Perhaps the dialogue Theaetetus best illustrates Socrates view on the relativity of perspectives on objective reality. In that dialogue, Socrates speculates on how Protagoras himself might have defended his view that "man is the measure of all things, and that things are to me as they appear to me, and...to you as they appear to you."[C386a] Interestingly, he does this without commiting Protagoras to the same conclusions that some of his followers have drawn, namely, that "there is no name given to anything by nature; all is convention and habit of the users,"[Cratylus 384d: emphasis added] without any underlying reality. The Theaetetus gives us reason to think that Hermogenes misses the mark in this representation of Protagoras' views. Against the claim of Cratylus that names are "natural and not conventional," and that we have reason to believe "that there is truth and correctness in them,"[C383b] Hermogenes takes Protagoras to mean that there is no essential truth underlying our words, and that the name of each thing is only that which anybody agrees to call it.[C385] (Is there a true and false in words?[385bc] And true and false propositions? Yes.[C385bc] "And a true proposition says that which is, and a false proposition says that which is not?" Yes.[C385c] So a proposition can be true on whole, but have untrue parts? No.[C385c] Every part? yes. Does a proposition have any parts smaller than a name? No.[C385c] "Then the name is a part of the true proposition?" Yes.[C385c] A true part? Yes.[C385c] And is a part of a falsehood also a falsehood? Yes.[C385c] Then names may be true and false? Yes.[385c][As opposed to experiences, which are always true.[T167c]] And there are as many names as people want to give to things? "And will they be true names at the time of uttering them?" [C385d] Hermogenes asserts that there will be "different names for the same things."[C385e] "But would you say, Hermogenes, that things differ as the names differ? And are they relative to individuals, as Protagoras tells us?"[C386a] Or are they instruments of teaching,[C388c] which means they are for "giving information to one another and distinguishing things according to their natures?"[C388b] In which case, "Then...names ought to be given according to a natural process, and with a proper instrument, and not at our pleasure, in this and no other way shall we name with success."[C387d] Rather by one who is skilled in using names well.[C388d] "And the teacher will use the name well--and well means like a teacher."[C388c] The giving of names cannot be by anyone's whims, for they have a "natural fitness,"[C391] and the best way to discover this, that is, "the true way is to have the assistance of those who know."[C391c] This is what Cratylus has to learn from Protagoras, "about the fitness of names."[C391c] )
I think Socrates wants to show in Theaetetus that this conclusion need not follow from the argument Protagoras actually puts forth. And this confusion on the part of Hermogenes, Theaetetus, and others brings Socrates to assert that we should not take the followers to speak for the master unless they actually say what he himself would have said.[T166d] (Is there a true and false in words?[385bc] And true and false propositions? Yes.[C385bc] "And a true proposition says that which is, and a false proposition says that which is not?" Yes.[C385c] So a proposition can be true on whole, but have untrue parts? No.[C385c] Every part? yes. Does a proposition have any parts smaller than a name? No.[C385c] "Then the name is a part of the true proposition?" Yes.[C385c] A true part? Yes.[C385c] And is a part of a falsehood also a falsehood? Yes.[C385c] Then names may be true and false? Yes.[385c][As opposed to experiences, which are always true.[T167c]] And there are as many names as people want to give to things? "And will they be true names at the time of uttering them?" [C385d] Hermogenes asserts that there will be "different names for the same things."[C385e] "But would you say, Hermogenes, that things differ as the names differ? And are they relative to individuals, as Protagoras tells us?"[C386a] Or are they instruments of teaching,[C388c] which means they are for "giving information to one another and distinguishing things according to their natures?"[C388b] In which case, "Then...names ought to be given according to a natural process, and with a proper instrument, and not at our pleasure, in this and no other way shall we name with success."[C387d] Rather by one who is skilled in using names well.[C388d] "And the teacher will use the name well--and well means like a teacher."[C388c] The giving of names cannot be by anyone's whims, for they have a "natural fitness,"[C391] and the best way to discover this, that is, "the true way is to have the assistance of those who know."[C391c] This is what Cratylus has to learn from Protagoras, "about the fitness of names."[C391c] )
At Cratylus 386c Socrates shows Hermogenes his mistake. If Hermogenes is right in this interpretation, Socrates wonders, "and the truth is that things are as they appear to anyone, how can some of us be wise and some of us foolish?"[C386c] "You will allow, I think, that the assertion of Protagoras can hardly be correct. For if what appears to each man is true to him, one man cannot in reality be wiser than another."[C386d] ("Nor will you be disposed to say with Euthydemus that all things equally belong to all men at the same moment and always, for neither on his view can there be some good and others bad, if virtue and vice are always equally to be attributed to all."[C386d] Adherence to this line would make Protagoras a solipsist, but as it is, virtue and vice seem out of place here, and for a reason, I think, for later in the dialogue we see at Cratylus 415d that 'vice' has to do with impeding "the stream of the good soul," whereas 'virtue' involves "ease of motion." Likewise, at 421C, "being is also moving, and the same may be said of not-being, which is likewise called not-going."[C421c] At 415d, 'bad' is attributed to foreign origin, but at 421d he calls this a way of giving the mere appearance of an answer, when really there is just so much we cannot know about why our names and words are attached to one another. Too much has changed for us to pretend to 'know' all of it, and the point at which we give up the inquiry is when we come to "the names which are the elements of all other names and sentences...The word 'good' for example..."[421d] "But if neither is right, and things are not relative to individuals, and all things do not equally belong to all at the same moment and always they must be supposed to have their own proper and permanent essence;...independent and maintain to their own essence the relation prescribed by nature."[C386e] Hermogenes things this is true, but Socrates wants to know if it is true "only of things themselves, or equally to the actions which proceed from them?"[C387] They agree that actions have a proper instrument and a natural process that is right will succeed, while others will fail.