Some of the Platonic commentators maintain,[150] that the doctrine here explicitly laid down and illustrated by Sokrates, viz.: the essential identity of the pleasurable with the good, of the painful with the evil — is to be regarded as not serious, but as taken up in jest for the purpose of mocking and humiliating Protagoras. Such an hypothesis appears to me untenable; contradicted by the whole tenor of the dialogue. Throughout all the Platonic compositions, there is nowhere to be found any train of argument more direct, more serious, and more elaborate, than that by which Sokrates here proves the identity of good with pleasure, of pain with evil (p. 351 to end). Protagoras begins by denying it, and is only compelled to accept the conclusion against his own will, by the series of questions which he cannot otherwise answer.[151] Sokrates admits that the bulk of mankind are also opposed to it: but he establishes it with an ingenuity which is pronounced to be triumphant by all the hearers around.[152] The commentators are at liberty to impeach the reasoning as unsound; but to set it aside as mere banter and mockery, is preposterous. Assume it even to be intended as mockery — assume that Sokrates is mystifying the hearers, by a string of delusive queries, to make out a thesis which he knows to be untrue and silly — how can the mockery fall upon Protagoras, who denies the thesis from the beginning?[153] The irony, if it were irony, would be misplaced and absurd.
[150] See Brandis, Gesch. d. Griech.-Röm., Phil. Part ii. sect. 114, note 3 p. 458; Stallbaum, Prolegom. ad Protag. pp. 15-33-34.
So too Ficinus says in his Argumentum to the Protagoras: (p. 765) “Tum vero de bono et malo multa tractantur. Siquidem prudentia est scientia eligendi boni, malique vitandi. Ambigitur autem utrum bonum malumque idem sit penitus quod et voluptas et dolor. Neque affirmatur id quidem omnino, neque manifesté omnino negatur. De hoc enim in Gorgiâ Phileboque et alibi,” &c.
When a critic composes an Argument to the Protagoras, he is surely under obligation to report faithfully and exactly what is declared by Sokrates in the Protagoras, whether it be consistent or not with the Gorgias and Philêbus. Yet here we find Ficinus misrepresenting the Protagoras, in order to force it into harmony with the other two.
[151] This is so directly stated that I am surprised to find Zeller (among many other critics) announcing that Plato here accepts for the occasion the Standpunkt of his enemies (Philos. der Griech. vol. ii. p. 380, ed. 2nd).
[152] Plato, Protag. p. 358 A. ὑπερφυῶς ἐδόκει ἅπασιν ἀληθῆ εἶναι τὰ εἰρημένα.
[153] When Stallbaum asserts that the thesis is taken up by Sokrates as one which was maintained by Protagoras and the other Sophists (Proleg. p. 33), he says what is distinctly at variance with the dialogue, p. 351.
Schleiermacher maintains that this same thesis (the fundamental identity of good with pleasure, evil with pain) is altogether “unsokratic and unplatonic”; that it is handled here by Sokrates in a manner visibly ironical (sichtbar ironisch); that the purpose of the argument is to show the stupidity of Protagoras, who is puzzled and imposed upon by such obvious fallacies (Einleitung zum Protag. 230, bottom of p. 232), and who is made to exhibit (so Schleiermacher says, Einl. zum Gorgias, p. 14) a string of ludicrous absurdities.
Upon this I have to remark first, that if the stupidity of Protagoras is intended to be shown up, that of all the other persons present must be equally manifested; for all of them assent emphatically, at the close, to the thesis as having been proved (Prot. p. 358 A): next, that I am unable to see either the absurdities of Protagoras or the irony of Sokrates, which Schleiermacher asserts to be so visible. The argument of Sokrates is as serious and elaborate as any thing which we read in Plato. Schleiermacher seems to me to misconceive altogether (not only here but also in his Einleitung zum Gorgias, p. 10) the concluding argument of Sokrates in the Protagoras. To describe the identity between ἡδὺ and ἀγαθὸν as a “scheinbare Voraussetzung” is to depart from the plain meaning of words.
Again, Steinhart contends that Sokrates assumes this doctrine (identity of pleasure with good, pain with evil), “not as his own opinion, but only hypothetically, with a sarcastic side-glance at the absurd consequences which many deduced from it — only as the received world-morality, as the opinion of the majority” (Einleit. zum Protag. p. 419). How Steinhart can find proof of this in the dialogue, I am at a loss to understand. The dialogue presents to us Sokrates introducing the opinion as his own, against that of Protagoras and against that of the multitude (p. 351 C). On hearing this opposition from Protagoras, Sokrates invites him to an investigation, whether the opinion be just; Sokrates then conducts the investigation himself, along with Protagoras, at considerable length, and ultimately brings out the doctrine as proved, with the assent of all present.