Protagoras

Greek philosopher

• Born: c. 485 b.c.e.
• Birthplace: Abdera, Thrace (now in Greece)
• Died: c. 410 b.c.e.
• Place of death: Unknown

Protagoras was among the first of the Greek Sophists, itinerant teachers who professed to be able to teach virtue for a fee. His ideas on learning, morality, and the history of human society have influenced the system of education since the fifth century b.c.e.

Early Life

Most of what is known of Protagoras (proh-TAG-oh-ruhs) comes from select writings of Plato, Aristotle, Aristophanes, and certain later authors. Protagoras was born about 485 b.c.e. in Abdera, a coastal town of Thrace to the east of Macedonia. The town was remarkable for producing several famous philosophers, including Democritus, and as the third richest city in the Delian League, a fifth century alliance established to expel the Persians from Greece.

Protagoras’s father, Maeandrius (or by some accounts, Artemon), was said to have been one of the most affluent citizens of Abdera and was thus able to obtain a good education for his son. When Xerxes I, king of the Persians, stopped in the town with his army prior to invading Greece, Maeandrius supposedly gained permission for his son to be educated by the magi who were part of Xerxes’ retinue. The magi were supposed to have been the source of Protagoras’s well-known agnosticism. No trace of their influence, however, can be seen in his work, so the story is largely discounted.

A story arose that Protagoras invented the shoulder pad that porters used, because he himself had been a porter in his youth. A longer version of the tale claims that his fellow citizen, the philosopher Democritus, saw him working at a menial task and was so impressed by his methodical arrangement of firewood that he first made the boy his secretary, then trained him in philosophy and rhetoric. Because Democritus was actually younger than Protagoras, this story must also be rejected. However, he may have been a “hearer” of Democritus, as some accounts claim.

The numerous stories from ancient times that have largely been discounted by later generations prove that nothing certain can be said about Protagoras’s early life. It is stated authoritatively, however, that at the age of thirty Protagoras began his career as a Sophist, traveling up and down the peninsula of Greece and into Sicily and southern Italy, giving lessons to wealthy young men for a fee.

Life’s Work

Prior to the mid-400’s b.c.e. no schools or professional teachers existed, yet the city-states experienced an increasing need for well-educated, informed leaders. The older Sophists, Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, and Gorgias, filled this need by teaching upper-class young men how to acquire political and personal success. They held similar views on education and had similar aversions to the objective scientific doctrines of their day. They claimed superiority in wisdom, the ability to teach that wisdom, and the right to charge a fee for their lessons. In this atmosphere Protagoras gained fame by lecturing and by writing books.

Many disapproved of the Sophists’ methods, especially Socrates and Plato. Socrates argued that wisdom was a quality that could not be taught. Plato, who disparaged the rhetorical tricks used specifically by Protagoras, brought ill repute to all the Sophists. A generation later, Aristotle branded their teaching as the furthering of the appearance of wisdom without the reality, and the Sophists as men who made money on this pretense.

Still, Protagoras was clearly more than a specious philosopher. Plato consistently portrayed him as witty, intellectual, moral, and sincere in his praise of Socrates—and thought Protagoras’s ideas important enough to refute in several dialogues. Aristotle’s extensive refutation of Protagoras’s beliefs attests the fact that he, too, took Protagoras seriously.

Protagoras’s instruction was practical. He emphasized skill in persuasive speaking and effective debating. He taught his students the importance of words by the study of grammar, diction, and poetic analysis. He may have been the first to emphasize the importance of proper timing. Armed with these skills, Protagoras believed, his students would excel as civic leaders and political advisers. The Athenian orator Isocrates and Protagoras’s fellow Sophist Prodicus were two of his most famous students. He also influenced Aristophanes and Euripides.

On his journeys, Protagoras no doubt stayed with influential families and read his speeches to select audiences. His most famous visits were to Athens, which he first saw in 444 b.c.e., when the Athenian ruler Pericles asked him to write the constitution for the new Panhellenic colony of Thurii in southern Italy. This assignment probably required him to live in Italy for some years. He spent enough time in Sicily to have won fame as a teacher. He returned to Athens about 432, when he engaged in the debate with Socrates described in Plato’s dialogue Prōtagoras (399-390 b.c.e.; Protagoras, 1804). He may have visited the city once more in 422 or 421.

Protagoras’s high fee of one hundred minae was notorious; according to Plato, Protagoras earned more money in his forty years of teaching than did the famous sculptor Phidias and ten other sculptors combined. Protagoras claimed that a student was not compelled to pay the fee if he did not think the instruction worth the price.

Protagoras was known to have written at least two books, though many more titles have survived. Aletheia (The Truth) was an early, and his most important, composition. He wrote another titled Antilogion (Contrary Arguments) and may also have written a third called Peri theon (On the Gods). Only two substantial fragments of his writing remain. In conjunction with numerous shorter fragments, they reflect the two main philosophies of Protagoras’s life and portray him as a person interested in philosophy, rhetoric, grammar and syntax, and literary criticism. The statement for which he is most famous introduces The Truth: “Man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, of the things that are not, that they are not.” The saying, perhaps a reply to the mathematicians, has been interpreted since Plato to mean that what a man perceives to be true for him is true for him. A new fragment discovered in 1968 expounds further on the remark.

Protagoras’s subjectivism, as it was called, was not well received by philosophers. Aristotle declared the statement absurd. Plato argued that a pig or a baboon was equally capable of being the measure. The flaw in Protagoras’s argument was that if others believed the maxim to be false, then by that very maxim their perceptions must be true for them and his maxim was false for them. Despite these objections, the dictum represented an original contribution to fifth century philosophy.

