Plato’s Protagoras stages an intellectual showdown between Socrates and the famous sophist on a vital question:
Can virtue be taught?
Protagoras appealed to culture and storytelling; Socrates pushed for precision and logical unity.
At stake was more than education—the dialogue Protagoras explored whether morality was a skill, a strength of will, or something innate in all of us. It also raised a deeper concern:
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If we are wrong about what virtue is, but believe we can still teach it, what will be the collateral damage in students who emulate the wrong masters?
This dialogue speaks to educators, parents, citizens—and anyone wondering whether the good life can be transmitted person to person or is a solo task only for those willing to reflect.
Protagoras
At the start of the dialogue, Socrates was at a situation that was of his time, but it is also of our time. A candidate Hippocrates had been looking for a teacher to gain worldly wisdom, but at the beginning of the dialogue hadn’t been accepted yet. For anyone who has ever gone to school and found misleading information taught, teachers saying anything, no matter how valueless, to continue their graft, or simply information that is too abstract to be practical, Socrates’ warning about value for money is still important for the modern citizen perusing expensive courses online and degrees that employers treat as simply pieces of paper, because they require work experience before taking you seriously. What can you actually do after you earn your diploma? Wisdom and virtue have to lead to wise and virtuous actions that increase goodness in the surroundings to get employers or customers to take notice. Wisdom in the general sense can easily obscure important details that motivate a student to change and improve their behavior, and therefore be bad value for money. For Socrates, if a wise person, a Sophist, is imparting information, it concerns the enrichment of the soul, and this dialogue continued Plato’s interest in the role of knowledge and courage in acquiring true wisdom. The risk in getting misled is the potential for making bad decisions for as long as one persists in following the said advice.
Plato: Euthydemus: https://rumble.com/v74kd5y-plato-euthydemus.html
SOC: “What’s that got to do with you? Protagoras hasn’t done you any wrong, has he?”
HIPP: “By gods he has, Socrates! Because he’s wise all by himself and doesn’t make me that way.”
SOC: “But, surely if you give him money, and make friends with him, he will make you as wise as he is himself…Who will you be going to and what will you become? If you were intending to go to Polycleitus the Argive or Pheidias the Athenian to pay them a fee on your own behalf, what would you answer if someone asked you, ‘You have the idea of paying this money to Polycleitus and Pheidias because they’re what?'”
HIPP: “I’d say because they’re sculptors.”
SOC: “‘So that you yourself would become what?'”
HIPP: “Obviously a sculptor.”
SOC: “So if someone asked you the further question about this, too, ‘Then you’re going to Protagoras so you yourself will become what?'”
HIPP: “If it’s anything like [in the previous case], it’s obviously so I’ll become a sophist.”
SOC: “What do you consider a sophist to be?”
HIPP: “I’d say he’s just what the name says…someone who knows wise things.”
SOC: “No doubt it’s possible to say that about painters and carpenters too, that they’re people who know wise things, but if someone were to ask us, ‘Among wise things, what is it that painters are knowers of?’ we’d tell him, presumably, that it’s of things related to the producing of likenesses, and so on with the others. But if someone asked this: ‘And the sophist? What among the wise things is he a knower of?’ What should we reply to him? What sorts of work is he in charge of?”
HIPP: “Someone in charge of making a person formidable at speaking?”
SOC: “Presumably a harp-teacher likewise makes a person formidable at speaking about the very thing he also knows, namely harp-playing, right?”
HIPP: “Yes.”
SOC: “Okay, so then what does a sophist make a person formidable at speaking about? What is this that the sophist is a knower of himself and also makes his pupil a knower?”
HIPP: “By Zeus. I no longer have anything to tell you.”
