Gonzalez, Francisco J. - The Virtue of Dialogue, Dialogue As Virtue in Plato's Protagoras (2014) (Philosophical Papers Vol. 43 Iss. 1)

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The Virtue of Dialogue,

Dialogue as Virtue in Plato's
Protagoras
a
Francisco J. Gonzalez
a
University of Ottowa.
Published online: 14 Mar 2014.
To cite this article: Francisco J. Gonzalez (2014) The Virtue of Dialogue,

Dialogue as Virtue in Plato's Protagoras, Philosophical Papers, 43:1, 33-66, DOI:
10.1080/05568641.2014.901694
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Philosophical Papers
Vol. 43, No. 1 (March 2014): 33-66
The Virtue of Dialogue, Dialogue as Virtue in

Plato’s Protagoras
Francisco J. Gonzalez
Abstract: This article interprets Plato’s Protagoras as a defense, against the claim of the
sophists to possess a skill of teaching virtue, of Socrates’ claim in the Apology (38a) that the
greatest good for a human being is examining oneself and others every day with regard to
virtue. Attention to the often-neglected complex series of prologues as well as the dispute
about method at the dialogue’s center shows both the erotic and the dialogical character of
Socratic virtue. Specifically, human virtue turns out to be a process of becoming as opposed
to being good that can be carried out only in constant dialogue with others. In this context,
the ‘science of measurement’ Socrates describes on behalf of Protagoras and the other
sophists is exposed for what it is: a delusion that continues to exert its power over us today
on account of the recurrent human wish to possess a skill or technique that could save us by
guaranteeing the goodness and happiness of our lives.
In an earlier article on Plato’s Protagoras (Gonzalez 2000), I concluded

with the intentionally provocative assertion that virtue for Socrates is
‘talking about the good together everyday.’ What makes the assertion
provocative is its apparent absurdity: how can being a virtuous or good
person consist of inquiring into the good along with others? Obviously, if
one is still inquiring into the good and if one still needs others, one is not
yet good. Yet this seemingly absurd conclusion simply takes Socrates at his
word when in the Apology, at a key moment in his defense against the
charges of impiety and corrupting the young, he asserts that ‘the greatest
good for a human being is conversing everyday about virtue and the other
things about which you have heard me conversing’ (38a2-4). How can
conversing about virtue be the highest good when it is clearly nothing but
the pursuit of a higher good, which would be the possession of virtue? The
qualification ‘for a human being’ is presumably crucial: our highest good is
the pursuit of a good higher than us (and therefore never fully attainable
ISSN 0556-8641 print/ISSN 1996-8523 online

© 2014 The Editorial Board, Philosophical Papers
DOI: 10.1080/05568641.2014.901694
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34 Francisco J. Gonzalez
by us). To be good for a human being is to inquire into the good constantly
and in dialogue with others or, at least, with oneself as another.1 Human
virtue would then be not a possession, but a process. What this means is,
negatively, that virtue is not a technē, i.e., not a definable and teachable
skill, not a definable set of qualities to be procured and transmitted by way
of some skill and, positively, that virtue is intrinsically erotic (always a
desire for what is not possessed, always a search) and dialogical (had only
in being together with others in conversation). In the present article I wish

further to defend and explicate this Socratic conception of human
goodness by returning to the Protagoras. While the earlier article sketched
out an interpretation of the dialogue as a whole, I here focus first on the
dialogue’s beginnings, of which there are three: the opening conversation
between Socrates and a friend, Socrates’ conversation with Hippothales,
and the opening scene at Callias’ house. This complex prologue will be
seen, as is usual in Plato, to introduce all the major themes of the dialogue
as well as to define the perspective from which these themes are to be
addressed. Once this perspective is clear, I can then focus on the
discussion of the relation between wisdom and courage in the latter part of
the dialogue: a discussion that throws into sharp relief the two conceptions
of virtue being contested.
Beginnings: Reconciling Eros and Wisdom

The Protagoras begins, strangely enough, with a reference to Socrates’
erotic drive.2 Socrates meets a friend who suspects him of having just
1 As we are told in the Theaetetus (189e) and the Sophist (263e), thinking is a dialogue of the
soul with itself. If I borrow here the Ricoeurian phrase of ‘oneself as another’, it is to
emphasize that this conversation of the soul with itself, as self-examination, requires a critical
distance from oneself.
2 Most scholars make nothing of the introductory frame of the dialogue and therefore do
not see the theme of ἔρως as having any bearing on the rest of the dialogue: A. E. Taylor is
only making explicit a widespread assumption when he characterizes the opening
discussion as no more than a ‘little exchange of pleasantries’ with the sole purpose of
dating the dialogue by reference to the age of Alcibiades (1956, 238). An important
exception is Friedländer, who sees ἔρως as central to the contrast between sophistic and
Socratic education (1964, 5-6).
The Virtue of Dialogue, Dialogue as Virtue in Plato’s Protagoras 35
come from chasing the beautiful Alcibiades. Socrates confesses that this
is so. Yet he adds the surprising news that most of the time he was with
Alcibiades he was made to forget all about him by someone much more
beautiful. When the friend expresses disbelief that someone could be
more beautiful than Alcibiades, Socrates, appealing to the surpassing
beauty of wisdom, responds that he has just come from speaking with the
wisest, and therefore most beautiful of men, ‘if Protagoras seems [δοκεῖ]
the wisest to you’ (309a1-310a1). This conversation immediately

identifies Socrates with the erotic pursuit of wisdom as the most beautiful
of things. At the same time, it raises some important questions. What is
the nature of this wisdom Socrates loves? Is it truly possessed by
Protagoras? Or does Protagoras possess only its semblance? As the cited
passage shows, Socrates leaves this an open question. Is it something that
Socrates himself possesses? Or does he only pursue it? And what, then, is
the nature and status of this pursuit? The answers will be found only in
the narrative with which Socrates agrees to gratify his friends.3
If Socrates begins his narrative with a discussion he had with a young
aristocrat named Hippocrates prior to the encounter with Protagoras,
that is because this preliminary discussion raises the important questions
with which we must approach the debate between Socrates and
Protagoras if we are properly to evaluate it. Just as Socrates seeks to
prepare the naive and over-eager Hippocrates for a critical assessment of
Protagoras and what he says, so Plato seeks to give us the readers the
same preparation by inserting this discussion into the dialogue.
The dramatic setting is vivid. Socrates is awoken before daybreak by a
greatly agitated Hippocrates.4 Suspecting only bad news at such an early
hour, Socrates is instead told that Protagoras is in town. He observes,
with no perceptible excitement, that Protagoras has been in town for two
3 As Contarín and Díez note, there are indications in the text (five, to be precise), that
Socrates’ anonymous friend is accompanied by others (p. n. 7).
4 While Ildefonse asserts that we know nothing about this Hippocrates beyond what we
learn in the present dialogue (p. 146, n. 9) and Cantarín and Díez suggest that he is only
a type (liv), Nails presents evidence for identifying him with a nephew of Pericles (169-
170).
days. Hippocrates, it turns out, has been out of town chasing a fugitive
slave; he was going to tell Socrates of his plan before leaving, but
something else distracted him and he forgot. As a result he found out
about the arrival of Protagoras only late last night. He was ready to go
running to Socrates right then, but realizing that it was too late, he
decided to sleep a little and come over as soon as he was no longer dead
tired. Now he can wait no longer and wants to go to the sophist right
away. ‘Why,’ Socrates asks, ‘has Protagoras done you an injustice?’ ‘Yes,’
Hippocrates replies laughingly, ‘since he has a monopoly on wisdom and
will not give me any’ (310d). When Socrates observes that Protagoras
would be happy to share his wisdom, for the right price, Hippocrates
responds that money is not the issue: instead the problem is that, being
young and having never met Protagoras before, he is afraid to approach
the great man alone. That is why he has come: he wants Socrates to
speak to Protagoras for him.
What first strikes us about Hippocrates is his impetuosity. As one
scholar has remarked, he seems always in motion.5 He runs after the
fugitive slave, forgetting in his haste to tell Socrates of his plan; once
back in town and hearing about the arrival of Protagoras, he is ready to
run immediately to Socrates so they can both visit the sophist, delays
only when he realizes the lateness of the hour, but still comes before
daybreak after having gotten only the absolutely minimal amount of
sleep. He is someone ruled by the whims of passion rather than by any
prudent reflection. This characterization may be reinforced by two
otherwise arbitrary details in the text: Hippocrates’ slave is given the
name Satyros, after the companions of Dionysus, and the town to which
Hippocrates chases him is identified as Oinoē, a name which, according
to Liddell-Scott, is derived from the Greek word for wine (oinos).6
5 Coby 1987, 25.

