Protagoras and Meno

by Plato, Adam Beresford (Translator), Lesley Brown (Introduction)

Two of Plato's finest dialogues; together they offer a rich and entertaining exploration of the origins of right and wrong, hedonism, self-control, the teachability of goodness, and the sources of our knowledge.

Exploring the question of what exactly makes good people good, Protagoras and Meno are two of the most enjoyable and accessible of all of Plato's dialogues. Widely regarded as his finest dramatic work, the Protagoras, set during the golden age of Pericles, pits a youthful Socrates against the revered sophist Protagoras, whose brilliance and humanity make him one the most interesting and likeable of Socrates' philosophical opponents, and turns their encounter into a genuine and lively battle of minds. The Meno sees an older but ever ironic Socrates humbling a proud young aristocrat as they search for a clear understanding of what it is to be a good man, and setting out the startling idea that all human learning may be the recovery of knowledge already possessed by our immortal souls.

For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Genres: Philosophy, Classics, Nonfiction, Ancient, Ancient History, Greece, Literature

166 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 391

About the author

Plato (Greek: Πλάτων), born Aristocles (c. 427 – 348 BC), was an ancient Greek philosopher of the Classical period who is considered a foundational thinker in Western philosophy and an innovator of the written dialogue and dialectic forms. He raised problems for what became all the major areas of both theoretical philosophy and practical philosophy, and was the founder of the Platonic Academy, a philosophical school in Athens where Plato taught the doctrines that would later become known as Platonism.
Plato's most famous contribution is the theory of forms (or ideas), which has been interpreted as advancing a solution to what is now known as the problem of universals. He was decisively influenced by the pre-Socratic thinkers Pythagoras, Heraclitus, and Parmenides, although much of what is known about them is derived from Plato himself.
Along with his teacher Socrates, and Aristotle, his student, Plato is a central figure in the history of philosophy. Plato's entire body of work is believed to have survived intact for over 2,400 years—unlike that of nearly all of his contemporaries. Although their popularity has fluctuated, they have consistently been read and studied through the ages. Through Neoplatonism, he also greatly influenced both Christian and Islamic philosophy. In modern times, Alfred North Whitehead famously said: "the safest general characterization of the European philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato."

Reviews

[Hannah Kwak · Rating 5 out of 5]

Among the works of Plato I've read so far, Protagoras has so far been my favorite. A dialogue between Socrates and Protagoras, the work describes the two philosophers discussing whether or not virtue can be taught. The question is explored in many different directions, some of which may confuse the reader at times, but the arguments are compelling and easily understood with some thought. The dialogue first establishes the difficulty of defining virtue: when one tries to define the word, he or she often ends up listing various parts of virtue - justice, temperance, and courage - but is no closer to finding an underlying connection among these various facets. Socrates demonstrates through a series of logical syllogisms that these facets of virtue are in actuality different words for the same thing: wisdom. And since wisdom can be taught, virtue can be taught as well.

One of the arguments through which he proves this statement concerns the relationship between courage and knowledge. Courage is one of the many parts of virtue, and confidence a part of courage. But confidence and courage is not the same thing for confidence is present in both the virtuous and the evil: often times, violent and rash individuals tend to be very confident about their actions, even if these actions are immoral. So what distinguishes confidence from courage? Socrates' answer is the presence of wisdom. The courage and the cowardly both pursue that about which they are confident, but only the courageous have knowledge about which actions are good. Thus, courage is wisdom.

Socrates further illustrates this point by disproving a popular opinion: that knowledge can be easily overcome by emotions. After all, how often have we heard the phrase "a man does evil because he is overcome by pleasure"? According to Socrates, however, pain is synonymous to evil and pleasure synonymous to good unless the pain leads to greater pleasure in the future or the good leads to greater pain in the future. Thus, the popular phrase can be rewritten: "a man does what is painful because he is overcome by pleasure, which is unworthy to overcome the pain." Or, in other words, the man thinks the pleasure will overcome the pain but he is mistaken. Socrates states that the salvation of human life is dependent upon a knowledge of measuring, or making the right choices of pleasures and pains. Weighing the pleasures and pains an action will cause may be complex at times and involve a certain degree of predicting future repercussions. When one does this successfully, he or she chooses the good, pleasurable path. When one does this unsuccessfully, however, he or she chooses the evil, painful path. Therefore, being "overcome by pleasure" in decision-making is not a matter of emotion overpowering knowledge, but really a matter of ignorance. In other words, temperance is wisdom.

These dialogues are a fairly easy way to become more familiar with Socrates' teachings, an endeavor I find worthwhile considering the large role he played in the study of philosophy. I will say that I find his style of argumentation off-putting at times, but the phrasing of his ideas doesn't significantly detract from the value of their content.

[Saige · Rating 4 out of 5]

By far the most readable philosophical text I've ever read. Plato doesn't get lost in definitions and terminology the way Sartre does. The thinking is complex and provoking, but the actual written words are wonderfully comprehensible. Socrates lays out his arguments well in both texts, although I found them a lot more reasonable (with less leaps and conclusions based on pedantics) in Meno than in Protagoras.

Besides the actual arguments, my absolute favorite thing about this book was the translator. His notes on translation, history, and Plato's points were clear and helpful, as well as steeped in sarcasm and wit. It was just the right mix of professionalism and humor given the historical context. I often read them out loud to anyone unfortunate enough to be in the room with me. So huge shout out to Adam Beresford for making this 10 times better than a more dry translator would have been.

[Scriptor Ignotus · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Plato’s dialogues is like visiting a chiropractor; at times uncomfortable, but ultimately beneficial for how it straightens you out. If everyone spent some time with Plato’s Socrates once or twice a year, people would stop taking cable news seriously, and the U.S. government might even become quasi-functional again—but let’s set my childish fantasies aside.

There’s a terrific symmetry between these two dialogues. They are concerned with the same fundamental subjects—what it means to be good, whether being good is something unitary or multifaceted, and whether being good is teachable—and at the end of the Meno, a now-elderly Socrates rounds upon the opposite conclusion from the one he came to as a young upstart in Protagoras. The two dialogues thus exist in a kind of permanent and intriguing tension.

Protagoras has a young Socrates going up against the dialogue’s namesake, the most famous sophist of the day, in front of the best and brightest of Athens. Unlike other sophists, Protagoras freely admits to his sophistry, and expresses every bit of confidence that he is so well-qualified to teach his students how to be good citizens that he is justified in charging a fee for his services. Whereas Homer and Hesiod had to disguise their sophistry as storytelling, he says, he’s willing to teach his lessons straightforwardly.

Socrates voices his skepticism that good citizenship can be taught, pointing out that while the opinion of experts is typically sought on matters of technical knowledge—shipbuilders are called upon to speak about matters of shipbuilding, for instance—in democratic Athens, all citizens are allowed to weigh in on matters of state, which would seemingly suggest that the quality of good citizenship is something innate.

Ironically enough, Protagoras responds by telling a story, claiming that explaining things this way is easier than making straightforward arguments, even though he just criticized the poets for hiding their teachings in stories. He recounts the myth of Epimetheus and Prometheus; in my translation, their names are rendered as “Thinxtoolate” and “Thinxahead”; at first this rubbed me the wrong way, but after giving it some thought, I came to appreciate this decision. For us, the original Greek names carry a certain mystique, but for the Greeks, the literal meaning of the names would have made them sound folksy; so this translation conveys that folksiness.

