Precis Posted for Corway Chao

Corway Chao

Professor Carrico

GSI: Kuan Hwa

The Prattling Preaches of Protagoras vs. the Assault of Socrates’s Thoughts

The text Protagoras by Plato begins with a young Athenian citizen aspiring for political eminence, who requests Socrates’s accompaniment in discussion with the reputed “wisest of all living men,” Protagoras. However, as a political philosopher, Plato had much to say concerning citizenship and Sophists. With a stroke of the pen, he combines both topics to demonstrate the flaws of the Sophists through dialogue concerning citizenship. From the point Hippocrates notifies Socrates of Protagoras to when the famed discourse nearly drew to an end, Plato portrays the flaws of the Sophists, through its sole representor, Protagoras and his association with outward appearance, his weakness and inaccuracy intrinsic in arguments that merely gloss over the surface, and his twisting of knowledge to support his claims.

        Plato, through the discourse of Philosopher and Sophist, brings up what can be related to the flaw of Sophism, Protagoras’s association with outward appearance, more precisely that of a citizen when he clearly is not so. The text begins with introducing Protagoras as a foreigner, a husk residing where he literally does not belong as a foreigner. Moreover, to Socrates that was not the fact that mattered to him. Instead, Socrates describes Protagoras as fairer than the beautiful Alcibiades, for “is not the wiser always the fairer?” By relating Protagoras’s wisdom to appearances, Socrates not only reveals his wisdom as a mere front or act, but even as a whore, when he immediately follows with commodifying the act by saying “if Hippocrates [gives] him money…[Protagoras] will make [him] as wise as he is himself.” Using Hippocrates’s conundrum with his slave, a citizen enforcing his right by trying to capture his property, Plato cleverly associates Protagoras to a slave when he has Protagoras say, “to run away, and to be caught in running away is the very height of folly.” The slave has been captured so to say, since Protagoras is shown to be very much like a slave, an occupant that looks like a citizen, but lacks the full rights of such. To be seen as a suitable teacher for Hippocrates is quite fitting however, because for a man who seeks political eminence, one who uses wisdom for appearance alone is perfect. To further enforce Protagoras’s superficiality, Protagoras differentiates himself from other Sophists by only teaching “prudence of public affairs”, without wasting time on the arts, the true substance and culture that makes up a citizen, the stilts of nationalism that Plato touts. Nearly having the discussion drawn to an end, Socrates dubs the mostly foreigner assembly, “arbiters,” upholders of the laws that Plato finds inherent in citizenship, another instance of the foreign Sophists acting as citizens.

The association between Protagoras and appearance reflects the kind of arguments that Protagoras and the Sophists make, arguments that only gloss over the surface, with their inherent weakness and inaccuracy.  By using Hipponicus as metaphor and example, he is shown “lodged…[in] a storehouse that “Callias had cleared…out,” a presentation of the Sophist arguments’ lack of substance. He is “wrapped up in sheepskins and bedclothes,” a foreigner, a wolf pretending to be something it is not, blending in under the golden light of reason and fleece. Without realizing the true complexities of citizenship and its treasured quality, virtue, Protagoras oversimplifies virtue into five parts, which Socrates is able to prove as one greater, holistic concept. Even when backed into a corner, Protagoras still desperately attempts to wriggle out with his ambiguous, weak concession, “if you please I please; and let us assume, if you will.” Sensing a chink in the armor that is Sophistry, Socrates asks Protagoras to “cut [his] answers shorter,” because its long length not only leaves listeners wondering about the original question, but also allows him to gloss over details as an extensive response is laid out. With Sophists simply constructing a shell of interpretation, it was bound to crack under the intense pressure of Socrates’s style: curt, probing questions and examples meant to puncture.

In attempts to substantiate their claims under the probing of others, the Sophists were shown to be enthusiastic practitioners of twisting knowledge for support. By relating Protagoras’s wisdom to a slave, his wisdom is shown to be stripped of its most basic aspects to be bent against its will. Even Protagoras himself believed that “[a Sophist’s] purpose…[is] to deceive the government,” as if at once proclaiming his dishonesty and anarchic, irresponsible citizen tendencies. The unctuous interlocutor even deals a sweet breath of liberty and bootlicking to the audience by giving the option of ”apologue or myth, or…[arguing] out the question,” demonstrating the many masks that his arguments can constantly don, while Plato staunchly supports using the form that best fits the argument.

Presented as a set of frauds and foreigners, the Sophists were brought down in authenticity harshly through Plato’s references to citizenship. Plato believed citizens were born into that right and should uphold laws the best they can to support it. Sophists were seen as anything but; people who are not born in Athens, do not support a true sense of virtue, and do not try their best to demonstrate the true aspects of concepts. Perhaps the reason Sophists initially hid under the guises of other professions was to avoid the barbs, like those of Plato, becoming entangled in the sheep’s wool that they try to pull over the eyes of others.