6 Roochnk (1996, 229-30) has drawn attention to the possible significance of these details.
He may be over-interpreting them, however, in taking them to suggest that the reason why
Hippocrates did not go to Socrates earlier is that he was literally too drunk to do so (230).
This type of word-play is course not unusual in Plato. Recall the description in the Phaedrus
of Stesichorus as the son of ‘Good Speaker’ (Euphemus ) from the ‘Town of Desire’ (Himera,
These details need not mean that Hippocrates is literally a drunkard

running after satyrs to the ‘town of wine,’ but they may be intended to
suggest that he acts like a drunkard. The two words with which Socrates
describes him are ‘courage’ (ἀνδρεία)7 and ‘passionate excitement’
(πτοίησις, 310d3). I use the translation ‘courage’ here only to highlight the
anticipation of what will be an important theme later in the dialogue.
However, unlike the courage that will later be associated with wisdom,
Hippocrates’ ‘courage’ is more the kind of reckless daring that arises from
intense passion (and from drunkenness).8 And this intense passion is what
is referred to by the second word Socrates uses to describe him. The
impetuosity and passion that rule Hippocrates and that make him willing
to bankrupt both himself and his friends in order to become Protagoras’
pupil (310e), associate him with erōs, which, as we have seen, is already
made an explicit theme in the introductory frame of the dialogue. This
establishes a certain kinship between Hippocrates and Socrates: recall that
Socrates is described as always running after (or ‘hunting’) Alcibiades.
Both Hippocrates and Socrates are passionate, both are always chasing
after something, both are erotic, both are young (314b5).9 But while
Socrates presumably has some idea of what he is after, Hippocrates, as we
will see, does not. He represents untutored, misdirected erōs. This is why
Socrates refuses simply to pander to Hippocrates’ passion and instead uses
the earliness of the hour as an excuse to engage him in a discussion and
thereby test his passion (310a8-311a7).
240a). Denyer suggests another possible significance of the reference to Oinoe that has
nothing to do with etymology: a town by this name near Athens become a proverb for
bringing evil onto oneself when in diverting a mountain stream to irrigate its fields it
ended up washing everything away. The point, Denyer suggests, is that Hippocrates
likewise risks bringing evil on himself in his ignorant pursuit of Protagoras (69).
7 For the debate regarding the meaning of the word in this context, see Contarín and Díez,
p. 126-7, note 21.
8 Cantarín and Díez thus see in him an enthusiasm born of a lack of reflection (lv).
9 How young Socrates is depends on what dramatic date one gives the dialogue. This is
unfortunately a question that does not admit of easy solution: for a thorough discussion see
Cantarín and Díez. pp. cxxv-cxxi. On the most plausible, but still problematic date
suggested by them (ca. 432), Socrates would be 37 at the time of the encounter with
Protagoras.
It does not take Socrates long to expose the blindness of Hippocrates’

passion. He first asks what Protagoras is and therefore what Hippocrates
seeks to become in going to Protagoras (311a8-e4). The seemingly
innocent distinction employed by Socrates in this questioning between
being x (as an attribute of Protagoras) and becoming x (as an attribute of
his student) will in fact, as we will see, prove to be of central importance
to the account of human goodness Socrates later offers through his
interpretation of the poet Simonides. For now we need only observe that
Hippocrates cannot explain what he wishes to become in going to
Protagoras because, first, if he identifies Protagoras as a sophist (311e4-
5), he is ashamed to say that he is going to Protagoras in order to
become himself a sophist (312a1-7), and, secondly, because he cannot
state what exactly the sophists have to offer.
But why, we might ask, need Hippocrates know all this before
becoming Protagoras’ student? Will he not find out afterwards? Socrates
sees a great danger here and severely upbraids Hippocrates for his
willingness to risk his soul in this way. In describing the sophist as ‘a kind
of merchant who peddles provisions upon which the soul is nourished’
(313c4-6)10 he wishes to suggest that the sophist is as ignorant as the
grocer of the benefit or harm of what he sells. What Hippocrates
therefore needs to learn most of all is not what the sophists teach, but
rather how to evaluate what they teach (313e2-5).
But from whom can Hippocrates learn this? Who is the ‘physician of
the soul’ (περὶ τὴν ψυχὴν ἰατρικὸς, 313e2) capable of evaluating the
sophist’s wares in the way the physician of the body can evaluate the
grocer’s wares? In the action of the dialogue it is Socrates who, in arguing
that sophists as such do not fulfill the role of physician of the soul,
himself assumes this role. Socrates describes his questioning of
Hippocrates in terms suggesting a medical examination: ‘And I
examined Hippocrates in order to test his strength’ (καὶ ἐγὼ
10 Except where otherwise specified, I use the translation of Stanley Lombardo and Karen
Bell.
ἀποπειρώμενος τοῦ ̔Ιπποκράτους τῆς ῥώμης διεσκόπουν αὐτὸν, 311a8-b1).

Furthermore, Socrates will continue to act as Hippocrates’ physician
when he accompanies him to visit Protagoras. Though Hippocrates only
wants Socrates to introduce him to Protagoras, Socrates will do much
more: he will test and evaluate for Hippocrates the teachings sold by this
peddler of provisions for the soul and thus will himself act as a physician
of the soul. Finally, Socrates will explicitly assume the role of physician at
critical points in the dialogue (see 340d9-e2, 352a1-b2).11 Therefore,

when Socrates criticizes Hippocrates for handing over his soul for
treatment (παρασχεῖν θεραπεασαι) to a sophist (312b8-c1), he is criticizing
him for putting himself in the hands of the wrong doctor.12
What is indeed strange about the knowledge Socrates claims is
needed is that, while it may initially appear to be only a propaedeutic to
learning from the sophists, it turns out to supplant sophistic teaching
altogether. As Socrates observes, unlike food and drink, teachings cannot
be taken away in a container to be evaluated later, since they benefit or
harm us as soon as we take them into our souls (314a-b). But in this case
we either would have to evaluate the teachings without learning them,
something that seems hardly possible, or the evaluation would need to
be somehow simultaneous with the learning.13 In this latter case,
evaluating what the sophists teach would entail knowing both what they
teach and what will benefit us. But if we could know that, why would we
need the sophists? In other words, if Socrates alone can cure
Hippocrates of his ignorance about both what the sophists have to offer
and what is truly beneficial or harmful, what need does the young man
have for Protagoras? We thus begin to see a possible answer to the
11 Cf. Benitez 1992, 230: ‘Socrates is such a doctor: given the view he has just expressed,
could he allow Hippocrates to meet Protagoras under any other condition?’ Landy
inexplicably sees Socrates as implying that the notion of such a doctor is preposterous
(1994, 290).
12 The word παρέχω in this passage ‘is often used of putting oneself in the hands of a
doctor’ (Adam & Adam 1984, 90). What we are meant to see is that Socrates is the doctor
who can truly benefit Hippocrates.
13 Cf. Goldberg 1983, 85.
question raised by the opening frame of the dialogue: the wisdom of

which Socrates is enamored is not the kind of wisdom sold by
Protagoras, but rather a kind of wisdom that can judge and evaluate
what Protagoras has to sell. If we ask specifically what kind of wisdom
this is, it appears to be nothing other than the art of dialectic Socrates is
here practicing. Hippocrates’ mistake could therefore lie in using
Socrates’ dialectic only as a means of gaining access to Protagoras (ἵνα
ὑπέρ ἐμοῦ διαλεχθῇς αὐτῷ, 310e2-3), rather than recognizing that the
knowledge he needs is to be found only in conversation with Socrates
himself. As we have been led to suspect, his ἔρως is misdirected. Now in
going to meet Protagoras with Socrates he has the opportunity to correct
his mistake.
Socrates’ narrative proceeds to paint a very vivid picture of the scene
of the gathering of sophists at Callias’ house to which he and
Hippocrates go in search of Protagoras. Most significantly, he uses the
language Homer has Odysseus use to describe his perception of the
shades of the dead in Hades: ‘And then I perceived, as Homer says,
Hippias of Elis’ (Τὸν δὲ μετ̓εἰσενόησα, Odyssey 11.601). In addition,
Socrates’ description of Hippias as answering from a high seat the
questions of those seated beneath him parallels Odysseus’ description of
Minos (XI. around 570).14 Furthermore, Socrates explicitly identifies
Prodicus with Tantalus (315c8). Finally, it is not difficult to see in the
irascible doorkeeper a reference to Cerberus, the monstrous dog
guarding the entrance to the underworld.15 But what is the point of these
comparisons? They at least suggest that the difference between Socrates
and the sophists is like that between Odysseus and the dead in Hades: a
14 The specific line Socrates uses upon seeing Hippias (‘And then I perceived’) is the line
Odysseus uses upon seeing Heracles (XI. 601). However, I cannot see any point to the
comparison between Hippias and Heracles, while the parallels between the description of
Hippias and the description of Minos are quite strong. For this same view, see Adam &
Adam 1984, 100. Coby (1987, 35-6) attempts to explain the resemblance between Heracles
and Hippias, but with little confidence or success.
15 This suggestion is made by Weingartner 1973, 52.
distinction between someone who is truly alive and insubstantial

