Protagoras and Meno

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 show more 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. show less

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 show more 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. show less

1. Ménon (***): Sócrates, a tremelga grega, usa sua maiêutica para dar choques de realidade em seus interlocutores, de modo a paralisar o que toca em um primeiro momento, deixando-os perplexos, e assim abrir caminho para o verdadeiro conhecimento. É entendendo que não sabemos que nos conectamos com a possibilidade de buscar o conhecimento, cujas nossas mais profundas estruturas do racional permitem alcançar; procurar a recognição do que a alma esquecera ou enterrara à consciência. Se limparmos, portanto o terreno das certezas confusas, infundidas de maus hábitos ou flacidez por falta de uso, podemos acessar esse estado de busca da verdade. O exemplo do escravo de Ménon o mostra: esse estado é despertado no outro através da show more dialética, do fazer o outro perceber sua ignorância e formulá-la enquanto tal. Porque a alma é imortal e viu tudo quanto é coisa, em todos os mundos, e conhece tudo. E assim lembrar-se-ia do que é a virtude, se colocada no caminho correta. A natureza sendo conectada, um conhecimento puxa o outro, e aprender é lembrar na alma. Conhecismento é reminiscência.

De toda forma, com sua queda por mancebos bem apessoados, Sócrates quer mostrar a Ménon como é difícil definir a virtude e assim, incerto ensiná-la. Pois não se define algo listando as coisas que nele participam, nem fornecendo várias definições diferentes para as partes, nem inventando sinônimos substitutivos. Então é preciso investigar a definição real: Sócrates exige definições que mostrem a essência comum que faz as coisas serem o que são. No caso da virtude, entretanto, o processo do diálogo leva a uma antinomia (um impasse): em que a virtude é um conhecimento, pois só o conhecimento é inerentemente bom e então condutor das ações à virtude; entretanto, ela não é ensinada, e aqueles que aprendem outras coisas bem, nem sempre a possuem. Resta sugerir que o processo que levaria uma alma a reconhecer a virtude desperte em cada um a virtude...

2. Protágoras (****): escrito em uma forma mais cômica, Sócrates madruga contra sua vontade para ir com Hipócrates a ver o famoso Protágoras, um dos velho sofistas, orgulhoso da sua arte retórica, cercado de seguidores. Ele explica ser um educador a ensinar virtude cívica, o que dá a oportunidade para Sócrates de novamente (vide Meno) avançar a ideia de que virtude não se ensina e provocar a aporia da virtude (ou não se ensina e é conhecimento, ou se ensina e não é conhecimento). Protágoras inicia com uma bela versão do mito de Epimeteu e Prometeu, mas cujo foco é: Zeus, para que os humanos não se extinguissem, distribui qualidades cívicas aos povos, a técnica não produzindo a coesão necessária para a sobrevivência. Assim, esta é mais igualmente distribuída que os saberes específicos, e por isso todos ensinam todos o tempo todo. O experimento mental aqui é interessante: imaginem uma cidade em que a habilidade mais importante para a sobrevivência é saber tocar flauta. Como toda a vida social voltar-se-ia para flautismos, e como as pessoas seriam impelidas a constantemente ensinar flautas umas às outras.

Sócrates então intervém com a ladaínha de sempre - se a virtude é una ou várias, e Protágoras acredita no modelo da cara, que é una, mas cujos elementos mantém suas especificidades. Segue então uma disputa retórica intensa, em que Sócrates quer desenhar a estrutura do debate para favorecer sua estratégia maiêutica (invocando o laconismo dos espartanos e mentindo sobre ter uma memória ruim), cortando a discursividade fluente de Protágoras e seu apreço por questões específicas. O argumento de sócrates vai no sentido de converter a coragem a uma sabedoria, e portanto conhecimento benéfico, virtude. Desse modo ele pode dizer que a virtude é una e cair na aporia. Pois agora Protágoras terá de defender que ela não é conhecimento, para que possa continuar a ser múltipla, e então não se ensina. O resultado é uma troca de posições, que é a situação comentada no Meno. show less

