Protagoras Undone

This lecture is principally concerned with Socrates’s complex response to Protagoras and his eventual victory over him. Socrates begins somewhat strangely, by probing whether (according to Protagoras) virtue is some one thing or whether it is composed of essentially different parts. This question strikes Protagoras as being entirely innocuous, until it dawns on him, a little too late, that his holding the virtues to be separate means that wisdom and justice need not go together: Socrates practically forces him to admit that the wise as such are not necessarily just! We will also consider the concluding section of the dialogue, in which Socrates reveals—to us and to Protagoras—that the sophist’s “sophisticated” contempt for justice and noble self-sacrifice cannot be squared with his genuine admiration of courage and the courageous. Even Protagoras, then, has failed to search his heart adequately, and he remains a far more moral man than he realizes.

English
  • Runtime 30 minutes
  • Production Company The Great Courses
  • Created May 20, 2022 by
    shunsuke218
  • Modified May 20, 2022 by
    shunsuke218