SOC: “What about it then? Do you know what sort of risk you’re getting yourself into by putting your soul at stake? If you had to entrust your body to someone, running the risk that it would become either sound or unsound, you would consider carefully from many angles whether it should be entrusted or not, and call in the advice of friends and relatives while investigating the matter for a good many days. But when it comes to your soul, something you regard more highly than your body—and the good or bad outcome of everything of yours rests on whether it becomes sound or unsound—in this case you don’t consult your father or your brother or any of your companions about whether or not your soul ought to be entrusted to this foreigner who’s come here. But after you heard about him in the evening, as you say, you come at the break of dawn, have no discussion or deliberation about this matter of whether you should entrust yourself to him or not, and you’re ready to spend your own money and that of your friends, as though you’d already determined that it’s necessary at all costs to get together with Protagoras, whom, as you claim, you neither know nor ever had a conversation with, and whom you call by the name of ‘sophist,’ while it plainly appears that you don’t know what in the world a sophist is, though you’re about to entrust yourself to one—is that it?”
HIPP: “So it seems, Socrates, from the things you’re saying.”
SOC: “Well, Hippocrates, isn’t the sophist in fact a sort of merchant or dealer in commodities from which a soul is nourished? He appears to me to be something of that sort. And make sure, my friend, that the sophist doesn’t deceive us when he praises the things he offers for sale, the way the merchant and dealer do about nourishment for the body. For doubtless they have no knowledge themselves of what’s sound or unsound among the the commodities they bring to market, but they praise everything they offer for sale, and those who buy from them have no knowledge of it either, unless one of them happens to be a fitness expert or a doctor. And in the same way, those who carry the learnable things around from city to city, as dealers offering them up for sale, praise everything they have for sale to the one who desires them at any moment; but it’s probable, you best of men, that some of these too are ignorant of what among the things they offer for sale is sound or unsound for the soul. And it’s the same way too with those who buy from them, unless one of them happens to have the skill of a doctor, in this case about the soul. So if you happen to be someone who knows what among these things is sound or unsound, it’s safe for you to buy learnable things from Protagoras or from anyone else whatever; if not, though, you blessed one, see that you don’t roll the dice and take a risk with the most precious things. For as a matter of fact, the risk in the buying of learnable things is much greater than in the buying of food. For when food and drink are purchased from the dealer or merchant, it’s possible to carry them off in separate containers, and before admitting them into the body by drinking or eating, it’s possible to put them away at home in order to get advice by calling upon someone who understands what should be eaten or drunk and what not, and how much and when, so that there’s no great risk in buying them. But with learnable things, there’s no such thing as carrying one off in a separate container, but once one has handed over the price and taken the learnable thing into the soul itself and learned it, it’s necessary to go away either harmed or benefited.”
When Hippocrates and Socrates found Protagoras, it didn’t take long for the teacher to exert his influence, bringing past students with testimonials, and making promises. The students were all interested in getting better treatment by gaining a name for themselves. “The greater part of those who were following along behind [Protagoras] listening to what was said appeared to be foreigners—[He] brings them along from each of the cities he passes through, casting a spell over them with his voice just like Orpheus, while they trail after him spellbound; and some of the local inhabitants were also in the choral dance. I was especially entertained at seeing how beautifully this chorus was taking care never to get in Protagoras’s way or be in front of him, but when he and those beside him turned back, this audience somehow split expertly into two rows in perfect order on the one side and the other, and wheeling around in a circle they always fell back into place in the rear most beautifully.”
Protagoras was aware of the envy and jealousy that could be aroused by being an itinerant teacher, influencing students to abandon their homes to follow him for long periods of time. He was aware of past sophists that camouflaged their teachings on virtue by pretending to teach more socially acceptable skills, but Protagoras instead followed a more forthright approach.
PRO: “I acknowledge that I’m a sophist and that I give people an education, and I take this to be a better precautionary measure [by] acknowledging it rather than being in denial…So it’s much the pleasantest thing for me, if it’s something you folks want, to make my discourse on these things right in front of everyone who’s in here…Young man, it will assuredly be the case for you, if you associate with me, that on the day on which you come into association with me you’ll go home having become better, and the same things will happen on the following day, and each day you’ll make continual progress for the better.”
Socrates posed the same questions he gave Hippocrates about the actual skills that he would be learning with Protagoras: How to be a good citizen.
