The Sophist Protagoras in Plato’s Dialogues, His Biography and Fragments of His Works

What can we learn from what little we know of the life of the
Sophist Protagoras, who was featured in several Platonic
dialogues, and the few fragments of his sayings that survive?
What does Protagoras mean when he says that man is the
measure of all things? Does this only refer to perceptions, or
does he mean that man can measure his own moral principles?
Did the teachings of the Sophists corrupt the youth of Athens?
Why did the many Athenian jurors trying Socrates believe he was
a Sophist?
Why did Aristophanes accuse Socrates of being a sophist?

There are so few fragments of the works of Protagoras
that survive that we have reflected on all the fragments
we could find.
Please, we welcome interesting questions in the
comments. Let us learn and reflect together!
At the end of our talk, we will discuss the sources used
for this video.
Feel free to follow along in the PowerPoint script we
uploaded to SlideShare.

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The Sophists were itinerant professors who traveled from city to city. They were not
primarily concerned about determining the objective truth, they cared about
teaching the art and control of life. Although they did teach grammar, poetry, and
philosophy, they were primarily interested in teaching rhetoric, a skill that was
essential for political life in addressing the Assembly. They also taught practical
lessons on winning lawsuits, as Aristophanes notes in his play, The Clouds.
The older Sophists were respected, often they were selected to be ambassadors for
their cities, since they frequently traveled. But in time, their perceived moral
relativism hurt their reputation. But Copleston also notes, on the plus side, that
Sophists were willing to draw from multiple traditions, and often their borrowings
were more practical than systematic. In particular, Protagoras was friends with
Pericles of Athens, though Diogenes says he escaped from the city when he was
indicted for blasphemy because of his book on the gods. Diogenes of Laertius says
there are several stories on how he died. Protagoras may have drowned on the way
to Sicily, or he may have died in old age, as Plato suggests.

Pericles' Funeral Oration, by Philipp Foltz (1852)

Why was Plato so hostile towards the Sophists? During the Trial and
Execution of Socrates, many jurors thought he was one of the hated
Sophists who many thought were corrupting the youth with their
teachings. What formal charges were brought against him by the
Athenian citizens? Socrates was accused showing impiety towards the
gods, and that he was corrupting the youth. During his trial, Socrates
defended himself against the notion that he was a Sophist, and he
mentioned how this slander was spread by the comic Aristophanes in his
play mocking Socrates, The Clouds, many years before. So, Plato is really
defensive about how Socrates, who teaches for free, is not a Sophist, who
often charged their students handsome sums.

Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Lavis David, 1787

Why was Socrates being tried by the citizens of
Athens? In ancient Athens, there were no
prosecutors, anyone could bring charges, and a jury
of 501 citizens would hear the case and decide the
punishment, always in the same day. Athens had
recently lost the Peloponnesian Wars against Sparta,
and had thus lost her empire, and many partially
blamed Socrates because several of his students
were implicated in this defeat.

One leading character on all sides of the Peloponnesian Wars was Alcibiades. He
could have been the Napoleon of Athens, but his enemies managed to derail his
career each time he was on the cusp of winning major victories for Athens. Had he
led the forces of Athens after Pericles, today we might be studying the history of the
world-wide Athenian Empire rather than the Roman Empire.
However, the Greek legends and myths always warn against the dangers of hubris,
but Alcibiades was not merely guilty of hubris, he was guilty of outrageous hubris.
After he was exiled from Athens, he advised the kings of Sparta. But then he
seduced the Spartan queen and she bore him a child, which meant hubris led to his
exile from Sparta. Alcibiades played a leading role in all sides of the Peloponnesian
Wars, and in the Platonic dialogues he crashed the Symposium Party right after
Socrates had delivered his speech. Several Platonic dialogues discuss the friendship
of Socrates and Alcibiades, including the Symposium and the dialogue Alcibiades.

https://youtu.be/SaIqQ35ysl4 https://youtu.be/b7QLp1HrOMs
https://youtu.be/OIe5pn2S1Ls https://youtu.be/WbCARvApLNk

After the Spartans won the war, they forced Athens
to set up a Tyranny of thirty aristocrats. The leader
was Critias, another former student of Socrates.
These were no benign tyrants, very quickly Critias
and his associates started a rule of terror similar to
the French Revolution, where they executed first
their opponents, and then they started executing
their fellow aristocrats so they could seize their
property.