shades.16
But what is it that Socrates has that makes him more substantial than
the sophists? And what do they lack so as to be insubstantial? Though
only the rest of the dialogue could provide the answer, there appears to
be here already an indication of at least part of the answer. Do not the
description of the doorkeeper as a eunuch and the comparison of the
supposedly profound, but inaudible, Prodicus to Tantalus, the

embodiment of unfulfilled desire,17 suggest that what makes the sophists
insubstantial shades is that erōs has dried up in them, the erōs which, as
we learn from the introductory frame of the dialogue, fully animates
Socrates?18 The other thing that makes the sophists like the insubstantial
shades of Hades is the complete absence of dialogue among them: each
is described as pontificating in isolation from the others, neither hearing
nor even, as in the case of Prodicus, being heard.19 And if the shades in
Hades must be given blood by Odysseus in order to speak, the sophists
must apparently be given money.20
The suggestion might thus be that while Hippocrates’ passion is
without wisdom, the sophists’ wisdom is without passion. In this case, it is
significant that Socrates, as the only genuine practitioner of dialogue,
proves the intermediary between the two. This contrast is only further
accentuated when Socrates’ initial conversation with Protagoras shows
the latter to be obsessed with caution and precaution (εὐλάβεια, 317b3-7),
proud in having discovered that openness about his profession along
with ‘other precautions’ can best guarantee his safety. We thus have a
16 See Friedländer 1964, 8. The ancient rhetorician Aelius Aristides saw in the comparison
of the sophists to the shades in Hades a denunciation meant to bring great shame on them
(Orat. 46 377-378 [Jebb 291-2]).
17 Denyer sees here the suggestion that ‘knowledge, which is the nutrition of the soul
(313c8-9) will escape us if we try to get it by the intellectual methods of Prodicus that are
parodied at 337a1-c4’ (84).
18 I owe this suggestion to Coby, 141.
19 Denyer notes that before Socrates’ arrival the sophists were not conversing with one
another at all (140) and that it is only Socrates who brings about such a conversation (142).
20 This is Denyer’s suggestion (82).
very clear set of contrasts in our three introductions: first we are

introduced to a Socrates possessed with an erotic desire directed at both
another human being and at wisdom, but also capable of maintaining a
questioning critical distance from both; then we are introduced to a
Hippocrates characterized by blind erōs and impetuosity, dedicated to
pleasures of the unreflective sort; finally, we are introduced to the
sophists, both in general and in the figure of their leader Protagoras,
who are characterized by a claim to a technical skill promising mastery

and security, but apparently without erōs for, or understanding of, the
good it serves. And again, Socrates as the lover of wisdom is situated
between the two, enlightening the blind desire and impetuosity of
Hippocrates while questioning the enlightenment of the sophists. But
where exactly does that put Socrates himself?
A Battle over the Wisdom of Courage

The prologues we have been examining already give some indication, in
their contrast between the impetuosity of Hippocrates and the
‘precautions’ of Protagoras, of why the relation between knowledge and
courage becomes the central focus of the last part of the dialogue,21 but
this is also motivated by the specific argument between Socrates and
Protagoras. First, the reason why Socrates, after claiming against
Protagoras that virtue cannot be taught (and therefore is not a technē),
responds to Protagoras’s speech-long defense by turning to the
apparently different question of the unity of the virtues, is that
Protagoras’ speech strangely left out of consideration the virtues of
wisdom and courage, even though Protagoras himself claims wisdom to
be the greatest of the virtues (330a1-2). Socrates’ attempts to show the
inseparability of wisdom from virtues such as piety, temperance and
justice are met with Protagoras’s determination to derail this discussion,
presumably because the wisdom he so values and professes to teach has
21 Denyer notes this anticipation of the question of courage both in the description of
Hippocrates (69, 72) and in Protagoras’ concern with precautions (87).
little to do with piety, justice or temperance. This results in a crisis at the

heart of the dialogue in which the discussion threatens to break down
completely: a passage to which we will return later as key to
understanding the opposition between Socrates’ conception of virtue
and that of Protagoras. Protagoras is eventually lured back into the
discussion by being allowed to ask the questions: an opportunity he uses,
however, only to show off with a prepared refutation of a poem by
Simonides. After Socrates plays this game by giving his own violent
interpretation of Simonides that makes the poet express Socrates’ own
conception of goodness—and to this too we will return—the argument
recommences with Protagoras’ insistence that courage and wisdom at
least have nothing to do with each other (349d3-5).
This opposition turns out to serve very well Socrates’ purpose of
demonstrating the absurdity of a technical conception of virtue. Why,
after all, would Protagoras wish to distinguish sharply between courage
and wisdom? Presumably, he is equating courage with some purely
emotional state, some kind of rash daring involving no reflection or
understanding. Most importantly, he is assuming that inversely wisdom
has no connection to the kind of disposition or character expressed by
courage, in other words, that it is a mere technique or expertise to be
wielded by coward and courageous man alike.
Socrates first gets Protagoras to agree (1) that the courageous are
daring or bold (θαρραλέοι, 349e). It is here that Protagoras betrays his
view that the many do not possess courage when he observes that the
courageous are willing to go towards what the many fear (349e3). By
then recalling Protagoras’ profession to teach virtue (349e4-5), Socrates
next gets him to admit that (2) those who have knowledge will be more
daring than those who do not on account of their knowledge (349e8-
350b1). If Socrates were committing the fallacy of which Protagoras will
proceed wrongly to accuse him, he would here assume that all who are
daring are courageous and then conclude that those who have
knowledge will be more courageous than those who do not. Instead,
however, Socrates suddenly shifts his ground by getting Protagoras to
admit that (3) people who lack knowledge are also daring, even
extremely daring (350b1-4).22 (4) When Socrates next asks if these
people who are foolishly daring are also courageous, Protagoras replies
that it would be foolish to call them courageous, since they are in fact
raving mad (350b4-6). It is only at this point that Socrates believes he
can conclude that wisdom and courage are in some sense the same. But
how?
Socrates presents his reasoning in a very ambiguous way: ‘Then

these men who are so daring turn out to be not courageous but mad?
And, on the other side, the wisest are the most daring and the most
daring are the most courageous? And the logical conclusion would be
that wisdom is courage?’ (350c) If one focuses exclusively on the second
sentence here, Socrates might appear to be identifying those who are
daring with those who are courageous and then arguing that the wisest
must be the most courageous just because they are the most daring. But
the last part of Socrates’ argument, summarized in the first sentence of
the cited passage, in fact denies that all those who are daring are
thereby courageous: some are simply mad. So Socrates does not arrive
at his conclusion by identifying the daring with the courageous, as
Protagoras wrongly charges. What then is his reasoning? It has been
admitted that the wisest are the most daring. But it has also been
admitted that many of those who are daring are so without wisdom.
Furthermore, it has been admitted that those who are daring without
wisdom are not courageous. But then who is courageous? It is agreed at
the very beginning of the argument that those who are courageous are
daring. But now we know that those who are ignorantly daring cannot
22 Even though Socrates at 350c3-4 says that the wisest are most daring and the most
daring most courageous, this is after the ignorantly daring, who can be extremely daring,
have been taken out of consideration. It is therefore misleading to say, as Russell 2000 does
(316), that one of the claims Socrates seeks to establish is that the most confident are the
most courageous. The claim Socrates’ argument makes instead is that the most confident,
once we exclude the madly confident who are very confident indeed, are the most courageous. Thus
Socrates is not at all claiming, contra Protagoras’ objection, that greater confidence as such
makes one more courageous.
be courageous. So the courageous must be daring by being wise and

thereby most daring.23
This conclusion clearly falls short of identifying courage with wisdom,
since it leaves open the possibility that wisdom is a necessary, but not a
sufficient, condition of courage. In other words, the argument shows
only that all those who are truly courageous must base their daring on
wisdom, not that all those who base their daring on wisdom are thereby
courageous: there could be some other, unspecified condition required

