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Plato's Protagoras dramatizes a debate between Socrates and the sophist Protagoras over whether virtue can be taught, ending in apparent confusion. This deck covers the dialogue's argument, its treatment of Simonides' poem, and the chapter's interpretation of both speakers.
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Chapter 1 · Question
Why does Hippocrates come to Socrates before dawn?
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Chapter 1 · Answer
Hippocrates arrives before dawn because he is fervently eager to be introduced to the celebrated Sophist Protagoras and become his pupil. Socrates moderates his excitement and advises him first to find out what Protagoras will make of him before he becomes a pupil.
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Hippocrates arrives before dawn because he is fervently eager to be introduced to the celebrated Sophist Protagoras and become his pupil. Socrates moderates his excitement and advises him first to find out what Protagoras will make of him before he becomes a pupil.
Chapter 1
Protagoras answers that he will make Hippocrates a better and a wiser man. Pressed by Socrates for precision, he says he will teach prudence in affairs private and public—in short, the science or knowledge of human life.
Chapter 1
Protagoras uses the apologue of Zeus sending Hermes with Justice and Reverence, given to all men rather than a few like the arts. He argues all men share political virtue to some degree, that Athenians punish evildoers for prevention, and that education in virtue begins in childhood and continues under the state.
Chapter 1
Socrates is delighted with the explanation but still doubts whether the virtues are many or one—whether they are parts of a whole or different names of the same thing. Protagoras replies they are parts like parts of a face, each with its own function, none like another; Socrates then cross-examines this admission.
Chapter 1
Socrates argues, in a manner the text calls 'manifestly absurd' yet accepted by the company, that Simonides' whole composition is intended as an attack upon Pittacus. Simonides was jealous of the fame of Pittacus' saying 'Hard is it to be good,' and countered that it is not 'hard to be good' but 'hard to become good.' Hippias approves but has his own interpretation, which Alcibiades asks him to defer.
Chapter 2
Socrates obtains the admission that all virtue is in the highest degree good, then argues that the courageous are the confident, and the confident are those who know their business or profession; those who are confident without such knowledge are madmen. From this he infers that courage is knowledge. Protagoras evades the inference by distinguishing the courageous from the confident in a fluent speech.
Chapter 2
Socrates argues pleasure is the only good and pain the only evil; apparent evils and goods are really lesser and greater pleasures and pains. The illusion of distance requires an art of mensuration to show pleasures and pains in true proportion. This art is a kind of knowledge, so knowledge is the governing principle of human life and ignorance the origin of all evil, since no one prefers the lesser pleasure except through ignorance.
Chapter 2
The text says difficulties are partly imaginary and partly real. Imaginary ones include chronological impossibility of all speakers meeting, disputes over the dialogue's place and date, and commentators' preconceptions that Protagoras must be wrong and Socrates right. The text replies that Plato, like all fiction writers, aims at the probable, is a dramatic writer who throws thoughts into both sides, and reveals truth by lights and shadows rather than dogmatic statements.
Chapter 2
The chapter states Protagoras's real defect is that he is inferior to Socrates in dialectics. Their opposition is not good versus bad or true versus false, but the old art of rhetoric versus the new science of interrogation and argument, and Socrates's irony versus the Sophists' self-assertion. The author argues there is as much truth on Protagoras's side as on Socrates's, though Protagoras's truth rests on common sense and common maxims of morality.
Chapter 3
The chapter argues there is nothing in the introduction leading to the inference that Plato intended to blacken the Sophists' character; he only makes a little merry at their expense. Protagoras is portrayed as ostentatious but frank and honest, open about his liberal dealings with pupils, good-tempered under Socrates's cross-examination, and parting on good terms, calling himself the 'least jealous of mankind.'
Chapter 3
The chapter lists several: Protagoras gives one of antiquity's noblest statements on the preventive nature of punishment; he is clearly right that virtue can be taught, which Socrates concedes at the Dialogue's end; he rightly explains why good fathers have bad sons; he is right that the virtues are the common property of all rather than gifts of special individuals; and there is more than a half-truth in ascribing to man the power of self-improvement.