How did the comedy, The Clouds, damage Socrates’
reputation? Socrates is ridiculed in his first entrance
in the comedy where, suspended in a basket, he is
gazing up through the clouds. Aristophanes’ Socrates
only cares about teaching useless knowledge such as
how far fleas jumped and out of which end gnats
buzzed and gazing at and pondering the moon.

Many of the Sophists concentrated on teaching rhetoric, which is the
manipulative techniques of public speaking with little emphasis on moral
principles, just like debating clubs today debate positions selected at
random by the participants. The Sophist Socrates in the play instructs his
students how to mislead and manipulate their peers, and how to avoid
their debts. This Socrates is not concerned with justice.
Which is why Socrates has to defend himself against this slanderous
portrayal by Aristophanes. This history explains why Plato was not only so
adamant in demonstrating that Socrates was not a Sophist, but he also
was also eager to show that it was the Sophists who were corrupting the
youth of Athens, and not Socrates.

Socrates in a basket, woodcut for Aristophanes’ The Clouds / Socrates teaches a youth, José Aparicio, 1811

Presidential Debate between Richard Nixon and John F Kennedy, 1960

Life of Protagoras, Itinerant Sophist

Protagoras was born in 481 BC in Abdera in Thrace,
near Macedonia, and came to Athens in the middle
of the century. He was favored by Pericles and was
in Athens at the beginning of the Peloponnesian
Wars in 431 BC. He also witnessed the plague that
killed two of Pericles’ sons, and also many
Athenians, including Pericles himself. But Diogenes
does not provide any details.

Diogenes describes Protagoras as “the
first to charge a fee of a hundred
minas,” which scholars estimate is a
hundred times the daily wage of a
skilled worker, “the first to distinguish
the parts of time,” perhaps he is
referring to verb tenses, “to stress the
importance of the opportune moment,
and to furnish disputants with
rhetorical gambits. In argument he
neglected meaning in favor of verbal
jousting, giving rise to today’s shallow
debaters.” “He was also the first to use
the Socratic form of argument.”

Was Democritus the teacher of Protagoras? Diogenes says he was, but the
footnote says this was not possible, as Democritus was a generation younger.
Although the Protagoras entry in Dr Wikipedia sides with Diogenes, his entry for
Democritus says he was born thirty years after Protagoras. Also, though Plato
does not mention Democritus, Aristotle mentions him frequently.
Although Democritus was also born in Abdera, he was not a travelling Sophist.
Rather, he was a naturalist philosopher, he is best known for naming atoms as
moving about the universe in a vortex, generating all composite things: fire,
water, air and earth. They are not quite the same as the building blocks of matter
as described by John Dalton in the nineteenth century. Dalton had borrowed the
word, atom, from Democritus, not the concept.

Crying Heraclitus
and laughing
Democritus, by
Donato
Bustamante, 1477
Crying Heraclitus and laughing Democritus, by Donato Bustamante, 1477

Surviving Fragments of Protagoras’ Work

Fewer than a dozen fragments survive of the works
of Protagoras that Diogenes lists. We have the same
problem with his famous quotes as we do with all the
pre-Socratic philosophers, scholars are forced to
guess what they mean.

Diogenes of Laertius says in his short
biography that “Protagoras was the
first to say that there are two sides to
every question, opposed to each
other,” and “that the soul is nothing
apart from the senses.”
Protagoras begins one of his works
with “Man is the measure of all things,
of things that are, that they are, and of
things that are not, that they are not.”
Democritis & Protagoras, by Salvator Rosa, 1664

The ancient author Sextus
Empiricus also quotes this
fragment, continuing the quote
from Protagoras: “And for this
reason he posits only what appears
to the individual, thus introducing
relativity.” “What Protagoras states
then is this--that matter is in flux,”
“and the senses are transformed
and altered according to the times
of life and to all other conditions of
the bodies.”

Summarizing this quotation by Sextus: “Protagoras says
also that the reasons (logoi) of all the appearances are
present in matter, so that matter, so far as depends on
itself, is capable of being all those things which appear to
all. And men, he says, apprehend different things at
different times owing to their differing dispositions;”
whether in a natural or un-natural state. “Moreover,
precisely the same account applies to variations due to
age, and to the sleeping or waking state, and to each
several kinds of conditions.”