[C387; also see T168bc] For all actions, "the right way is the natural way..."[C387b] Speaking is a kind of action [C387d] with a special nature of its own and names ought to be given accordingly.[C387d]) Hermogenes admits to the implausiblity of this view when he replies to Socrates' question, Are there no wise men? with the response that he has "taken refuge" with Protagoras in this claim--though "not that I agree with him at all."[C386a] Socrates easily leads him into contradiction, wondering why Hermogenes has never "taken refuge" with him in his view that there are no bad men,[C386b] to which Hermogenes replies that he has good reason to believe that there are such men, and plenty of them, compared with only a few good ones.[C386b] When Hermogenes agrees that the good are the wise, and the bad are the foolish,[C386c] Socrates brings him to see that he could not hold this if he agrees with what he has put forth as Protagoras' view, for it would mean that he makes both claims, i.e. that there both are and are not any wise men. Hermogenes admits that he cannot consistently hold that there are no wise men if he also thinks that there are some good men, and that the good are wise.[C386c]
Thus, Socrates concludes later in Theaetetus, "Your master...must admit that one man is wiser than another and the wiser man is the measure, whereas an ignorant person like myself [and perhaps Hermogenes and/or Theaetetus?] is not in any way bound to be a measure..."[T179b] because "not every opinion of every person is true."[T179c] So rather than follow Protagoras' students in the wrong direction, Socrates suggests we "honestly consider what we mean when we say that all things are in motion and that what seems also is, to any individual or community...and whether knowledge is, or is not, the same thing as perception..."[168bc]--not "basing our argument on the common use of words and phrases, which the vulgar twist into any sense they please and so perplex one another in all sorts of ways."[T168c] "Be on the watch against one another's attempts to catch at words,"[T166c] he warns.
Here, as in many of the dialogues, I think Socrates is concerned that we do not fully understand the true and deep meanings of the words we use, and due to this, he is engaged in an effort to distinguish our common misunderstandings--in this case, of 'to know' and 'to be wise'--from their truer meaning, about which it is admittedly more difficult to talk. Taken as a subtle dialectic between seemingly contradictory understandings of these terms, this dialogue is especially instructive toward a truer grasp of what it might actually mean to 'teach' well.[see footnote 1] Protagoras admits at the outset to the existence of wise men--the debate remains over who they will turn out to be. "And as for wisdom and the wise man," he says, "I am very far from saying they do not exist. By a wise man I mean precisely a man who can change any one of us, when what is bad appears and is to him, and make what is good appear and be to him."[T166d] (This will allow Plato to show later on that the Sophist is not a wise man, for as we see in later talk of how little his followers understand him, or anyone, for that matter, Protagoras does not succeed in using words in this way...We might interpret Protagoras to be saying then that our particular perceptions are in a way complimentary, such that seeing both and all points of view is better, but that whether we are or are not wise, whether we are healthy or ill, and thus have happy experience or bitter, is not told by this 'knowledge' alone, but by whether we can make the good appear to others. This is a conclusion I think Socrates would happily accept. But it seems a curious claim, at first, if Protagoras is saying that there are wise men, but we do not have "call to represent" either the healthy or sick as such, because both need the other condition, and since the wise man is one who can make the good appear to those who are in view of the bad, so change their condition from the worse to the better, and it is better for both to be in view of the other condition, and the claim that "we have no call to represent" has to do with being outside looking in on the matter, which is subject to change from worse to better and back again. One might think from the Cratylus that naming a person attempts to make static what is actually dynamic, and so can be a false representation of what actually is [C394de]. But experiences themselves are never false, but only sound or unsound, good or bad. And as in the state, when practices are unsound, it is the job of the wise man to substitute others that are and appear sound.[see T167d]) This can be interpreted in several different ways; from the perspective that to change appearance is to teach (a view Socrates could never endorse), and from the view that to teach is, at least, to change appearances (a weaker claim that could be true if qualified). The Sophists believe they follow Protagoras directly when they say they 'know' what it is to be 'wise', i.e. to be able to use words to change others by changing the appearances before their eyes.[T166d][see footnote 1.] Socrates admits this is one way these terms are sometimes used, weakly. But he and Hermogenes have already agreed that the good are wise, and so Socrates' challenge is to help this student of Protagoras to keep this strong sense in mind, and thus, to use his words more carefully than to equate mere 'perception' with 'knowledge', for to do so can lead to false conclusions, such as that truth consists in words alone, and that wisdom amounts to using words as a power over others. The Sophist may be able to change other's perceptions, i.e. to show them more of what is pleasant, but it does not follow from this that he has changed his subject's 'knowledge', only his beliefs. Nor has he bettered the others actual condition, nor shown himself to be 'wise'--if only because to be good is to be wise, and the Sophist only aims at what appears 'better'. This interpretation leads to a method of action which only manipulates belief, getting us no closer anything that deserves to be called 'knowledge'.[see C387 footnote 3.] What is suggested then is that the followers understanding of their hero may be only a very shallow interpretation of the deeper meaning about which Protagoras may very well have intended to teach. Evidence for this claim is subtle, but by the dialectic method Socrates uses, with himself playing both voices, he can show the sense in which Protagoras may indeed be quite right about many things (including the complexity and encouragability of subjective perception), but without allowing the conclusion that there is no essential reality underlying and uniting our perceptions and our words. This popular mistake (then, as now) leaves us with nothing to qualify our beliefs as true beliefs, and (if they are not forgotten) as knowledge. But, again, it is a mistake made in the following, not the vision.