for courage besides the wisdom required to be most daring. Strictly
speaking, therefore, Socrates overstates his case when he concludes that
wisdom simply is courage.24
However, two points need to be made. First, since the argument
shows that wisdom is necessary for courage and that the daring also
necessary for courage is simply the result of this wisdom (350a2-3), and
since there appears to be no other necessary condition for courage
besides wisdom and daring, the argument at least lends a certain
plausibility to, even if it does not strictly entail, the identification of
courage with wisdom.25 Secondly, and most importantly, even without
this identification the argument still suffices to refute Protagoras’ claim
that a person who is ‘most ignorant’ can still be ‘most brave’ (349d7-8).
But exactly what kind of wisdom is being associated with courage in
this argument? The examples upon which Socrates bases his induction
that knowledge makes one more daring are all technai: horsemanship,
the skill of diving, the art of fighting with shields (349e8-350a5). There
is, however, something odd about the suggestion that technical skill
makes one more daring: someone in possession of such skill need not
23 As Weiss has suggested (1985, 17), the phrase ‘on the other side’ (ἐκεῖ ἀὖ, 350c2) with
which the second sentence in the cited passage begins is meant to restrict the content of
that sentence to the class of daring people other than the ignorantly daring: that the most
daring are the most courageous is true only of those who are most daring through knowledge.
24 See Adam & Adam 1984, 188-190, and C. C. W. Taylor 1976, 159.
25 A similar interpretation and defense of Socrates’ argument and of the identification of
courage with wisdom can be found in Weiss 1985, 13-16, and Allen 1996, 120-121.
dare anything, since he has full control of the situation.26 Indeed, it

would seem that those who dive into wells without skill are much more
daring than those who do so with skill. In striking contrast with the
present passage, precisely this is argued in the Laches: ‘And as many as
would be willing to endure in diving down into wells without being
skilled (δεινοί), or to endure in any other similar situation, you say are
braver than those who are skilled in these things’ (193c2-5, trans,
Sprague). Socrates likewise suggests that someone ‘who has knowledge of

horsemanship is less courageous than the man who lacks this knowledge
(ἄνευ ἐπιστήμης)’ (193b5-7). Thus, while the present argument in the
Protagoras suggests that a person with technical knowledge is more
daring and more courageous than a person without such knowledge,
Socrates in the Laches argues, on the basis of the same examples, that it is
the person without technical knowledge (τέχνη, 193b10, c10) who is more
courageous (an argument not retracted or refuted anywhere in that
dialogue). This contradiction between the two dialogues has not escaped
scholars.27
But what is the solution? It lies, I suggest, in the ad hominem character
of the present argument. It is no accident that Socrates, immediately
before using the technai to make the point that knowledge makes one
26 The only thing that allows this suggestion to have the semblance of plausibility is the
ambiguity of the word θαρραλέος, which can mean ‘confident’ as well as ‘bold’ or ‘daring’:
the claim that technical skill makes one more confident is certainly much more plausible
than the claim that technical skill makes one more daring. On the other hand, the first
premise, according to which those who are courageous are necessarily θαρραλέοι, is much
more plausible if ‘θαρραλέοι’ is translated as ‘daring’ rather than as ‘confident’: courage,
rather than presupposing confidence, seems to exist only when one has no good reason to
be confident. It is therefore the ambiguity of the word θαρραλέος that allows any connection
to be made between courage, which requires daring but not confidence, and technical skill,
which provides confidence but not daring. On this ambiguity and its effect on the
argument, cf. Goldberg 1983, 234-240.
27 See C. C. W. Taylor 1976, 153-154. Taylor rightly claims that the equation of courage
with technical expertise is abandoned in the Protagoras itself, but he surprisingly believes
that this happens in the final argument of the dialogue that equates courage with the
knowledge of what to fear and what not to fear (154). In my view, this knowledge of what to
fear and what not to fear is as like as anything can be to a technical expertise.
more daring, refers to Protagoras’ claim to teach virtue (349e5). As

Socrates has continually reminded us, this claim assumes that virtue is
some sort of technē. Therefore, if Protagoras claims to teach courage
along with the other virtues, he is committed to seeing courage itself as
some sort of technē. Thus, when Socrates proceeds in the argument to
use the technai in order to identify or closely associate courage with
wisdom, he is simply drawing out the implications of Protagoras’ own
profession. (And Protagoras will say, at the conclusion of his comments

on the argument, what Socrates himself wisely avoids claiming explicitly:
that daring comes from technē, ἀπὸ τέχνης, among other things [351a7].)
Socrates may himself see courage, and virtue generally, as involving a
very different kind of wisdom.
Hedonism and the Art of Measurement

Socrates’ response to Protagoras’ objection to this first argument is to
commit him to hedonism and then to use this commitment to commit
him further to the identity of courage and wisdom. The argument (351b-
358a), in short, is that if the good is the same as pleasure—and the many
can offer no other characterization of the good (353c1-355a5)—we
cannot say that those who fail to do what is good do so on account of
pleasure; there could be no such conflict between good and pleasure on
the hedonistic premise. Rather, if I fail to do what is good it must be only
because I am ignorant of it’s being good, i.e., pleasurable. What appear
to be conflicts between pleasure and the good are only miscalculations
with regard to what is most pleasurable. For example, if I choose to eat
something now that will deteriorate my health in the future, this is not
due to a conflict between pleasure and the good, but rather to a failure
to perceive that the pleasure afforded by eating this unhealthy food now
is outweighed by the pain to be caused by the deterioration of my health
later. Just as something far away can appear smaller than something
near at hand even when it is in fact larger, so a future pain can seem
lesser than a present pleasure even when it is in fact greater. All we need,
therefore, in order to be good is a science of measurement that will
enable us to transcend the distortion produced by perspective and thus

to measure objectively the true relative quantities of pleasure and pain.
Such a science would be our salvation (ἡ σωτηρία τοῦ βίου, 357a6-7)
because in ‘revealing the truth it would bring into the possession of
tranquility a soul remaining in the truth and thus save our life’
(δηλώσασα δὲ τὸ ἀληθὲς ἡσυχίαν ἂν ἐποίησεν ἔχειν τὴν ψυχὴν μένουσαν ἐπὶ
τῷ ἀληθεῖ καὶ ἔσωσεν ἂν τὸν βίον, 356e1-3). If we apply this theory to the
question of courage, as Socrates will proceed to do (358a-360e), then we

must conclude that the cowardly person acts out of ignorance of what is
truly most pleasurable (not knowing, for example, that running into
battle is overall more pleasurable than running away from battle) and
that therefore only the person with an expertise capable of determining
what is truly most pleasurable or painful could be courageous. Courage,
in short, proves to be wisdom contrary to Protagoras’ thesis.
But if Protagoras is thereby refuted, what of the means by which he is
refuted? Does Socrates truly believe that the good is pleasure? Does he
truly believe that there exists an art of measuring pleasure objectively
that would thereby ensure our goodness? Does Socrates truly believe that
there is such a science of virtue? With regard to the first question, it not
being possible to enter here into the debate concerning Socrates’
supposed hedonism in the Protagoras, I can only repeat dogmatically
what I have argued elsewhere,28 i.e., that the rhetorical context makes
perfectly clear that Socrates himself is not committed to hedonism.
Socrates’ strategy is as follows: he gets a very reluctant Protagoras to
commit himself unambiguously and against the many to the view that
knowledge is what rules human activity and thus, presumably,
determines its goodness or badness. Furthermore, he shows Protagoras
that the many have no other criteria for what is good or bad than
pleasure and pain, also suggesting in having Protagoras speak for the
many that he himself has no other criteria to offer them. The
consequence is that if Protagoras has a technē of virtue to teach the many,
28 Gonzalez 2000, 134-138.