PRO: “For Hippocrates, in coming to me, will not have the same experience he’d have by coming into the company of some of the other sophists. The others abuse the young terribly. For when they’ve steered clear of the arts, they drag them back again against their will and shove them into arts, teaching them arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, and music, but when he comes to me he won’t learn a single thing other than what he came about. The thing to be learned is how to make good decisions about his own affairs, so he can run his own household the best way, and about the affairs of his city, so he can be the most powerful in his city’s affairs in both action and speaking.”
Socrates reiterated the challenge with politics in how one can hire a political consultant that guarantees results the way an artisan with practical skills can confidently provide sage advice in the form of an identifiable procedure. When one is not taken seriously, one is open to ridicule. Is political consulting real?
SOC: “I see that whenever the city needs to act on some measure pertaining to building, the builders are summoned as advisors about matters of building, and whenever something pertains to shipbuilding, it’s the shipbuilders, and the same way with all other matters that they regard as being learnable and teachable. But if anyone else, whom they didn’t believe was professionally skilled, were to try to give them advice, then even if he’s a very fine-looking fellow and rich and belongs to a well-born family, they’re none the more receptive to him, but jeer and hoot at him until the fellow trying to speak either stands down himself after he’s been shouted down, or the guards drag him away or pick him up and carry him off on orders of the presiding officials. But whenever something needs to be deliberated on that has to do with managing the affairs of the city, the one who stands up and gives them advice about these things may equally well be a carpenter, a blacksmith, or a leatherworker as well, a merchant or a ship’s captain, a rich man or a poor one, of good family or no family, and no one casts aspersions at them, as in the previous cases, for not having learned it anywhere or not having anyone who’s been his teacher, and then trying to give advice. For it’s obvious that they don’t regard it as teachable.”
In Socrates experience, political knowledge is often not transmitted from ruler to successor and there’s an element of learning only when one runs across lessons and is able to recognize them through trial and error on the job. Errors in many cases kept the foundation of virtue from being installed which opens politicians and the public to corruption, boondoggles, wreckage, and misadventures. Some teachers fail to teach because they are afraid of being replaced, so failure to impart knowledge becomes a gatekeeping function. It can then be inferred that virtue in politics is making the right decisions for the city state as a householder does for his family. For a household to succeed, all the members of the family have to work harmoniously together, and so for a city-state, political virtue stops infighting and pursues a thriving state of affairs.
SOC: “I have a great many others to tell you about who are good themselves but never made any of their family members, or anyone else, better. When I pay attention to these things, then, Protagoras, I don’t regard virtue as being something teachable.”
Instead of dialoguing directly with the audience, Protagoras decided to tell a story to make his point. In this story of the origin of man, he describe humans as being good at somethings and weak in others. The strengths allowed individuals to survive on the Earth in their own way. One of the ways humans were able to work together was the provision of enough resources for each of the types. He recounted the Prometheus myth of the stolen knowledge of fire, indicating that humans can imitate Gods and therefore imitate each other in order to gain skills and knowledge, but mostly by the way of witnessing the skills being used, rather than a transmission of knowledge from teacher to student. The skill of politics was still missing and cities would crumble under repeated injustice. The Gods had to instill a sense of shame into humans and punish the shameless so that cities could once again be established under justice and moderation.
Politics is connected with economics and cities are all about citizens trading their expert skills with one another so as to share in the common wealth. Appetitiveness has to be moderated so as to allow stores of wealth to grow through saving and there has to be a military to defend against marauders and thieves. For Protagoras, the fact of shame proves a common sense in all, and the teacher, barring the need to shame a student, virtue is teachable. He provided more examples to Socrates of the endless parenting, threats of punishment and exile as examples of one generation molding another, though he provided a qualification that those who are rich have the easiest access to education.
