Read superficially, the Protagoras doesn’t appear to tell us much of any use that isn’t told better elsewhere – unlike the Meno, which has some more memorable features – so if you’re teaching (or learning) an introductory course on Plato, you might be inclined to skip this one altogether.
That would be a shame, because it’s another excellent example of Plato’s ‘writing with layered intentions’; and if you can uncover the meaning in the Protagoras, you will be well-equipped to discover more meaning in the other Platonic dialogues. For that reason, it’s a useful exercise to spend some time with Protagoras the dialogue, just as, in the dialogue, it’s a useful exercise for Socrates to spend some time with Protagoras the famous sophist.
But it’s not going to be an easy time, in fiction or reality. Like the Meno, the Protagoras shows Socrates mostly getting frustrated (as do we) as he argues for points that contradict what he says elsewhere and even within this dialogue. Without an ear for irony and an eye for what is shown but not said, the Protagoras can be very confusing and its effect will be to confuse what you understand about Plato and Socrates.
Read between the lines, though, and you’ll see that Plato is basically trying to show us two things with this dialogue: Firstly, that appearances can be deceiving; and secondly, the damaging effects of learning from people who don’t know what they’re talking about.
The Protagoras
The Protagoras tells a story of a young man coming to Socrates in great excitement. He can barely contain himself. He’s excited because Protagoras the famous sophist is in town, along with some other famous sophists (the celebrity self-help gurus of their day), and this young man wants to go and pay all he has to learn from these famously wise men.
Socrates warns the youth against buying into anything before you know what you’re buying, so they go together to meet with the sophists – Protagoras, Hippias, and Prodicus – to see what they’re selling.
Socrates asks Protagoras: What effect will your teaching have on this young man?
‘Young man, if you come to me, your gain will be this: the very day you join me, you will go home a better man, and the same the next day. Each day you will make progress towards a better state.’
Protagoras
Impressive words, and Protagoras is always speaking with impressive words. But what do they mean? What is it that Protagoras teaches? If you go to learn from a painter then you go home better at painting; if you go to a musician you go home better at music. What is it that Protagoras will make the young man better at?
‘The proper care of his personal affairs, so that he may best manage his own household, and also of the State’s affairs, so as to become a real power in the city, both as a speaker and man of action.’
Protagoras
Protagoras claims to teach virtue. In another similarity with the Meno, the topic of conversation is going to be, in the end, virtue and whether or not it can be taught.
Over the course of their discussion, Socrates will suggest that virtue can’t be taught, and Protagoras will say that it can but also that it’s a gift from the gods and a talent; Socrates will query what virtue is, whether it’s one thing or many, and Protagoras will say it’s many different things, then many similar things, then maybe one or two things; Socrates will say that virtue is only a matter of knowledge, and Protagoras will say that virtue isn’t only a matter of knowledge; but if virtue isn’t only a matter of knowledge, then how does Protagoras teach it?
It’s a confusing mess that makes no progress. But whilst that’s the surface content, the real focus of the Protagoras is on the sophists and their style.
I won’t cover the content of their discussion much more than this – I’ll leave that to other introductions – because I want to cut to my point: you won’t get any useful answers from their arguments. No good comes of their discussion. That is the point of the dialogue. It’s meant to show you the damaging effect that the sophists have on anyone who spends time with them.
Protagoras says that anyone who learns from him will be left better off, but no one is left better off from the discussion depicted in this dialogue. He says he teaches virtue, but no one is left more virtuous by his teaching, and neither are they left any the wiser about what virtue is. In this way, he is shown to be his own refutation.
That is the point that Plato is trying to make; that is what he is trying to show you.
Don’t follow the sophists: they will not help you. Follow Socrates and walk away from the sophists (and their like) at the first opportunity.
How to Read Plato
How does Plato show this? Remember my three rules for ‘how to read Plato’:
1. Whatever they are talking about, Socrates is talking about virtue: he is trying to show something important about virtue and so encourage you to try to be more virtuous.
2. Plato is trying to show you something by saying something else.
3. The content of the dialogue is the product of the particular people in the conversation.
Applied to the Protagoras:
1. Socrates is trying to show the sophists (and anyone else) that no good comes from their way of carrying on: virtue will never be found that way.
2. Plato has the discussion go badly, to show how bad the sophists’ way of carrying on is.
3. This bad discussion is the product of the sophists and their methods.
Remember What We Know
It’s helpful to also remember what we know about Plato’s Socrates and the sophists.
Firstly, an obvious contrast between Socrates and the sophists, the background that’s never mentioned in the dialogue: Socrates’ main interlocutor in this dialogue (see rule #3 above) is Protagoras, who is most famous for his thesis ‘man is the measure of all things; of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not’.
There are many ways to interpret this statement, but one of the most natural ways (which aligns with Protagoras’ sophistical tendencies) is to say that there is no truth beyond what people believe to be true.
This is a useful thing to believe, and to convince people of, if your business is persuading people to believe what you want them to believe and teaching people how to be able to do this: which is the primary business of the sophists.
