Protagoras Annotated

Protagoras by Plato

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I am reading this for the Online Great Books program. I am really grateful that this was among the assigned reading. I read a fair bit of Plato around 15 years ago, but I missed this dialogue, but it was everything I enjoyed about the dialogues I read, particularly the Gorgias. The main attraction for me was the character of Socrates; he's sharp, clever, sarcastic, and subtle. Watching him get digs into his adversaries, or in setting the bait and working the chump to keep him on the line, is a great pleasure.

The Protagoras starts with Socrates being rousted by his friend Hippocrates who is eager to listen to the sophist teacher Protagoras who is visiting another friend named Callias. Hippocrates is thinking about becoming Protagoras's student, which leads Socrates to ask, what precisely does Protagoras purport to teach?

The two get to Callias's house, which is a hotspot of intellectual activity. Protagoras is walking back and forth with a crowd trailing him. Hippias is on a bench teaching. Prodicus has a group clustered around him. Still, when Socrates asks his question of Protagoras, it's like a group of schoolboys watching a fight after school; they push the benches together and sit down watch the donneybrook.

The dialogue follows the issue of whether virtue is knowledge and whether it can be taught. The discussion is well worth following, but if you miss the entertainment value of Socrates controlling the discussion, you are missing the element that has kept Plato's dialogues alive through the ages. For example, after Protagoras insists on giving a long speech, Socrates pleads that he has a short attention span and cannot be expected to remember what he needs to remember if Protoagoras gives such long speeches. Later, when Protagoras is given the chance to frame questions, Protagoras celebrates that he has scored on Socrates by showing that a poem is not a great work as Socrates had claimed because it seems to contain a contradiction. Socrates, then gives a flawless ten-page deconstruction of the poem, quoting from it by memory, pointing out the nuance of dialects, and brilliantly explaining its key points, all from memory without notes.

Then, he asks Protagoras if they can cut the nonsense and get back to philosophy.

This is a fun read and informative.