PRO: “This is what is done by those who have the means, and those who have the means are the rich; their children begin to go to school soonest and leave off latest. When they have done with masters, the state again compels them to learn the laws, and live after the pattern which they furnish, and not after their own fancies; and just as in learning to write, the writing-master first draws lines with a style for the use of the young beginner, and gives him the tablet and makes him follow the lines, so the city draws the laws, which were the invention of good lawgivers living in the olden time; these are given to the young man, in order to guide him in his conduct whether he is commanding or obeying; and he who transgresses them is to be corrected, or, in other words, called to account, which is a term used not only in your country, but also in many others, seeing that justice calls men to account. Now when there is all this care about virtue private and public, why, Socrates, do you still wonder and doubt whether virtue can be taught? Cease to wonder, for the opposite would be far more surprising.”
Protagoras further illuminated the situation with examples of cultural transmission, such as language, and how what profits all is easily transmitted, because no one loses position in society when knowledge of justice is communicated. Teachers in virtue become hard to find because it requires people to be examples that surpass the average in skill, and so there’s no need for teachers of virtue.
PRO: “And it’s exactly in this category that I believe myself to be, someone who is better than other human beings at helping people come toward the beautiful and good, and I believe I’m worth the fee I charge and still more than that, so much so that it seems that way even to the student himself. And for these reasons, I’ve adopted this sort of procedure for charging the fee: whenever anyone learns from me, he pays over the amount of money that I charge if he wants to, but if not, he goes into a temple and takes an oath as to how much he takes the things he’s learned to be worth, and puts down that amount.”
Socrates was momentarily astonished, but he wanted the detail of a craftsman as to how virtue was underpinned.
SOC: “Go over these same things for me in a precise way in an argument, as to whether virtue is some one thing, and justice, moderation, and piety are parts of it, or these things which I just now spoke of are all names for the same thing, which is one. That’s the thing I’m still yearning for.”
Protagoras responded that the different aspects of virtue are like parts of a face that are related to the whole. This opened up the weakness in his argument that all people partake in virtue, yet many are good at some aspects of virtue but faulty in others.
PRO: “Many people are courageous but unjust, and many too are just but not wise.”
SOC: “So these are also parts of virtue, wisdom and courage?”
PRO: “They most of all, without a doubt, and wisdom is certainly the greatest of the parts.”
SOC: “And each of them is one thing, and another is another thing? And does each of them have its own particular power? Just as, with the parts of a face, an eye is not the same sort of thing as the ears, and its power is not the same, and neither is any of the others the same sort of thing as a different one, either in its power or in any other way, is that how it is with the parts of virtue too, that there is no one part that’s the same sort of thing as another, in itself or in its power? Therefore no other one of the parts of virtue is the same sort of thing as knowledge, or the same sort of thing as justice, or the same sort of thing as courage, or the same sort of thing as moderation, or the same sort of thing as piety.”
PRO: “No.”
SOC: “Is it the case then that piety is of such a sort as to be not just but unjust, and justice impious? I myself, on my own behalf, anyway, would claim that justice is pious and piety is just.”
Socrates and Protagoras were stuck in how to say how similar piety and justice were to each other. If they were different, were the differences small or large? The similarity at a minimum would be that piety and justice equally occupied categories, even if they were in different categories. Socrates then illuminated the fact that we can register difference and those differences do matter.
SOC: “We’re agreed that something done without good sense is done in an opposite way to something done moderately? And something done moderately is done with moderation, while something done without good sense is done with a lack of good sense? One thing is opposite to one thing only and not more? And if it’s done in an opposite way, it would be done by an opposite power? Is a lack of good sense the opposite of moderation?”
PRO: “It appears so.”
SOC: “Then which of our statements are we going to turn loose, Protagoras? One thing’s being opposite to one thing only, or the one in which it was said that moderation is something different from wisdom, while each one is a part of virtue, in addition to being different and dissimilar, both they themselves and their powers, just like the parts of a face? Which of the two are we going to turn loose? How could [it be that] it’s necessary for one thing to be opposite to one thing only, and not more, while to a lack of good sense, which is one thing, wisdom and then again moderation appear to be opposite? So would moderation and wisdom be one thing? Then too, earlier on, it appeared manifest to us that justice and piety are pretty much the same thing. Does it seem to you that any human being is moderate in committing injustice, whatever injustice he commits?”
