertion that words are mere shadows of the truth.
Works
Unlike Socrates, Plato was prolific in his writings: He “published perhaps twenty-five philosophical dialogues (the authenticity of some is disputed) and the Apology ... written over a period of fifty years, and they all survive,” in addition to thirteen extant apocryphal letters, or the Epistles (Howatson 442). Plato wrote on a variety of subjects, including temperance, courage, friendship, pleasure, wisdom, law, politics, truth, etc. He also wrote many satirical works, including Protagoras, an assault on the Sophists and their claim to teach virtue through rhetoric. In most of Plato’s work, the central figure is Socrates, and though we depend on the dialogues for much of our knowledge of Socrates’ philosophy, it is nonetheless “difficult to know in the early dialogues how far Plato is reproducing Socrates’ views and to what extent he has moved beyond them, but in the later dialogues it is reasonable to think that Plato is propounding his own doctrines” (443), doctrines that most surely were most influenced by Socrates, but had significant influence from other sources as well.
Rhetoric
We have already discussed the importance of language in Plato’s philosophy. It is only natural that Plato would explore the nescient art of rhetoric among his many topics of study. And though he himself was an apparent master of rhetoric, “all the derogatory things that men have said about this art down through the ages have their roots in Plato’s strictures” (Corbett 597). Rhetoric, the art of persuasion, could be used to rile the emotion of crowds, to ends both good and ill. In Plato’s pursuit of the true value of things, he found emptiness in the art of rhetoric. It contained no inherent virtue that might prevent a skilled rhetorician from abusing its techniques.
Plato famously attacks rhetoric in the dialogue Gorgias, using the analogy that rhetoric is to philosophy what cooking is to medicine. According to this proportion, “philosophy and medicine constitute real knowledge in contrast to the apparent knowledge of rhetoric and cooking” (Snell 221–2). The contrast of apparent and real knowledge was important, for Idealism asserts that real knowledge is not based on perception, but thought. Herein it is difficult to discern exactly what Plato was thinking and arguing, but my interpretation (based on linguistics and psychology) is that human beings consciously think in terms of language, and furthermore language is arguably the foundation for consciousness. Yet consciousness is not reality; it is a mere shadow of reality on a figurative cave wall. If we assert that words are truth, or that words can express truth, we base that assertion on the veracity of words.
Plato argues that words are not experiences, and in fact they are not, for the idea of the color red is not the expression or the experience of the color red (which could be entirely solipsistic for all we know). Furthermore, perceptions are not experiences, but recreations of experiences based in language. Language cannot possibly express a universal truth, merely a human truth. Ironically, we can gain a similar understanding of reality from the most noted axiom of one of Plato’s satirical victims, Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things: of those that are, that they are; and of those that are not, that they are not.”
Protagoras
In a sense, Plato’s Idealism echoes Protagoras’ assertion that all things that exist in man’s world in reality only exist in his privy mind. Protagoras’ relativity principle is based on the fact that “man’s knowledge of the phenomenal world (the world which he senses) is imperfect owing to the imperfection of the human senses” (Sahakian 27). Compare that with Williams’s description of Plato’s philosophy: It is “an early form of rationalism because it relies on reason rather than the senses to understand the world ... What passes for justice and virtue in the world of experiences are simply imitations of the Ideal Forms that exist in the mind of God, imitations that delude us into believing that we are experiencing true virtue on the basis of their resemblance to the real things” (108–9). Plato’s Idealism relies on reason rather than sensual experience because he believed, like his predecessor (and modern scientists), that the human senses do not reveal the truth of the universe.
Nonetheless, it was Protagoras’ insistence that one could teach virtue that drew Plato’s criticism. The historical Protagoras is the earliest known Sophist: “His teaching career began c.455 and in his lifetime he made a great deal of money. What he professed to teach was aretē, ‘virtue,’ by which he meant worldly success achieved through practical good management of public and private affairs” (Howatson 469). Protagoras’ most revered works questioned the nature of truth and the existence of the gods, and he “was said to have been prosecuted and expelled from Athens for atheism” (469). Though historically significant, Protagoras is perhaps better known for his role in Plato’s dialogue of the same name.