"No," Socrates thinks Protagoras would put forth, "[W]hat I actually say," and what Socrates needs to refute, is that we have particular perceptions, and that it follows from this that "what appears to each becomes--or is, if we may use the word 'is'--for him alone to whom it appears."[T166d] Socrates objection to this, of course, will be to the suggestion that something can be true for one person "alone" that is not true for others, which would rob all truth from the word 'is', not to mention the word 'true'. Hermogenes and others had interpreted Protagoras in this way, i.e. to believe that things have no permanent essence of their own.[C386a] But what Protagoras seemed to want to do was to emphasize the necessary idiosyncracy of our subjective perspectives, not to deny the objectivity of the truth itself. What he actually says is "that the truth is as I have written. Each one of us is a measure of what is and of what is not, but there is all the difference in the world between one and another just in the very fact that what is and appears to one is different from what is and appears to the other."[T166d] Socrates will be happy to admit, of course, that what appears is different to each, but not that this changing appearance entails a changing 'is'. Protagoras' followers may want to ask how we can ever tell the difference between them, and I think Socrates would say that this is what we need the dialectician's method for, i.e. to weigh the subjective experiences and thus reconcile appearances to show the truth of what 'is' which underlies our shifting beliefs. "What I mean," he supposes Protagoras to claim, is that, just as "to the sick man his food appears bitter and is so; to the healthy man it is and appears the opposite. Now there is no call to represent either of the two as wiser--that cannot be...what is wanted is a change to the opposite condition, because the other state is better."[T167] Thus, the wise man, according to this view of Protagoras, is not wise by virtue of health or illness in himself, or by virtue of being able to promote health or illness in others, but rather by virtue of being able to change the subjective appearances by which we perceive the world. While this view of teaching may actually encourage more, rather than less learning, this conclusion, in and of itself, will not set particularly wrong with Socrates. And what's more, this subjective realm of knowledge will be encouragable in that no one can deny that the sick persons food tastes bitter and that the healthy persons food tastes better. But Socrates will not let Protagoras pretend that there is not an objective good which is being measured by this subjective criterion, for the quality of these appearances depends on the actual condition of the soul, that is, whether it is healthy or sick--and changing this is apparently something that the Sophist cannot help us with. While Protagoras holds that the healthy are not wiser and the ill are not more ignorant, Socrates will have to show that it is the person in healthy condition which secures the most desirable experience. And therefore the task of the wise person will be, not merely to effect appearances, but to help change the actual condition of the soul which gives rise to appearances in the form of sweet or bitter experience. The debate remains then a question of who can best accomplish this task.
Socrates gets at this by exploring an understanding of Protagoras which is more subtle and deep than his own followers attribute to him, asking "what after all do they mean when they say that all things are in change?"[T181c] (It is only one kind of change, or two? Alteration and/or local movement? If two, do they mean both kinds?[T181d])
If Protagoras meant this in the strong sense, as his followers have taken him to mean, it would follow that perception of this changing reality 'is' knowledge, and then there could be no belief truer than any other. If this were the case, communication would simply fail,[C387] and reconciliation of our separate subjective realities would be impossible. Clearly Socrates cannot grant that 'is' can be used in this way--lest its meaning disappear altogether. But the claim that appearances are particular perceptions and unique to the subject need not entail the strong claim that all is in flux--only the weaker claim that all perceptions are in flux, whatever else might be constant. The fact of such differences of subjective perspectives does not ential that these are not merely different points of view on the same essential truth. Socrates and Protagoras could both admit in this that there are an infinite number of such perspectives from which any object of knowledge might appear, and even that what appears to each is different and his alone in the subjective experience, and still never have to give up the claim that these flowing appearances have the same essential reality in common--that which 'is' in a deeper sense. And so, it does not follow from Protagoras' conception that subjective perceptions can never be reconciled in the objective world they view in common--in other words, it can be true "for him", but not "for him alone".[T166d] Hence, the less assailable claim that "what the individual experiences at the moment--the source of his sensations and the judgments in accordance with them...are transparently clear and are instances of knowledge," that is, knowledge of a kind the Sophists typically disregard in their claims to know what they cannot possibly, and this "may be in the right," after all, "and Theaetetus was not beside the mark when he said that perception and knowledge were the same thing."[T179d, 182e, 184b, 186e] Socrates thus qualifies Protagoras' use of "for him" in this. And if we take seriously what is said in the Cratylus, that 'knowledge' is ambiguous, and can seem to signify both "motion...expressed by names,"[C436e] and "stopping the soul at things [rather] than going round with them".[C437c] "We must, then, look more closely into the matter, as our defense of Protagoras enjoined, and study this moving reality, ringing its metal to see if it sounds true or cracked [see footnote 2 on theme of motion and action] ...there has been no inconsiderable battle over it...which is...actually growing in violence,"[T179d] led by the followers of Heraclitis. "You will never get anywhere with them, for that matter they cannot get anywhere with one another, but they take very good care to leave nothing settled either in discourse or in their own minds. I suppose they think that would be something stationary--a think they will fight against to the last and do their utmost to banish from the universe."[T180b] Theodorus says "there is no such thing as a master or a pupil among them...and not one of them thinks another understands anything."[T180c] And we are between these combatants, still today.[T181] The ancients hid their meanings of "flowing streams" in poetry, and the moderns say theirs straight out, provoking "the very cobblers may...abandon their simple faith that some things stand still while others move."[T180d] The moderns accordingly think, as Hermogenes, that names are mere convention, and so Socrates resolves to discuss not the names of things, but the things themselves that bear naming.[T177e] These are subject of a school which teaches just the opposite--that reality 'is one, immovable, being is the name of the all' , according to Parmenides, 'all things are a unity which stays still within itself."[T181].
