[148] Professor Bain (in his work on the Emotions and the Will, ch. xv. On the Ethical Emotions, pp. 271-3) has given remarks extremely pertinent to the illustration of that doctrine which Plato has here placed under the name of Protagoras.
“The supposed uniformity of moral distinctions resolves itself into the two following particulars. First, the common end of public security, which is also individual preservation, demands certain precautions that are everywhere very much alike, and can in no case be dispensed with. Some sort of constituted authority to control the individual impulses and to protect each man’s person and property, must exist wherever a number of human beings live together. The duties springing out of this necessary arrangement are essentially the same in all societies.… They have a pretty uniform character all over the globe. If the sense of the common safety were not sufficiently strong to constitute the social tie of obedience to some common regulations, society could not exist.… It is no proof of the universal spread of a special innate faculty of moral distinctions, but of a certain rational appreciation of what is necessary for the very existence of every human being living in the company of others: Doubtless, if the sad history of the human race had been preserved in all its details, we should have many examples of tribes that perished from being unequal to the conception of a social system, or to the restraints imposed by it. We know enough of the records of anarchy, to see how difficult it is for human nature to comply in full with the social conditions of security; but if this were not complied with at all, the result would be mutual and swift destruction.… In the second place, mankind have been singularly unanimous in the practice of imposing upon individual members of societies some observances or restraints of purely sentimental origin, having no reference, direct or indirect, to the maintenance of the social tie, with all the safeguards implied in it. Certain maxims founded in taste, liking, aversion, or fancy, have, in every community known to us, been raised to the dignity of authoritative morality; being rendered (so to speak) ‘terms of communion,’ and have been enforced by punishment.… In the rules, founded on men’s sentiments, likings, aversions, and antipathies, there is nothing common but the fact that some one or other of these are carried to the length of public requirement, and mixed up in one code with the imperative duties that hold society together.”
The postulate of the Platonic Protagoras — that δίκη and αἰδὼς must be felt to a certain extent in each man’s bosom, as a condition to the very existence of society — agrees with the first of the two elements here distinguished by Mr. Bain, and does not necessarily go beyond it. But the unsystematic teaching and universal propagandism, which Protagoras describes as the agency whereby virtue is communicated, applies alike to both the two elements distinguished by Mr. Bain: to the factitious exigencies of King Nomos, as well as to his tutelary control. It is this mixed mass that the Sokratic analysis is brought to examine.
The Ethical End, as implied in the discourse of Protagoras, involves a direct regard to the pleasures and pains of other persons besides the agent himself.
If we thus compare the Ethical End, as implied, though not explicitly laid down, by Protagoras in the earlier part of the dialogue, — and as laid down by Sokrates in the later part — we shall see that while Sokrates restricts it to a true comparative estimate of the pains and pleasures of the agent himself, Protagoras enlarges it so as to include a direct reference to those of others also, coupled with an expectation of the like reference on the part of others.[149] Sokrates is satisfied with requiring from each person calculating prudence for his own pleasures and pains: while Protagoras proclaims that after this attribute had been obtained by man, and individual wants supplied, still there was a farther element necessary in the calculation — the social sentiment or reciprocity of regard implanted in every one’s bosom: without this the human race would have perished. Prudence and skill will suffice for an isolated existence; but if men are to live and act in social communion, the services as well as the requirements of each man must be shaped, in a certain measure, with a direct view to the security of others as well as to his own.
[149] Plato, Protag. pp. 321-322.
In my judgment, the Ethical End, exclusively self-regarding, here laid down by Sokrates, is too narrow. And if we turn to other Platonic dialogues, we shall find Sokrates still represented as proclaiming a self-regarding Ethical End, though not the same as what we read in the Protagoras. In the Gorgias, Republic, Phædon, &c., we shall find him discountenancing the calculation (recommended in the Protagoras) of pleasures and pains against each other, as greater, more certain, durable, &c., and insisting that all shall be estimated according as they bear on the general condition or health of the mind, which he assimilates to the general condition or health of the body. The health of the body, considered as an End to be pursued, is essentially self-regarding: so also is the health of the mind. I shall touch upon this farther when I consider the above-mentioned dialogues: at present, I only remark that they agree with the Sokrates of the Protagoras in assuming a self-regarding Ethical End, though they do not agree with him in describing what that End should be.
Plato’s reasoning in the dialogue is not clear or satisfactory, especially about courage.
The application which Sokrates makes (in the Protagoras) of his own assumed Ethical End to the explanation of courage, is certainly confused and unsatisfactory. And indeed, we may farther remark that the general result at which Plato seems to be aiming in this dialogue, viz.: That all the different virtues are at the bottom one and the same, and that he who possesses one of them must also possess the remainder — cannot be made out even upon his own assumptions. Though it be true that all the virtues depend upon correct calculation, yet as each of them applies to a different set of circumstances and different disturbing and misleading causes, the same man who calculates well under one set of circumstances, may calculate badly under others. The position laid down by Protagoras, that men are often courageous but unjust — just, but not wise — is noway refuted by Plato. Nor is it even inconsistent with Plato’s own theory, though he seems to think it so.
Doctrine of Stallbaum and other critics is not correct. That the analysis here ascribed to Sokrates is not intended by Plato as serious, but as a mockery of the sophists.