The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy Book

"It makes no difference to me, provided you give the answers, whether it is your own opinion or not. I am primarily interested in testing the argument, although it may happen both that the questioner, myself, and my respondent wind up being tested."

***

"Well, then, do you say that ignorance is to have a false belief and to be deceived about matters of importance?"

THE TAO OF TEACHING

The Protagoras is at its core a simple dialogue that questions the role of teachers in society - Is teaching possible? What is to be taught? How do we choose? Can only experts be teachers? Is expertise possible? How are we to judge?

As a setup for a Critique on teaching, what better way than to confront the best teacher of the day? And to show him up!

I wonder how many teachers and professors of our day would be able to stand up and defend their own capacity to teach, or their own claim to expertise.

When I categorize the Protagoras as primarily a critique on teaching, I might get an objection that this dialogue is applicable to only the non-expert fields of education such as the humanities or literature, or more specifically to the really debatable fields such as political theory. My counter would be that unlike what Plato firmly believed in (naively?) back then - that some fields can have experts, we now know that no field can, not really. Hence, to me this dialogue can now be characterized as universally applicable to all types of education, educational institutions and educators.

In any case, the question - if the teacher REALLY understands what he purports to teach - must be some nightmare to confront! One has to credit Protagoras for being able to stand up to that scrutiny.

This dialogue is a must-read for everyone in the teaching profession.

Moral of the story?

As long as they are like Socrates and only trying to learn, in company, then it is hunky-dory. Never call yourself teachers. (only communal learners?)

Accept teaching to be a joint exploration. That is the best claim that can be made without being shot down for hubris!

The Socratic Loop

Thus, the Protagoras is concerned with the nature and acquisition of human excellence and the credentials of those who purport to teach it.

So we move from who can teach ' to what is the end of teaching ' to what it is they are teaching ' soon reaching the familiar Socratic territory of arete ' 'what is excellence' & 'what is the Good Life'.

Once Socrates establishes that the answer to both these questions is in the 'art of measurement' i.e. knowledge, then we can again loop back to the beginning and question for ourselves the credential of a teacher who cannot even explain what it is he is teaching, and what its purported end is, and how whatever is being taught ties up with this end …

- in the real dialogue, discussion breaks down before a full conclusion and is left for another day

- the dialogue is over but we have no choice except continue the debate!

The Perils Of Education

A sophist is an educator. Socrates was not happy about the fact that Protagoras taught arete, or virtue, to young men of rich or noble families, and taught it in a worldly way, as the means to "get on in life." He also charged high fees and became rich.

Protagoras offers to teach young men 'sound deliberation' and the 'art of citizenship''in other words, as Socrates puts it, human 'virtue', what makes someone an outstandingly good person. But can this really be taught? Socrates doubts that virtue can be taught at all, and all the more that Protagoras can teach it.

Inevitably Protagoras and Socrates came to verbal blows. But Protagoras posed him an unusual problem, for unlike most of the clever men Socrates met and debated with, Protagoras was highly rational, moderate and quite a match for Socrates!

Protagoras is committed to holding that it can be, especially by him, and he expounds an extremely attractive Promethean myth (of the cover of this edition - the word "Prometheus" originally means "Forethought" by the way!) about the original establishment of human societies to show how there is room for him to do it.



Ultimately Protagoras' answer, as of all self-proclaimed experts (and all experts are self-proclaimed!) devolves to authority - which amounts to "I can teach because I am qualified. My qualification attests to my knowledge. And my knowledge gave me the qualification. (Logical loop, anyone?). This qualification is conferred on me by others like myself - who in turn got it form others."

So rests the whole edifice of authority.

From the whole spicy argument between Socrates and Protagoras, neither seem to be entirely convinced...

One thing, however, is established for certain - which is precisely what Socrates set out to discover in accompanying his friend Hippocrates to confront Protagoras: even if virtue can be taught, no one should entrust himself to Protagoras to learn it, since he does not even have a coherent view of what it is.

Student: What will I get out of Education?
"Well, Protagoras," I said, "as to why we have come, I'll begin as I did before. Hippocrates here has gotten to the point where he wants to be your student, and, quite naturally, he would like to know what he will get out of it if he does study with you. That's really all we have to say."
Hippocrates here represents those students who have no idea what he/she wants in life, or wants to be taught - and tags along purely out of heard reputation of the teacher-sophist.

Socrates does manage to convince Hippocrates (and all future students?) of the folly of this unconsidered approach to education. Which, to me, is one good conclusion to arise from the dialogue.

The Poetry Review Exercise

As an addendum to the discussion of how teaching is unreliable, Socrates calls literature and poetry to the stands.

The point is to demonstrate the unreliability of written texts and the folly of attempting to 'decipher' them or 'analyze' them - since the author is not around to explain.



Socrates demonstrates this by taking a well-known poem by Simonides (dealing with the thesis - "It is hard to be good") and then putting his own theories into Simonides' mouth with such breathtaking ease!
"So the tenor of this part of the poem is that it is impossible to be a good man and continue to be good, but possible for one and the same person to become good and also bad, and those are best for the longest time whom the gods love."
While an interlude, this thrilling 'review' of Simonides' poem, its structure, word order, hypothesis, reason for composition, etc, is an amazing example of how adept Plato/Socrates was at literary criticism and structural theory.

