Plato's Protagoras
These notes rely to a great extent on Terry Penner's
'Socrates' Response to Protagoras in The Cambridge History of Greek and
Roman Political Thought.
The dialogue breaks down into the following sections:
- 309-319: Introductory exchange: what is the nature of Protagoras'
knowledge?
- 320-328: Protagoras' "Great Speech": everyone teaches
- 328-334: Arguments about the virtues and Virtue
- 334-338: Skirmishing: Socrates wants short answers
- 338-348: Simonides poem interpretation
- It's hard to become virtuous
- The only way to become worse is to become less knowledgeable
- No one errs willingly.
- 348-349: Socrates explains that since Protagoras knows what
virtue is, Socrates will gladly learn from him.
- 349-360: Protagoras argues that courage is not the same as
wisdom. Socrates argues that it is.
- 360-362: Socrates holds that virtue is knowledge but is not
teachable. Protagoras holds that it is not knowledge, but is teachable.
That's absurd.