[MD] Protagoras and "Measure"

[Ian Glendinning]

Nice one Matt,

I'd seen tha ambiguity on the measure / rationality aspect before but
not the things / experience side of it. Very interesting.

Ian

On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 12:43 AM, Matt Kundert
<pirsigaffliction at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> I ran across something interesting today.  I didn't realize this, but Protagoras' famous aphorism "Man is the measure of all things..." has an ambiguity in the English (at least for amateurs who only read translations and dabble in Greek words).
>
> I'd always assumed that what standardly gets translated as "measure" was related to the Latin "ratio," and that old saw about how "reason" and mathematical "measuring" are ancient relations. etc.  Well, the Latin "ratio" is the translation of "logos," which all us amateurs recognize as one of the more famous Greek words: reason, thought, account, measure, word, etc.
>
> The Greek word translated as "measure" in Protagoras' aphorism is _not_ Logos, but
>
> Metron
>
> "Metro" in modern Greek is still "measure."  However, what I ran across which made much of what the actual Greek word is was an alternative translation by Mario Untersteiner (often considered a renegade scholar by respected Anglophones I've run across), who wrote a book on the Sophists that is almost impossible to find in English for under $50 (been out of print for half a century):
>
> "Man is the master of all experiences..."
>
> I have no bead on what Greek word (or phrase) "things" or "experiences" translates.  All I can identify is "metron" and "anthropos" (the gender-neutral "man").  But I imagine "experiences" sounds even better to Pirsigians, whatever one might think of "measure vs. master."
>
> Matt
>
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