PHL202H5 Lecture Notes - Lecture 7: Techne, Prodicus, Dialectic
Document Summary
The burden of the irst part of protagoras"s discourse is this: virtue is only important within societies; it is a social function that all members of a community share. The second part poses the question of whether or not virtue is innate or taught, but this question is not answered. Instead, it is displaced by protagoras"s argument that greek society functions as if it were teachable, and that the institutions and structures of the greek polity are all premised on the principle that virtue can be taught. On the one hand, then, protagoras"s concession to his listeners marks him as an unserious and somewhat casual thinker; on the other, this concession indicates how deeply his method of philosophy is determined by that philosophy. Deep- seated ambiguities like this are central to plato"s representation of protagoras: he is both a sophist and thus a igure to be disparaged and a profound thinker, who must be respected.