Thus, Protagoras can hold that there are particular perceptions, and that there is something universal which unites what we see, if he admits that these may be only different subjective approaches to the same objective reality. As shown in the dialogues Cratylus and Protagoras, different names can represent the same thing[C385e]. If this is a concession Protagoras is willing to make, then we can perhaps reconcile subjective differences, and thus, have much left to learn from one another about the truth...or at least from the good and wise among us who remember it. If Protagoras would allow this interpretation of his work, then he can hold, with Socrates, that not every view is just as good as any other[i] (a claim his followers take him to affirm) and thus, that some men are wiser than others (a claim his followers take him to deny). (Just as 'true', perhaps, but not just as 'good'-- hence his talk of 'better' at Theaetetus 167bc.) Protagoras could not hold that all perception is 'knowledge' in the strict sense, any more than he can say that what appears also 'is'--lest 'to know' and 'to be' lose the objective referent that grounds them. But he can and apparently does disagree with Socrates about who the wise are and what special talents they have.
Protagoras would call Sophists wise men in their fields, [T167c] at least if they actually are "honest public speakers [who] substitute in the community sound for unsound views of what is right."[T167c] The Sophist can do this, Socrates agrees, i.e. "guide his pupils in the way they should go,"[T167d] and when he does, he "is wise and worth a considerable fee to them"...but only "when their education is completed."[T167d] That is, when their condition is actually bettered by becoming more sound and good. For "in education, a change has to be effected from the worse condition to the better...not that a man makes someone who previously thought what is false think what is true, for it is not possible either to think anything but what one experiences, and all experiences are true..."[T167b] Rather, Socrates thinks Protagoras would say, when someone has depraved thoughts, the wise person can help them "by reason of a sound condition, think other and sound thoughts, which some people ignorantly call true, whereas I...say...better, but not in any way truer..."[T167bc] For words are true and false [C385c], but experiences are always true.[T167b] And thus, in this way, Socrates takes Protagoras to have said that it is the case "both that some men are wiser than others and that no one thinks falsely," and because both things can be concluded, you, Socrates, must put up with being a measure...whether you like it or not.[T167d]
Thus, we have here a plausible alternative to Hermogenes interpretation of Protagoras, for it seems he need not agree to the claim that there are no wise men and no essential reality. However, we are still left with the question of just who these men will be. Socrates can show that there may very well be wise men, if they are good, but these are not the same people who most profess themselves to be 'wise', or think that they 'know' what they only believe to be true.
Thus, I take the Theaetetus to be, most fundamentally, about teaching, i.e. how to change peoples' views toward what is real, true, good, and right, rather than toward the mere appearance of these things.[see footnote 1.] The Sophists method amounts to manipulating beliefs and selling the appearance of pleasure, and has no end in understanding or promoting the truth about the good. It assumes, unnecessarily, that words have no essential referents, that anyone can know and define them, and that all is in flux and flow, and so 'wisdom' is reduced to the ability to change appearances for others, that is, to change their opinions and beliefs. For Socrates this will not do because, as they agreed at the outset of Cratylus, the good are the wise, and so only those who help better the actual conditions of others, and not merely those who can change their beliefs and appearances, will qualify as 'wise', in the strict sense of the term. Likewise, only those beliefs which are grounded in essential reality will qualify as 'knowledge'.