it could be nothing other than a science of objectively measuring pain

and pleasure. He then commits all of the sophists to this characterization
of the technē and sends the many to them to learn it (357e2-8). By thus
having the sophists make the unfulfillable promise to teach a technē that
will fully guarantee the goodness of our lives and thus ‘save’ us, he
undermines their pretension in the usual Socratic way, i.e., by playing up
to it.29
Yet even many of the scholars who see Socrates’ defense of hedonism
as ad hominem still want to see him as endorsing a science of
measurement minus the hedonism. In other words, they want to
attribute to Socrates the view that there exists a science of measuring the
good with the power of making us good. It is this point that I wish to
address here, as on it rests the identification of virtue with a technē . A
purely textual objection is that, as even the quick summary given above
should make clear, Socrates’ account of the science of measurement is
inseparable from the thesis of hedonism: only because the good is not
distinguished from pleasure must the choice of a bad action be
explained as the result of a failure to judge its relative pain/pleasure and
only because bad action is the result of such ignorance must the good be
identified with a science of measurement.30 But the most important
29 Russell 2000 also interprets the argument as dialectical and, specifically, as a ‘mock
protreptic’ Socrates ‘gives on Protagoras’ behalf to Protagoras’ potential audience’ (327).
But Russell interprets Socrates’ aim as showing that Protagoras’ profession vis-à-vis his
potential audience commits him to the unity of the virtues. Yet to identify the aim of the
dialogue with demonstrating the unity of the virtues, as Russell clearly does (see 314), is to
forget that the question of the unity of the virtues is introduced only in the course of
debating the question with which the discussion begins and which therefore has more claim
to being the central question of the dialogue: whether or not virtue can be taught as the
sophists claim to teach it, i.e., as a skill or technē. It is in terms of that question, I suggest,
that Socrates’ dialectical argument should be mainly understood.
30 As R. Weiss has observed, ‘Socrates never intimates that the denial of incontinence or
the definition of courage can stand apart from hedonism. On the contrary, he makes every
effort to insure that Protagoras and the reader are aware of the dependence of these
doctrines on hedonism (358b-c and 360a)’ (1990, 35 n29). See also Ildefonse, p. 216, n.
342. The argument that what the many take to be incontinence is really ignorance of the
science of measurement depends upon hedonism in at least two important ways:
objection and the one I wish to pursue here is that the parts of the
dialogue usually skipped by interpreters provide conclusive evidence
that Socrates cannot be committed to the identification of virtue with a
science of measurement, whether or not this science is hedonistic.
A) the view that one can fail to do what one knows to be good by being overcome by
pleasure is shown to be absurd only by identifying the good with pleasure (354e-355e).
See Zeyl 1980, 259; Weiss 1990, 24; Kahn 1998, 238. As long as pleasure and the good
are distinct, there is nothing immediately absurd about saying that I do what I know to
be bad because I am overcome by the pleasure it gives me. Cf. Coby 1987, 149-151,
and C. C. W. Taylor 1976, 182-6. Vlastos in contrast claims that the argument against
akrasia requires only the assumption that ‘all pleasure is good,’ an assumption that falls
short of hedonism, since it does entail that all good is pleasure (1969, 86-87). There
are two problems with this interpretation. 1) Even if the claim that ‘all pleasure is good’
falls short of hedonism, it is still a claim that would be rejected not just by ‘that fierce
eccentric, Antisthenes,’ as Vlastos claims (87), but by Socrates himself, who vehemently
maintains in the Gorgias that some pleasures, such as those experienced by the
catamite, are not good (494e-495a). 2) More importantly, the claim that ‘all pleasure is
good’ is not sufficient to show the absurdity of akrasia, since it is compatible with the
view that there are goods distinct from pleasure and that these goods are qualitatively
better goods than pleasure (e.g., the claim that while pleasure is a good, virtue is a
much greater good to which pleasure should therefore be sacrificed when necessary).
In this case it is compatible with the possibility that of two options, X and Y, Y is more
pleasurable while X is better (e.g., running away from battle may be more pleasurable
[and in this sense good], while running into battle is better [but not more pleasurable]).
But if this is possible, akrasia has not been shown to be absurd: I can choose Y over X
even when I know that Y is worse than X because I am overcome by the greater
pleasure of Y.
B) The good which the science of measurement measures must be completely
homogenous (i.e., qualitatively undifferentiated), quantifiable and definable
independently of virtue (since the argument identifies virtue with the science of
measurement itself): the only remotely plausible candidate appears to be physical
pleasure, though there are serious problems even with this characterization. See
Goldberg 1983, 274-75; Nussbaum 1986, 109-110; Irwin 1995, 88-91. That physical
pleasure is what Socrates has in mind is made clear by the examples he gives at 353c7:
food, drink, and sex. Cf. McCoy 1998, 34. And it is significant that in committing
Protagoras and the many to the identification of the good with pleasure Socrates
includes among good things power over others and wealth (354b4-5): the goods at which
Protagoras’ ‘wisdom,’ with its fixation on reputation and its demand of a fee, clearly
aims. In contrast, Prodicus is made to distinguish between ἥδεσθαι and εὐφραίνεσθαι at
337c2, a distinction rightly described by Denyer as ‘a subversive prelude to an
argument which will assume that pleasures are all homogenous, and differ only in
quantity …’ (p. 141).
Becoming Good through Dialogue

As already noted, when Protagoras has the opportunity of questioning
Socrates on his understanding of virtue, he chooses instead to refute
Socrates by committing him to the goodness of a poem by Simonides
and then presenting a prepared refutation of the poet. This forces
Socrates to respond not only by defending the poem (since, after all,
what matters to him is not the poem but the question at issue), but by
making the poem express, through what all scholars recognize to be a

very violent interpretation, Socrates’ own conception of human
goodness. What then does Socrates make the poem say? The central
point is that being good is impossible for human beings and is a
prerogative of the gods only. All that we can aspire to is becoming good
(344b-e). But if this is Socrates’ view, what could be more unSocratic than
the pretension of teaching a science that would save our lives by making
us infallibly good?31 This is the pretension with which Socrates’ saddles
the sophists in order to expose their claim to teach virtue as empty. What
prevents us from being good, according to Socrates’ interpretation, is
our continual subjection to the misfortune of ignorance. There is no
divine science that could save us from such misfortune and thereby make
us good. The contrast here between the view Socrates defends in his
interpretation of Simonides and the science of measurement he
elaborates for the sophists is evident even on a verbal level: while the
science of measurement is said to enable the soul to remain in the truth
(μένουσαν ἐπὶ τῷ ἀληθεῖ, 356e2), what Socrates denies in his
interpretation of Simonides is precisely that the soul could remain in the
31 The incompatibility of Socrates’ interpretation of Simonides with the account of the

science of measurement has also been noted by D. Frede 1985-6, 749, and Landy 1994,
301. Frede, however, wrongly assumes that this incompatibility can be best explained by
the hypothesis that this part of the Simonides interpretation was a later insertion. Landy
unfortunately jumps to the conclusion that knowledge of virtue is simply unattainable and
fails even to mention Socrates’ introduction of a ‘middle state.’ Though Cantarín and Díez
do not themselves see the contradiction between the description of the art of measurement
at 356e1-4 and Socrates’ interpretation of Simonides, they make it clear when they
comment on the former passage: ‘De esta manera, Platón desarrolla la contraposición de
movimento y estabilidad, equiparando ésta à la salvación existencial’ (p. 108, n. 4).
state of being good (διαμένειν ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ ἕξει, 344b7). We should note

too that courage in this case would not be pursuing what we know to be
pleasurable, as it absurdly turns out to be on the premise of the science
of measurement, but rather confronting the misfortune of ignorance
with which any pursuit of knowledge is in the case of humans continually
threatened. Not the caution of skill, but the risk of inquiry is what
Socrates advocates.
But what does it mean to become good without being good?32 We already
encountered this distinction when Socrates suggested that in going to
Protagoras, Hippocrates seeks to become what the sophist already is. What
the sophist claims to be, however, i.e., wise in the possession of the good
he can therefore teach to others, is now said by Socrates to be a
prerogative of the gods only. What, then, is the alternative? It was
already suggested that the alternative to Hippocrates going to
Protagoras under the false assumption of being made good by him
would be to remain in dialogue with Socrates which, given Socrates’
denial that he possesses the good and is able to teach it, could promise
no more than a continual becoming good. This suggestion that the only
possible human good, understood as a continual process of becoming, is
to be found in dialogue is an idea literally at the very center of the
dialogue in a long ‘digression’ (334c-338e) often quickly passed over as
being nothing more than a dispute about method.33 This is the crisis
32 One misses the central point of the dialogue if one dismisses the conclusion Socrates
reaches by means of the distinction between becoming good and being good as
‘extremadamente trivial’, as do Cantarín and Díez (p. 200, n. 239).
33 Allen, who devotes only three pages to this episode consisting mostly of mere summary
(1996, 113-5), likens it to Shakespeare’s use of clowns to break the tension of the drama
(114). Coby devotes a little more space to it (1987, 86-96), but interprets it as doing little
more than showing Protagoras’ dependence on public opinion (see 97). Three exceptions
to the general neglect are Miller (1977), Benitez (1992) and Goldberg (1983, 128-55), who
provides by far the most detailed account currently available. Most recently, Cohen 2002
defends the importance of the interlude, finding in it what he calls a ‘political parable’ in
which Socrates offers a kind of community distinct from the anarchy defended by Callias
and the enforced equality defended by Hippias (6-7), as well as a parable for education in
which Socrates defends a collaborative form of education (9). Cohen also rightly notes that
Socrates’ practice of dialectic is both a form of politics and a form of education in the
already referred to in which the discussion is threatened with dissolution

as Socrates insists on dialogue whereas Protagoras insists on giving long
speeches. Upon careful inspection, the dispute turns out to be not about
mere method, but about the substantive question at the heart of the
dialogue: what is good? If Protagoras insists on giving speeches, this is
because he views discussion as a mere means of beating one’s opponent
in the competition for goods such as prestige and influence (335a3-6). In
other words, Protagoras has a purely instrumental and competitive

conception of knowledge serving the kinds of goods that cannot be
possessed in common such as reputation and power; this is indeed the
serious point of Hippocrates’ apparently ‘playful’ protest, cited above,
that Protagoras has done him an injustice in not sharing his wisdom.
How the pretension of a science of measuring pleasure suits such an
outlook should be clear. In contrast, if Socrates insists on dialogical
sunousia, this is, first, because the good for him is something shared and
had in common.34 To use his own intentionally provocative example
(335e1-336a4), the faster runner should slow down so that he and the
slower runner can run together: which makes the goal of course no longer
victory but something else.
Furthermore and most importantly in the present context, Socrates
insists on dialogue because there is no other way of pursuing and
possessing the good. When, in response to the crisis, the sophist Hippias
suggests choosing an umpire (ἐπιστάτης) to judge between the claims of
Socrates and Protagoras, Socrates dismisses the suggestion as absurd
(338b4-c6): such an umpire would need to have a knowledge Socrates
and Protagoras themselves lack and be recognized by all as having it. But
senses presented in the interlude.

