ABSTRACT

IF there is any Platonic dialogue which can challenge the claim of the Symposium to be its author's dramatic chef d'œuvre it is the Protagoras, with its brilliant full-length portrait of the famous Protagoras and its mirthful sketches of the two minor “sophists,” Prodicus and Hippias. The very life-likeness of the narrative has led to grave misunderstanding of the philosophical significance of the dialogue. It has been assumed that so lively a work must be a youthful composition, and this has led to the further supposition that its teaching must be “undeveloped,” as compared with that of e.g. the Gorgias. By way of providing Plato with a crude “early ethical doctrine,” for the Gorgias to correct, it has then been discovered that the Protagoras teaches the Hedonism of Bentham, a misconception which makes the right understanding of its purpose wholly impossible. We shall see, as we proceed, that the dialogue does not teach Hedonism at all; what it does teach is something quite different, the Socratic thesis that “all the virtues are one thing—knowledge,” and that its philosophical purpose is simply to make it clear that this thesis is the foundation of the whole Socratic criticism of life. The absurdity of regarding the dialogue as a juvenile performance is sufficiently shown by the perfect mastery of dramatic technique which distinguishes it. No beginner, however endowed with genius, produces such a masterpiece of elaborate art without earlier experiences of trial and failure. He has first to learn the use of his tools. And it is worth noting that Aristotle must have regarded the dialogue as a particularly ripe and masterly exposition of the Socratic moral theory, since he has taken directly from it his own account in the Ethics of the characteristic doctrines of Socrates. 1