Journal of the History of Philosophy

Book Reviews Plato: Protagoras. Translated with commentary by C. C. W. Taylor. Clarendon Plato Series. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976. Pp. vi ' 230. $17.25) The explicit purpose of this volume, as with others in this series, is to provide an accurate translation together with a commentary emphasizing the philosophical content of the dialogue . The translation certainly does not excel in literary merit or stylistic finesse; for example, one gets the impression that at least every other sentence begins with a conjunction. However, judged in terms of the avowed aim of accurately rendering the Greek, the translation is successful . Especially commendable is the wording of ambiguous passages so as to preserve the original's range of possible meaning. Some terminological decisions may be less astute. "Aperfi is usually translated as "excellence" in order to avoid the moralistic restrictions implicit in "virtue"; but since the former word seems to share some of the archaic flavor of the latter, one wonders whether "merit," "value," or "worth of character" would not have been preferable. Still more significant for the argument of the dialolgue is the translation of ococppoo6vrl as "good sense" or, more frequently, as "soundness of mind," for the commentary maintains that the sense of the text requires this meaning rather than the idea of control of bodily appetites conveyed by the more conventional "temperance." Although this point is basically well taken (some qualification is necessary since the two connotations tend to merge in Plato: showing good sense is to listen to one's reason, which means ignoring one's appetites ), again the choice of "soundness of mind" seems awkward; the term carries an out-ofthe -lexicon aura and would never be encountered as the colloquial opposite of "folly" as the text requires. "Sound judgment," "discretion," or even "prudence" would have been better synonyms to provide variety alongside the perfectly acceptable "good sense." The commentary is largely devoted to the analysis of individual arguments and discussion of specific problems of interpretation and translation. There are a few comments on personages and historical background. No attempt is made to assess the overall significanceof the work or to propose any general thesis about how the whole dialogue is to be read. Any subtleties communicated through dramatic structure or irony usually go unremarked, even in such extraordinary passages as 318B-319A, wherein Protagoras, the itinerant lecturer, unabashedly claims to be a teacher of the "art of running a city" just after Socrates has given some examples suggesting that one might naturally suppose the expert practitioners of an art to be those most capable of teaching it. The comments also have little to say about the historical or philosophical interest of the ideas involved, that is, about the importance of the topics being discussed (an exception is the treatment of Protagoras's remarks about punishment). Emphasis is placed upon determining the meaning of claims, displaying the structure of the various arguments (including putting them into symbolic form), and assessing their validity. The arguments are all taken seriously and the possibility of Socratic irony is not considered. Within these bounds, the issues are addressed in a thoroughly competent manner. Controversial interpretations are defended through criticism of the arguments that have been given for alternative readings. For the most part, the arguments responded to are those found in quite recent literature. Such competing views are fairly presented, and the reasons given for rejecting them in favor of another interpretation are normally cogent and clearly stated. As for the perennial problem of Socrates's apparent hedonism in the last section of the dialogue , beginning at 351B, Taylor's view is that Socrates does maintain the strongest of the several possible senses of "pleasure is the good," that is, that "pleasure is identical with the good" (p. 209). In accordance with the aforementioned serious approach to the conversations of the dialogue, this conclusion is based principally on an interpretation of 360A2-3 that [4671 468 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY would find Socrates "dishonest" if he did not share the assumption that only pleasant things are good. The treatment of the earlier passages relevant to this issue is scrupulous in noting that alternative construals are not excluded by the text. There is...