34 Commenting on 336e, Ildefonse rightly notes: ‘L’insistance est portée à nouveau sur le
lien entre la parole-dialogue et le souci de la communauté: personne n’est censé faire
cavalier seul’ (p. 193, n. 226). Ildefonse (p. 150, n. 32) also finds the appearance of the
notion of community as essential to dialogue in the word anakoinôsômetha at 314b when
Socrates suggests that once he and Hippocrates have heard what Protagoras has to say they
can ‘share’ their discussion with others: something that of course at least Socrates will do in
narrating the dialogue to a friend.
where could such an umpire be found? The irony is that such a potential
umpire could prove his credentials only by entering into dialogue with
others, in which case he would no longer be umpire but would be subject
to the judgment of others. We must indeed, as Socrates suggests, be all
umpires together (κοινῇ, 338e1). What Socrates clearly denies in his
defense of dialogical συνουσία is the existence of any knowledge of the
good external to such συνουσία and capable of arbitrating over it.35 But it
is precisely such knowledge that the science of measurement claims to

provide!36 If there existed an external epistemic measure by which to
judge competing accounts or speeches, disputes about what is good
could be settled without any recourse to that type of dialogue in which
we must, in the words of a passage from the Republic (348a-b), be both
advocates and judges.
There would be little sense in talk of becoming good, of course, if there
did not exist a good towards which such becoming is directed. Similarly,
if dialogue would be rendered superfluous by the existence of an umpire
in possession of the knowledge by which the truth could be determined
once and for all, it would also be rendered impossible by the denial of a
measure of truth that transcends any individual human perspective (i.e.,
by the Protagorean claim that each of us is the measure). What Socrates
says here, rather than denying the existence of an absolute good or
measure, rather assumes it; the point is that only a god has the privilege
of simply being good and only a god can be the measure. We are capable
only of that ‘imitation’ of the divine measure (see Theaetetus 176b1-2)
that consists in judging each other in dialogue. We are capable only of
35 Cf. the comments of McCoy 2008: ‘Socrates does not hold that there is some
independent, universal epistemic standard by which a person could judge whether his
beliefs are adequate or inadequate (e.g., an argument grounded on self-evident
propositions)…. For Socrates, philosophical discovery and what is “reasonable” have social
and linguistic dimensions rather than being independent of social discourse. Socrates does
not adhere to the idea that some particular epistemic test can automatically yield the truth’
(73).
36 If Coby is right in seeing in the science of measurement an implicit reference to
Protagoras’ doctrine that man is the measure of all things (1987, 153), then perhaps we are
also being reminded that this doctrine is incompatible with Socratic dialogue.
that approximation to the good that consists in becoming good. What we

encounter here is nothing but the paradox expressed in the passage
from the Apology with which we began: the highest good for a human being
is becoming good, i.e., conversing about and examining virtue everyday.
This means that Socrates’ defense of dialogue defends it not simply as
a means to virtue and the good, but as itself a form of virtue and
goodness: indeed, the highest for us, if not the highest simpliciter.
Contrasted with Protagoras’ combative quest for power and reputation at

the expense of others, Socratic dialogue is justice in the sense of allowing
each his due in the name of a common good. Contrasted with
Protagoras’ injustice of claiming for himself a wisdom he will impart only
for a price, Socrates freely shares with others the pursuit of wisdom.
Contrasted with Protagoras’ confusion, self-contradiction and dishonesty
regarding his own métier in sharply distinguishing wisdom from the
virtues he claims to teach, Socratic dialogue is temperance in the sense
of ‘knowing oneself.’ Contrasted with Protagoras’ endless precautions
against criticism and persecution, his determination to escape all danger
including that of being proven wrong, Socratic dialogue is courage in the
sense of confronting the constant danger of proving ignorant. Finally,
contrasted with Protagoras’ impiety of disregarding the gods—his
reference to the gods in only the ‘mythical’ portion of his speech has
little significance in contrast to what Socrates exposes to be his total
disregard for the relation between piety and justice (331c-332a)—
Socratic dialogue is piety in the sense of doing the gods the service of
continually exposing the gulf between us and them (see Apology 23b7).37
In these ways, both what Socrates says through the poem of Simonides
and what he exhibits in his defense of dialogue against the sophists
demonstrate a conception of human virtue and knowledge completely at
odds with that attributed to the sophists in the account of a science of
37 In case we are tempted to think that identifying virtue with dialogue makes it too easy,
Plato repeatedly shows us how resistant most people are to dialogue and therefore how
failed dialogue is the norm. The life of conversing about virtue everyday would not be the
highest good if it were not difficult.
measurement. It is Protagoras who claimed that man is the ‘measure’ of

all things and the science of measurement is doubtless an allusion to that
doctrine;38 for Socrates, if there is any measure, it is divine and therefore
beyond us.
Why We are not Saved: the Delusion of a Technique of Happiness

It is no accident, therefore, that Socrates leaves the exact nature and
identity of the science of measurement unexamined (357b): no such

science could ever be developed by mere mortals like ourselves, for
whom becoming good through dialogue is the greatest good
attainable.39That the science of measurement is indeed impossible for us
mortals is not hard to see. First, this science would require an ability to
predict the future with absolute precision. In order to make the correct
choice between options X and Y we would need to know exactly how
much pleasure and pain (or whatever else we wish to substitute for ‘good’
and ‘bad’) each option will provide in the long run. This in turn would
require precise knowledge of all of an action’s long-term consequences.
We would need, in short, a divine omniscience. A second and related
point is that the science of measurement would require immortality or,
at least, a guaranteed lifespan, since a premature and unexpected death
would undermine all of its calculations.40If today I choose an action that
is painful in the short term but leads to much greater pleasure in the
long term over an action that is pleasurable in the short term but leads
to much greater pain in the long term, but I die tomorrow, have I made
the right choice? Thirdly, it seems highly doubtful that even with
omniscience and immortality we could ever succeed at objective and
quantitative measurement of ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ As already noted, pleasure
and pain are substituted in the argument for good and bad because they
38 A suggestion made by Ildefonse, p. 61, p. 216, n. 343. Ildefonse also rightly points to
the relevance of the art of measurement to the euboulia Protagoras claims to teach (p. 216,
n. 343).
39 Coby suggests (1987, 161) that the word ὑπερφυῶς at 358a4 is meant to suggest that the
science of measurement is beyond our nature.
40 Cf. Coby 1987, 159.
appear the most susceptible to quantitative measurement. How could

you calculate whether wealth is better than reputation or whether virtue is
better than contemplation without reducing these different goods to
differing quantities of pleasure? But even if we allow such a reduction, are
pleasure and pain themselves susceptible to objective measurement (and it
would need to be objective in order to counter mere appearance)? The
pleasure of an action seems inherently subjective and relative, varying
not only from person to person but also within the same person at
different times and in different circumstances. How does one measure
such a slippery, protean phenomenon? Is not the science of
measurement an absurd attempt to render objective what is most
subjective in human life?41
Furthermore, are even pleasure and pain quantifiable in the way
necessary for a science of measurement? How do you compare
quantitatively the pleasure of eating a good steak to the pleasure of
seeing a painting by Vermeer or to the pleasure of hearing a piano
prelude by Chopin? Finally, is it even possible to form a clear idea of
how exactly one would go about measuring a specific pleasure? In terms
of what would one measure it? By what device? Even if we could correlate
pleasure and pain with some specific physiological process such as, for
example, the excitement of neurons in a certain part of the brain, and
even if we could devise some means of measuring the exact number of
neurons excited when a person feels either pain or pleasure, this
measurement of the physiological accompaniments of pleasure and pain
would not be a measurement of pleasure and pain themselves as they are
actually experienced by the individual.42 In short, Socrates leaves the
41 C. C. W. Taylor argues that there can be no measurement of pleasure and pain because
judgments about pleasure and pain cannot be inter-subjective, i.e., their truth cannot be
determined independently of ‘the beliefs, attitudes, etc. of the individual making [them]’
(1976, 196).
42 This point is made by C. C. W. Taylor (1976, 199) in the course of arguing that the
assessment of pleasures and pains does not admit ‘quantitative precision’ (1976, 197-199).
For more discussion of these and related problems with the science of measurement, see
Goldberg 1983, 266-270.
exact nature of the science of measurement unexplained for the simple

