Philosophical Issues in Educatoin, Winter 2004

DePaul University

Professor Craig A. Cunningham

Providing a Context for Plato's Protagoras

Geographical Context

(larger map)

 

(Note relative locations of Crete, Asia Minor (now Turkey), Italy.  Note importance of the sea.)  Greece is divided by mountains into isolated regions, each of which developed its own sovereign government.  Athens is in Attica, part of Peloponnesia. Athens is easternmost sea port on Greek Mainland (sea port was called Piraeus): hence a place where culture, ideas, and material goods were exchanged.

Historical Context

• 546-479 Greek City-States at war with Persians
• 490 Protagoras born (SOPHIST: "Man is the measure of all things.")
• 479 Athens (together with Sparta and other city states) defeats Persians
• 469 Socrates born ("The unexamined life is not worth living.")
  
• 460 Pericles establishes formal democracy in Athens and uses money collected from allies and conquered lands in war against Persia to build Parthenon and other structures (more about Pericles here)
• 460-431 "Golden Age"
• 435 The Protagoras takes place
• 431-404 Peloponnesian War (between Athens and Sparta)
• 427 Plato born
  
• 415 Alcibaides (Socrates' student) accused of destroying herma
• 413 Athens defeated in Sicily (due to Alcibaides' treason)
• 404-402 Thirty Tyrants (rule for 18 months by Critias and other exiled oligarchs including Plato, some of whom studied with Socrates)
• 403 Restoration of democracy (with amnesty for oligarchs, but not for Socrates, who was labeled their intellectual mentor, or Plato, who fled the city)
• 399 Trial and Death of Socrates (withaudio clips)
• 390-88 The Protagoras written (?)
• 387 Plato returns to Athens after visiting Egypt, Sicily, Italy (and geting to know the work of Pythagoras, the mathematician)
• 387-85 The Meno written (?)
• 387, Plato establishes the Academy (on land owned by Academos), a school for young men (existed until shut down in 529 AD by Justinian (for being "pagan")
• 384 Aristotle born
  

• Comparison of ancient Athens to contemporary America
• After Persian war, Athens used ships to form merchant fleet and so prospered.
• With increased international commerce and wealth, belief in traditions (contained in Homeric epics and Greek mythology) broke down.  Increased interest in math and science, more "critical" art forms:  rise of drama….rise of philosophy.
• Political form: "pure" democracy (actually of 400,000 residents, 250,000 were slaves, only men over 30 were considered full citizens, and most people did not have time or inclination to attend Ecclesia, or Assembly; highest court, or Dikasteria, was over 1000 men--to make bribery expensive--chosen by alphabetical order).
• Importance of RHETORIC (persuasiveness) as well as LOGIC and GRAMMAR (the Trivium) Sophists stepped into the educational void and began offering courses in these three subjects (later, after Plato, there would be public education); but their teaching varied, and often assumed a critical stance toward traditional beliefs.

Skip to Meno discussion

More about Plato

• born 427?; died 347 bc
• son of wealthy aristocrat
• called "Plato" because of his broad shoulders; was a champion wrestler
• Student of Socrates during late teens and 20s (was 28 when Socrates died)
• Socrates' death led to Plato's distrust of democracy
• After Socrates' death, traveled for 12 years in Egypt, Italy, perhaps India
• Returned to Athens in 387, ready to write and teach
• Founded "The Academy," the first formal university in the Western world

Platonic ideas

• Founder of "ontological realism," an ontological view which says: Above and beyond the everyday world of appearances, there exists another, more perfect realm of pure Ideas, universals, or Forms, which are the true reals or existences: permanent, unchanging, and divine.
• The Ideas are the true existences: they define the categories of thought and existence.
• The world of appearances is just an approximation of the pure Ideas: that chair is a chair because it is similar to a True Chair.
• "true reality" exists in a transcendent realm of Ideas, Forms, or Universals.  These Ideas can also be thought of as "First Principles"--axioms from which all appearances stem.  (Thus, a "true education" is an examination of "First Principles" through a process known as the "dialectic.")
• Allegory of the cave (click on link for original text): most men treat the world of appearances as if they were the true reality. It is as if they were in a cave, with the sun shining into the cave, and casting shadows on the wall; most men look at the shadows and think they are real; but some men, the philosophers (lovers of wisdom), turn, and realize that the shadows are just shadows,   and ascend from the cave, to the world of true being (the Ideas or Forms); these men, because they have been enlightened (and see the Sun in all its Truth), have an obligation to go back inthe cave and instruct the others, to guide them, as they live in the world of appearances.
•     Philosophers are RARE; most men cannot deal with the truth.
•     Difference between true knowledge and opinion.
•     Distrust of majority rule; believes the philosophers should rule: the "philosopher kings" (Guardians) of The Republic.

