Abstract
At the end of the private conversation Socrates has with Hippocrates before both of them walk over to the house of Callias, Socrates presents a rather curious image: the soul is like a vessel (angeion) which is filled with the doctrines one learns (314a3–b4). The image is curious if one believes that knowledge or wisdom, according to Plato’s Socrates, is something that cannot be passed on to others like wares or commodities, a view expressed in both the Symposium (175d3–7) and the Republic (518b8–d1; see Manuwald 2006, 74). In the Protagoras, however, Socrates claims that doctrines, or mathêmata, that one learns from others, are like food and drink to the soul: they are the very stuff by which souls are nourished (313c8–9). Accordingly, one should take care that one does not end up consuming unsound doctrines that will prove harmful rather than beneficial to the soul. In particular, one should take great care if one intends to buy doctrines from a sophist, for the sophist is presumably, according to Socrates, like a merchant (emporos) or a hawker (kapêlos) selling food: just as hawkers and merchants praise all their wares equally regardless of their quality, it may be the case that the sophist, who praises all he sells, does not know whether his wares are beneficial or harmful (313d1–e2). In fact, as a rule, one knows which of the doctrines are actually nourishing and which are not if one happens to be a physician of the soul, Socrates claims – but if one is not, one might well be ignorant of this (313e2–3). Since Hippocrates is obviously no such expert, Socrates’ suggestion that he is about to put his soul into grave danger (313a1–2) is understandable.
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- 1.
Manuwald suggests that Socrates, in characterizing the sophists as merchants dealing in doctrines or “Wissensgüter”, bases his characterization on the sophists’ conception of education rather than on his own.
- 2.
See Lampert (2013, 108–9) who suggests that Socrates is “[c]asting himself as a doctor”; this claim is too strong to be supported by the text in itself, however, since it need not be a doctor who inspects someone else’s body. It is safer to say that Socrates’ depicts his examination of the mind of Protagoras as analogous to the way someone might examine the bodily health or other functions of someone else by inspecting specifically his body.
- 3.
The metaphors of medical examination as philosophical inquiry and philosophy as medicine are found in many Platonic dialogues. An interesting discussion can be found in Moes (2000, 32–46). Moes does not discuss the Protagoras in any detail, though.
- 4.
One may compare what Protagoras states here with Gorgias’ Encomium of Helen, 8–10. See Roochnik (1996, 71–74) for a discussion of this.
- 5.
This is pointed out by Mr. Reinken in Strauss (1971, lecture 4, 22).
- 6.
This is emphasized in Adkins (1973).
- 7.
Denyer (2008, 75) points out that Hippocrates is mistaken, since the “ιστ of σoφιστής is quite different from the ιστ of επιστήμων”. Still, one should note that Socrates does not object to the etymology here, and perhaps also that Theaetetus seems to make a similar inference in the Sophist 221c9–d6 insofar as he claims that the name sophist implies that the sophist cannot be a layman, but must be thought of as possessing technê.
- 8.
It is a nice touch on Plato’s part that he has Protagoras ending up (361e4–5) stating that he shouldn’t be surprised if Socrates should become one of the men distinguished (ellogimoôn andrôn) for wisdom.
- 9.
That it is Hippocrates, and not Protagoras, who claims that Protagoras teaches the art of speaking cleverly, is correctly emphasized by Stokes (1986, 186–191). Stokes identifies the ability to speak cleverly with rhetoric but it should be noted that the word “rhetoric” is itself never used in the Protagoras.
- 10.
In the Gorgias (463a8–465c), Socrates distinguishes sophistry from rhetoric, claiming that rhetoric and sophistry are both types of flattery, but that rhetoric is an imitation of corrective justice (punishment), the psychic equivalent of medicine, whereas sophistry is an imitation of lawgiving, the psychic equivalent of gymnastics. Hence rhetoric is like pastry cooking, whereas sophistry is like cosmetics. In the Theaetetus, Socrates, impersonating “Protagoras”, in a similar manner draws a distinction between the sophist and rhetorician and suggests that sophistry is like private education (167c2–d2) comparable to the expertise of the physician (167a5–6).
- 11.
See Manuwald (2006, 73).
- 12.
See Friedländer (1964, 3).
- 13.
The phrasing “poein andras agathous politas” is ambiguous: Denyer (2008, 96) follows some commentators in saying that the words “andras agathous politas” form a single expression and that the phrasing accordingly does not mean “to make men good citizens”, but rather to produce good citizens (men), since this seems to be what the phrase means in e.g. Aristophanes’ Knights 1304. Syntactically, however, nothing speaks against reading the phrasing as containing a double accusative, as other commentators have construed it, in which case it could mean either “to make men good citizens” or “to make good men citizens”. I owe this observation to Hayden Ausland.
- 14.
That Aristotle suggests that some sophists thought that political expertise is identical with rhetoric (EN 1181a14–15) does not guarantee that Protagoras was of this opinion.
- 15.
- 16.
- 17.
Adkins (1973, 9–10). Leo Strauss likewise suggests that Protagoras seems to deliberately conceal what he is teaching as a result of his caution (Strauss 1971, lecture 9, 7–15 and compare with lecture 6, 22–23). Friedländer (1964, 13) observes that Protagoras’ apparent inability to distinguish himself from other teachers of virtue results from the fact that “jeder absolute, jeder geistige Maßtab dem Protagoras fehlt.”
- 18.
The speech begins by mentioning only aidôs and dikê as the gifts of Zeus at 322c3, they are then replaced with dikaiosunê and sôphrosunê at 323a1–2 and at 325a1 the political virtues are listed as dikaiosunê, sôphrosunê and to hosion.
- 19.
Coby (1987, 46) states that “Protagoras’ own sophistry is compatible with freedom because he teaches his students the subjects they naturally desire. And because his students are at the beginning of their adult careers, what they desire is instruction in the craft of success – how to succeed politically and economically”. See also Weiss (2006, 33).
- 20.
- 21.
Denyer’s observation (2008, 132–133), that “in spite of what Protagoras says here, it is hard to find many, or even any, who said outright that one can be temperate in committing an injustice. Popular opinion held the opposite …” may thus be beside the point.
- 22.
Weiss (2006, 40–41).
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Hayden Ausland, Vivil Valvik Haraldsen and Kristin Sampson for reading earlier versions of the paper; they all contributed with many fruitful suggestions that improved the final manuscript. The present work was written as part of a postdoctoral research project financially supported by the Danish Council for Independent Research.
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Larsen, J.K. (2017). By What Is the Soul Nourished? On the Art of the Physician of Souls in Plato’s Protagoras . In: Pettersson, O., Songe-Møller, V. (eds) Plato’s Protagoras. Philosophical Studies Series, vol 125. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-45585-3_5
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