Protagoras

plato

i've always felt that reading platonic dialogues stimulates my logical mind like few other forms of writing do.  unfortunately after years of working in IT and becoming one who only skims documentation, due to its poor quality, time considerations, and the need to only extract out very specific information, i have to make a really concerted effort to follow the arguments set forth in plato's works.  that said, i think i followed the arguments put down in this 73 page book, which i'll try to now describe.

protagoras is a famous sophist in athens who takes on students for pay, in order to teach them "virtue".  socrates brings a potential student to protagoras, and questions whether virtue can be taught.  the two identify five components of virtue (temperance, justice, holiness, wisdom, and courage) but debate whether they are separate parts which together form virtue or whether each is equal to the other, and to virtue itself.

protagoras makes the unfortunate statement that the ignorant can be courageous, and socrates pounces.  courage and cowardice are opposites.  only the courageous are confident in their knowledge of danger, while the coward has a false confidence ("base confidence") in their understanding of danger, which originates from ignorance. therefore the ignorant displays cowardice, and not courage.

socrates builds the argument in a more subtle and elaborate way than this of course, in order to trap protagoras into renouncing his original assertion, and succeeds.

in my reading of the dialogue, the arguments are not convincing as to make me believe the claim set forth.  the five components of virtue are not truly and rigorously defined and the lack of differentiation allows socrates to make this "equality" or "equivalency" claim on them to support his argument.  in this way, much of the argument just seems like word-play built into a drawn-out logical chain.  while i am saying this as a criticism, it still must have been novel for the time plato sets this down, and these same principles are employed in philosophy today, only in a more rigorous/mathematical way, in my very rudimentary understanding of analytic philosophy.

miscellaneous points that i found fascinating for roughly 400 BC: (1) the good for a person is pleasure either now or later, and the bad for a person is pain either now or later.  this line of argument spans a few pages and almost sounds like the basis for the Utilitarianism of bentham and mill in the 1800s.  (2) "But the art of measurement would do away with the effect of appearances, and, showing the truth..." plato explicitly states that experiences must be somehow recorded in a quantifiable and therefore objective manner, which today is fundamental to the process of defining repeatable experiments in science.  (3) manure is recognized as a good fertilizer when "laid about the roots of a tree".  (4) olive oil is recognized as good for human hair and the human body.  though relevant and admitted today, perhaps this was merely product placement for greek exports to the rest of the mediterraean...