For more information about Plato, click here, or here.)

The Sophists

• Sophists: professional teachers of rhetoric (and other subjects) [Note: Socrates sometimes considered a sophist; Plato claims he was not, because (1) he did not charge for his teaching and (2) he stressed "true knowledge" rather than rhetoric].
• Sophists: professional teachers of rhetoric (and other subjects) [Note: Socrates sometimes considered a sophist; Plato claims he was not, because (1) he did not charge for his teaching and (2) he stressed "true knowledge" rather than rhetoric].
• A note on "sophistry"
• sophism: (from Greek sophisma: clever device, trick, argument. A. A plausible but fallacious argument, esp. on intended to display ingenuity in reasoning. 2. Specious or oversubtle reasoning, sophistry, casuistry.
• sophist: In ancient Greece, a scholar, a teacher; spec. a paid teacher of philosophy and rhetoric, esp. one associated with specious reasoning and moral scepticism; gen. (now rare) a wise or learned person. Now, a person using clever but fallacious arguments, a specious reasoner, a casuist.
• sophistry: 1. Specious or oversuble reasoning, the use of intentionally deceptive arguments; casuisty; the use or practice of specious reasoning as an art or dialectic exercise. 2. Cunning, trickery, craft. 3. The type of learning characteristic of the ancient sophists; the profession of a sophist.
• specious: 1. Pleasing to the eye; beautiful, handsome...2. Deceptively attractive in appearance or character; merely apparent. 3. Superficially geniune or correct but in reality wrong or fasle; (of an argument, reasoning, etc.) misleadingly sound or convincing.
• The difference between Socrates and the sophists: "Socrates did not regard education and philosophy as training how to do things, but as a process of acquiring a knowledge of the nature of things" (Sinclair, A History of Greek Political Thought, Routledge 1951, p. 94).
• For Socrates, the "things" of interest were moral qualities (virtues, justice, love)
• If these "things" exist, then what are their features? Do individuals decide (relativism), or are the features universal (absolutism)?
• Sophists tended to think these things are relative, "man made," and thus that different "positions" on what they are are equally worthy of debate.
• Socrates believed these things were universal, that their features are the same everywhere, a priori (before thought).
• He also believed that if people attained knowledge of the universals, they would inevitably act according to virtue: "no one does evil willingly"; everyone seeks what they understand to be "the good," and knowledge of the true good ensures truly good behavior. (Do we believe this?)

Key questions in "The Meno"

• What is virtue/excellence?
• What is "the good" or "goodness"?
• Is there a foundation for moral judgments?
• Can virtue be taught?
• How do we teach virtue?

Some other topics for discussion

• Describe the key differences between Meno's and Socrates' notions of the nature of virtue.
• In Meno, Socrates opines that virtue is equivalent to knowledge.  What argument can be made that knowledge is virtue?
1a.  What is knowledge?
1b. What is "the good"?
1c.  How does knowledge help someone to achieve "the good"?
• What is the elenchus and why is it important?