reason that it is impossible both to form any clear conception of its
nature and to defend its possibility. In order to see Socrates as
advocating such a science we would need to accuse him of the delusion
that human beings are capable of a more-than-human wisdom and
perfection. Fortunately, Socrates himself criticizes this delusion, and
therefore the science of measurement, in his interpretation of
Simonides.
Yet must not Socrates’ defense of the power of knowledge against the
view of the many that knowledge is the slave of desire be taken as his
own view? What is too often missed is that the notion of a science of
measurement defends the power of knowledge only by making it
extrinsic and subservient to the desire and the good it pursues. In short,
the account of the science of measurement presupposes an
instrumentalist conception of knowledge and virtue according to which
they have no intrinsic value but instead are in the service of people’s
natural desire for pleasure. Socrates reconciles the sophists with the
many, who are made Protagoras’ interlocutors in this section of the
dialogue, by making the knowledge claimed by the former cater to the
desires of the latter. It is as if he were saying: ‘All of you people want the
maximum amount of pleasure, right? Well, the sophists have just the
thing for you: a technique for objectively measuring relative quantities of
pleasure and pain!’
Defenders of the science of measurement, however, have one final
argument: Socrates uses the account of the science of measurement to
defend, against the view of the many that knowledge is powerless in the
face of desire and pleasure, what is clearly a Socratic thesis defended in
many dialogues (including in this very dialogue in the course of the
Simonides interpretation, 345d-e), i.e., that we necessarily desire to do
what we know to be good and that therefore all wrong doing is the result
of ignorance. How, then, can the science of measurement not be a Socratic
account of the knowledge involved in being virtuous if it is used to defend
a Socratic thesis? It is important to note, however, that Socrates’ claim that
someone who knows what is good will desire what is good (or that no one
willingly does what is bad) can be interpreted in two radically different
ways. According to one interpretation, the reason why we all desire what
we know to be good is that knowledge does no more than show us where
we can find in the greatest quantity a good that we all already, by nature
and therefore necessarily, desire: in other words, knowledge is always
obeyed because, being only the instrument of desire, it can never be
opposed by desire. This is the interpretation advanced by the present

argument against akrasia with its appeal to a science of measurement.
According to the second interpretation, we necessarily desire what we
know to be good for the opposite reason: because knowledge, rather than
serving desire, determines and transforms it.43 Of course, in some
indeterminate sense we all desire what is good. According to the first
interpretation, however, the specific content of the good is determined by
our natural desires, i.e., it is identified with physical pleasure; knowledge
only serves to calculate how and where this already defined good can be
best procured. According to the second interpretation, on the other hand,
knowledge can fundamentally change our conception of the good and
thus change our desires so that, for example, we progress from desiring
physical pleasure to desiring honor to desiring virtue to desiring wisdom.
While the first interpretation makes knowledge and desire completely
extrinsic to one another and therefore can join them only by making one
serve the other, the second interpretation makes them an inseparable
unity so that as my conception of the good is transformed, so is my desire
for the good. Indeed, this unity is such that knowledge and virtue, rather
than serving desire, can themselves become objects of desire and thus
essential constituents of the good. It is this second interpretation, I
suggest, that best characterizes Socrates’ position.
43 Denyer thus rightly notes that Socrates’ rejection of the view that knowledge can be
overcome by pleasure does not necessarily commit him to the view that knowledge as
commonly understood is all-powerful; he instead could have believed that ‘knowledge of good
and bad demands something like the long and intense schooling of appetite, emotion, and
intellect that the Republic prescribes for those who are to rule an ideal society’ (181).
In this case, while the present argument against akrasia seems to say
something like what Socrates says elsewhere, it in fact says the exact
opposite. The engagement in dialogical συνουσία, which the central
section of this dialogue defends and identifies with the process of
becoming good, engages the entire person, transforming both our
knowledge and our desire in continually questioning and reevaluating
our understanding of a good we can never fully attain. This
inseparability of knowledge and desire in dialectical inquiry is what

Socrates calls ἔρως, which must be understood as being as much cognitive
as it is conative. Like Lysias’ utilitarian calculations in the Phaedrus, the
science of measurement is the complete antithesis to such ἔρως. It is
therefore a science appropriate not to Socrates, but to the sophists who,
as Socrates’ description of the opening scene in Callias’ house was seen
to suggest, are characterized precisely by a deficiency of ἔρως.
Socrates elsewhere, when he claims for himself a certain kind of
knowledge and even a technē , explicitly characterizes it as erotic. Thus in
the Symposium he claims to know nothing more than ta erôtika (177d,
212b) and in the Phaedrus speaks of his erôtikê technē (257a). On the one
hand, we cannot characterize Socrates’ pursuit of the good in dialogue as
itself a form of goodness and virtue unless we also characterize it as a
kind of wisdom and skill. Indeed, we can even characterize Socratic
dialogue as a kind of measuring since, as we have seen, in such dialogue
we take measure of each other in simultaneously assuming the roles of
both advocate and judge. We also saw suggested in the prologue that
Socrates is a ‘physician of the soul’ who as such can evaluate the goods
offered to the soul and who conducts this evaluation through the art of
dialectic. Yet the crucial point is that this Socratic skill of measuring is
erotic: it is not the calculation of an already defined good that brings us
into its possession and thus saves our lives, but a skill of pursuing the
good, a knowledge of how to desire that is also a desire of knowledge.
This is why the possession of such a skill is not at all incompatible with
Socrates’ disavowal of knowledge (which he makes in the Symposium
itself: 175e). What it is incompatible with is the science of measurement

he attributes to the sophists in the Protagoras.
If this interpretation is correct, why have so many scholars not only
seen Socrates as endorsing the account of the science of measurement,
but have also themselves shown great enthusiasm for it? After all of the
vague claims in other dialogues about the relations between virtue,
knowledge, and happiness, scholars are apparently relieved finally to
find here what seems to them a relatively clear and precise theory.44
Moreover, it is a theory that sounds ‘modern’ and has not lost its
attractiveness or, rather, seductiveness during the last two thousand
years. Its similarity to the hedonistic calculus of Bentham and Mill has
often been noted.45R. E. Allen has also noted parallels between the
science of measurement and Freudian psychoanalysis: both see pleasure
as the primary psychological motive (Freud’s ‘pleasure principle’) and
both believe that immediate pleasure must sometimes be renounced for
the sake of greater pleasure in the long run (Freud’s ‘reality principle’).46
Gregory Vlastos has noted an affinity between the science of
measurement and present-day decision theory. Though he recognizes
important differences which he attributes to the fact that Socrates’ model
of deliberation is ‘archaic,’ he nevertheless sees the following
‘unmistakable’ affinity: ‘both make the fundamental assumption that in
principle first-order valuations can be represented by numbers [e.g.,
quantities of pleasure or pain] and second-order ones by the end-results
of algebraic additions [e.g., a calculation of whether the aggregate
pleasure or the aggregate pain is the greater]’ (1969, 73 n12). But the
appeal goes far beyond such sophisticated theories and is represented in
the broader culture by promises of happiness for the cost of a book or a
44 As Grote remarks with evident satisfaction, Socrates here ‘lays out one of the largest,
most distinct, and most positive theories of virtue, which can be found in the Platonic
writings’ (1888, 2:305); this theory ‘is positive and distinct, to a degree very unusual with
Plato’ (2:308).
45 See especially Allen 1996, 126-153.
46 Allen 1996, 153-158. Allen draws this parallel with the goal of giving a critique of
psychoanalysis.
set of videos or a series of tests and courses. What makes all of these
modern theories attractive is their promise of a technē or science by
which we can control and ensure the goodness and happiness of our lives
or, to use Socrates’ expression, ‘save’ our lives.
But if the present interpretation is correct, the idea of such a technē is
to be traced back not to Socrates but to the sophists, and it finds in the
Protagoras not confirmation or support, but rather a thoroughgoing
critique and refutation. This dialogue is indeed timely, not because it

confirms our modern prejudices, but because it brings them into
question. In the age of technology, it is very tempting to think that
ethical dilemmas and the unhappiness resulting from bad decisions can
find their solution or cure in some technical skill or science. And there
are today many Protagorases trying to sell their own versions of the
science of measurement.47 The present dialogue can help us to resist this
temptation and to begin to relearn the messy, always incomplete,
dangerously fragile, terribly humbling but ennobling process of
dialogical sunousia. In an age where there is such a need for ‘physicians
of the soul’ and where there are so many competitors for this title,
maybe we should consider recognizing such a physician in the seemingly
most implausible candidate of all: Socrates. Unlike Protagoras, he
neither professes a teachable technē nor offers a cure. However, precisely
because his method promises so little, in contrast to the extraordinary
boasts of the science of measurement, it may be the only one that can
truly help us become better.
Protagoras or Socrates: Our Choice