According to the myth, Thinxtoolate was given the task of distributing skills and abilities to the various members of the animal kingdom; but being the poor planner that he was, he forgot to give any special abilities to mankind. In a desperate attempt to save humanity from extinction, Thinxtoolate’s brother, Thinxahead, stole technical knowledge from Athena and fire from Hephaestus and gave them to mankind for its survival.

This gambit was only trivially successful, however, as because mankind still lacked the civic knowledge guarded by Zeus, its technical knowledge was as much a liability as an asset, and war and strife led humanity close to its demise. Seeing their plight, Zeus sent Hermes to distribute a sense of justice evenly among mankind.

This, according to Protagoras, is why everyone has some civic knowledge, but only a few people have various kinds of technical knowledge. It isn’t because civic knowledge is innate; it is because civic knowledge is more widely taught, because men and gods alike know that society can’t function if most people don’t learn a basic sense of justice and citizenship.

Protagoras goes on to point out that while society doesn’t condemn people because of their innate flaws—ugliness or weakness, for example—because it recognizes that these flaws are due to no wrongdoing on the part of the unfortunate individuals, it strictly condemns and punishes people who act unjustly, because people have a sense that the wrongdoer ought to know better, which would imply that justice is a type of knowledge that can be taught—or at least that popular belief holds this to be true. As for who the teachers of good citizenship are: Protagoras thinks there are numerous people who take on this role; parents and teachers, who endow children with their knowledge of justice from the day they are born.

Socrates then asks Protagoras whether he thinks goodness is one thing or many things—whether every attribute which we might call good, like bravery, wisdom, religiousness, and so on, has a unifying principle behind it which would apply to all instances of goodness; or whether good attributes are irreconcilably separate, and thus goodness must always have a different meaning when applied to different qualities.

When Protagoras takes the latter view, the conversation goes into the weeds, but when their friends intervene to set the discussion back on track, Socrates is able to articulate his view that all goodness is one, and it is unified by knowledge. When people act in ways that harm them, for instance, they do so out of a mistaken belief that the benefit of the action, even if the benefit is merely pleasure, will outweigh the pain and discomfort of future consequences. Bravery, likewise, is acquired by knowledge about a future task that allows someone to approach it without fear.

Protagoras resists assenting to this argument, though he has no response for it; but the really ironic thing is that he and Socrates have switched positions on the original question: whether good citizenship, or goodness in general, can be taught. Socrates, who originally doubted that it could be taught, now thinks that if goodness is constituted by knowledge, then is must be as teachable as any other form of knowledge. Protagoras, who originally thought goodness was a teachable skill, is now skeptical about the whole idea; but now he is thoroughly impressed with Socrates’s intellect, and he ends the dialogue by delivering one of the biggest understatements of all time:

“And I can say here and now that I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up as a pretty famous name in philosophy.”

In the Meno, an elderly Socrates and his young, aristocratic interlocutor broach the subject of Protagoras—whether virtue can be taught—but this time the conversation centers around the definition of what virtue is.

Though no straightforward definition emerges from the dialogue, Socrates returns to his insistence that virtue must be unitary by its nature, and that it must in some form be common to all people. Meno argues that virtue must be defined differently for men and women, but Socrates rejects this notion because there are certain things which are called virtues—strength, wisdom, temperance, etc.—that mean the same thing when they are said of women as when they are said of men.

When looking for a type of virtue applicable to all people, Meno suggests that an ability to govern people might fit the bill; but even I could have told him that a capacity to govern is not universal, nor is it synonymous with virtue. Meno suggests that virtue could be defined as the desire for good things and the power to attain them, but Socrates points out that many people cannot distinguish between what is good and what is bad, and that the pursuit of bad things in the mistaken belief that they are good could not in itself be called virtuous.

Meno then presents a paradox by asking Socrates how one can attain knowledge of something when one doesn’t know what it is. One cannot search for what he does know, or for what he doesn’t know. If he already knows something, there is no point in searching for it; and if he doesn’t know something, he cannot know what he is looking for. The question, in effect, is how learning is even possible.

In response to this, Socrates reveals his theory of anamnesis: that knowledge is achieved not by learning at all, but by remembering the knowledge contained in the premortal soul. He demonstrates this, somewhat dubiously, by interrogating one of Meno’s slaves in order to reveal that he has some innate knowledge of geometry. His dialogue with the slave is meant to demonstrate that a person can learn on his own without instruction (Socrates insists that his method of questioning is not a form of instruction, but merely provides an impetus for the other to search for what he already knows, but doesn’t know that he knows).

This may strike some readers as preposterous—this talk about the soul, about remembering things we knew before we were born. Not everyone believes in a soul (if we even know how to define such a thing) or in reincarnation, of course; but those people don’t have to write the theory of anamnesis off as total nonsense.

Even if we discard any talk of the soul, we may still concur with the overwhelming scientific consensus that the human mind is no tabula rasa, and that beneath our superficial knowledge is a cognitive structure that vastly predates any one of us as an individual. Even if we are not remembering things from a “soul”, it would not be a crazy thing to say that our innate cognitive abilities—the ability to learn and use language, for example, or the ability to use geometric reasoning, to use Meno’s slave as another—are things that we “remember” in the process of learning, in the sense that we are discovering faculties which are already within us, and are in fact older than we are.

But again, Socrates and Meno get hung up on the issue of whether virtue is teachable. Socrates wants to say it is, but he can’t point to anyone who might be described as a teacher of virtue. Virtue may be constituted by knowledge, as he is fond of claiming; but the notion that knowledge is recollected from the soul rather than learned, and the fact that knowledge isn’t necessarily required for virtue, as true belief can be just as useful as knowledge, even though belief is fickle unless it is fixed in place by reason, means he cannot say concretely that virtue is innate or that it can be taught.

Goodness, he finally suggests, may be a form of knowledge that can’t actually be learned! Whatever virtue is, its presence in people might be—either literally or figuratively—what Socrates calls a “gift of god”.

[Dominic Muresan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pe cand sa traga concluzia daca virtutea se poate preda sau nu, dialogu se incheie. Dubios Socrate asta, totusi ideea ca virtutea este cunoastere e bine argumentata in Protagoras, desi nu stiu cum merge cu concluzia lui Socrate ca nu poate fi invatata, desi e cunoastere... but anyway, Protagoras e all over the place - mitologie, critica literara??? Un adevarat concurs intre cel mai intelept om care zice ca e prost si ala care nu zice, totul in audienta celor mai luminate minti ale vremii - personajele Platonice clasice. Dar oricum, in colectia asta - pe care am ales-o doar pentru traducerea dementiala a lui W. K. C. Guthrie - dialogul, despre care tocmai vorbeam, e asezat impreuna cu Meno. Si nu degeaba.

Concluzia (atat cat e) din Meno e una similara - virtutea e cunoastere DOAR CA, aici cunoasterea nu e necesara pentru a te directiona inspre bine. Yup. In Meno apare ideea de credinta - credinta buna care are acelasi efect ca si cunoasterea. Si atunci cum sta treaba? Virtutea e cunoastere, dar si credinta? Well no, intelepciunea impreuna cu credinta duce la cunoastere, iar cunoasterea e virtute. Credinta fara intelepciune e moarta, ar zice pretenul nostru Socrate, si nu zice prost. Dar de ce nu mergem mai departe, si sa zicem ca intelepciunea e virtute? Putem merge oare la infinit? Daca da, pentru ce? Daca suna bine pt mine, o sa concluzionez ca e ok.