If the only measure of truth is what appears to be true, then anyone who has the power to make something appear to be true has the power to control the truth. It doesn’t matter if it’s actually true or not, because there is no actual truth, because man is the measure of all things.
Protagoras (and his fellow sophists) live and work in this realm of belief and appearances. Their mastery lies in the art of making things appear to be true, whether or not they are. They have no interest in real knowledge because they think there is no such thing.
This is a clear contrast with Socrates, who recognises that appearances can be deceiving, which means there must be more to the truth than our perception of it. Our perception is unreliable, and therefore appearances are unreliable measures of truth and reality.
We are unreliable measures of truth and reality. People believe all sorts of nonsense. Socrates believes that we correct our faulty perceptions and hold ourselves to account by subjecting ourselves (and others) to rational scrutiny.
For Plato’s Socrates, man is not the measure of all things: knowledge is the measure of all things. We measure accurately by learning the art of measurement. And so if we want to understand the truth we should apply ourselves to the various arts of measurement – mathematics, geometry, natural science, and the like – and to the one art of measurement that rules them all: philosophy.
It’s through philosophy that you learn to measure the arts of measurement and understand what counts as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ thinking on these matters. The philosophy of science teaches us the difference between good science and bad; political philosophy teaches us the difference between just governance and unjust; ethics teaches us the difference between good conduct and bad, or at least it ought to. But in all these sub-disciplines, for all their distinct subject matters, you are cultivating only one discipline that really matters: the capacity to think well. That is what philosophy does.
But that is not what the sophists do. They are too busy mastering the art of manipulating appearances.
A second background contrast that isn’t made clear in the dialogue: Plato’s Socrates isn’t a fan of poetry, long eloquent speeches, or sophists. Elsewhere, he is always shown to be arguing against the value of these things. Bear that in mind when we see Socrates giving a long eloquent speech to sophists about poetry. It’s clear that there is some irony at play here. In doing what he doesn’t think ought to be done, Socrates is making a point, or making fun. He is most assuredly not contradicting himself.
For example, in one section of the dialogue, Socrates has been asking Protagoras to keep his answers short, complaining (ironically) that he is forgetful and can’t keep up with Protagoras’ long-winded eloquence: by the end of the speech, Socrates has forgotten the points that were made at the beginning. (Protagoras is shown to be always reluctant to go along with the requirements of Socratic conversation: to answer directly and simply according to what you really believe, and to say only ‘I don’t know’ if you don’t know.)
And yet later in the dialogue, Socrates goes off on an extremely long-winded (but eloquent) analysis of a poem. In my edition it runs unbroken to seven pages long, far longer than anything Protagoras is shown to say. At the end of this incredibly long and meandering speech, another sophist (Hippias) chimes in and says: ‘This exposition seems to me highly meritorious. However I also have an interesting thesis on this poem…’, and another onlooker (Alcibiades) says ‘another time’.
Plato puts this in as a kind of joke that makes a point. Imagine listening to a prolonged recital from a novice violinist, as they scratch and screech their way through a musical piece, and at the end they say: ‘I have another if you’d like?’ Another time, perhaps!
Socrates asked Protagoras and the sophists to keep their answers short, but they keep going off on long-winded speeches. So he winds them up by out-winding them all. And afterwards he says (I’ll loosely paraphrase):
Conversation about poetry reminds me too much of a drinking party in second-rate company: you always need another entertainment, ‘to bring in another voice’, because the conversation is lacking. But in better company, you can enjoy yourself without needing to appeal to such frivolous nonsense. The best people avoid such things.
Good conversation should be sufficient, and if we are serious about improving ourselves then we should talk about the most important things:
‘It is the truth, and our own minds, that we should be testing.’
Socrates in the Protagoras
But the sophists have no interest in testing the truth or their own minds: they’d rather compete to give the most impressive speech about poetry. The dialogue ends with Socrates and Protagoras agreeing to disagree about this. Socrates wants to talk about virtue but Protagoras says ‘another time’. Socrates walks away.
Were you like the young man in this dialogue, trying to improve yourself, and having seen the contrast between Socrates and Protagoras, would you want to follow Socrates and have good conversations, and in this way make yourself better? Or would you want to stay with Protagoras and hear more long-winded speeches that teach you nothing and only leave you frustrated…?
It’s clear how Plato wants you to answer. Understanding this is the key to reading the Protagoras.
This background being understood, I think you’ll see two main points emerge from the Protagoras. They will leave you wanting to run away from the sophists and have nothing more to do with them or their like.
Appearances Can Be Deceiving
There are a lot of narrative elements within the dialogue that draw your attention to this idea. At the very beginning, for example, the dialogue is introduced with an ‘unnamed friend’ of Socrates asking him where he’s been: has he been captivated by the beauty of Alcibiades? No, says Socrates, but by the wisdom of Protagoras.
This is another kind of joke that makes a point. It’s sarcasm. We all know that the famously ugly Socrates considers bodily beauty to be a mere appearance and not anything of any great worth. He is interested in beautiful souls, not beautiful faces. And so to draw the connection between Alcibiades’ beauty and Protagoras’ wisdom suggests one thing: both are mere appearances, in reality as empty as each other. They are captivating images, but that’s it. There’s nothing behind the appearance.
