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Updated: May 16, 2025
"Very opposite opinions on that subject may be equally true, since it depends solely on us and our feelings how things appear to us whether cold or warm; lovely or repulsive and when Protagoras says that 'man is the measure of all things, that is the most acceptable of all the maxims of the Sophists; moreover the smallest matter as you will fully appreciate acquires an importance all the greater in proportion as the thing is perfect, of which it forms a part.
Protagoras, whose temper begins to get a little ruffled at the process to which he has been subjected, is aware that he will soon be compelled by the dialectics of Socrates to admit that the temperate is the just. He therefore defends himself with his favourite weapon; that is to say, he makes a long speech not much to the point, which elicits the applause of the audience.
How will Protagoras answer this argument? For he cannot say that no one deems another ignorant or mistaken. If you form a judgment, thousands and tens of thousands are ready to maintain the opposite. The multitude may not and do not agree in Protagoras' own thesis, 'that man is the measure of all things, and then who is to decide?
In the evening, as you say, you hear of him, and in the morning you go to him, never deliberating or taking the opinion of any one as to whether you ought to intrust yourself to him or not; you have quite made up your mind that you will at all hazards be a pupil of Protagoras, and are prepared to expend all the property of yourself and of your friends in carrying out at any price this determination, although, as you admit, you do not know him, and have never spoken with him: and you call him a Sophist, but are manifestly ignorant of what a Sophist is; and yet you are going to commit yourself to his keeping.
'Is justice just, and is holiness holy? And are justice and holiness opposed to one another? 'Then justice is unholy. Protagoras would rather say that justice is different from holiness, and yet in a certain point of view nearly the same. He does not, however, escape in this way from the cunning of Socrates, who inveigles him into an admission that everything has but one opposite.
The demand for philosophy and rhetoric was, for a long time, so small, that the first professed teachers of either could not find constant employment in any one city, but were obliged to travel about from place to place. In this manner lived Zeno of Elea, Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and many others.
Besides, things of this kind are only delivered adventitiously in the Platonic dialogues; as the fable in the Protagoras, which is inserted for the sake of the political science, and the demonstrations respecting it. In like manner the fable in the Republic is inserted for the sake of justice; and in the Gorgias for the sake of temperance.
His subsequent dialogues show how he fitted out the hulk to sail on his voyages of discovery. The Meno is a rediscussion on Platonic principles of the problem of the Protagoras: can virtue be taught? Meno, a general in the army of the famous Ten Thousand, attempts a definition of virtue itself, the principle that underlies specific kinds of virtues such as justice.
This tradition was sustained by the great authority of Plato, and therefore the legend of the Island of Atlantis, though not closely connected with the voyages of the early navigators, may be truly said to have contributed indirectly to the great discovery. The Timaeus of Plato, like the Protagoras and several portions of the Phaedrus and Republic, was translated by Cicero into Latin.
And I said: Protagoras, I have a wretched memory, and when any one makes a long speech to me I never remember what he is talking about. As then, if I had been deaf, and you were going to converse with me, you would have had to raise your voice; so now, having such a bad memory, I will ask you to cut your answers shorter, if you would take me with you.
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