The remainder of the dialogue’s argument cannot be examined here:
Socrates’ use of the hedonistic calculus to commit the sophists to the
47 Coby makes this interesting observation: ‘It could be observed that the solution
proposed by Socrates has in large measure been adopted by modern Western society: a
utilitarian science that enlightens and satisfies the desires of the masses; a society that is
technological, progressive, secular, hedonistic, permissive, apolitical, egalitarian, and
individualistic—all attributes of the art of measurement’ (1987, 171).
view that courage is the pursuit of what is known to be most pleasant—a

view that should be recognized to be the opposite of what Socrates
himself understands and practices as courage48—and the concluding
reversal of positions that has Socrates claiming that virtue is wisdom but
cannot be taught and Protagoras claiming that it can be taught but is
not wisdom: a reversal that only hides the difference between an erotic
conception of virtue and wisdom that identifies the two and a technical,
instrumental conception of wisdom that sharply distinguishes it from

the good it supposedly provides. I instead focus on the end and three
choices dramatized there: two explicitly made and one left
indeterminate. Offered a continuation of the discussion of virtue,
Protagoras chooses against it in favor of ‘turning to something else’
(361e6-362a1). Socrates in response claims that he should have left long
ago; while in explanation he pretends to have an appointment
elsewhere, the narrative frame of the dialogue reveals the truth: he
clearly prefers to continue the discussion with someone else (as he will
do in immediately narrating at leisure the discussion to a friend) to
remaining with the sophists who pretend to possess a skill that renders
such discussion superfluous. But the third choice, that of Hippocrates, is
not explicitly described. Does he leave with Socrates or remain with
Protagoras?49 It was for his sake that this discussion between Socrates
and Protagoras took place. However, the concluding words of the
dialogue tell us nothing clear about his fate. Indeed, after the initial
introduction to Protagoras, Hippocrates is not mentioned again. Is this
48 It is simply wrong to suggest, as Ildefonse does, that there is no way to define courage as
wisdom ‘si ce n’est par rapport au plaisir et à la douleur, aux désirs et aux craintes, si ce
n’est en usant des ‘connecteurs’ temporels de l’anticipation et de différence entre le court
terme et le long terme’ (p. 52).
49 As Denyer notes, Socrates’ use of the plural ‘we went away’ ‘perhaps means that
Hippocrates, in spite of his earlier enthusiasm for Protagoras, left with Socrates’ (204). But
this is only a ‘perhaps’. Lampert, in contrast, sees the rest of the final sentence as excluding
the possibility that Hippocrates left with Socrates: ‘But: “Having said and heard these
things”—Hippocrates said nothing at all, so Socrates’ exact words exclude him’ (124).
Lampert suggests instead that Socrates left with Alcibiades, from whom he has just come at
the start of the dialogue.
an oversight on Plato’s part, a rare and surprising failure of his literary

art?50
It seems more likely that the silence is intentional. Neither Plato nor
Socrates can decide the fate of a young, passionate man like
Hippocrates. We can imagine Hippocrates being seduced by the rhetoric
and fame of Protagoras, by the wealth and power Protagoras promises.
We can also imagine him recognizing the superiority of the life of
dialogue and virtue recommended by Socrates. Ultimately, the decision

is his. If Plato had described Hippocrates as either leaving with Socrates
or remaining with Protagoras, he would have given the misleading
impression that everyone in Hippocrates’ situation would have done the
same. But of course we the readers are all in Hippocrates’ situation: we
must ourselves continually choose between the way of life represented by
Protagoras and that represented by Socrates. And we will not all make
the same decision: scholarship on the Protagoras is itself evidence of this,
since the sympathies of scholars are sharply divided between Protagoras
and Socrates. Nor will even the same person make the same choice at
every point of his or her own life. Protagoras and what he represents will
always be attractive and seductive, while the kind of dialogue Socrates
demands will always be extraordinarily difficult. The choice must thus be
made again and again. In this way, the silence concerning the fate of
Hippocrates, as well as the silence concerning the reaction of the friend
to whom Socrates narrates the dialogue, represent a challenge to the
reader. What choice will we make? How will we react? Will we follow
Socrates and persist in the often frustrating and humiliating quest for
goodness and virtue in dialogue, or will we follow Protagoras and ‘turn
to something else’?
University of Ottowa
fgonzal2@uottawa.ca
50 This is Grote’s view (1888, 2:298-299).

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Gonzalez, Francisco J. - The Virtue of Dialogue, Dialogue As Virtue in Plato's Protagoras (2014) (Philosophical Papers Vol. 43 Iss. 1)

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This article was downloaded by: [Pennsylvania State University]

On: 11 August 2014, At: 16:24

The Virtue of Dialogue,

To cite this article: Francisco J. Gonzalez (2014) The Virtue of Dialogue,

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/05568641.2014.901694

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

The Virtue of Dialogue, Dialogue as Virtue in

In an earlier article on Plato’s Protagoras (Gonzalez 2000), I concluded

ISSN 0556-8641 print/ISSN 1996-8523 online

in being together with others in conversation). In the present article I wish

Beginnings: Reconciling Eros and Wisdom

the wisest to you’ (309a1-310a1). This conversation immediately

5 Coby 1987, 25.

These details need not mean that Hippocrates is literally a drunkard

It does not take Socrates long to expose the blindness of Hippocrates’

ἀποπειρώμενος τοῦ ̔Ιπποκράτους τῆς ῥώμης διεσκόπουν αὐτὸν, 311a8-b1).

critical points in the dialogue (see 340d9-e2, 352a1-b2).11 Therefore,

question raised by the opening frame of the dialogue: the wisdom of

distinction between someone who is truly alive and insubstantial

supposedly profound, but inaudible, Prodicus to Tantalus, the

very clear set of contrasts in our three introductions: first we are

who are characterized by a claim to a technical skill promising mastery

A Battle over the Wisdom of Courage

little to do with piety, justice or temperance. This results in a crisis at the

Socrates presents his reasoning in a very ambiguous way: ‘Then

be courageous. So the courageous must be daring by being wise and

courageous: there could be some other, unspecified condition required

dare anything, since he has full control of the situation.26 Indeed, it

Sprague). Socrates likewise suggests that someone ‘who has knowledge of

more daring, refers to Protagoras’ claim to teach virtue (349e5). As

profession. (And Protagoras will say, at the conclusion of his comments

Hedonism and the Art of Measurement

enable us to transcend the distortion produced by perspective and thus

question of courage, as Socrates will proceed to do (358a-360e), then we

28 Gonzalez 2000, 134-138.

it could be nothing other than a science of objectively measuring pain

Becoming Good through Dialogue

making the poem express, through what all scholars recognize to be a

31 The incompatibility of Socrates’ interpretation of Simonides with the account of the

state of being good (διαμένειν ἐν ταύτῃ τῇ ἕξει, 344b7). We should note

already referred to in which the discussion is threatened with dissolution

other words, Protagoras has a purely instrumental and competitive

senses presented in the interlude.

is precisely such knowledge that the science of measurement claims to

that approximation to the good that consists in becoming good. What we

Contrasted with Protagoras’ combative quest for power and reputation at

measurement. It is Protagoras who claimed that man is the ‘measure’ of

Why We are not Saved: the Delusion of a Technique of Happiness

identity of the science of measurement unexamined (357b): no such

appear the most susceptible to quantitative measurement. How could

exact nature of the science of measurement unexplained for the simple

opposed by desire. This is the interpretation advanced by the present

inseparability of knowledge and desire in dialectical inquiry is what

itself: 175e). What it is incompatible with is the science of measurement

critique and refutation. This dialogue is indeed timely, not because it

Protagoras or Socrates: Our Choice

view that courage is the pursuit of what is known to be most pleasant—a

instrumental conception of wisdom that sharply distinguishes it from

an oversight on Plato’s part, a rare and surprising failure of his literary

dialogue and virtue recommended by Socrates. Ultimately, the decision

50 This is Grote’s view (1888, 2:298-299).

Protagoras. Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas.

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