This short dialogue on the issue of virtue (arete) and whether it can be taught is apparently one of Plato's works from his second literary period, written after Book 1 but before the remaining books of The Republic. The introduction to this version is by the translator, Benjamin Jowett. There are few references to other works in the modern academic tradition, but Jowett makes particular mention of Meno in relation to the works of Descartes, Locke, Bacon, Hume, Spinoza, and Berkeley. I found this interesting as I have been exploring deductive versus inductive methods of research in recent times. Plato tends to be deductive, in moving from general ideas and principles to specifics, whereas the inductive method draws on specific cases to show more lead to general principles. Karl Popper was not a fan of induction, it seems. That Plato draws on Pythagoras and Heraclitus is obvious, but Jowett points out that there is no explicitly stated link. Most interesting was Plato's finding (through the words of Socrates, p. 75):

Then, Meno, the conclusion is that virtue comes to the virtuous by the gift of God.

That this is an early work makes sense. I frequently adopt the Socratic method in my teaching (as does much of academe even if implicitly) and a few times I have received feedback that sums it up thus:

The Socratic method sucks. I hate it.

By the end of this work, I couldn't help think that Socrates was being egotistical. Sure, he tried to shock people to realise their ignorance, but in this case, and as important as the idea is to so many philosophers, but in particular, Heraclitus, I thought the finding was quite a cop-out. All that posturing to say what Heraclitus had said more eloquently? The big lesson for me is that the Socratic method, when practised by the un- or under-practised, could easily come off as it does in Meno. I am half-way through a cover-to-cover reading of The Republic at the moment, which seems better polished and far less obtuse. It may well be that Desmond Lee's translation is better than Jowetts's. But clearly, if I am to be better at using the Socratic method, I must take into account how an amateurish use of the method may come off as egotistical with my students. I can recall the instances where this may well have been the case. But the idea of deduction versus induction and Jowett's comments on Plato in relation to other philosophers ranging from Descartes to Spinoza are worthy of further exploration. Additionally, Jowett states that modern philosophy no longer asks the sort of questions asked by Plato (p. 29). I think this explains why Nietzsche's madman shouts in the market place (The Gay Science, section 125, p. 90):

God is dead! ... And we have killed him!

Here Plato has Socrates tell us that virtue is a gift of God, which I can see means that to be virtuous requires one to find God. Rather than the shopkeepers telling the madman that they didn't know we had lost Him, and in spite of Plato's unrefined use of the dialogue (compared to his more advanced, later use), it would seem that modern philosophers are the crowd looking on and laughing at Nietzsche's madman (or, if you prefer, Huxley's self-flagellating Savage), while all the time they have forgotten their very origins. show less

A couple of the more enjoyable dialogues because they are much more accessible and they concern a more practical topic: virtue. That said, I find it hard to rate it high when I disagree with a large part of Socrates' argumentation and conclusions. I have no certainty that virtue is the same as knowledge, as he states in both of them, and then dismisses later in the Meno. I do think it's possible to have knowledge and still act unvirtuously, unlike Socrates. And I do think that sometimes emotions, passions, or other sorts of impulses can over-ride knowledge in the course of decision-making, unlike Socrates. I vehemently disagree with the conclusion in the Meno that virtue is some sort of divine inspiration. And finally, I completely show more disagree that it cannot be taught. There is also Socrates' false modesty on great display in Protagoras, especially 361a. I wish I knew how much of this was Plato and how much was the genuine Socrates. show less

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.

Plato's earlier dialogues don't really seem to go anywhere. Maybe they are more to be appreciated as examples of philosophical method in the socratic tradition. A really funny quote that stood out to me was towards the end of the Protagoras where he says to Socrates "I'm sure you'll be a famous name in philosophy one day". And here I am, reading Plato's reconstruction of that conversation some 2400 years later.