Specific key passages

• what is "the elenchus" and why is it important? (Page 13: "I do not know how to answer you..." Also with slave boy, page 17. Admission of ignorance necessary before search for truth can be undertaken.  Many people are filled with opinions, not all of which are "tethered" or are knowledge.)
• Recall Meno asks whether virtue can be taught and Socrates says we first need to inquire into what IS virtue (that is, the nature of something needs to be understood before an accidental or secondary qualities can be pinned down.)
• page 6: looking for the essence of virtue: "They all have a common form which makes them virtues."  What is that form? (Here there is the notion that all "substances" have an essential quality; definitions are pre-existent; inquiry is the process of DISCOVERING the pre-existent essence of a form.)
• Page 8:  "Do you not understand that I am looking for that which is identical in all particulars."  Notion that courage, compassion, sense of justice, etc. are all "virtues" because they share common essence; which is what?
• Page 11: "do you really imaging that a man knows evils to be evils and desires them notwithstanding?"..."Is it not obvious that those who are ignorant of their nature do not desire them (evils) but desire what they suppose to be goods although they are really evils; and therefore if in their ignorance they suppose the evils to be goods they really desire goods?" "...if there is no one who desires to be miserable, there is no one who desires evil..." (Notion that no one desires evils willingly; if they desire evil, it is because they think it good. All, then, DESIRE good.  So what distinguishes those who pursue evil from those who pursue good?)
• Page 13: "I fear that I must begin again and repeat the same question: what is virtue."  Here Socrates expresses frustration with Meno's inability to DEFINE "virtue" without referring to particular virtues.  Again, notion that the definition or essence of the thing EXISTS and must be found.)
• Here digression into notion of FORMS as pre-existent.
• Plato's notion that "true reality" exists in a transcendent realm of Ideas, Forms, or Universals.  These Ideas can also be thought of as "First Principles"--axioms from which all appearances stem.  (Thus, a "true education" is an examination of "First Principles" through a process known as the "dialectic.")
• Page 14: Socrates rejects idea that simply because we do not know something we should not inquire (eristic argument); this argument supposes that there are only two states: complete ignorance and full knowledge; but in fact there is an intermediary state in which BELIEF or OPTINION (doxa) can serve as a first step in inquiry
• Doctrine of "recollection" of knowledge and passage with slave boy
• Page 20: "Some things I have said of which I am not altogether confident." (The "recollection" view of learning is not central to Socrates's view; Plato on the other hand probably believes in this and the immortality of the soul.)
• Page 20: Meno wants to return to question of whether virtue can be taught; Socrates again says that reverts the order, but agrees to go forward with the "hypothesis" that virtue is knowledge (that is, within (page 21) the "class knowledge"
• Page 21:  Both agree that "virtue is that which makes us good"
• Page 21-22: "courage wanting good sense, which is only a sort of confidence...when a man has no sense he is harmed by such confidence" et seq. (Each of the qualities discussed BECOMES good when it includes "sense" or understanding, wisdom, knowledge)
• Page 22: "If then virtue is a quality of the soul, and is admitted to be profitable, it must be wisdom or good sense, since none of the things of the soul are either profitable or hurtful in themselves, but they are all made profitable or hurtful by the additioni of wisdom or of folly; and therefore if virtue is profitable, virtue must be some sort of wisdom."
• Page 22: "The good are not by nature good," that is, they BECOME good by acquitring " by instruction"
• Page 23: problem that is virtue is knowledge, who are the instructors? (here comes Anytus: sample Athenian citizen who later prosecuted Socrates)
• Page 24: Meno "desires to attain that kind of wisdom and virtue by which men order the state or the household, and honour their parents, and know how to receive citizens and stangers and to send them on their way as a good host should" (here we have a social def. of virtue)
• Page 25: Anytus: "Any Athenian gentlemen taken at random will do far more good to him than the sophists, if Meno will mind him"
• Page 27: Meno: much disagreement about what virtue is and whether it can be taught.
• Page 28: notion that there are NONE who "know" the good, but
• Page 29: "true opinion" is as valuable as knowledge
• Page 29: notion that knowledge is "bound" whereas true opinion "walks off"
• Page 31: Since knowledge is so rare, the "virtuous" are those with right opinion, those who are "inspired" or given a divine "instinct" for the right

The Protagoras

Protagoras, from Abdera (in Greece), most reputable sophist, many Athenian students, about 65; epistemological relativist said "man is the measure of all things, of those that are that they are, and of those that are not that they are not"; knowledge is relative to the knower, and no man can call another wrong; also religious agnostic…said "Concerning the gods I cannot say either that they exist or that they do no, or what they are like in form; for there are many hindrances to knowledge; the obscurity of the subject and the brevity of human life."
• Before Protagoras's speach, Socrates claims virtue cannot be taught; two reasons: 1. All citizens can speak on issues of government (as opposed to, say, shipbuilding, which requires expertise); 2. Good men can't make their sons good.
• Protagoras' speach (p. 32-39); demonstrates Protagoras' teaching style (telling stories; narratives; using myths); claims the capacity for political wisdom ("virtue") is universal ("otherwise the state could not exist"); claims that it is not automatic, by "acquired by instruction and taking thought", shown by use of punishment (contrast between dwarfism and viciousness); goodness of children depends on 'natural talent' or capacity and on instruction (nature AND nurture); moral education is EVERYWHERE, like language instruction.
• Protagoras claims that laws are "inventions of good lawgivers of ancient times" (thus man-made, not divine).
• Socrates' reaction to Protagoras' story