Protagoras
Plato’s criticism of the Sophists in Protagoras is ostensibly mild compared to his other dialogues: “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” (Howatson 469). Williams belies this common sentiment: “Such positive assessments of the dialogue, however, fail to recognize that in this work Plato’s irony is more subtle than what we find in most of his other works” (114).
The dialogue involves a discussion of virtue, for it is virtue that Protagoras claims to teach, and Socrates’ companion wishes to study with the Sophists. Socrates says to the Sophist, “I am of opinion that this art cannot be taught or communicated by man to man” (Williams 120). Socrates does not believe that virtue can be taught, and therefore Protagoras is not only avaricious, but mendacious as well. The historical Protagoras was known for his monetary successes, and Plato’s satire of him in this regard is evident throughout. Socrates says to his companion, “if you give him money, and make friends with him, he will make you as wise as he is himself” (116), and with scathing irony he states to Protagoras, “such confidence have you in yourself, that although other Sophists conceal their profession, you proclaim in the face of Hellas that you are a Sophist or teacher of virtue and education, and are the first who demanded pay in return” (135). It is perhaps not so much the act of paying that worries Plato as much as the potential abuse:
there is greater peril in buying knowledge than in buying meat and drink ... you cannot buy the wares of knowledge and carry them away in another vessel; when you have paid for them you must receive them into the soul and go your way, either greatly harmed or greatly benefitted (118).
Socrates questions whether his companion even knows what a Sophist is, and warns him of dire consequences to his soul.
Nonetheless, the majority of the dialogue is concerned with virtue, for Socrates believes that if Protagoras cannot rightly define virtue, he cannot rightly teach it, either. As in other dialogues, Socrates employs aporia and elenchus: he “feigns ignorance and confusion on a variety of topics and encourages Protagoras to educate him. The Sophist readily complies, and the trap is set” (Williams 114). Socrates wins the argument in a twist — though Plato fails to prove through the dialogue that virtue cannot be taught, he does prove that Protagoras is not fit to teach it. A hypothetical address from the “human voice” of the argument summarizes the irony of the debate:
there are you, Socrates, who were saying that virtue cannot be taught, contradicting yourself now by your attempt to prove that all things are knowledge, including justice, and temperance, and courage — which tends to show that virtue can certainly be taught; for if virtue were other than knowledge, as Protagoras attempted to prove, then clearly virtue cannot be taught; but if virtue is entirely knowledge, as you are seeking to show, then I cannot but suppose that virtue is capable of being taught. Protagoras, on the other hand, who started by saying that it might be taught, is now eager to prove it to be anything rather than knowledge; and if this is true, it must be quite incapable of being taught. (142)
Plato here is attacking the Sophists’ dissoi logoi argument by suggesting duplicity on the part of Protagoras. Plato has by the end of the dialogue satirized Protagoras’ claims of virtue, his teaching aptitude, his levying of fees, and the inherent lack of truth in his relativistic views.
Works Cited
Coleridge, Samuel Taylor. Specimens of the Table Talk of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. London: John Murray, Albemarle St., 1836. Epub file.
Corbett, Edward P.J. Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 2nd Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1971. Print.
Havelock, Eric A. Preface to Plato. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. Print.
Howatson, M.C. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. Print.
Sahakian, William S., and Mabel Lewis Sahakian. Ideas of the Great Philosophers. New York: Barnes & Nobel, 2005. Print.
Snell, Bruno. The Discovery of the Mind in Greek Philosophy and Literature. New York: Dover Publications, 1982. Print.
Williams, James D. ed. An Introduction to Classical Rhetoric. United Kingdom: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. Print.
