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Protagoras and Meno

1957Plato

4.9/5

Among the works of Plato I've read so far, Protagoras has so far been my favorite. A dialogue between Socrates and Protagoras, the work describes the two philosophers discussing whether or not virtue can be taught. The question is explored in many different directions, some of which may confuse the reader at times, but the arguments are compelling and easily understood with some thought. The dialogue first establishes the difficulty of defining virtue: when one tries to define the word, he or she often ends up listing various parts of virtue - justice, temperance, and courage - but is no closer to finding an underlying connection among these various facets. Socrates demonstrates through a series of logical syllogisms that these facets of virtue are in actuality different words for the same thing: wisdom. And since wisdom can be taught, virtue can be taught as well.One of the arguments through which he proves this statement concerns the relationship between courage and knowledge. Courage is one of the many parts of virtue, and confidence a part of courage. But confidence and courage is not the same thing for confidence is present in both the virtuous and the evil: often times, violent and rash individuals tend to be very confident about their actions, even if these actions are immoral. So what distinguishes confidence from courage? Socrates' answer is the presence of wisdom. The courage and the cowardly both pursue that about which they are confident, but only the courageous have knowledge about which actions are good. Thus, courage is wisdom.Socrates further illustrates this point by disproving a popular opinion: that knowledge can be easily overcome by emotions. After all, how often have we heard the phrase "a man does evil because he is overcome by pleasure"? According to Socrates, however, pain is synonymous to evil and pleasure synonymous to good unless the pain leads to greater pleasure in the future or the good leads to greater pain in the future. Thus, the popular phrase can be rewritten: "a man does what is painful because he is overcome by pleasure, which is unworthy to overcome the pain." Or, in other words, the man thinks the pleasure will overcome the pain but he is mistaken. Socrates states that the salvation of human life is dependent upon a knowledge of measuring, or making the right choices of pleasures and pains. Weighing the pleasures and pains an action will cause may be complex at times and involve a certain degree of predicting future repercussions. When one does this successfully, he or she chooses the good, pleasurable path. When one does this unsuccessfully, however, he or she chooses the evil, painful path. Therefore, being "overcome by pleasure" in decision-making is not a matter of emotion overpowering knowledge, but really a matter of ignorance. In other words, temperance is wisdom.These dialogues are a fairly easy way to become more familiar with Socrates' teachings, an endeavor I find worthwhile considering the large role he played in the study of philosophy. I will say that I find his style of argumentation off-putting at times, but the phrasing of his ideas doesn't significantly detract from the value of their content.

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