PRO: “I’d be ashamed to agree to that, Socrates, although many human beings certainly say so.”
Socrates continued clarification by showing that one could be good at doing evil, or injustice, and that it would be necessary to see an action in how it affects other people, before one could consider an action good. One could make an excuse that if something is good for oneself, then that is enough, even if others are ignored in the process. Socrates wanted to understand the nectar of goodness that was pure and unadulterated by any sort of badness. Protagoras introduced again moderation into the debate because of how good things can be used in bad ways.
PRO: “So varied and multifarious a thing is the good that here is something that’s good for the outside of the human body but for its insides, this same thing is the worst, and hence all doctors forbid people in a weakened condition to use olive oil, other than the smallest possible amount, on the things they’re going to eat, just enough to subdue any unsavoriness in their foods and sauces that might make its way to their senses through the nostrils.”
Socrates felt that Protagoras was too long winded with the intent of making the audience forget the details of the debate, and as he was about to leave, the audience convinced him to stay.
PRO: “In my opinion, Socrates, the most important part of an education for a man is to be formidable in the matter of verses; that is, to be able to understand which of the things said by the poets are composed rightly and which not, and to know how to distinguish them and give an account of them when questions come up. And now in particular, the question will concern the very thing you and I are now having our conversation about, namely virtue, but carried over into poetry; it will differ to that extent only.”
To get at the reason for moderation or extremity, there’s a need to delineate between the activity of good versus the adjective good. Protagoras recited a verse that he felt contained a contradiction.
PRO: “Now Simonides says somewhere, to Scopas, the son of Creon of Thessaly, that…Ah, but it’s hard in truth for a man to become good, Built squarely in hands, feet, and mind, beyond reproach.”
He got Socrates to agree that it’s a beautiful verse before demonstrating that later on Simonides contradicted himself. “That saying of Pittacus doesn’t seem to me well-tuned, Spoken though it was by a wise mortal: hard, he says, to be good.”
Socrates clarified that Simonides was actually arguing with Pittacus and blaming him, but yet still confessing that Pittacus was right. Being good is easier than becoming good. Being and becoming are two different things and so Simonides was talking about two different things.
He quoted Hesiod for clarifying the distinction between being and becoming.
For before virtue, the gods have placed sweat…[but when] one reaches its summit, then it’s easy going, hard though it was to attain.
Becoming was hard for Socrates because of the effort involved and he managed with Prodicus to get Protagoras to agree that “I know perfectly well that Simonides meant the very same thing by ‘hard’ that all the rest of us do, not ‘bad’ but whatever is not easy comes only through a lot of trouble.”
Because humans are not Gods, and cannot maintain perfect effort and resistance at all times, Socrates quoted Simonides again…
A god alone should have this privilege.
Man can be either more good or bad based on how well they apply effort and if there’s irresistible misfortune, nothing can be done other than being in a bad state, but when the surroundings can be resisted successfully, then Good can be acted upon. To drill down further, resisting is some kind of skill and that “what way of acting well makes someone a good doctor? Obviously, learning about the treatment of those who are sick. And bad, badly: well, then, who would become a bad doctor? Obviously, someone who already is a doctor in the first place, and secondly a good doctor, since he’s the one who could also become a bad one, while we who are ordinary people when it comes to medical knowledge could at no time, by acting badly, become either doctors or carpenters or anything else of the sort. And obviously anyone who couldn’t become a doctor by acting badly couldn’t become a bad doctor either. And in the same way, a good man can also become bad at some time, through the action of time or being worn down or being sick or some other of fortune’s blows, for this is the only way of acting badly: by being deprived of knowledge. But a bad man could not become bad at any time, since he always is that way; if he were going to become bad, he’d have to become good first. So this part of the ode also tends to this conclusion, that it’s not possible to be a good man and stay good to the end, but is possible to become good and for the same person to become bad, ‘and they’re best longest whom the gods love.'”