On the Gods is said to have opened with the following statement:

With regard to the gods, I cannot know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form; for the factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of human life.

Such agnosticism shocked Protagoras’s contemporaries. The Athenians reportedly expelled him from the city for impiety. Nearly seven hundred years later, Sextus Empiricus labeled Protagoras an atheist for this remark, as did Diogenes Laertius.

In Contrary Arguments, Protagoras stated that two contradictory propositions existed for every issue. Aristotle rejected the saying as contradicting Protagoras’s own belief that all views were equally true, and Aristophanes lampooned the idea in his comedy Nephelai (423 b.c.e.; The Clouds, 1708). Modern views of sophistry stem from the comic playwright’s portrayal of these rhetorical tricks.

Minor fragments reveal Protagoras’s interest in speech, grammar, and education in general. He wrote on existence, he refuted mathematics, and he discussed such varied topics as wrestling, ambition, virtues, laws, human error, and the underworld. Protagoras’s influence on his contemporaries is apparent from later authorities. Porphyry claims that Plato plagiarized substantial passages from the Contrary Arguments for his work, the Politeia (388-366 b.c.e.; Republic, 1701). Protagoras’s personal friend Pericles may have chosen him to draft laws for Thurii, partly because he respected the Sophist and partly because Protagoras was already familiar to Western Greeks. The drafting of the laws may have brought him into contact with the historian Herodotus, who was also involved in founding Thurii. Protagorean influence has been noted in part of Herodotus’s Historiai Herodotou (c. 424 b.c.e.; The History, 1709).

The circumstances of Protagoras’s death remain shrouded in mystery. By one account, he died in a shipwreck. Diogenes believed he died fleeing Athens when he was banished for impiety. Probably closest to fact is Plato’s statement that he died after forty years of teaching, that is, about 410 b.c.e.

Significance

Protagoras’s importance in the realm of Greek philosophy has been largely underrated because of the refutations of Plato and Aristotle and the lampoons of Aristophanes. He and his fellow Sophists initiated the practice of instructing students. Before this time, young men had had to rely on the dramatists and their plays for lessons in how to be good citizens. After the Persian War, this brand of instruction was inadequate for the demands of the city-states, especially Athens. The Sophists provided a necessary service by establishing a definite curriculum.

The system was not without flaws. The aim from the beginning was to educate only the leaders of society, not the general populace. Protagoras’s claim to teach virtue was too weak an assertion to support, as Plato, Aristotle, and others clearly saw. Still, it is interesting that after the death of Socrates, who vehemently protested that he taught nothing and never charged a fee, his student Plato founded the Academy, where he lectured to paying students in the area of philosophy. In this respect, Plato much more closely resembled Protagoras than Socrates.

Protagoras’s influence has spanned generations. He was known in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance through the writings of Cicero, Seneca, and Aulus Gellius—and in the Latin translations of Aristotle. Some scholars have seen evidence for sophistic origins of Renaissance Humanism. Greek Sophists founded the type of intellectual movement with which the Italian Humanists are identified. There seems to have been a Humanist character to the Sophists, a character that arguably makes the Sophists, through Cicero and his knowledge of them, the progenitors of the thoughts and ideas expressed in Italian Humanism of the 1400’s. Protagoras’s myth on the origin of human society corresponds to the Humanists’ concepts of their own moral and educational role in society.

As historian W. K. C. Guthrie so aptly claims:

Protagoras’s innovation was to achieve a reputation as a political and moral thinker without supporting any political party, attempting political reform, or seeking power for himself, but simply by lecturing and speaking and offering himself as a professional adviser and educator.

Protagoras made people think about their lives in relation to society and sparked some very strong objections from philosophers regarding the direction of learning. In this way, he helped advance education.

Bibliography

Balaban, Oded. Plato and Protagoras: Truth and Relativism in Ancient Greek Philosophy. Lanham, Md.: Lexington Books, 1999. The conclusion of this analysis is that Plato and Protagoras do not exemplify characteristic moralism or relativism. Includes index and bibliography.

Barnes, Jonathan. Empedocles to Democritus. Vol. 2 in The Presocratic Philosophers. New York: Routledge, 1996. The author’s special contribution is interpreting Protagoras’s sayings according to ancient commentators. Includes extensive bibliography, endnotes, and index.

Freeman, Kathleen. The Presocratic Philosophers. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971. Still an excellent discussion in English of all the fragments of Protagoras, fact and fiction. Freeman puts him in historical perspective with his predecessors, contemporaries, and successors.

Guthrie, W. K. C. The Fifth-Century Enlightenment. Vol. 3 in A History of Greek Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Compiles ancient evidence on Protagoras and presents it in a clear, straightforward manner. Also provides a good historical background to the Sophists and a discussion of their importance.

Jaeger, Werner. Archaic Greece: The Mind of Athens. Vol. 1 in Paideia: The Ideals of Greek Culture. Translated by Gilbert Highet. 1945. Reprint. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Jaeger’s evaluation of the role and importance of the Sophists and of Protagoras’s role is one of the best critical accounts. Includes extensive endnotes.

Plato. Plato’s “Protagoras”: A Socratic Commentary. Edited by B. A. F. Hubbard and E. S. Karnofsky. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1984. This translation of Plato’s dialogue provides a clear portrayal of Protagoras as Sophist and as intellectual. In the commentary, the translators refer to sections of the dialogue that reveal bits of Protagoras’s life, and a succinct biography appears in one of the indexes. Includes bibliography.