[MD] Protagoras

[MarshaV]

This book was so delicious.

 

 

>From the book 'Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric Refigured' by
Susan C. Jarratt

 

 

 

 

"Protagoras and Dissoi Logoi

 

   The oldest sophist, Protagoras of Abdera probably lived from 490 to 420
B.C.  His literary remains are the most fragmentary of all the figures
associated with the movement, and for that reason he has received little
attention from historians of rhetoric, who usually focus on Gorgias.  But a
balanced picture of the sophists demands an interpretation of Protagoras's
contribution.  As a close associate of Pericles, he was engaged in the
democratic experiment at its height, writing laws for the colony of Thurii
in 444.  His fragments stand as key doctrines in sophistic thought, while
his representation in two Platonic dialogues offers a fuller picture of his
political and epistemological orientation and the style of his discourse.

 

   One of the fragments of commentary about him asserts that he was the
first to say that there were two contradictory arguments about everything,
an observation expressed by the Greek phrase dissoi logio.  From our
location on the far side of Aristotle's insistence on the Law of
Non-Contradiction, we respond readily to the certain interpretations of this
observation; that it provides a logical basis for opportunistically taking
any side in an argument, for making the weaker case the stronger; or that it
represents a step along the way to Plato's later "clarification" of the
problem of contradiction.  But under the epistemology attributed to
Protagoras in 'Theaetetus' and revealed by other fragments, dissoi logoi are
unavoidable outcomes of any group discourse.  The title of one Protagoras's
lost works, 'Truth", bears the subtitle 'Refutations", suggesting that the
sophist understand dissoi logoi to be a means of discovering _a_ truth
rather than the expression of a distance from a separate, single Truth
within phenomena.  His most famous saying reinforces this notion:  "Of all
things the measure is human, of the things that are, they are, and of the
things that are not, they are not".  Protagoras denies any significance to
the existence of phenomena outside individual human experience.  He is given
the opportunity to lay out his doctrine about sensation in Plato's dialogue
'Theaetetus'.  The character "Protagoras" there argues that a wind that
feels hot to one person and cold to another really _is_ both hot and cold.
The sophists found it both impossible and unnecessary to determine any
single Truth about appearances; more important is negotiating useful courses
of action for groups of people given their varying perceptions about the
world.  That understanding and use comes to be through the propositions
people form about them; in other words, the human-as-measure doctrine is an
answer to dissoi logoi.  It is important to identify the recognition of
contradictory statements as a starting point for the rhetorical work of
Protagoras and other sophists rather than a despairing conclusion about the
futility of human inquiry, as for Zeno who engaged in absurd paradoxes.
Further evidence of Protagoras's rejection of any truth outside of human
experience is his comment on the gods: "Concerning the gods, I am not able
to say whether they exist or what they are like, for there are many things
that hinder me".  Though a skeptical attitude toward the gods was not
uncommon in the fifth century, Protagoras's agnosticism contributes to the
general picture of his knowledge theory.  Like the Presocratics, who sought
reasons for physical phenomena outside the explanations of myth,
Protagoras's careful expression of ignorance directs energy away from the
search for external knowledge source and throws the responsibility for
determining the nature of things onto humans."

 

 

 

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"What we observe is not nature itself, but nature exposed to our method of
questioning."

     (Werner Karl Heisenberg)