Chapter 3
The chapter says that without the whole poem the question of how the two passages of Simonides are reconciled cannot be answered certainly; we can only follow Plato's indications. It seems likely, the author argues, that Socrates's offered reconcilement is a caricature of Sophist interpretive methods, citing the transparent irony of his earlier interpretations, the ludicrous description of the Lacedaemonians as true philosophers, and the manifest futility of his explanation.
Chapter 3
The chapter calls the passage Plato's satire on the tedious and hypercritical arts of interpretation prevailing in his own day. It compares this with his condemnation of the same arts applied to mythology in the Phaedrus and with other parodies such as the first two speeches of the Phaedrus and the Menexenus. The chapter adds that the veil of irony is never withdrawn, leaving it doubtful how far Socrates is fooling or in earnest.
Chapter 4
The chapter says Protagoras is consistently presented as the teacher of moral and political virtue. There is no allusion to the theories of sensation attributed to him in the Theaetetus and elsewhere, nor to his denial of the gods in a well-known fragment ascribed to him. In this Dialogue, the chapter concludes, he is the religious rather than the irreligious teacher.
Chapter 4
The chapter says these propositions look paradoxical but are really moments or aspects of the truth by which one passes from conventional morality to a higher conception of virtue and knowledge. Plato means virtue is not brought to a man but drawn out of him, and cannot be taught by rhetorical discourses or citations from the poets. The chapter notes Aristotle's remark that Socrates and Plato make a part of virtue into the whole.
Chapter 4
The chapter says the Protagoras is one of the earlier or purely Socratic works, perhaps the last and certainly the greatest, indicated by the absence of allusion to the doctrine of reminiscence and by a different attitude toward the Sophists in later Dialogues. The Charmides, Laches, and Lysis are closely connected; the Meno's affinity is more doubtful. The Phaedo, Gorgias, and Philebus later renounce the doctrine that virtue is pleasure.
Chapter 4
Socrates tells the Companion that although Alcibiades was gracious to him, he paid no attention and several times forgot Alcibiades was present. He explains he has found a love far fairer—a foreigner from Abdera—and asserts that the wiser is always the fairer, naming Protagoras as the wisest of all living men.
Chapter 5
Hippocrates arrives before dawn, having only learned the previous evening that Protagoras had arrived. He wants Socrates to speak to Protagoras on his behalf, since he is young and has never seen or heard Protagoras. He jokes that Protagoras has robbed him of the wisdom he keeps back.
Chapter 5
Socrates asks what Hippocrates would answer if paying money to Hippocrates of Cos or to Polycleitus and Pheidias: he would say he pays a physician to become a physician, or statuaries to become a statuary. Socrates then asks what Protagoras is and what he will make of Hippocrates, pressing for the proper designation.
Chapter 5
Hippocrates replies that Protagoras is called a Sophist. Socrates then concludes that they are going to pay their money to him in the character of a Sophist. This exchange frames the upcoming meeting, since Socrates has just pressed Hippocrates to say what Protagoras is and what he will make of him.
Chapter 5
Hippocrates blushes and answers that, unless this case differs from the former instances, Protagoras will make a Sophist of him. He admits to Socrates that he is ashamed at having to appear before the Hellenes in the character of a Sophist. Socrates then suggests he might instead learn from Protagoras as part of a freeman's education, not to make it a profession.
Chapter 6
Socrates proposes that a Sophist is one who deals wholesale or retail in the food of the soul. Since knowledge is the food of the soul, the Sophist is a merchant of knowledge who travels the cities selling to whoever wants it. Socrates warns that such dealers praise all their wares indiscriminately, without knowing what is truly beneficial or hurtful to the soul.