[Justin Evans · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was reading some history book the other day when I realized I'd never read Protagoras. Well, now I have, and the Meno for good measure. As with too many Platonic dialogues, if they weren't by Plato and didn't feature Socrates, nobody would care: The Republic this ain't. Socrates' fundamental question--"yes, but what is virtue, really?"--is a good one, but the obvious answer ("you're being fooled by a word into believing that the various human excellences must have some one thing in common") is never really raised, and everything else is just a bunch of fallacies of ambiguity.

On the other hand, and as ever, these texts are so fundamental to philosophy that they're still worth reading.

[path · Rating 4 out of 5]

I can just imagine the exasperation in Protagoras’s replies. After reading these dialogues it makes me wonder at what point along the way does one agree with Socrates because of the irrefutable logic or just so that he’ll friggin’ shut up already. He just won’t let things go.

Some of the arguments seem faulty and want to reach universality in scope and Plato tries (via Socrates) to get there through a critique of the particulars and examples/counter examples in Protagoras’s answers. But then Socrates, having made a successful counter argument, jumps back to universals and uses them as base claims in a process of logical argumentation to arrive at truth. But really the move to universals seems contestable and is limited by our experience to see the counter examples or our willingness to put up with more of Socrates’s persistent badgering.

At some point, I’d agree just to agree and be done with it. It would be good enough or close enough to proceed, until it isn’t. And only then reevaluate. So I suppose I still side with Protagoras that man is the measure of all things.

I have to think that Plato must have written these dialogues as teaching tools and not as treatises on truths. These are the exercises for his training of philosophers. See the form of the argument, but find the gaps in Socrates’s logic or method and jump in. That’s where guided, experiential learning happens. These aren’t Plato’s lecture notes as much as the exercises his students do in class, under his direction.

Meno is an interesting and more wide-ranging dialogue that covers some principles of reasoning that seemed problematic to me in the first dialogue and in this one. My growing skepticism concerned how Socrates would insist on identifying truth of a matter not by giving many different examples of the thing but isolating the one thing that they all held in common. He often arrived at ideas closer to this through the application of logic (e.g., defining opposites, identification, categorization, etc.) the makes some conclusions necessary while ruling out others. Often it would seem that Socrates, in setting up a logical analysis of base claims would import the same kinds of opinionated biases and poorly defined terms that he accused his interlocutors of taking. I feel like I can see Meno with a finger in the air and an “actually …” on his lips before thinking twice and trying not to egg Socrates onward.

Meno, mounts some seemingly solid counter points to Socrates that, as I read it pointed to the boundaries of experience by which any individual would be capable of formulating base claims with universal certainty. We get into some outlandish thought experiments that require imaging people who don’t know what colors are or shapes other than circles, but if one considers the range of base assertions required to commenting on what is good or truthful and it is easy to see how the boundaries of individual experience would necessarily hamper a Socratic approach to reasoning … including Socrates, which it doesn’t appear to. That is, unless you take these dialogues (as I am coming to) as exercises that Plato might have used for training philosophers at the academy.

Or if you take Socrates at his word that he truly is baffled and confused all the time AND he is doing the work of the gods by testing/proving the Oracle’s claim that none are wiser than Socrates. But honestly, how often can Socrates really be baffled by questions about what is good or whether what is good can be taught as knowledge given all the times that he has discussed it and reached conclusions (as with Protagoras). Does he just …. forget? … or rather forget all over again?

Interestingly, Socrates tries to escape an argument about the limitations of experience by inverting the idea and claiming that it is not by experience that we learn but rather through the practice or habit of remember what the soul has always known. That is, we are born with a full knowledge of the world and Forms but this is not accessible to us unless (by being taught and through habit of practice) the ability to remember what we have forgotten? Don’t have the experience to know what colors are or shapes are? Actually, you do, you just forgot.

The illustration with the slave was interesting, but it seems disingenuous to say that the slave was remembering what he knew from birth about geometry. Socrates’s questions, as framed, were literally setting presuppositions about squares and area that taught geometry. Socrates’s lack of regard (as I see it) for teaching and for teaching habits of action that could lead to knowledge (through practice and feedback) is surprising to me, as is his disdain for the sophists, who I see (claims of relativism aside) as teaching habits of action, skills of participation in professions and acts that are legitimately sites where knowledge of the good and virtuous are hashed out.

[L · Rating 4 out of 5]

what lies beneath the words are a mirrored reflection of the reader's thought processes...

"Thinking: the talking of the soul with itself"


These intriguing dialogues are packed with thought-provoking anecdotes, illuminating examples and hypothesis that keep you guessing and wondering through the book. Every page led to more questions and, I felt like I was taken on a journey of transcendental discovery every time I turned a new page. Complete with mathematics and geometry, Plato's Protagoras and Meno are fascinating dialogues about Virtue that keeps you interested throughout.

"Wonder is the feeling of a philosopher and philosophy begins in wonder..."

I find Plato very transparent and easy to understand, with his work on ethical debates as something highly intellectual and enlightening for reading. The ultimate question that instigates several debates in this book is about Virtue --if it can be learned and what it really is.

In Protagoras, Socrates pits his wits against the great sophist of the title, and by implication against both new and accepted wisdom of his time. The dialogue leads to the conclusion that all virtues are united by knowledge, which should be every person's goal. In Meno, which first clearly shows the Socratic approach to attempting definition of an ambiguous concept such as virtue, Socrates then argues that all so-called learning is in fact the recovery of pre-existent knowledge in the soul, and that if virtue is teachable it must be knowledge.

Having read Plato's laws and some of the Republic, I would highly recommend this piece of prose to be read beforehand. It is a great way to introduce oneself into the world of this extraordinary philosopher and great thinker of the times. A book that any deep thinker who asks themselves the meaning of life and its limitations will absolutely love.

[Josephine Waite · Rating 4 out of 5]

I did a short course on Plato's Symposium just before the COVID 19 lockdown and searched out all the Greek philosophy books I had acquired in a long life of secondhand bookshop fossicking. Found this and some others; I only just finished Meno when I couldn't sleep last night. I like Socrates and got used to his annoying habit of cross examining Athenians about things they think they know, like Columbo after a murder suspect.
But Socrates is only pretending not to know, or so I thought. At the end of his chat with Meno (spoiler alert) it seems virtue can't be taught, or learned, or even acquired by accident; it is Gods' inspired because we have immortal souls that have to be reminded of what we knew in between lives.
Tosh! I expected so much more from the Socratic method; I hoped for a moral system that doesn't rely on metaphysical bollocks. Of course great men can't teach their sons virtue; men don't teach children. Maybe virtue can't be taught, but it can be learned. We know what virtue is, and a clear headed discussion can bring it out.

[YouMo Mi · Rating 3 out of 5]

Two key works by Plato touching on epistemology.

I found Meno to be more insightful with its exploration of where knowledge comes from (is it a priori that is being recollected?) and Meno's Paradox (If you know what you're looking for, inquiry is unnecessary. If you don't know what you're looking for, inquiry is impossible. Therefore, inquiry is either unnecessary or impossible.) This is a helpful starting point for anyone delving into later philosophical works by Descarte, Kant, Hume, and the later Existentialists such Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.

Now that I've gotten a taste for Nietzsche, his criticisms of Plato as "dogmatic" colored my reading (and re-reading) of Protagoras. The dialogue's focus on Socrates besting Protagaros in a duel of wits muddles any coherent exploration of the nature of virtue and whether it is teachable or not. Maybe I'll revisit it down the line, but it's not the easiest to follow on the first or second read.