(In Cratylus, we are offered Socrates view of the etymology of the names of the gods, where we can see how men misname in an effort to possess,[C393de] and how different names can have the same meaning,[C394bc] and how good men can misname their not so good sons by wishful thinking of what they might be.[C394de] But the names need not necessarily fit the thing it signifies. Hence, the danger of taking others word for things,[c436b] the only other option being to discover the truth for ourselves.[C438b] The truth of names--which are given by the law,[C388e] and thus made by the legislator,[C389] who looks to the dialectician,[C390d] who in turn looks to "the true or ideal" form [C389b]--is best found in the asking of questions.[C390c] This suggests a proper method for knowing the forms, which Socrates elaborates on at Theaetetus 168bc, where he is challenged to either state "the case on the other side" or ask questions "if you prefer that method, which has no terrors for a man of sense on the contrary it ought to be specially agreeable to him. Only there is this rule to be observed. Do not conduct your questioning unfairly...Unfairness here consists in not observing the distinction between a debate and a conversation. A debate need not be taken seriously and one may trip up an opponent to the best of one's power's, but a conversation should be taken in earnest; one should help out the other party and bring home to him only those slips and fallacies that are due to himself or to his earlier instructors. If you follow this rule, your associates will lay the blame for their confusion's and perplexities on themselves and not on you; they will like you and court your society, and disgusted with themselves, will turn to philosophy, hoping to escape from their former selves and become different men. But if, like so many, you take the opposite course"--like the Sophists, who seek to prove themselves to be of "noble breed of heroes [which] are a tribe of Sophists and rhetors"[C398e]--"heroes in debate"--"you will reach the opposite result; instead of turning your companions to philosophy, you will make them hate the whole business when they get older."[T168bc] This effect is called 'misology' in Phaedo, come of hearing contradictory things both called true, and so learning to hate ideas altogether. Such a method is thus unlikely to prove successful in "making the good appear" or bettering the condition of your partner in dialogue.[T168bc] He himself would have been turned off, Socrates said, if he had not had "so deep a passion" as to adhere him to the exercise of such inquiry.[T169c] "This is the reason," he says in the Cratylus, "why every man should expend his chief thought and attention on the consideration of first principles...and all the rest will follow."[C436d] "I myself do not deny that the givers of names did really give them under the idea that all things were in motion and flux, which was their sincere, but, I think, mistaken opinion...[but] tell me whether there is or is not any absolute beauty or good, or any other absolute existence."[C439c] "[L]et us seek the true beauty, not asking whether a face is fair...for all such things appear to be in a flux, but let us ask whether the true beauty is not always beautiful."[C439c])
[See T177-183 for the argument from the future, for discussion of why the weak sense cannot qualify as 'knowledge'.] Protagoras' apparent willingness to equate perception with knowledge makes for much confusion in these terms and the meaning of wisdom itself. And so I take Socrates intention in this dialogue to be to purge our understanding of Protagoras of its tendency to ignore the object, the things themselves, in favor of a focus on changing subjective perceptions. For even if Protagoras is right about much, this does not preclude the possibility of wisdom and ignorance.
I think Plato shows this well by allowing us to see that the term 'knowledge' is ambiguous, the way that the Sophists use it, and that Socrates is trying to show that there is something deeper to which the word more properly stands, and what's more, a proper method for discovering it.[see footnote 7.] By using the term 'knowledge' to represent our changing subjective perceptions, the Sophists leave us with no name for that deeper consciousness about which Parmenides spoke, and thus, no way to distinguish ignorance from wisdom. But again, I think Socrates is exempting Protagoras from this mistake, or at any rate, giving him the benefit of the doubt, assuming he would have seen this mistake for what it is. And he shows this at T166c, where he admits to this equivocation of terms, and reproves Socrates for acting like a pig, and unfairly,[T166d] when he tempts people to think that Protagoras meant to deny this dual use of terms. Protagoras admits to this distinction between one and another use of 'knowledge' when he denys that "ones present memory of a past impression is an impression of the same character as one had during the original experience. It is nothing of the sort... Will anyone shrink from admitting that it is possible for the same person to 'know' and not to know the same thing? Or if he is frightened of saying that, will he ever allow that a person who is changed is the same as he was before the change occurred, or rather, that he is one person at all..."[T166c] In other words, I take Protagoras to be aditting here that those who do not recognize their own equivocation regarding the term 'to know' will not be able to see the continuity underlying their changing experiences, even within themselves, and so cannot be expected to see it in nature either. They are thus not likely to see the essential forms underlying their words. They will interpret Protagoras to be saying that all is in flux, rather than merely that all appearances are. I think Plato is thus generously attributing a broader vision to Protagoras than to his followers, and this in an effort to reconcile him with Socrates. I think Protagoras is 'hip', so to speak, to that which Socrates calls 'essence', what Plato calls 'form', and Buddhists simply don't talk about...and perhaps for good reason. (There are those who would argue that Plato violated this essence by talking about the forms so directly; perhaps Socrates himself might have criticized him for this...)
So, I think we should not take Protagoras to be a solipsist, though clearly many of his followers are. Rather, I think we must read very carefully, recognizing that Socrates takes great pains to choose Protagoras' words very carefully, so as not to commit him to the view that there is nothing constant which underlies our perceptions, which, they seem to agree, it is the function of the mind to weigh and reconcile. "For we should not admit that knowledge is perception, not at least on the basis of the theory that all things are in change," for some things are absolutely unchanging.[T183c]
I think Socrates wants to show us that such extreme subjectivism/relativism/idealism as some attribute to Protagoras is not a necessary conclusion of his argument, which may very well be a sound account of the subjective realm, as far as it goes, and yet not go far enough to include all of what is knowable. 'Knowledge', Protagoras admits, has an objective referent about which it is very difficult to talk without equivocation, if not ambiguity. Yet it is the 'things themselves' which Socrates wants to reserve as 'knowable', distinguishing them from the appearances which are indeed always in flux, and thus, constitute mere beliefs, and are not 'knowable' in the same sense as are essential forms. By giving Protagoras only as much credit as he deserves, I think Socrates wants us to see the subtlty of the interaction between subject and object, and where Protagoras' views properly fit into this understanding--at the same time warning us not to take the importance of this subjective instrument too far--so far as to pretend that we or anyone 'knows' more than we, or anyone, can.