Chapter 6
Socrates argues that food and drink can be carried away in other vessels, deposited at home, and inspected by an experienced friend before being consumed. But the wares of knowledge cannot be carried away in another vessel: once paid for, they must be received directly into the soul, and you go away either greatly harmed or greatly benefited. Therefore one should deliberate and consult elders first.
Chapter 6
Socrates notes that Hippocrates never consulted his father, brother, or companions about entrusting his soul, which is worth more than the body, to a man he does not know and has never spoken with. He heard of Protagoras in the evening and goes to him in the morning, ready to spend all his own and his friends' property, though he is ignorant of what a Sophist is.
Chapter 6
The door-keeper, a eunuch, is annoyed by the great inroad of Sophists and assumes the visitors are Sophists too. He grumbles that the master is not at home and bangs the door shut. Socrates protests that they are not Sophists and want to see Protagoras, not Callias, and after much difficulty persuades him to open the door.
Chapter 7
Protagoras says the art of the sophist is of great antiquity, but practitioners feared the odium it aroused, so they veiled themselves under other names: poets like Homer, Hesiod, and Simonides; hierophants and prophets like Orpheus and Musaeus; and even gymnastic-masters like Iccus and Herodicus. He argues they failed to deceive rulers and only fooled the uncomprehending people.
Chapter 7
Protagoras says a stranger who persuades the flower of youth to leave their families and live with him must be very cautious, since this arouses jealousy, enmities, and conspiracies. Unlike the disguised sophists, he openly acknowledges himself a Sophist and instructor of mankind, believing open acknowledgement is a better sort of caution than concealment. He therefore prefers speaking before the company.
Chapter 7
The narrator is delighted by the precision of their movements: they never get in his way. When Protagoras and those walking with him turn back, the band of listeners parts regularly on either side; he is always in front, and they wheel round and take their places behind him in perfect order. Many of the listeners appear to be foreigners he brought from cities on his journeys.
Chapter 7
Protagoras promises that on the very first day Hippocrates will return home a better man than he came, better on the second day than the first, and better every day thereafter. When Socrates asks in what respect he will improve, Protagoras answers that Hippocrates will learn prudence in private and public affairs, ordering his own household well and speaking and acting best in affairs of state.
Chapter 8
Protagoras says Hippocrates will not suffer the drudgery other Sophists impose on pupils who have just escaped the arts, only to be driven back into calculation, astronomy, geometry, and music — he glances at Hippias while saying this. Instead, Hippocrates will learn what he came to learn: prudence in affairs private and public, so as to order his own house best and speak and act best in the state.
Chapter 8
Socrates argues that Athenians, an understanding people, summon builders for building and shipwrights for shipbuilding, and laugh down or expel anyone without recognized skill. But in affairs of state, anyone — carpenter, cobbler, sailor, rich or poor — may speak, and no one reproaches him for lacking a teacher, evidently because they think this knowledge cannot be taught. He adds that the best citizens, like Pericles, could not impart virtue even to their own.
Chapter 8
Socrates cites Pericles, father of the young men present, who gave them excellent instruction in what could be learned from masters but neither taught nor provided teachers for his own department of politics, letting them wander in hope of finding virtue on their own. He also cites Cleinias, Alcibiades' younger brother, whom Pericles placed with Ariphron to prevent corruption; Ariphron sent him back within six months, not knowing what to do with him.
Chapter 8
Epimetheus, who was not very wise, distributed all the available qualities among the brute animals and forgot that he had none left for man. When he came to man, still unprovided, he was perplexed. Prometheus then arrived to inspect and found man alone naked, shoeless, and without bed or arms of defence, as the appointed hour for man to emerge approached.
Chapter 9
Prometheus stole the mechanical arts of Hephaestus and Athene, along with fire, since those arts could neither be acquired nor used without fire, and gave them to man. He did not give man political wisdom, for that was kept by Zeus in the citadel of heaven, which Prometheus could not enter. So man had the wisdom needed to support life but not political wisdom.