[C. B. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Protagoras is incredibly rich in its literary detail; its information, then, comes to us in that most wonderfully diluted and confused Platonic manner. This really is as far as we ever get from simply being told what to think. The question: is virtue teachable? The entire dialogue is a dramatic role reversal, with Protagoras initially asserting that virtue can be taught, and Socrates that virtue cannot be taught. In the end, however, Protagoras doesn’t believe that virtue is knowledge — and thus surely teachable — while Socrates asserts that virtue is knowledge. The perils of not defining one’s terms...

Meno is bare by comparison, but no less enjoyable. We are on very similar grounds, as the discussion again concerns the teachability of virtue. I particularly like the brief discussion towards the end about the difference between knowledge and opinion. Opinion can be merely learnt from someone else and still be right and good in practical senses, but it is the independent understanding of given principles — their ‘tethering’ — which constitutes knowledge. (p. 154)

[Casper Vermeeren · Rating 5 out of 5]

Filosofie is wel nog tof

Bedankt Plato

[Corey Schuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Want ik breng de anderen niet aan het twijfelen door zelf geen twijfel te kennen. Het is juist omdat ik zelf het meest van al twijfel dat ik ook de anderen aan het twijfelen breng."

[Jas MacMillan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best place to start in the Plato canon.

[Amanda Nunn · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first intro to Plato and probably a pretty decent starting point, made up of two dialogues concerning the subject of "virtue".

This was also my first introduction to the character of Socrates, from whom we have no direct writings, but we do have him portrayed here by Plato, who was a great admirer. Let's just say I wouldn't be inviting this guy to any of my parties. He comes across as the type who gets a little drink in him and then monopolises the room with his "brilliant" arguments and sarcastic "wit" and takes pride in "demolishing" any opposing arguments (really just annoying everyone until they give up and go away).

Okay, yeah I know the Socratic dialogue is a foundation of Western philosophy and argumentation. In practice, unless you're in the role of the Socrates, it's likely to be extremely frustrating and annoying. The Meno addresses this point, with Socrates suggesting how much better it is to be reduced to confusion by such questioning, because at least then you know how ignorant you are!

Both dialogues start off with the question "Is virtue teachable?" In both cases the instinctive answer is, yes, of course it is. But a little exploration reveals that we don't even have a solid definition for what virtue actually is. This is a good question, even today, although we'd probably be more likely to refer to it as "morals" or "ethics". It is also true that (to this day) many of us tend to assume that our own idea of what is righteous or good is self-evidently so, and that anyone who disagrees must simply be bad or wrong.

But once we start really getting into details we can see how slippery the idea of virtue becomes. I've been reading a lot about early Christianity and just finished The Dawn and Twilight of Zoroastrianism, and learned that while the Christian tradition finds suffering quite virtuous, the Zoroastrians considered it a duty to be happy and enjoy the fruits of a good life. Some traditions emphasise rule-following, but international criminal courts hold that "just following orders" is no excuse for doing something we know to be wrong.

This brings up the one main useful idea I got from these dialogues, what Plato calls "the right opinion". This is not true virtue, it's doing what's right by accident because you've been told what to do and it happens to be correct - you don't have a true understanding of what actually makes it right.

This is a useful concept even now, because there are plenty of people who have been "taught" (some version of) right and wrong but might never have given any thought to why they follow the rules they do. You see it too in child development, first they learn when to say "please" and "thank you", but only later do they come to understand the nuances of courtesy. True wisdom, we might conclude, comes from examining our learned ideas of right and wrong, questioning them, deconstructing them, and rebuilding them.

But not at my party, Socrates.

[Mithil Bhoras]

Having read six of Platonic dialogs (Euthypro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Protagoras and Meno) I feel confident in painting a rough picture on what the objectives of these dialogs might be. The focal point of Plato's is not the content but rather the structure: Plato, through his puppet Socrates, doesn't intend to give an objective answer to abstract ideas like Justice, Beauty or (in this case) Goodness; rather, it is the manner in which Socrates uses logic which is essential to understand. The dialogs sometimes tend to be deliberately fallacious, in order for the reader to think in the same way Plato/Socrates wants us to be.

Every person, with their subjective experience, has a different worldview or opinion. But... are they consistent in their opinions? Do they have contradictory logic? Do they think through their thoughts before voicing them? This is what Socrates attacks.

In Protagoras, this challenge is put forth in front of the titular character Protagoras: a high profile Sophist, who were like ancient versions of the modern day self-help gurus. Protagoras is easily my favorite of all the dialogs I have read so far and also one of the greatest pieces of literature. The dialog is unconventional in it's narrative and unpredictable in it's story. The dialog begins with one of Socrates' younger friends, Hippocrates, waking Socrates up at the crack of the morning. He excitedly conveys how the famous Sophist Protagoras is in town and that he intends to learn from him. Socrates, the ever curious and sarcastic soul, asks: learn what? Socrates explains that the first step towards knowledge is to understand what we'll be even learning in the first place. The beginning itself sets the stage for the reader to contemplate their own selves as they interact with this dialog.

Soon, both the characters go to meet Protagoras personally to check out what the Sophist teaches. "That's easy!", says Protagoras, "I teach people to be good people!" Protagoras is the kind of person who adores making long drawn out speeches. Speeches that make the audience forget what the original question was and hidden under the guise of expert oratory that makes the audience clap mindlessly as if they are under his spell. This kind of Populism unfortunately is still universal. Politicians or political influencers have literally given birth to the "X destroys Y" culture on social media. It is only the style that people adore, not the very substance of the words being spoken. Socrates being Socrates "destroys" Protagoras by breaking down his own logic. He shares his doubts on whether "being good" is even something that can even be taught.

The second dialog, Meno, is in my opinion is a mixed bag. For one, I love the subtle sexual tension between Meno and Socrates, as if they are philosophising literally in a bed. Meno, an aristocrat, similarly begins the dialog by posing the same question of "Can virtue ever be taught?" I love that Meno as a dialog is structured unevenly. The first section deals with finding an objective definition for virtue (because Socrates insists how can one know if virtue can be taught if we don't know what it is in the first place?) The second section is where Meno gives up with frustration when they cannot come to a solution, setting the stage to Meno's paradox, a famous but sophistic epistemological problem. The last section deals with Meno's original question he posed in the beginning, with both of them speculating if virtue can be taught through inductive reasoning, without bothering to define virtue at all (since Meno insisted they skip that part)

The reason why I love the uneven structure is because it mirrors real life conversation. Just when things begin to get interesting, a character gives up the train of thought. This leaves the reader frustrated but this frustration is important: it is a lesson for us how not to abandon a line of reasoning; otherwise, we'll never come closer to the truth. Socrates also explains how that same discomfort (called numbness by Meno) is essentially the first step towards reaching what you are after. That discomforting numbness is good and we should not turn back once we feel it. Unfortunately, some people (like Anytus, a character in the dialog) are overpowered by it. The dialog is not perfect because, for the most part, Socrates' arguments are unconvincing and ridiculous. I know this contradicts what I said about the content of the arguments in the first para. But even the implementation of logic, the very heart of Plato's beauty, is flawed.

The "famous" episode where Socrates asks a slave a bunch of questions to prove that learning is only "remembering" is hilariously bad. He asks the slave a geometrical question, the answer to which he gets wrong twice but eventually corrects himself. I love how Socrates happily exclaims "Aha!" to have proven that a soul has retained information which humans only have to "remember"... by asking loaded and leading questions to the slave and literally guiding him to the answer. Socrates' or rather Plato's insistence on this metaphysical concept of a souls and forms are poorly explored, like a passionate young philosopher who thinks they have stumbled across something ground breaking. Plato is at his weakest when he makes extremely wild assumptions about the nature of soul with no empirical evidence. Even if we give the benefit of doubt, it is not convincing. Plato is best when his writing seeks to explore ideas rather reach a specific conclusion, especially in matters for which we don't have evidence for. I am not against Metaphysical enquiries, but Plato seems to present them as gospel, as if it is his way or the highway.