Therefore, I think we see that the forms are presupposed here, but Socrates is careful not to suggest that they can be 'known' in the sense that we usually understand the term. To talk about the arguments of those who think "the universe is one and at rest", as Parmenides, can be deep and hard to understand, and can make us lose sight of the question "what is knowledge," for it cannot be a side issue, it is too "importunate".[T184] So he limits himself here to the current task, i.e. delivering Theaetetus of his mistaken view that knowledge is perception,[T184b] and leaving us to ponder what is meant by such knowledge as that which grasps the "true and ideal" forms.[C389b] He ends Protagoras' defense by distinguishing between ipressions and reflective knowledge, showing that we perceive through the senses, rather than with them,[T184d] and that that they "converge and meet in some single nature--a mind, or whatever it is to be called--with which we perceive all the objects of perception through the senses as instruments.'[T184d] This then explains his earlier talk of having the criterion within oneself. "It is clear to me that the mind in itself is its own instrument for contemplating the common terms that apply to everything."[T185e] "All the impressions which penetrate to the mind through the body are things which men and animals alike are naturally constituted to perceive from the moment of birth; reflections about them with respect to their existence and usefulness only come, if they come at all, with difficulty through a long and troublesome process of education."[T186c] "If that is so, knowledge does not reside in the impressions, but in our reflection upon them."[T186d] And if we keep this in mind, he concludes, then "we shall be less inclined to imagine we know something of which we know nothing whatever..."[T187c]
The Protagorean dictum as applied to legality is stated at 172ab Theaetetus; "[I]n social matters, the theory will say that, so far as good and bad customs or rights and wrongs of matters of religion are concerned, whatever any state makes up its mind to enact as lawful for itself, really is lawful for it, and in this field no individual or state is wiser than another. But where it is a question of laying down what is for its advantage or disadvantage...the theory will admit of difference between two advisors or between the decisions of two different states in respect of truth, and would hardly venture to assert that any enactment which a state supposes to be for its advantage will quite certainly be so."[T172b]
The argument from the future first arises in the claim that when a state holds by the practices that seem right to it, it is right to do so,[T167c] and "when the practices are, in any particular case, unsound for them, the wise man substitutes others that are and appear sound."[T167d] However, he notes at 177e that the state always has its own advantage at heart, and not being able to see into the future, it sometimes misses the mark of what will actually be good for it.[178] So, the argument goes, enactments that the state decides to be right may or may not actually hold to what is good. Good is a broader, more inclusive thing than advantage. Thus, we should "start from a question covering the whole class of things which includes the advantageous. it is, I suggest, a thing that has to do with future time. When we legislate, we make our laws with the idea that they will be advantageous in time to come," in effect, predicting "'what is going to be.'"[T178] So the challenge for Protagoras is that man will only be the measure of all things, color, weight, light and such, if "he possesses in himself the test of these things, and believing them to be such as he experiences them, he believes what is true and real for him... Is it also true Protagoras, we shall continue, that he possesses within himself the test of what is going to be in the future."[T178c] The wise man is wise only in as much as "what he believes will be, will actually come to pass."[T178c] The 'for him' here indicates that man is the measure of what seems to him to be the case, but, as noted earlier, he is only a good measure if he is wise, that is, if his predictions come to be. Thus, it will not be enough for the followers of Protagoras to believe he can simply make up reality as he goes along, as a solipsist might read Protagoras, for one is compelled by one's own best interest and the interest of the state to discover and interpret the truth about the things of the world. [Q7ciii] It is the fact that there is more than one opinion in the state which presses Protagoras to admit that the layman is not as good a predictor of health as the physician,[T178c] the flute player not as good a judge of the sweetness or dryness of wine as the vinegrower,[T178d] and the gymnastic trainer is not a better tuner than the musician about what he "himself will later judge to be in good tune."[T178d] [Here again, the criterion is within, as regarding Q7iv] However, in the question of the relation between the guest and the confectioner regarding the pleasure to be had in the eating, we see that this discussion involves a distinction between pleasure already had and that which is yet to come, one which Socrates sets aside. "We will not dispute yet about what already is or has been pleasant to any individual, but about what will in the future seem and be to anyone, is every man the best judge for himself, or would you, Protagoras...have a better opinion beforehand than any untrained person?"[T178e] Theaetetus admits that Protagoras thought he was "superior to everybody" in such matters. [T179] "Bless your soul, I should think he did..." Socrates says, for "huge sums" would not have been paid for his talk unless he had indeed "convinced the people who came to him that no one whatever, not even a prophet, could judge better than he what was going to be and appear in the future."[T179] Theodorus admits this is a weak point in Protagoras' theory, "though it is assailable in that it makes other people's opinions valid when, as it turns out, they hold Protagoras' assertions to be quite untrue."[T179c] In other words, in as much as Protagoras is right, he must be open to the claim that he is wrong...a qualification which saves his theory, I think. The conclusion that the wise man is the measure can be taken to show either that Protagoras is not a wise man, and thus not the proper measure of knowledge, and wrong to think himself the best judge of what is yet to be and appear, or that he is a wise man after all in as much as he has used words well enough and made the good appear to us such that we have benefited from his teaching.