Socrates does this by taking Simonides' poem and re-rendering it in prose form. Socrates advises his audience: just imagine that Simonides is making a speech, instead of writing poetry. Then let us approach it!
"And that, Prodicus and Protagoras," I concluded, "is what I think was going through Simonides' mind when he composed this ode."


THE HOME RUN!

Protagoras is, for the most part, a pretty slow dialogue and after a while, I gave way to thinking that surely  the point was already made and these digressions were more for the participants' sake and less for me, the reader's sake.

I even developed a theory on why some of these dialogues must have been fun back then but not to me: part of the Dramatic potential of the dialogues is lost to us because a big part of it must have been to see real life figures of the Polis being put on the stand by Socrates and made to look perfectly foolish!

As the argument veered towards expertise and its definitions, I was worried that this would be a corollary dialogue in which one aspect, expertise, would be better explored but nothing really new set forth.

I must confess that for a while there, I was thinking that this would be the first Platonic Dialogue to which I would award less than the full Five Stars.

And then, Socrates blew me out of the park with the delightful discussion that marked the closing of the dialogue. I was reinforced in my conviction that every dialogue of Plato is an absolute gem!

The Home Run had been hit and the Five Stars were on the board!


Courage? No Such Word in My Dictionary!

"But all people, both the courageous and the cowardly, go toward that about which they are confident; both the cowardly and the courageous go toward the same things."
The argument does get a little convoluted here, but the essential aspect of it is this: Courage is 'knowing what to fear' and going AWAY from what is to be truly feared, since no wise man will go towards something that is genuinely 'bad'. It depends on what your confidence tells you is 'good' or 'bad' in any given choice. The wise will know what is truly good for them and will go towards it - this movement is wisdom, not courage. Socrates effectively argues that true Courage is just a reflection of wisdom! While Cowardice is a reflection of Ignorance.
"So then, wisdom about what is and is not to be feared is the opposite of this ignorance?"

He nodded again.
This amounts to completely inverting the meaning of Courage. Let me try to explain:

Any movement (used here for the act of exercising a choice) is based on Confidence - which does not depend on real knowledge but only on the perception of knowledge. This is just another version of 'Opinion' that Socrates derides much elsewhere.

1. If going towards the 'Good', it is because of this same confidence, but one backed by true knowledge. It should not take any Courage since we are only moving towards what is Good for us. (Even if the path is difficult, sine Good here only signifies the total Good, after any Bad involved in that choice is also weighed in the balance and found less than the Good that will result - the example given is of a painful surgery(

2. If going towards the 'Bad' (long term vs short term, once weighed with 'art of measurement'), then that is what takes Courage, surely? (redefined as Stupidity, then?)

- Explanation: this movement too is backed by confidence/opinion, but of the mistaken variety, backed only by ignorance of what is really Good. We move towards the Bad, thinking it is the Good.

So courage, if defined conventionally as moving towards something that is Bad for us, is required only where ignorance prevails. And then, of course, it is not courage but only seems so!

This quote has just become my favorite inspirational quote of all time (yeah, it is about a bit more than adventure sports!)



This is where it can get a bit funny:

As we said, this is only seemingly 'courage', not in reality!

1. Consider a 'Coward' looking at such a 'Courageous Man'. What does he see?

- From the viewpoint of the ignorant, such people who go towards the Good seem courageous (or foolish) since they cannot see from their vantage point what the wise see!

2. Now, Consider someone going towards a goal that he considers is Courageous. Why would he consider himself courageous?

- Even if someone is going towards the Good and thinks one is acting courageously - it would only mean that one lacks confidence in that Good and is hence acting out of ignorance.

So 'courage' as a concept does not even exist on this Earth - it is all about confidence - whether it is mistaken or actual. If you are going to Bad, you are in ignorance, if to Good, you are Knowledgeable and wise.

There is no question of Courage here. It has been inverted, it has been subsumed under the dictionary entry for Wisdom.

It has been removed from the dictionary!


The Fine Art of Measurement (of the Good)

This entire argument depends on one hinge. That we can actually know what is the Good and the Bad. That is, that we can achieve knowledge that gives us confidence of what is really in our own best interests. This is what Socrates calls the "Art of Measurement" - the knowledge of how to "measure" the personal Good that would result from any choice, finely weighing in the balance all results, short term and long term, to our soul and to our bodies, to our societies, families, etc.



This is where the argument takes special importance. Socrates, by proving that Courage is just an aspect of Wisdom, soon goes on to argue that, similarly, all virtue is one - namely a single knowledge. The conclusion is that our 'salvation in life' depends upon this 'Art of Measurement' that will overcome the power of appearance and get us to act rightly always.

At the end of the complex argument, Socrates is thus revealed as deeply committed, more deeply indeed than Protagoras, to Protagoras' initial claim that virtue is a rationally based expertise at deliberation and decision. But how, then, can he have been right to doubt whether virtue is teachable? Aren't all rationally based expertises acquired by teaching?


Socrates believes that this "Art of Measurement" exists and it can be developed with consistent Philosophical enquiry.

We can either roll our eyes or make the best of a bad deal. Do we really have another option?

"Then if the pleasant is the good, no one who knows or believes there is something else better than what he is doing, something possible, will go on doing what he had been doing when he could be doing what is better. To give in to oneself is nothing other than ignorance, and to control oneself is nothing other than wisdom."