Meno's/Protagoras' view of virtue

• Virtue is a category or set of traits or dispositions (tendencies to behave in certain morally acceptable ways):
• Example:  "I trust Jane; she is an honest person."
• Example:  "If trouble comes, I hope Jim is around; he is very brave."
• Example:  "Pericles's character is an inspiration to the moral development of young men and women."
• All people have some capacity for virtue
• An agent can have some traits and not others
• There is no ultimate "good"; all goods are relative to situation, goals, ends
• An act is "good" (and therefore virtuous) if it furthers other goals
• "Morality" is mainly a matter of social convention; people make the rules
• Political success is the ultimate "sign" of Athenian virtue; includes:
• reputation
• rhetorical skill
• organizational skill
• Virtue is taught through:
• punishment
• admonition
• the laws
• fables, stories, myths
• narratives
• Vice is result of lower capacity to learn virtue or insufficient attention to moral education

Advantages to this view:

• does not depend upon acceptance of a rational argument
• accounts for different moral rules in different societies
• compatible with evolutionary view of human nature
• appeals to our common-sense understanding of virtue
• validates our common attempts to teach virtue to the young
• provides justification for democratic forms of decision-making

Problems with this view:

• The only way to resolve moral disagreement is moral suasion:  "Let me tell you a story that will convince you that adultery is wrong"; makes rhetoric more important than logic.
• No acknowledgement that morality has spiritual dimension; makes religious beliefs arbitrary or facetious
• Seems to reward ability to manipulate and deceive
• Leads to "power politics", "moral relativism," and crass individualism
• Claims that our most heartfelt moral commitments are just "opinions"
• Specificity thesis (The Character Education Inquiry, 1928-1930, by Hartshorne and May):
• the behavioral manifestations of character are situationally specific
• an agent's behavior correlates more highly with situational variables than with personal attributes conceptualized in terms of traits
• specificity thesis is supported by the (Edward) Thorndike's notion of learning as the acquisition of specific "connections," each of which develops as a specific response to a specific stimulus (NOTE: connectionism is still a popular psychological view, but it has been enhanced; new theories do not require the same level of specificity)
• character as a "bag of virtues" seems to take certain moral IDEALS (such as honesty, compassion, justice, temperance), and "psychologize them" into traits or dispositions, when evidence shows that people's traits and dispositions are not as "general" as these ideals
• Also, studies of character education have shown that:
• widely practiced educational activities such as reciting inspirational passages, singing patriotic and prayerful songs, and even democratic discussions about the school's moral aims have little effect on students' "character" behaviors, especially when compared to personal and social factors outside of the classroom teacher's control

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Socrates's/Plato's view of virtue

• Virtue is knowledge (that is, courage is knowledge; honesty is knowledge; a sense of justice is knowledge)
• The capacity for knowledge is universal, but most people never attain true knowledge
• People vary in their willingness to question received knowledge; only the philosophers (lovers of wisdom) suspend judgment in seeking the Truth
• Vice is ignorance (and because true knowledge is rare, vice is widespread)
• EVERYONE has some virtue (knowledge) and some vice (ignorance)
• Pleasure is The Good
• Pain is Evil
• No one does evil willingly: all people THINK they are acting to maximize pleasure
• Knowledge that pain will result from an action is sufficient to dissuade agents from doing wrong
• Assumes that the agent's SOUL will suffer consequences of evil actions
• A virtuous person uses knowledge to choose actions which maximize pleasure and minimize pain
• The "hedonic calculus" is the rational evaluation of the probable consequences of actions
• A virtuous person is one who exercises major restraint in accepting anything as true, and who reflects long and hard (on probable consequences to one's being and soul) before making decisions.
• Virtue is taught through the elenchus (leading student to humility) and through shared philosophical inquiry into questions such as:
• what is the good?
• what is true?
• what is beautiful?
• what does it mean to be virtuous?
• what does it mean to be vicious?
• how can we increase our own virtue?

Advantages to Socrates'sPlato's view:

• Results in "scientific" approach to moral issues; recognizes the importance of FORESIGHT
• Results in same morality in all situations or societies
• Easy to convince people that pleasure is "good"
• Acknowledges spiritual ideas such as "soul," and "absolute good"
• Accounts for revulsion we feel when we perceive evil (it's not just opinion)

Problems with Socrates's view:

• Some people seem to get pleasure from doing pain
• Some people seem to do evil knowingly
• Suggests that democracy is a bad idea; better to invest certain "experts" with moral authority
• Very smart or well-educated people do not seem more moral than the dim-witted or uneducated
• "Pleasure" seems too crass to serve as basis of morality
• Some widely accepted moral rules are not supported; examples:
• strictures against incest, sodomy, pornography, adultery, homosexuality
• manners and other social conventions
• Children do not seem capable of considering consequences of their actions, yet do not seem "evil"

For more information

• The elenchus

...on to Aristotle

last updated 1-27-04