There’s a difference between willingly doing bad and unwillingly doing so. This eliminates perfectionism because no one is blameless, but evil is the one who plans and sets out intentionally to do bad. Leading to a heuristic, Socrates wanted to know what situations one had to put effort in and resist in order to be virtuous. “Do wisdom, moderation, courage, justice, and piety, which are five in name, refer to one thing, or is there some particular being and thing underlying each of these names, each having its own power, with no one of them the same sort of thing as another?”
PRO: “I say to you that these are all parts of virtue, and that four of them are reasonably close to one another, while courage is very much different from all the rest. You’ll recognize that what I say is true from this: you’ll find a lot of human beings who are very unjust, very impious, very self-indulgent, and very unintelligent, yet courageous to an exceptional degree…people keen to go where most people are afraid to go…The ones who are too audacious.”
SOC: “So then doesn’t it plainly appear, that people who are audacious in that way are crazy rather than courageous? And in those other cases, the wisest are also the most audacious, and since they’re the most audacious, the most courageous? And by this argument, wisdom would be courage?”
PRO: “Audacity and courage are not the same thing; so what follows is that the courageous are audacious, but the audacious are still not all courageous. For audacity comes to human beings from artfulness, and from spiritedness and craziness as well, just as power does, while courage comes from nature along with good nurture of souls.”
SOC: “And do you say, Protagoras, that some human beings live well and others badly? And does it seem to you that a human being is living well if he lives in pain and suffering? But what if he were to get to the end of his life having lived pleasantly? Does it not seem to you that in that case he would have lived his life well? Therefore it’s good to live pleasantly and bad to live unpleasantly.”
PRO: “So long as it’s beautiful things that one lives his life taking pleasure in.”
SOC: “What, Protagoras? You don’t mean that you too, like the general run of people, call some pleasant things bad and some painful ones good? I mean, insofar as things are pleasant, aren’t they good in that respect, apart from anything else that might result from them? And on the other side, aren’t painful things bad in just the same way, to the extent they’re painful?”
PRO: “There are among pleasant things some that are not good, while among painful things in turn there are some that are not bad, some that are, and a third sort that are neither bad nor good.”
SOC: “What condition are you in on the matter of knowledge? Does this too seem to you the same way it does to the general run of human beings, or some other way? The way it seems to most people about knowledge is something along the lines that it’s not a strong or guiding or ruling thing, and since they don’t think of it as being of that sort, when knowledge is present in a human being, as it often is, they think it’s not his knowledge that rules him but something else, sometimes spiritedness, sometimes pleasure, sometimes pain, occasionally lust, frequently fear, literally thinking of knowledge as they would of a slave that can be dragged around by everything else. So is something like that the way it seems about it to you too, or does knowledge seem to you to be a beautiful thing of such a kind as to rule a human being, that if one recognizes what’s good and bad, he won’t be prevailed on by anything to do anything other than what knowledge tells him to do, and that intelligence is strong enough to provide support to a human being?”
PRO: “It seems just the way you say, Socrates, and at the same time, for me, if anyone, it would be shameful not to claim wisdom and knowledge are the most powerful of all things in human affairs.”
SOC: “Now you know that the general run of human beings aren’t persuaded by me and you, but claim that many people who recognize what’s best aren’t willing to act on it, though it’s open to them to do so, but act from other motives. And all those I’ve asked what in the world the cause of this is, claim it’s from being overcome by pleasure or pain, or being overpowered by one of those things I was just now speaking of, that those who do these things do them…[For example you can ask] ‘Are you claiming, human beings, that anything happens to you other than this, and in these cases, that you’re often overpowered by some sort of food or drink or sex, which are pleasant, and you recognize they’re worthless but act on them nonetheless? In what sense are you saying they’re worthless?’ Would any of them still be bad even if it left you with no consequences afterward, but only made you feel enjoyment, for the sole reason that it made you feel enjoyment of one sort or another? Do we imagine, Protagoras, that they’d give any other answer than that they’re bad not for the action of the pleasure itself at the moment, but on account of the things that come afterward, illnesses and so on? And by causing illnesses they cause pains, and by causing poverty they cause pains? I imagine they’d agree…So what if we were to put the question to them again in the opposite way: ‘Human beings, you who also speak of good things as being painful, don’t you mean that such things as gymnastic and military exercises, and treatments by doctors that take place by means of burning and cutting and medicines and starvation diets, are good things, but painful? Then is this the reason you folks are calling them good, because they produce extreme suffering and pains at the moment, or because, on into the time afterward, healthy and fit conditions of the body arise from them, and safety of cities, supremacy over others, and riches?”