Direct Quotation of Sextus: “Protagoras says also
that the reasons (logoi) of all the appearances
are present in matter, so that matter, so far as
depends on itself, is capable of being all those
things which appear to all. And men, he says,
apprehend different things at different times
owing to their differing dispositions; for he who is
in a natural state apprehends those things
present in matter which are able to appear to
those in a natural state, and those who are in a
non-natural state the things which can appear to
those in a non- natural state. Moreover, precisely
the same account applies to variations due to
age, and to the sleeping or waking state, and to
each several kind of condition.” Democritis & Protagoras, by Salvator Rosa, 1664

We really do not know exactly what he means by
natural or non-natural states. Although most of us
agree that morals should not be relative, certainly
our perceptions are relative to our own experiences
and our abilities to perceive.

Sextus continues quoting
Protagoras, “Thus, according
to him, man becomes the
criterion of real existences;
for all things that appear to
men also exist, and things
that appear to no man have
no existence either.”
Democritis & Protagoras, by Salvator Rosa, 1664

Copleston discusses the debates between scholars about what he
means when he says man is the measure of all things. This
debate can never be resolved, as that first sentence is all that has
survived of this work. Does he mean the individual man, or the
human race? In other words, who determines the truth, the
individual, or the culture? What does he mean by things? Do
things refer to what our senses perceive? Do things refer to
ethical values and judgements? Plato discusses this in his
dialogue Theaetetus when he argues that knowledge is not
sense-perception.

School of Athens, by Raphael, 1511, Apostolic Palace in the Vatican, Heraclitus and Diogenes of Sinope are in front.

The Athenians, according to Diogenes, expelled Protagoras from
Athens for declaring: “As for the gods, I cannot know either that
they exist or that they do not exist; for many things hinder
knowledge, including uncertainty and the brevity of human life.”

Diogenes suggests that Protagoras is a bit greedy for fees. When he “asked
his student Euathlus for his fee, he said, ‘But I haven’t won a case yet.’
Protagoras replied, ‘That doesn’t matter. For if I win this case, I should get the
fee for winning it’ and if you win it, I should get the fee because you did.’”

Plato, in his dialogues, says that
Protagoras is a relativist. When you teach
young ambitious rulers rhetoric and
debate skills, their political ambition often
leads them to reject truth and justice.
“There are ethical tendencies in all men,
but these can only develop in the
organized community. Therefore, he must
absorb the whole social tradition of his
community. This social tradition is not
absolute truth, but it is the norm for a
good citizen.”
Plato and Aristotle, School of Athens, by Raphael, 1511

Aristotle has a passing reference to Protagoras in
his essay on Rhetoric. He gives an example of
what his student might argue for someone who is
accused of a violent assault. If the accused is not
tall and imposing, they could argue to the jury
that his small stature means that it is unlikely he
committed the crime. But if the accused is a large
and imposing man, they still argue that he was
not likely to commit the crime. He says this is
what Protagoras means by “making the worser
argument appear the better.” Aristotle continues,
“Hence people were right in objecting to the
training Protagoras undertook to give them. It
was a fraud; the probability it handled was not
genuine but spurious.”
Plato & Aristotle dialectics, Luca della Robbia

The main sources for the philosophy of Protagoras is
the early Platonic dialogue directed at him, and also
the dialogue Theaetetus, a later dialogue on
epistemology, or knowledge.

The primary source for the life and sayings of Protagoras is the Lives of
the Eminent Philosophers by the ancient biographer, Diogenes of
Laertius. He is also the primary source of the writings of the Greek Stoic
and Cynic philosophers, many pre-Socratic philosophers such as
Heraclitus, and a major source for the writings of Epicurus.
Frederick Copleston, an influential Jesuit professor, has excellent
summaries of the pre-Socratic philosophies, though out of necessity his
primary source is also Diogenes. He also discusses the then-current
scholarly consensus on various topics relating to Protagoras and the
Sophists.
The Wikipedia page for Protagoras directed us to a collection of surviving
fragments and references to Protagoras.

https://youtu.be/7Kpfm0O8XBA https://youtu.be/49Qv3Be86Jw
https://youtu.be/STxpGlkFyvs https://youtu.be/zAAal5p8AX8

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protagoras
https://www.gpullman.com/8170/protagoras.php

To find the source of any direct
quotes in this blog, please type in
the phrase to the search box in
my blog to see the referenced
footnote.
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The Sophist Protagoras in Plato’s Dialogues, His Biography and Fragments of His Works

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