Nevertheless, both the dialogs are compelling in their own ways. Both of them tackle the same issues a) What is Virtue? b) Can it be taught?. Surprisingly, both dialogs reach contradictory conclusions. I felt Protagoras was more convincing in it's use of logic than Meno. The Socrates in Meno (who is supposed to be way older than the Socrates in Protagoras) makes a lot of fallacious claims like "I have never seen someone do x. Hence x cannot be done!" His assertions are wild and Meno agrees with him quite readily. Of course this does make one think if Meno's weird and wild argumentations were done intentionally, since the dialog's aim is to attack the confident yet ignorant stance on abstract ideas that people like Meno themselves hold. Meno is very appropriately taught to be skeptical, but he eventually consumes Socrates' words as gospel instead of inquiring them, proving that he didn't really change. At least in Protagoras, Socrates had a dialog with a seasoned intellectual. So is Meno deliberately an attempt to make itself appear poor? This is debatable.

Of course, if Plato makes you think and disagree with the logic of the arguments, it is possible to say that he is winning nevertheless. No matter if the dialogs are rich or poor, astonishing or fallacious, Plato's works are intellectually stimulating and that is something I don't think anyone can argue against.

[Mary · Rating 4 out of 5]

From the podcast:


The Protagoras (with the traditional subtitle“Or the Sophists”) instead focuses on Socrates taking issue with the idea that morality can be taught and that the sophists are the ones to do it. The historical Protagoras is a subject for another day, but for Socrates buffs, the important thing to keep in mind is that Protagoras, like Gorgias, was a bit of a celebrity. He’s famous enough that the dialogue starts with Socrates telling the story of getting woken up by young Hippocrates who is so excited to meet him that he goes to wake up Socrates in bed. “Protagoras has arrived in Athens!” he exclaims eagerly, to which the groggy Socrates replies “I know. He arrived two days ago...you’ve only just found out? That’s right, he said I only found out yesterday night” (310b-c). One gets the impression that Hippocrates did not sleep much last night in his enthusiasm over the famous sophist. In being such an eager beaver easily impressed by a famous sophist, this scene calls to mind the beginning of the Phaedrus, where another young buck mooning over another sophist confides his admiration in Socrates. Socrates is less impressed. By the way, why do people keep talking to him about sophists? Do they think he’s suddenly going to get all fan boy with them? He’s like the worst person to admit your celebrity sophist crush to.

True to form, Socrates draws the wind out of Hippocrates’ sails, deflating the young man’s expectations of all that he’ll learn at the feet of the orator, but he tags along visit Protagoras where he’s staying with the rich Callias. Again, what does Hippocrates think is going to happen? That Socrates will be polite and respectful for his hero’s accomplishments? That he will condone Hippocrates entering into his tutorage? The comic scene where the slave misinterprets the visitors as sophists and bars the door is probably unintentionally the best response to when you see Socrates at your gates.

Once inside, though, Socrates and Protagoras enter into a conversation on the value of sophistic education, partially, like the the Gorgias, because Socrates can’t understand what exactly a sophistic education prepares you for, unlike, for example, learning to be a sculptor or a flute player or a doctor. Partially, though, Socrates is skeptical of what he demanded in the Gorgias: that a sophist can teach virtue. Unlike in the Gorgias, though, Protagoras has free rein to do things his way.

He starts by telling a myth about the origins of morality, that people lack sharp teeth and claws like animals and instead are granted an internal sense of right and wrong. In addition to this natural moral compass, he goes on, civil society teaches people to be good. Make your little sister cry and your babysitter will send you to time out. Play your music too loud in college and the neighbors will complain to management. Everyone educates the young to be good because “we benefit from people being good to one another” (327b). Okay, sure, but then, why should you need a professional teacher to teach you this stuff? If it’s all internal and pervasive, why devote precious class time? Why pay for this instruction?

Oddly, though, Socrates instead starts talking about the different KINDS of being good--bravery and sense of doing the right, for example--which seems like a bit of a change in topic. What’s cool about this dialogue though, is that Protagoras is allowed to say so. He calls Socrates on the holes in his arguments. I think this is a cool move on Plato’s part, by the way, for what he loses in making Socrates the conquering hero (as he is in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus), he gains in demonstrating how philosophy works--Protagoras is a good critical thinker.

Socrates gets in his hits, too, especially as he starts roasting the wider group of sophists hanging around--the semantic gymnastics of Prodicus for example. Ugh, Prodicus comes across as obnoixious. “Prodicus is always telling me off if I’m complimenting someone--you for example--and I say, ‘that Protagoras, what a terribly clever guy’ He asks me why I’m not embarrassed, calling good thigns terribly anything. ‘After all, something that’s terrible,’ he says ‘is bad.’” Oh my gosh, I’m the side of the sophists and I want to punch this guy. We all know pedants who cock their head at you and then start off a sentence, “Act-u-ally…”

After this semi-comic interlude, we return to the argument of whether good can be taught and...wait, what’s happened? The opponents are now fighting from opposite corners. Now Socrates is arguing that people can be taught to be brave and good because being good is a type of knowledge and then it gets even weirder because Socrates begins to sound a little bit like Callicles in the Gorgias, finding the good to be something like the pleasurable. Wait a second, but what about the argument that Socrates made against Callicles in that dialogue, that pleasure can weaken one’s power and one’s future pleasure? After all, the hedonist who develops a cocaine addiction becomes loses both power and pleasure as the addiction wears on. In that case, says Socrates, that’s exactly what must be taught. “If it’s the case.. That pleasurable=good, it follows that… this ‘not being able to resist’ business is really nothing by ignorance and ‘self control’ is just a matter of knowledge” (358 c).

In the end, Socrates and the sophists end up agreeing about a lot of stuff, even though, in true socratic mode, Socrates reduces everyone else to silence--and a desire to “go through [these questions] another time” (361e). Protagoras, though, gets to say a last peice where he comes off as a really decent dude--he thanks Scorates for his time and energy and says that, by his own admition “I’m not a bad sort of a man, generally speaking, and I’m certainly the last person in the world to be ungracious,” so he compliments Socrates “I’ve spoken about you to lots of people. I’ve often said that you’re by far the most impressive man I’ve met--at any rate, certainly the most impressive of your generation And I can say here and not that I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up as a pretty famous name in philosophy” (361e).

[Fraser Kinnear · Rating 4 out of 5]

Protagoras
Probably the first thing I ever learned about Plato was his famous “Socratic Method”, wherein a philosophical topic is explored through a debate between two positions, each side questioning the other’s position to find the strongest argument.

I remember reading the Republic and Symposium and being disappointed in the quality of this Socratic dialogue. After the first few chapters, Socrates spouts off on what is virtually a lecture for the majority of the Republic. And the Symposium is mostly a collection of individual stories, with a little synthesis from Socrates at the end.

The Protagoras is a much better representation of the method. Socrates debates with a wandering Stoic, Protagoras, over the nature of virtue, and if it can be taught. In fact, I found the methods of the debate, the rhetorical tools each combatant used against each other, to be more interesting than the substance.

The MacGuffin of the story is Socrates’s concern that Protagoras has arrived in Athens to teach impressionable youth a confused or tainted philosophy (Plato clearly creating dramatic irony for the Apology). Sophists, like Protagoras, were simply teachers, but they appear to have sustained a bad reputation for teaching the wrong kind of things. I suspect today they might be likened to SAT Prep Tutors, who are performing a benign service, but advantaging people of means with tools that aren’t real representations of knowledge, but just methods of getting ahead.