Chapter 9
Zeus feared the entire race would be exterminated. Men gathered in cities but, lacking the art of government, wronged one another and began to disperse and perish again. So Zeus sent Hermes bearing reverence and justice as the ordering principles of cities and bonds of friendship. He ordered they be given to all, not a favoured few, since cities cannot exist if only a few share in the virtues.
Chapter 9
Protagoras argues that if a man claims skill in an art he lacks, such as flute-playing, people laugh at him or think him mad. But in honesty and political virtue, even a known dishonest man who publicly admits his dishonesty is deemed mad; people say all men ought to profess honesty whether honest or not. Their notion is that a man must have some honesty, and if none at all, he ought not to be in the world.
Chapter 9
Protagoras argues that rational punishment is forward-looking: no one punishes simply because a past wrong was done, since that cannot be undone. Instead, the punisher aims to deter the offender and others from future wrongdoing. Because punishment presupposes that wrongdoing can be corrected through learning, Protagoras concludes that all who punish, privately or publicly, implicitly assume virtue is capable of being taught and acquired.
Chapter 10
Protagoras observes that no one rebukes, instructs, or punishes people for being ugly, diminutive, or feeble, because such qualities are understood to come from nature or chance; people merely pity them. By contrast, people are angry with and reprove those lacking qualities gained through study and exercise, such as impiety and injustice. This difference in response, he argues, shows that people believe such virtue can be acquired by learning.
Chapter 10
Protagoras argues that if a city is to exist, all citizens must share in political virtue—justice, temperance, and holiness—not the crafts of carpenter or smith. Anyone lacking it must be taught and punished, and the incurable exiled or condemned. Since virtue is thus taught privately and publicly, it would be extraordinary for good men to teach their sons lesser matters but neglect this greater one.
Chapter 10
Protagoras compares the city's laws to the lines a writing-master draws for a beginner: the laws, invented by good lawgivers of old, guide the young man in commanding or obeying. Whoever transgresses them is corrected—'called to account'—a term used in many places because justice calls men to account. Given this private and public care for virtue, he tells Socrates, doubting that virtue can be taught is far more surprising than the opposite.
Chapter 10
Protagoras argues that virtue is not a private possession but a condition of the state, so everyone teaches it freely. Using a flute-playing analogy, he claims sons of good and bad players alike succeed by natural capacity, not parentage. Likewise, sons of good fathers may turn out worse, as with Polycleitus's sons, though he still holds hope for the young Paralus and Xanthippus.
Chapter 11
Protagoras asks Socrates to imagine a state where everyone must be a flute-player and all freely teach the art. In that case, sons of good players would not be more likely to be good than sons of bad ones; each would succeed by natural capacity. Yet all would be good compared with those wholly ignorant of flute-playing, just as all reared in law appear just beside savages.
Chapter 11
Protagoras compares asking 'Who teaches virtue?' to asking 'Who teaches Greek?' No designated teacher exists, yet all men teach virtue each according to ability, as artisans teach their sons their craft. He adds that finding a teacher for the wholly ignorant is easy, but finding one to advance the already-taught is hard; anyone who improves virtue even slightly should satisfy us.
Chapter 11
Protagoras says he gives pupils their money's worth and more, as they themselves confess. So he sets no fixed fee: after a man has been his pupil, he pays Protagoras's price if he likes; if not, he goes into a temple, swears an oath of the instruction's value, and pays only what he declares.
Chapter 11
Protagoras agrees with Socrates that the parts of virtue are like the parts of a face—distinct from one another in themselves and in their functions—rather than like parts of gold, which differ only in size. He says a man may be brave without being just, or just without being wise, so having one part does not require having all the others.
Chapter 12
When Protagoras offers to concede that justice is holy and holiness just merely 'if you please,' Socrates refuses. He says he does not want an 'if you wish' or 'if you will' conclusion but wants Protagoras and himself to be proven; the conclusion is best proven, he argues, when there is no 'if' at all.
