In our review of this dialogue, we have found first, towards the beginning, an expository discourse from Protagoras, describing the maintenance and propagation of virtue in an established community: next, towards the close, an expository string of interrogatories by Sokrates, destined to establish the identity of Good with Pleasurable, Evil with Painful; and the indispensable supremacy of the calculating or measuring science, as the tutelary guide of human life. Of the first, I speak (like other critics) as the discourse of Protagoras: of the second, as the theory of Sokrates. But I must again remind the reader, that both the one and the other are compositions of Plato; both alike are offspring of his ingenious and productive imagination. Protagoras is not the author of that which appears here under his name: and when we read the disparaging epithets which many critics affix to his discourse, we must recollect that these epithets, if they were well-founded, would have no real application to the historical Protagoras, but only to Plato himself. He has set forth two aspects, distinct and in part opposing, of ethics and politics: and he has provided a worthy champion for each. Philosophy, or “reasoned truth,” if it be attainable at all, cannot most certainly be attained without such many-sided handling: still less can that which Plato calls knowledge be attained — or such command of philosophy as will enable a man to stand a Sokratic cross-examination in it.
Order of ethical problems, as conceived by Sokrates.
In the last speech of Sokrates in the dialogue,[133] we find him proclaiming, that the first of all problems to be solved was, What virtue really is? upon which there prevails serious confusion of opinions. It was a second question — important, yet still second and presupposing the solution of the first — Whether virtue is teachable? We noticed the same judgment as to the order of the two questions delivered by Sokrates in the Menon.[134]
[133] Plato, Protag. p. 361 C.
[134] See the last preceding chapter of this volume, [p. 242].
Upon this order, necessarily required, of the two questions, Schleiermacher has a pertinent remark in his general Einleitung to the works of Plato, p. 26. Eberhard (he says) affirms that the end proposed by Plato in his dialogues was to form the minds of the noble Athenian youth, so as to make them virtuous citizens. Schleiermacher controverts the position of Eberhard; maintaining “that this is far too subordinate a standing-point for philosophy, — besides that it is reasoning in a circle, since philosophy has first to determine what the virtue of a citizen is”.
Difference of method between him and Protagoras flows from this difference of order. Protagoras assumes what virtue is, without enquiry.
Now the conception of ethical questions in this order — the reluctance to deal with the second until the first has been fully debated and settled — is one fundamental characteristic of Sokrates. The difference of method, between him and Protagoras, flows from this prior difference between them in fundamental conception. What virtue is, Protagoras neither defines nor analyses, nor submits to debate. He manifests no consciousness of the necessity of analysis: he accepts the ground already prepared for him by King Nomos: he thus proceeds as if the first step had been made sure, and takes his departure from hypotheses of which he renders no account — as the Platonic Sokrates complains of the geometers for doing.[135] To Protagoras, social or political virtue is a known and familiar datum, about which no one can mistake: which must be possessed, in greater or less measure, by every man, as a condition of the existence of society: which every individual has an interest in promoting in all his neighbours: and which every one therefore teaches and enforces upon every one else. It is a matter of common sense or common sentiment, and thus stands in contrast with the special professional accomplishments; which are confined only to a few — and the possessors, teachers, and learners of which are each an assignable section of the society. The parts or branches of virtue are, in like manner, assumed by him as known, in their relations to each other and to the whole. This persuasion of knowledge, without preliminary investigation, he adopts from the general public, with whom he is in communion of sentiment. What they accept and enforce as virtue, he accepts and enforces also.
[135] See suprà, vol. i. ch. viii. p. 358 and [ch. xvii. p. 136], respecting these remarks of Plato on the geometers.
Method of Protagoras. Continuous lectures addressed to established public sentiments with which he is in harmony.