Socrates then confirmed that recognizing counterintuitive pleasure and pain does lead to a toleration of beneficial pain and the abstinence of pleasure with an escape from negative consequences. What makes the difference is adding the time dimension of consequences. Understanding which choices lead to the best result is knowledge. Yet there are many who choose badly even when they have knowledge because they are overcome by pleasure or fear.
SOC: “What is it you say courageous people are keen to go forward toward? Is it what cowards are keen to go toward?”
PRO: “But surely, Socrates, it’s completely opposite things that cowards and courageous people go toward. For a start, one sort are willing to go into war, but the other sort are unwilling.”
SOC: “And what about a courageous person? And the fears that courageous people feel are never shameful fears, when they do feel fear? And if beautiful, also good? And cowards, audacious people, and crazy people, on the contrary, feel shameful fears and their audacity is shameful audacity? And do they have the audacity to do shameful and bad things on account of anything other than ignorance and lack of intelligence? And what about that on account of which cowards are cowards? Do you call that cowardice or courage? And didn’t it plainly appear that they’re cowards on account of their unintelligence about frightening things? Therefore wisdom about what is and isn’t frightening, being the opposite of unintelligence about these things, is courage?”
Protagoras stopped nodding in agreement.
SOC: “Protagoras, why won’t you affirm or deny what I’m asking about…whether it still seems to you that some human beings are very unintelligent and courageous to an exceptional degree?”
PRO: “To me, Socrates, you seem determined to come out on top by having me be the one to answer. I’ll make you happy, then, and say that it’s impossible, on the basis of the things that have been agreed to, for it seems that way to me.”
Plato: Laches: https://rumble.com/v6utof9-plato-laches.html
Socrates was landing on a source of courage, moderation, justice, and piety, which was a gradual abolishing of ignorance. Once the ignorance of consequences for a subject are better apprized, especially before an important decision, courage increases, because fear disappears when resistance is seen to be worthwhile in some situations. Long-term pleasure sometimes outweighs the short-term efforts required. The emotions that motivate action light up accurately based on having precise knowledge of actual consequences. If knowledge about what is virtuous is based on prior experiences and the sharing of experiences others went through, then virtue can be taught. Anything else irrational at that time was lumped into the category of insanity.
Protagoras thanked Socrates, and conceded that he may become “one of the men eminent in philosophy…I give you credit for your eagerness, Socrates, and for the way you made the arguments come out. I am not of a base nature, and I of all human beings am the least apt to feel envy; in fact I’ve said about you to many people that I admire you the most by far of the people I’ve happened to run into, especially those of your [generation].”
As successful as this result was, it was going to be challenged even further in the Dialogue, Meno, where belief and knowledge were examined through epistemology: How do we know what we know?
Socrates and The Sophists: Plato’s Protagoras, Euthydemus, Hippias Major and Cratylus – Joe Sachs: https://www.isbns.net/isbn/9781585103621/
Plato: Protagoras – Benjamin Jowett: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1591/1591-h/1591-h.htm
Dye, J.W. (1978). Plato: Protagoras. Journal of the History of Philosophy 16(4), 467-468.
Stocks, J. L. (1913). The Argument of Plato, Protagoras, 351b-356c. The Classical Quarterly, 7(2), 100–104.
Philosophy: https://psychreviews.org/category/philosophy03/