The argument from the future will be conclusive against Protagoras then [Q7b] if he means what his followers too often take him to mean, i.e. that any man is the measure of all things, and that all is in flux, and thus, mere perception will qualify as knowledge. But as Socrates says in Cratylus, if all is in flux, "nor yet can they be known by anyone, for at the moment that they observer approaches, then they become other and of another nature, so that you cannot get any further in knowing their nature or state, for you cannot know that which has no state...nor can we reasonably say...that there is knowledge at all, if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing abiding. For knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist..."[C440b] "[A]ccording to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known."[C440cd] "If all things are in change," he says in Theaetetus, "any answer that can be given to any question is equally right; you may say it is so and it is not so,"[T183] but "what is 'so' would cease to be."[T183]
This is why the discussion at 179-183 matters [Q7e] for if Protagoras held this, he would surely be a solipsist,[Q7d] and if he were, Socrates would not be ready to concede to him that every man is the measure of all things, not, at least, if he is not a wise man. But, if Protagoras agrees that only "the wiser man is the measure," [T179b] then the argument will not be conclusive against him in the end, for he will have to admit to an essence underlying changing appearances, which he seems to want to do. At least if he is to be successful in doing what the wise man does best, which is using words well [C388d] and accurately predicting about the future,[T178c] and about how to best use words so that others will understand him, for he will be successful in making the good appear and be to them.[T166d][see footnote 1.] And there are other ways, Socrates says, of "proving that not every opinion of every person is true,"[T179c] and that the wiser man is the measure."[T179b] If he is unsuccessful in this, he himself must not be the wise man he takes himself to be nor the proper measure of the truth on the subject. It would seem from Hermogenes early expression of disbelief in what Protagoras taught him that Protagoras was not too successful educating others. And talk of the "violent" conflict over the issue in public debate would indicate that little real education was going on, and how could it, since they all belief no one understands anything...[T180c] And yet, if we do not make Hermogenes mistake, and do not take Protagoras for the solipsist some mistake him for, perhaps he was not that bad of a teacher after all.
Thus "recourse must be had to another standard [an inner criterion] which, without employing names, will make clear which of the two are right, and this must be a standard which shows the truth of things...[for] things may be known without names."[C438de] "How real existence is to be studied or discovered is, I suspect, beyond you and me. But we may admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. No, they must be studied and investigated in themselves."[C439b] For "if that which knows and that which is known exist ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux... Whether there is this external nature in things, or whether the truth is what Heraclitus and his followers...say, is a question hard to determine, and no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names...reflect well and...do not easily accept such a doctrine..."[C440d]
I think Socrates wants to show in Theaetetus that this conclusion need not follow from the argument Protagoras actually puts forth. And this confusion on the part of Hermogenes, Theaetetus, and others brings Socrates to assert that we should not take the followers to speak for the master unless they actually say what he himself would have said.[T166d] (Is there a true and false in words?[385bc] And true and false propositions? Yes.[C385bc] "And a true proposition says that which is, and a false proposition says that which is not?" Yes.[C385c] So a proposition can be true on whole, but have untrue parts? No.[C385c] Every part? yes. Does a proposition have any parts smaller than a name? No.[C385c] "Then the name is a part of the true proposition?" Yes.[C385c] A true part? Yes.[C385c] And is a part of a falsehood also a falsehood? Yes.[C385c] Then names may be true and false? Yes.[385c][As opposed to experiences, which are always true.[T167c]] And there are as many names as people want to give to things? "And will they be true names at the time of uttering them?" [C385d] Hermogenes asserts that there will be "different names for the same things."[C385e] "But would you say, Hermogenes, that things differ as the names differ? And are they relative to individuals, as Protagoras tells us?"[C386a] Or are they instruments of teaching,[C388c] which means they are for "giving information to one another and distinguishing things according to their natures?"[C388b] In which case, "Then...names ought to be given according to a natural process, and with a proper instrument, and not at our pleasure, in this and no other way shall we name with success."[C387d] Rather by one who is skilled in using names well.[C388d] "And the teacher will use the name well--and well means like a teacher."[C388c] The giving of names cannot be by anyone's whims, for they have a "natural fitness,"[C391] and the best way to discover this, that is, "the true way is to have the assistance of those who know."[C391c] This is what Cratylus has to learn from Protagoras, "about the fitness of names."[C391c] )
At Cratylus 386c Socrates shows Hermogenes his mistake. If Hermogenes is right in this interpretation, Socrates wonders, "and the truth is that things are as they appear to anyone, how can some of us be wise and some of us foolish?"[C386c] "You will allow, I think, that the assertion of Protagoras can hardly be correct. For if what appears to each man is true to him, one man cannot in reality be wiser than another."[C386d] ("Nor will you be disposed to say with Euthydemus that all things equally belong to all men at the same moment and always, for neither on his view can there be some good and others bad, if virtue and vice are always equally to be attributed to all."[C386d] Adherence to this line would make Protagoras a solipsist, but as it is, virtue and vice seem out of place here, and for a reason, I think, for later in the dialogue we see at Cratylus 415d that 'vice' has to do with impeding "the stream of the good soul," whereas 'virtue' involves "ease of motion." Likewise, at 421C, "being is also moving, and the same may be said of not-being, which is likewise called not-going."