Socrates in Hades: On Platos Protagoras, Part I
Blogosphere • July 2010 • Views: 754
From the page:
Protagoras, as already has been mentioned, is a sophist. He says that he teaches a pupil “how he might best manage his own household – and, concerning the affairs of the city, how he might be the most powerful in carrying out and speaking about the city’s affairs” (318e5-319a2, trans. Bartlett). Bartlett points out how Protagoras is already exposed to the usual condemnation of sophists: “most powerful” regarding the city is not the same as “best” (Bartlett 71). One can read the Protagoras as a moralistic and polemical Socrates’ attack on a slick teacher of injustice. But for a number of reasons, that is not how I want to explore the dialogue.