Chapter 12
Socrates gets Protagoras to admit folly exists and wisdom is its very opposite. Men who act rightly and advantageously seem temperate, and temperance makes them temperate; those who do not act rightly act foolishly and are not temperate. So acting foolishly is the opposite of acting temperately, and foolish actions come from folly, temperate actions from temperance.
Chapter 12
Socrates argues that if everything has only one opposite, folly cannot have both wisdom and temperance as opposites. Yet Protagoras had agreed folly is the opposite of wisdom, and the argument shows folly is also the opposite of temperance. Since one thing cannot have two opposites, Socrates concludes temperance and wisdom must be the same. Protagoras assents reluctantly.
Chapter 13
Protagoras says there are many things inexpedient for man yet good — meats, drinks, medicines — and things expedient for some creatures but not others, like manure good for tree roots but destructive to shoots, or olive oil beneficial to human hair but harmful to plants and to man's inward parts. He thus denies that 'good' simply means 'expedient for man.'
Chapter 13
Socrates claims a wretched memory and says that when someone makes a long speech he cannot remember what is being discussed. He asks Protagoras to use the brief, compendious method of answer, noting he has heard Protagoras can speak at any length or with such brevity that no one could use fewer words.
Chapter 13
Protagoras resists answering further, saying he has fought many battles of words and would be no better than another if he followed his adversaries' method. Socrates, seeing he will not be answered in a way he can follow, declines to force the conversation and departs, citing an engagement elsewhere, though he says he would have liked to hear Protagoras.
Chapter 13
Socrates argues choosing an umpire would be unseemly: an inferior should not preside over a better, an equal would simply do as they do, and no one is wiser than Protagoras. Naming someone merely said to be better would insult Protagoras. Instead, he proposes that if Protagoras won't answer, Protagoras should ask and Socrates answer, then they swap, with the whole company as arbiters.
Chapter 14
Prodicus says those present should be impartial hearers of both speakers, but impartiality is not equality: both sides should be heard impartially, yet an equal meed should not be assigned to both. The wiser should receive a higher meed and the less wise a lower one. He also urges Socrates and Protagoras to argue rather than wrangle, since friends argue out of good-will while only adversaries wrangle.
Chapter 14
Prodicus argues speakers will win esteem, not merely praise: esteem is a sincere conviction of the hearers' souls, while praise is often an insincere expression contrary to conviction. Likewise hearers will be gratified, not pleased: gratification is of the mind receiving wisdom and knowledge, whereas pleasure is of the body, as in eating or other bodily delight. Many of the company applauded his words.
Chapter 14
Hippias claims those present are kinsmen, friends, and fellow-citizens by nature rather than law, since like is akin to like by nature, while law is the tyrant of mankind and often compels actions against nature. He urges Socrates to loosen his extreme brevity and Protagoras not to sail into an ocean of words, observing a mean, and suggests choosing an arbiter or overseer to regulate the length of their words.
Chapter 14
Protagoras says skill in poetry is the principal part of education, which he defines as the power of knowing which poetic compositions are correct and which are not, how to distinguish them, and of explaining the reason for the difference when asked. He then proposes to transfer the discussion of virtue into the domain of poetry, using a passage of Simonides.
Chapter 15
Protagoras notes that Simonides first says 'Hardly can a man become truly good,' then later blames Pittacus and refuses to agree with him for saying 'Hardly can a man be good,' which Protagoras takes to be the same statement. So Simonides, by blaming someone who says the same thing as himself, must be wrong in one assertion or the other.
Chapter 15
Socrates appeals to Prodicus's distinction between 'being' and 'becoming.' Simonides himself says hardly can a man become good, while Pittacus says hardly can a man be good. Since becoming is not the same as being, Simonides blames Pittacus for saying something different from himself, not for repeating his own claim, so Simonides is not inconsistent.
Chapter 15
Socrates says Protagoras misunderstands 'hard' as Simonides intended it, comparing it to Prodicus's rule that 'awful' (deinon) always means evil, never good. Asked what Simonides meant by 'hard,' Prodicus answers 'evil.' So Simonides blames Pittacus for saying 'Hard is the good,' as if saying evil is the good, and twits a Lesbian for barbarous usage.
Chapter 15
Socrates argues the phrase only makes sense if Simonides is speaking hostilely against Pittacus's saying 'Hard is it to be good.' Simonides replies that the truly hard thing is not to be good but to become good—four-square in hands, feet, and mind, without flaw—and he places 'truly' with 'hard,' not with 'good.'
Chapter 16
Socrates argues that philosophy is more cultivated in Crete and Lacedaemon than anywhere else in Hellas, but the Lacedaemonians deny it and pretend ignorance. They hide it so no one thinks they rule by wisdom like the Sophists rather than by valour of arms; if their superiority's reason were disclosed, all men would practice their wisdom.
Chapter 16
Socrates says an ordinary Lacedaemonian is seldom good at general conversation, but at any point in the discourse he darts out a notable saying, terse and full of meaning, with unerring aim, leaving his interlocutor like a child in his hands. He calls this brevity the style of primitive philosophy.
Chapter 16
Socrates argues the poem is designed throughout as a refutation of Pittacus's saying 'Hard is it to be good.' Simonides, ambitious for the fame of wisdom, hoped to overthrow the saying as if defeating a famous athlete. He grants becoming good is possible for a time, but holding that state belongs to God alone; man turns bad when circumstance overpowers him.
Chapter 16
Socrates asserts that no wise man would allow that any human being errs voluntarily or voluntarily does evil and dishonourable actions; all who do such things do them against their will. He grounds this in the claim that the only real doing ill is to be deprived of knowledge, so wrongdoing stems from ignorance rather than willing choice.
Chapter 17
Socrates argues that becoming good is difficult but possible, whereas being continuously good is impossible. He notes the good may deteriorate through time, toil, disease, or other accident, while the bad man is always bad and could only become bad if he had first been good.
Chapter 17
Bad men, when parents or country have defects, look on them with malignant joy, expose and denounce them to others, and exaggerate the faults to deflect scrutiny from themselves. The good man instead dissembles, constrains himself to praise, pacifies his anger, and compels himself to love and praise his own flesh and blood.
Chapter 17
Socrates calls talk about poets a commonplace entertainment for vulgar company, like hiring flute-girls because people cannot converse themselves. He argues poets cannot be interrogated about their meaning, so citing them produces endless undecidable dispute. Educated gentlemen, he says, prefer testing one another in conversation.
Chapter 17
Socrates insists he has no other interest in asking questions than clearing up his own difficulties. He cites Homer's line that when two go together one sees before the other, arguing companions are readier in deed, word, or thought, and that a solitary discoverer seeks someone to confirm his findings. He prefers discoursing with Protagoras because he considers him the best informed on virtue.
Chapter 18
Protagoras says all five qualities are parts of virtue, but that four are to some extent similar while courage is very different from the other four. He argues many men are unrighteous, unholy, intemperate, and ignorant yet remarkable for courage. He compares the parts of virtue to parts of a face, unlike parts of gold, each with a distinct function.
Chapter 18
Protagoras holds that the courageous are confident, but not all the confident are courageous. Confidence can come from art or skill, and also from madness and rage; courage comes from nature and a healthy state of the soul. He compares this to strength versus ability: the strong are able, but not all who are able are strong.
Chapter 18
Protagoras says Socrates misremembers: he admitted the courageous are confident, never that all the confident are courageous. He offers a parallel: the strong are able, but not all the able are strong, since ability comes from knowledge, madness, or rage while strength comes from nature and bodily health. So Socrates' admissions do not prove courage is wisdom.
Chapter 18
Socrates proposes that things are good insofar as they are pleasant, provided they have no other consequences, and bad insofar as they are painful. He clarifies that by pleasant he means things that participate in or create pleasure, implying pleasure is a good in itself. Protagoras resists this unqualified claim, saying some pleasant things are not good and some painful things are good.
