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Protagoras
The presocratic philosopher Protagoras of Abdera (490–420 BC), founder of the sophistic movement, was famously agnostic towards the existence and nature of the gods, and was the proponent of the doctrine that 'man is the measure of all things'. Still relevant to contemporary society, Protagoras is in many ways a precursor of the postmodern movement. In the brief fragments that survive, he lays the foundation for relativism, agnosticism, the significance of rhetoric, a pedagogy for critical thinking and a conception of the human being as a social construction.
This accessible introductory survey by Daniel Silvermintz covers Protagoras' life, ideas and lasting legacy. Each chapter interprets one of the surviving fragments and draws connections with related ideas forwarded by other sophists, showing its relevance to an area of knowledge: epistemology, ethics, education and sociology.
This accessible introductory survey by Daniel Silvermintz covers Protagoras' life, ideas and lasting legacy. Each chapter interprets one of the surviving fragments and draws connections with related ideas forwarded by other sophists, showing its relevance to an area of knowledge: epistemology, ethics, education and sociology.
- GenresPhilosophyNonfiction
112 pages, Paperback
First published September 11, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
June 12, 2017
My review from Amazon (with two minor corrections):
This is a wonderful book. Few books on ancient philosophy can keep the reader engaged while actually informing them in the way this one does. It benefits from the author’s writing style, which is exceptional. The book is also an erudite work of scholarship filled with much useful and fascinating information. None of Protagoras’s works survive, and any scholar writing a volume dedicated to a presocratic philosopher, or for that matter presocratic philosophy in general, must piece together a system of thought from fragments quoted in other sources. This book does an excellent job of that.
I particularly enjoyed chapters two and chapter three, the latter being the main reason I purchased the book. Along with a number of other fascinating things, Chapter two tells us about Protagoras’s role as an intellectual supporter of democracy. This support is problematic because Protagoras publicly favored popular sovereignty (for free men), while privately believing that the masses could, and in fact were, manipulated by urbane political speech. In other words, democratic rule was to Protagoras a way of extending ostensible political power to the majority of men, when in reality, control would remain in the hands of influential elites. The beliefs of the majority of male citizens could channeled, he claimed, so as to serve the interests of the powerful.
For me, chapter three alone is worth the price of admission. According to Werner Jaeger in his 1936 Gifford Lectures (published as the Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers in 1967 by Oxford), the Promethean myth told by Protagoras in Plato’s Protagoras, is an authentic rendering of Protagoras’s actual views. Protagoras was ahead of his time, not only because of his relativism, whose modern counterparts are cultural relativism and post-modernism, but also in his social scientific theorist. Protagoras was an early anthropologist and sociologist who developed a theory of the origins of the human race, the first human societies, the process of enculturation and socialization, and the political role of religion in these phenomena. Highly recommended.
This is a wonderful book. Few books on ancient philosophy can keep the reader engaged while actually informing them in the way this one does. It benefits from the author’s writing style, which is exceptional. The book is also an erudite work of scholarship filled with much useful and fascinating information. None of Protagoras’s works survive, and any scholar writing a volume dedicated to a presocratic philosopher, or for that matter presocratic philosophy in general, must piece together a system of thought from fragments quoted in other sources. This book does an excellent job of that.
I particularly enjoyed chapters two and chapter three, the latter being the main reason I purchased the book. Along with a number of other fascinating things, Chapter two tells us about Protagoras’s role as an intellectual supporter of democracy. This support is problematic because Protagoras publicly favored popular sovereignty (for free men), while privately believing that the masses could, and in fact were, manipulated by urbane political speech. In other words, democratic rule was to Protagoras a way of extending ostensible political power to the majority of men, when in reality, control would remain in the hands of influential elites. The beliefs of the majority of male citizens could channeled, he claimed, so as to serve the interests of the powerful.
For me, chapter three alone is worth the price of admission. According to Werner Jaeger in his 1936 Gifford Lectures (published as the Theology of the Early Greek Philosophers in 1967 by Oxford), the Promethean myth told by Protagoras in Plato’s Protagoras, is an authentic rendering of Protagoras’s actual views. Protagoras was ahead of his time, not only because of his relativism, whose modern counterparts are cultural relativism and post-modernism, but also in his social scientific theorist. Protagoras was an early anthropologist and sociologist who developed a theory of the origins of the human race, the first human societies, the process of enculturation and socialization, and the political role of religion in these phenomena. Highly recommended.
January 5, 2016
I'm reading this along with Plato's Protagoras. I like the author's discussion of Protagoras' secret teaching.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews