Protagoras - Lecture notes 4 PDF

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Lecture Notes from T. Brennan's class...

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SUMMARY - 309a outer frame, Socrates and unnamed friend dialogue (friend doesn’t return) - 314c Socrates mistaken for Sophist - 314c S awoken by Hippocrates, potential disciple of Protagoras - 317c Protagoras professes to teach, Socrates doubts. H unable to state what it is he plans to learn. - 320c great speech of Protagoras (including Prometheus). - claims to teach politics and personal affairs - virtue is teachable, basis of political systems and criminal justice systems - 320d Epimetheus’s oversight - 322c origin of shame and justice - 324d why sons fail to match their fathers - 328d unity - 328e Protagoras’s view of virtue, it is one with parts (other virtues, four cardinal ones + holiness) - 335d Socrates threatens to leave: favors short answers, while P likes to rant - 335d audience (Callias, Alcibiades, Critias, Prodicus, Hippias) save the discussion. Protagoras questions Socrates first, bringing up Simonides’s poem and calling it inconsistent - 338e Socrates defends it, saying that it contends that it’s hard to become good but impossible to be good all the time (due to misfortune, the only evil specifically ignorance) - 347c Socrates critiques poetic exegesis - 328a Socrates returns to questioning virtue, connecting wisdom and courage - 357c Protagoras, Hippias, and Prodicus accept hedonism: the only good is pleasure, to commit an evil action is to unwittingly opt for pain > pl pleasure. easure. - cowardice is failing to fear the right things, ffearing earing that which should not be feared. thus, courage is a form of knowledge. - 351b hedonism shown to be incompatible with akrasia - 360c Protagoras butthurt - previously, accepted that wisdom, temperance, justice, and holiness all unified as virtue, and virtue is another name for knowledge. can be taught. - 361a the final paradox: argue opposite original positions. - 361d Socrates: we didn’t say which virtue is first - 361d Protagoras avoids, Socrates leaves. complains about missing appointment. Class -

Hippocrates independently wealthy, no need to go through with apprenticeship - offended his aristocratic pride, unwilling to become tradesman - liberal arts, basic craft-like disciplines for those who do not need to work with their hands

9/5 Class - virtue terms are terms of praise - Socrates has multiple theories of virtue - science of human welfare - general science is able to answer specific questions for everyone - not “cookie-cutter,” but is able to provide answers - human irrationality

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unclear to us, but could be understood by a well-placed external observer

activity: How do most people explain irrational behavior? - Unsatisfactory, internally incoherent. - How to better explain irrational behavior - 352b-356a...