Chapter 19
Socrates says the rest of the world holds that knowledge is not a principle of strength, rule, or command. They believe a man may have knowledge yet be overmastered by anger, pleasure, pain, love, or fear, as if knowledge were a slave dragged about. Socrates asks whether Protagoras instead thinks knowledge is noble and commanding and cannot be overcome.
Chapter 19
Protagoras agrees with Socrates and says that, above all other men, he is bound to say that wisdom and knowledge are the highest of human things. He thus rejects the common view that knowledge can be overmastered by pleasure, pain, or fear. Socrates praises this as good and true, then notes that most people think otherwise and are commonly supposed to know what is best yet not do it.
Chapter 19
Socrates proposes asking people whether pleasant things are called evil because of immediate pleasure or because of future consequences like disease and poverty. He argues such evils are evil because they end in pain and rob us of other pleasures. He then notes painful goods like gymnastic exercises, military service, and the physician's burning, cutting, drugging, and starving.
Chapter 19
Socrates argues that people call things good only because they end in pleasure and remove or avert pain, and call pain evil; even pleasure is deemed evil when it costs greater pleasures or brings greater pains. He presses Protagoras to name some other standard, and Protagoras concedes they have none beyond pleasure and pain.
Chapter 20
Socrates argues it is absurd to say a person knowingly does evil because overcome by pleasure, since if pleasure is renamed good, the claim becomes that one is overcome by good. The real explanation is that the person chooses a greater evil in exchange for a lesser good—that is, the goods and evils are out of proportion, greater or smaller, more or fewer.
Chapter 20
Socrates argues that near things appear larger and distant things smaller, deceiving us through the power of appearance and making us choose things we later repent. If happiness lies in choosing the greater and avoiding the less, the art of measurement removes the effect of appearances, shows the truth, and lets the soul rest in it—thus saving life.
Chapter 20
Socrates says to place pleasures and pains in the balance like a skilled weigher, accounting for their nearness and distance as well as their magnitude. Weigh pleasures against pleasures and take the more and greater; pains against pains and take the fewer and less; and pleasures against pains, choose the course where the painful is exceeded by the pleasant, whether distant or near.
Chapter 20
Socrates argues it means ignorance—specifically the greatest ignorance, a defect in the art of measurement. Men err in choosing pleasures and pains, greater and less, near and remote, from lack of the measuring knowledge. Since erring without knowledge is done in ignorance, being overcome by pleasure is not a force defeating knowledge but ignorance itself.
Chapter 21
Socrates argues that courage is the knowledge of what is and is not dangerous, opposed to the ignorance of these things, which he identifies as cowardice. He reaches this by getting Protagoras to admit that base fears and confidences arise from ignorance, and that cowardice is ignorance of dangers. Protagoras assents reluctantly and finally refuses to answer.
Chapter 22
Socrates notes that both the courageous and the coward go to meet what they are confident about, so in that sense they go to the same things. Protagoras objects that the coward goes to the opposite of what the courageous goes to, giving the example that one is ready to go to battle and the other is not.
Chapter 22
Socrates says if the argument had a voice it would laugh that Socrates, who denied virtue can be taught, now argues all things are knowledge including courage, which implies virtue can be taught. Meanwhile Protagoras, who said virtue can be taught, now resists proving it is knowledge, which would make it unteachable.
Chapter 22
Protagoras replies that he is not of a base nature and does not envy Socrates, applauding his energy and predicting he will become eminent in philosophy. He proposes returning to the subject at some future time and turning to something else. Socrates agrees, noting he had another engagement, and the conversation ends.
Chapter 22
Text used: Project Gutenberg eBook #1591 (Public domain in the United States). Generated from the full text; cards paraphrase the source.
Version: Public domain edition. Retrieved 2026-11-01. Cards reviewed 2026-11-01.
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