We see hints of at least the rhetorical tools Protagoras might be teaching, because he employs them against Socrates. Rather than economic and focused scrutiny of a topic, Protagoras tells appealing allegorical stories (argument by mythos), gives long-winded answers that bury the question, and creates straw-men counter-examples to defeat (the poems of Pittacus and Simonides).

Ironically, Socrates employs some of his own rhetorical gambits in the debate. He too attempts to influence his audience, but with the intention that they collectively can coerce Protagoras to follow Socrates’s own conventions of debate. Contrary to Protagoras, Socrates doesn’t use any of these tools to advance the substance of his argument, but rather to control the pace and focus of the debate. One possible exception is Socrates’s mythos example of the Spartans, but I read that more as a joke.

So what is virtue? Can it be taught? I wasn’t as interested in the substance or conclusions of the Protagoras until I read the next dialogue, Meno.

Meno
The dialogue opens with “Can you tell me, Socrates, whether aretê is something teachable?” My copy translates aretê to “virtue”, but given Meno’s motivations, the word is more appropriately translated to “excellence”. Meno, one of many ambitious young men at the time, presumably saw the political tumult of this “Thirty Tyrants” period they were living through, and was seeking advantage – how to become a great leader. Sophists floated about Athens, selling this advice, and Meno clearly expected Socrates might proffer some uniquely valuable ideas.

But the pair never reach a firm conclusion. Perhaps the audience would conclude that aretê is knowledge, so is probably teachable, which was also Socrates’s conclusion in Protagoras. Virtue also has something to do with justice and prudence, in that an excess of excellence might result in a person being too effective at providing the good things for themselves, at the cost of others. In the domain of economics, this is a question that has never gone away: what should society expect of its exceptionally effective constituents? For example, should taxes be flat or progressive?

I’m grateful for Bartlett’s essay at the end of the text for revealing another layer to the dialog. Plato’s selection of characters was intentional: Meno and Anytus were real characters in history, and proper villains. Anytus’s threats to Socrates are foreshadowing three short years later, when he would stand as one of Socrates’s accusers in the great philosopher’s trial. And only one year after the events of Meno, the eponymous character, motivated by greed and glory, would betray his own Greek troops in warfare against the Artaxerxes II, and would meet a grizzly fate at the hands of the incredulous Persian king, who apparently didn’t trust a turncoat.

Why did Plato choose these characters to debate Socrates? Meno and Anytus both behave with a clear lack of aretê. Anytus is quick to insult and short tempered. Meno has a poor attention span, and is only looking for quick answers to his difficult questions. Meno in particular is a great example of Socrates’s complaint from Protagoras, a person who has muddled ideas about a concept, and as a result is clearly disadvantaged.

Socrates’s impromptu questioning of a slave over geometry felt like an expensive tangent to ground a ridiculous claim about a theory of knowledge as recollection. But Bartlett uncovers a deeper, more literary explanation for this aside. Meno has, early in the dialog, failed a critical test with Socrates. Did Meno understand his own motivation for wanting to know if aretê can be taught? Socrates discovers not, and decides to cut his losses by convincing Meno of the importance of piety for aretê through a mythos and appeal to another authority, Pindar. Socrates observes, almost as an aside, that one should be pious in light of the fact that one lives many lives. This argument doesn’t seem very fleshed out, but it clearly does appeal to Meno’s vanity, and keeps him hanging on to Socrates for more study, albeit impatiently.

Wherein the generalizable lesson of Protagoras is negative advice on what poor philosophical methods one should be weary of, the Meno is positive advice on the right philosophical method: understanding first how one defines the thing they want to study, and then developing their own understanding from first principles.

[Rylie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Socrates makes me mad. Also why does this have to be so much more confusing than it actually is. Just say what you mean. We’ve got some chronic over thinkers on our hands

[Richard Newton · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Meno and Protagoras are two of Plato's better known works and a standard component of many undergraduate courses which touch on philosophy. These are relaxed modern translations - they are easy to read and the philosophical concepts are generally easy to identify from them. The supporting essay is a bit light, but if you want analysis there are plenty of other versions. I did occasionally feel that the translation was a bit too colloquial - I'm not suggesting Plato can only be approach by formal language, but I guess most people reading these will be students and this translation does not always match lecturers expectations (mind you it does not claim to). But, if you just want a good easy way to read Plato this is perfect.

[Cassandra Kay Silva · Rating 5 out of 5]

Socrates's approach to Protagoras was much more round about than he dealings with Meno. I preferred Protagoras, but felt that there was much to get out of both of these dialogs. This is a wonderful set of dialogs that explore the essence of virtue. They also expose the Sophists of the time to a bit of ridicule and ponderings. Having never met or talked to a sophist appears not to be an issue here. I liked the topic of conversation but am absolutely not resolved to the conclusions drawn on these topics.

[Nate · Rating 4 out of 5]

more interesting as a cultural insight to ancient greece circa 2500 years ago, which is nothing short of fascinating. admittedly the logic and semantic arguments themselves are rather dull to read nowadays but it would be silly to deny and recognise their influence

[Milo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have taken the controversial and – very likely – false position that Protagoras is a work written in complete irony. We might suppose the earlier Socrates was not yet entirely set on his anti-hedonistic notions, and that the earlier Socrates is very willing to entertain any idea that is self-consistent (this being the great flaw in his dialectic), but even accepting these premises, it seems he takes a rather unusual manner of approach, trading (in essence) his view with his opponent. A moment that struck me was the analysis of the Pittacus fragment, which is both nonsensical and extremely extensive – begun by Socrates just moments after his demand that Protagoras keep his answers short. Could it be that Socrates is using a sophistic approach (of sorts) to mock his opponent, and those things his opponent stands for? If we follow the sophistic view, then it must be that all virtue is pointed to the long-form of pleasure and that one simply need know what the long-form of pleasure is to therefore become virtuous in all ways. This fulfils the Socratic demand for continuity but bristles very profoundly with both the general Socratic view of virtue (not in its relation to knowledge, but its essential object), and with Socrates’ initially stated (and otherwise argued) statement against the ability to provide someone knowledge (and so virtue) in the manner of the sophists. It seems more credible, or at the very least more entertaining, if Socrates is pulling the sophist rug, and tangling the bearer of knowledge (and wisdom, and goodness) in such a way as to find him making totally inverted claims, and agreeing with premises that stood entirely against his earlier, stalwart position. Look: the world is now upside down. This is the man who claims he can teach goodness, who has been shown incapable in defining goodness, or what constitutes it, or how exactly it is conveyed. Perhaps this is literary angle; it is the one I am bound to take.