Next, we see that the young man wants to go and learn from the sophists because they appear wise, but Socrates warns him: appearances can be deceiving. Don’t buy into things on the basis of appearances.
In the dialogue itself, Socrates reports himself as having been spellbound and dazed by Protagoras’ eloquence. It is a powerful illusion of wisdom, immediately compelling, and it clouds your judgement like being punched in the head; but once your head clears it is shown to be only an illusion as it collapses under Socrates’ rational scrutiny.
There are many other little reminders of this throughout, but the final argument featured in the dialogue closes this narrative arc. Socrates argues, within the context of a discussion about virtue being knowledge, that no one wants what harms them: no one wants to drink too much and make themselves sick, for example. So if someone chooses to do something that harms them, it can only be because they are ignorant of the harm: no one drinks more knowing it will make them sick. Knowledge is the cure for this ignorance, and so knowledge is sufficient to ensure that you will not choose anything that harms you.
But this looks very much like a kind of virtue: in this case ‘temperance’ or self-control, not to drink too much and make yourself sick. Virtue is a kind of ‘knowing better’. It might appear to you that you want another drink, but knowledge is the thing that breaks through mere appearances and gets at the reality beneath. You don’t really want another drink, if only you knew what the consequences would be…
Knowledge sees beyond appearances, but sophists like Protagoras never leave the realm of appearances. And so Socrates will say that they have no real knowledge to teach: they only cultivate the appearance of knowledge.
We have a word for an appearance with no reality: illusion.
The sophists’ ‘wisdom’ is an illusion, a trick, an empty appearance. This is what Plato is trying to show you. It really does appear to be impressive: it spellbinds even Socrates. But ultimately there is nothing behind this appearance.
How does Plato show this? He writes a dialogue that’s packed with impressive appearances but that ultimately says nothing.
It doesn’t say what it means: it shows what it means.
The Sophists’ Style is Damaging
That the sophists cause harm to anyone who comes into contact with them is also shown by various narrative elements. For example, when Socrates and the young man arrive at the house where the sophists are staying, they are met by an extremely bad-tempered porter who’s been put in this mood by having the crowd of sophists in his house. He’s sick of them and he wants no more of them and so, mistaking Socrates and the young man for sophists, slams the door in their faces ‘with both hands, as hard as he could’. As introductions go, it’s a clear message.
A subtler message appears later, when Socrates deploys his aforementioned argument along the lines of ‘no one wants what harms them’. The precise phrasing gets translated as ‘no one goes to meet with what harms them’. This is a callback to the introduction of the dialogue. Socrates warns the young man that he shouldn’t buy into things that are harmful for his soul, so they will go and meet with the sophists to see what they are selling. After their meeting, the implication is clear: the sophists are harmful. And no one wants what harms them…
No good comes from meeting with the sophists. Anyone who has any knowledge will see this and will, as a result, naturally avoid such people. This is what Socrates does, once Plato’s had him make his point.
Socrates tried to walk away earlier in the discussion, as soon as he realised that Protagoras was unwilling to go along with his Socratic method and would only continue with his long-winded and eloquent but ultimately empty speeches that say nothing of any value. Socrates recognises that Protagoras has no real interest in finding the truth but is instead only interested in cultivating his own reputation by showing off. Socrates sees the harm that continuing the conversation would have, and tries to leave, but he is persuaded to remain by his friends.
And he does remain to try again with Protagoras, but it’s not long after that that we see Socrates doing his ironic thing of, first, imitating the sophists with his long-winded monologue about poetry and, second, resorting to an absurd demonstration of having a conversation with himself, playing the role of both asker and answerer, and only asking Protagoras if he agrees (which he always does).
This is what Socrates does when he’s frustrated. Like the Meno, it’s sarcastic. It shows us that the discussion has failed. That’s the point. He’s given up trying with Protagoras, so he’ll try to show the audience something instead, by making a kind of parody of sophistry.
Afterthoughts
There are a lot of people in this world who are trying to sell you something that they say will improve you or your life, or else are too eager to tell you that they have found the right answer about how to live. Most of them can present an impressive appearance of knowing what they’re talking about. Few of them do, because if they did, they’d know it’s rarely as simple as they make out. The briefest rational scrutiny reveals that.
Look to their own lives and you will see them for what they are: often, merely lucky, as if blessed with gifts from the gods. They are soon lost when their luck changes. Or look to the effect that they have on their students: often, none, or nothing good.
Their primary business and what they most enjoy seems to be being the one who sells these things. Otherwise: why wouldn’t they do it anonymously, or as part of a team? Why wouldn’t they leave their students to speak for them? But on every product you will find their face and name. They become a brand: a representation of reputation, detached from reality. They have no interest in having any effect for which they don’t get credit, and they will defend themselves in court to fight for their entitlements.
My reaction to anyone who sells such things bears the branding of a Socratic influence: I have an aversion to wisdom being sold. I’d believe them more if they didn’t make such a show of it.
Read more: Think Well, Live Well: A Free Introduction to Philosophy
tobybetenson.com 