Meno is my supporting crutch in this position, packaged as it is in neat series with Protagoras. Here we encounter the more classical Socratic position: that virtue cannot be taught (for where are its teachers?), and that the nature of virtue is evidently not decided upon by worldly hedonism but by some access to a world-beyond. Socrates’ method of access is that of recollection, which is later built upon in the Phaedo; in that text we understand that the spirit and the body are not conjoined, and that the former will bring from the outer-world much that is not immediately accessible in the world-as-it-is. Recollection is, in both dialogues, the means by which we do not acquire so much as remember knowledge already inborn within us. Here Plato’s forms become a crucial, if not directly assessed contributor: it is these we might possess knowledge of. This becomes a curious means by which to address Meno’s paradox, which is to say, Socrates accepts the premise that someone with no knowledge of a thing is therefore incapable of in any way apprehending it. It must be, therefore, that the knowledge of things exists already; that even an unlearned slave can recall some basic understanding of mathematical relations with a brief series of prods. Could it be that such a meagre series of prompts could, in a genuinely ignorant person, produce this degree of understanding? Though I might counterpose: if this is what returns to the mind knowledge we already possess, might we not call the prodder a teacher, and leave it at that? The question would then force us into Phaedo-territory, and ask the next question: are all people born with the same reserves of knowledge, ready for extraction? A continuous answer, fit for the Socratic method, might answer – necessarily – that they are not. Therefore virtue, or at least access to virtue, is inborn; only those with the potential to access certain aspects of it can be steered in the right direction. The implications of this idea are staggering, of course; it is perhaps an overbold answer to the question why do virtuous men produce unvirtuous sons. But it is, as Socrates most enjoys, a consistent report. He closes the dialogue by introducing the idea of divine intervention – inspiration – another uncountable element upon which we must depend. Besides this, we are left with a hanging epistemology, by which true belief and knowledge are distinguished. True belief is certainly useful; but without the tethering of knowledge they may wander and shift – it is the recollection of real knowledge that might verify one way or the other (though in that clause a whole new catalogue of problems). In Meno I see Socrates not so much as the provocateur and the word-twister – I think it is remarkably important that he comes to the exact opposite conclusion as Protagoras and much more straightforwardly. Here we see the man pressing onward toward Platonic philosophy, quite undressed of irony.

[Jaemes]

Notes to myself again because writing a review of Plato seems weird.

It's tempting to think the question of this dialogue is whether appearances are deceiving or not. I balk a little because that seems simplistic, but there's a lot of support for it. The crucial passage is 356d-e where Socrates distinguishes between the "power of the way things appear" and "knowing how to measure things." This is a surgical cut into Protagoras who, remember, claims "man is the measure of all things." That famous fragment is surely the background of the "face" analogy for virtue in the dialogue (are the virtues all the same or is each different, like the parts of a face?)

This explains also why recognition and misrecognition are leitmotifs in the dialogue. How can man be the measure when we so obviously misrecognize each other? If appearance is the standard of truth, won't we constantly be "misled"?

The dialogue, in fact, performs this very operation on the reader. In the penultimate passage, Socrates shows the reader that they have been misled by the dialogue into misrecognizing the two main speakers' position (and it is a really amazing twist, honestly).

The other major themes are beauty, pleasure, and memory, and each of these have clear connections to the problem of appearance. Memory is fickle, first of all. Pleasure is, Socrates aims to prove, typically misrecognized—people don't seem to understand that there are no pleasant things that are bad. To be "bad" for someone just means ultimately (in the long run, in sum) to be unpleasant. Beauty, finally, is hardly equtable to truth (at least here). Plato indicates the Greek commonplaces about beauty—its association with youth and boys—and then ends the dialogue by saying that Callias is beautiful. But Callias is old! He is only beautiful because, as Socrates points out midway through, he loves philosophy. So Plato has shown the reader that beauty is not a stable reference point for truth. It can mean different things.

The subtitle of the Protagoras neatly hints at these issues. "Η Σοφισται• ενδεικτικός" means "or, The Sophists, an arraignment." But the last word, arraignment, comes from a word that means "pointing out, showing, displaying" (just as an arraignment is to "appear" in court). Plato is, in other words, saying, let's get to the bottom of this appearance business, investigate it to see if it's telling the truth.

As a final straw, Socrates has the "dialogue" itself "appear" as a personification in the last passage. Nothing else should more definitively prove that appearances can be deceiving, right? How could a "flow of words" ever "appear"? This is, consistent with Plato's other engagements with the Sophists, a critique of their Heraclitean metaphysics.

[Roger Marc Bond Choquette · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't think I've enjoyed a Socratic dialogue so much as I enjoyed these, even when the arguments weren't always very persuasive.

I'm still reading books to better understand AI, and I wanted to add some depth by reading epistemology. So, I started where I always do when learning a new branch of philosophy.

I suppose the question I am seeking to answer in this part of my reading is: what is intelligence? And, accordingly, what would make it artificial?

These books mostly concern whether virtue can be learned (assuming it exists), so they are not entirely on topic, but that leads to a discussion in the Meno about the nature of learning.

In particular Meno and Socrates discuss the difference between "true belief" and actual "knowledge". The latter being information one is certain is true, and the former being information that cannot be verified with certainty but nonetheless turns out to be true.

I think this discussion was helpful in my AI readings because it reminded me both that (1) many of the impressive claims of a chatbot are actually akin to "true belief" (or sometimes false belief...) and (2) that's just because most human understanding is based on belief. Assuming direct experience is reliably correct and thus constitutes knowledge, most of the time we're just making do with the best we have. We can reason with certainty from the assumptions given, but they are just that: given.

I also think that the geometry lesson given by Socrates was revealing. As I understand, much of AI reduces down to algorithms which humans have taught by intervening to state whether an outcome was correct. Socrates has the idea that humans already have certain knowledge-and while his questions are leading, it is evident that the boy is able to work things out for himself. He can teach himself. He has an internal capacity for growth.

It seems that the chatbots have a similar capacity since it is "trained" on large data sets without human intervention, but it is not trained to understand or develop general principles (as the symbolic AI movement attempted), but rather it effectively is copying and pasting high likelihood answers which other humans have already written. All it "learned" was percentages.

At least, this is my current understanding. It will be awhile before I get to the technical reading.

One last note: this reading raised the interesting question for me of whether a computer can be virtuous or good.

[Isen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Protagoras and Meno consists of, shockingly, the Protagoras and the Meno, two dialogues dealing with virtue.

In the Protagoras Socrates is visited by an excited Hippocrates, who tells him that the famous sophist Protagoras is in town, and Hippocrates was on his way to give him all his money in exchange for lessons in public speaking. Socrates is having none of that, of course -- it is not sufficient that I live in poverty, everyone else must live in poverty too -- so he accompanies Hippocrates to put Protagoras' wisdom to the test.

The discussion with Protagoras is motivated by the question as to whether virtue could be taught, which leads to questions such as what is virtue, is it a single thing or many, and do grown Athenians have better things to do with their time than intentionally misinterpret poetry for cheap giggles. No wonder Sparta won the war.

What is remarkable about the Protagoras is how little patience Protagoras has for Socrates' shit. He sees through the most egregious abuses of logic the man tries to push on him, and calls him out of it, forcing Socrates to retreat into his safe space of epistemic hedonism and trap Protagoras into admitting that courage is, in fact, knowledge. Whether or not the reader learns something, it's a fun dialogue, and leaves many talking points open to the reader to discuss with others.

The Meno consists of a discussion between Protagoras and Meno about the same issue -- is virtue teachable, and what is it really. Of course Socrates is leaning towards his favourite thesis that virtue is, in fact, knowledge, but in the end admits some reservations on the score. Of course most famously Meno is the source for Plato's theory of learning-as-recollection, demonstrated via Socrates' attempt to teach mathematics to a slave boy. Laying the philosophical issues raised here aside, what struck me here is how little mathematics education has changed over two thousand years. Leading questions, condescension, and a student who may or may not in fact understand. So much for pedagogic progress.

Both dialogues are very readable, and involve interlocutors that actually contribute, either by challenging or questioning Socrates, rather than just blankly assenting to everything he says.

[Luke Merrick · Rating 2 out of 5]

The book reads a lot like a play based on the socratic method. In the first part, a group of sophists engage with the wise man (Protagoras) in an exploration of the nature of virtue and
whether or not it can be learned. The conversation then appears to devolve into somewhat of a duel between Socrates and Protagoras in a few other topics such as Hedonism and different elements of virtue. Eventually, Socrates overcomes Protagoras with his inquiry and the scene is over. I was very interested in a brief section near the close of Protagoras’ portion that noted the base reason for human action; “No one willingly goes to meet evil or what he thinks to be evil. To make for what one believes to be evil, instead of making for the good, is not, it seems, in human nature…” I have considered this idea before in relation to the nature of the will. That is, nobody actually does what they think is evil in and of itself. If there is some conscious evil that one wills it must follow that it is because of a greater good that one justifies their action.

In the second part; Meno, Plato describes a conversation between a sophist named Meno and Socrates. Again, the question is whether or not virtue can be learned. Throughout the argument Socrates virtually dismantles Meno’s case in affirmation that it can be learned. He makes the point that since it is not a type of knowledge it cannot be taught or learned. Ultimately both parties agree that virtue is given by “divine dispensation”. Socrates (or Plato’s) epistemology really clicked for me when reading this time. The soul is immortal and has existed in perpetuity and will continue to do so. Since the soul is immortal it has passed through every possible form of existence it contains within itself all knowledge. Because of this, Plato says that all learning is actually recollection. We do not learn anything new, instead we remember it. This is vital to Plato’s case because it undergirds his entire epistemology. Without this line of reasoning, there would be no reason to trust oneself in his pursuit of reason. It is a type of presupposition from which one must begin in order to make sense of one's reality.

All in all, this was an interesting look into ancient dialogue and philosophical discussion.

[Damien 明心 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Please note for my review I don't know Ancient Greek. And I'm reading the dialogues of Plato in dramatic order cf. [ https://monadnock.net/plato/order.html ]
What I've read:
Protagoras, Meno, Last Days of Socrates.
(first version of review - 2025年12月21日)

This isn't the first work by Plato I've read, the first was The Last Days of Socrates also published by Penguin Classics. Protagoras and Meno are nice works to read as a prelude to The Last Days of Socrates, as some details anticipate the trial of Socrates. In all honesty like my previous read, this book went over my head, and was hard to grasp. A different strategy I'll use next time is to have someone else, or use AI to ask questions to examine, analyse, comprehend, and discuss a text. If I find a new understanding of the book, I'll update my review.

I really liked the idiom of the book, except for the poetry which had modern slang which stood out from the rest of the dialogue. The idiom was clear to understand. I compared a few lines of Protagoras with the Oxford Classics translation and preferred the Penguin classics translation. I also compared with David Horan's translations for the sections of poetry, and prefer Horan's handling of the poetry as far as style is concerned. The Penguin Classics one by translated by Adam Beresford translates into English idiom, and doesn't use Latinised or translator jargon that only those who know Greek would understand. It also says that the notes can be skipped on first reading, so I did as recommended and only read the notes on the second reading. The notes were excellent, as was the introduction and glossary of Ancient Greek vocabulary. The only other nit-pick I would take at the translation is the issue of translating Prometheus and Epimetheus' names as Thixahead and Thinxtoolate. I would perhaps go with Thinks-ahead, or Thinks-too-late, or use an incorporated footnote, Prometheus-god of forethought, Epimetheus-god of afterthought. I also liked the mathematical diagrams of the Meno which made the dialogue with the slave clear.

Compared with the Last Days of Socrates, this is more of a nice place to start off with Plato, and acts as a prelude to Socrates Last Days.

[Curtis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Protagoras is the perfect Platonic dialogue and one that I'd recommend to relative newcomers to Plato looking for something a bit meatier than Apology or Euthyphro, whilst remaining quite readable and straightforward in its ideas. The key question throughout the dialogue, which takes place between Socrates and the famous sophist, Protagoras, is 'can virtue be taught?'.

There is no doubt much debate about this dialogue but to me it read very much like a conclusion to the earlier 'Socratic' dialogues, which end so often in a dissatisfying 'aporia', or 'impasse'. After reading Euthyphro (What is piety?), Laches (What is courage?), Lysis (What is philia?) and Charmides (What is temperance?), I was really starting to tire of Socrates aporetic conclusions and had started to wonder when I would start to hear Plato's voice (or at least what I recognize to be the voice of Plato in Meno, Phaedo or Republic) taking control. In Protagoras, however, it felt as though Socrates were still in control, but that he had finally reached his conclusion and resolved the aporia once and for all.

While Socrates conclusion comes as no real surprise if you've read a few of Plato's works before, the fact that it felt like it was Socrates himself that was reaching the conclusion was immensely satisfying and, for me at least, made the other Socratic dialogues feel like preliminary reading prescribed by Plato to lead us to Socrates true conclusion in Protagoras.

This is a very well written and well structured dialogue and, as many people have mentioned below, it's nice to see Socrates going up against a true adversary in Protagoras, instead of an interlocutor who breaks early on and allows Socrates to pretty much have his way with them philosophically. I will certainly re-read this one again in the future, purely for pleasure, and can't recommend it enough.

NOTE - This review is for the Protagoras only, and is for the free kindle edition of the Jowett translation that is available on Amazon (which I couldn't find listed here). Like many of my reviews of Plato's dialogues, this review was made after a complete second reading.

[Matt Ely · Rating 5 out of 5]

The dialogues are well paired, and I'm glad to have read them in sequence, both for my first time. They each occupy a central concern of Plato, and probably Socrates too, that of whether virtue can be taught like any other element of knowledge, or whether it is somehow inherent in some but not in others.

The dialogues come to few conclusions. The ones they do come to are not necessarily neatly proven (for instance how no one learns anything, but merely remembers what one already learned in past lives). Instead, both dialogues serve as a model for the process of education. This is not unique in the dialogues, but they demonstrate how Socrates would use inquiry and a precise definition of terms in order to uplift all parties in conversation. He was convinced that by maintaining an honest, direct dialogue, two people could learn something that neither knew at the outset. For the educator, this itself is an important demonstration. Furthermore, the inquiry into what can and what cannot be taught is useful for the educator who sees themselves as bearing the burden of a child's entire life; there are some things you cannot hold yourself responsible for.

Ultimately, I was honestly surprised at how accessible the dialogues were. That has something to do with translation, surely, but Plato, in this case, does not fly so far over your head that he must be brought down. Rather, the clarity of Socrates' inquiry and the time he takes to understand what he is talking about take the reader with him. It is a dialogue of improvement by participation that is much more accessible than anything over 2000 years old has any right to be.

[Mr Siegal · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting phenoMENOn

I purchased this book primarily to read Meno. Protagoras was an interesting little dialogue and a very enjoyable one at that, but Meno was the one to read.

Though both dialogues are interested in what is virtue, in Meno, you find what I think to be one of the most interesting questions in philosophy, namely, how can you search for what you do not know, for you will not know when you have reached it (I have paraphrased). This is a question that has not been answered adequately. I don’t view it as a sceptical question, but more of a matter of fact question.

Socrates answers this question by saying that the soul is immortal and thus, it is one with the world and hence has knowledge already. Then, acquiring knowledge is simply a form of remembering. Though Socrates believes to have answered this question put forth by Meno, I believe (and I hope many others), that it is not an adequate answer, for he relies chiefly upon mysticism and what priests say.

All in all, finding an answer for Meno is, I believe, a very crucial question for philosophy, one that has not been taken up with much seriousness, and one that should. If we cannot find an adequate response to Meno, then we must rethink our enterprise. In conclusion, a fascinating little dialogue.