[C421c] At 415d, 'bad' is attributed to foreign origin, but at 421d he calls this a way of giving the mere appearance of an answer, when really there is just so much we cannot know about why our names and words are attached to one another. Too much has changed for us to pretend to 'know' all of it, and the point at which we give up the inquiry is when we come to "the names which are the elements of all other names and sentences...The word 'good' for example..."[421d] "But if neither is right, and things are not relative to individuals, and all things do not equally belong to all at the same moment and always they must be supposed to have their own proper and permanent essence;...independent and maintain to their own essence the relation prescribed by nature."[C386e] Hermogenes things this is true, but Socrates wants to know if it is true "only of things themselves, or equally to the actions which proceed from them?"[C387] They agree that actions have a proper instrument and a natural process that is right will succeed, while others will fail.[C387; also see T168bc] For all actions, "the right way is the natural way..."[C387b] Speaking is a kind of action [C387d] with a special nature of its own and names ought to be given accordingly.[C387d]) Hermogenes admits to the implausiblity of this view when he replies to Socrates' question, Are there no wise men? with the response that he has "taken refuge" with Protagoras in this claim--though "not that I agree with him at all."[C386a] Socrates easily leads him into contradiction, wondering why Hermogenes has never "taken refuge" with him in his view that there are no bad men,[C386b] to which Hermogenes replies that he has good reason to believe that there are such men, and plenty of them, compared with only a few good ones.[C386b] When Hermogenes agrees that the good are the wise, and the bad are the foolish,[C386c] Socrates brings him to see that he could not hold this if he agrees with what he has put forth as Protagoras' view, for it would mean that he makes both claims, i.e. that there both are and are not any wise men. Hermogenes admits that he cannot consistently hold that there are no wise men if he also thinks that there are some good men, and that the good are wise.[C386c]
Thus, Socrates concludes later in Theaetetus, "Your master...must admit that one man is wiser than another and the wiser man is the measure, whereas an ignorant person like myself [and perhaps Hermogenes and/or Theaetetus?] is not in any way bound to be a measure..."[T179b] because "not every opinion of every person is true."[T179c] So rather than follow Protagoras' students in the wrong direction, Socrates suggests we "honestly consider what we mean when we say that all things are in motion and that what seems also is, to any individual or community...and whether knowledge is, or is not, the same thing as perception..."[168bc]--not "basing our argument on the common use of words and phrases, which the vulgar twist into any sense they please and so perplex one another in all sorts of ways."[T168c] "Be on the watch against one another's attempts to catch at words,"[T166c] he warns.
Here, as in many of the dialogues, I think Socrates is concerned that we do not fully understand the true and deep meanings of the words we use, and due to this, he is engaged in an effort to distinguish our common misunderstandings--in this case, of 'to know' and 'to be wise'--from their truer meaning, about which it is admittedly more difficult to talk. Taken as a subtle dialectic between seemingly contradictory understandings of these terms, this dialogue is especially instructive toward a truer grasp of what it might actually mean to 'teach' well.[see footnote 1] Protagoras admits at the outset to the existence of wise men--the debate remains over who they will turn out to be. "And as for wisdom and the wise man," he says, "I am very far from saying they do not exist. By a wise man I mean precisely a man who can change any one of us, when what is bad appears and is to him, and make what is good appear and be to him."[T166d] (This will allow Plato to show later on that the Sophist is not a wise man, for as we see in later talk of how little his followers understand him, or anyone, for that matter, Protagoras does not succeed in using words in this way...We might interpret Protagoras to be saying then that our particular perceptions are in a way complimentary, such that seeing both and all points of view is better, but that whether we are or are not wise, whether we are healthy or ill, and thus have happy experience or bitter, is not told by this 'knowledge' alone, but by whether we can make the good appear to others. This is a conclusion I think Socrates would happily accept. But it seems a curious claim, at first, if Protagoras is saying that there are wise men, but we do not have "call to represent" either the healthy or sick as such, because both need the other condition, and since the wise man is one who can make the good appear to those who are in view of the bad, so change their condition from the worse to the better, and it is better for both to be in view of the other condition, and the claim that "we have no call to represent" has to do with being outside looking in on the matter, which is subject to change from worse to better and back again. One might think from the Cratylus that naming a person attempts to make static what is actually dynamic, and so can be a false representation of what actually is [C394de]. But experiences themselves are never false, but only sound or unsound, good or bad. And as in the state, when practices are unsound, it is the job of the wise man to substitute others that are and appear sound.[see T167d]) This can be interpreted in several different ways; from the perspective that to change appearance is to teach (a view Socrates could never endorse), and from the view that to teach is, at least, to change appearances (a weaker claim that could be true if qualified). The Sophists believe they follow Protagoras directly when they say they 'know' what it is to be 'wise', i.e. to be able to use words to change others by changing the appearances before their eyes.[T166d][see footnote 1.] Socrates admits this is one way these terms are sometimes used, weakly. But he and Hermogenes have already agreed that the good are wise, and so Socrates' challenge is to help this student of Protagoras to keep this strong sense in mind, and thus, to use his words more carefully than to equate mere 'perception' with 'knowledge', for to do so can lead to false conclusions, such as that truth consists in words alone, and that wisdom amounts to using words as a power over others. The Sophist may be able to change other's perceptions, i.e. to show them more of what is pleasant, but it does not follow from this that he has changed his subject's 'knowledge', only his beliefs. Nor has he bettered the others actual condition, nor shown himself to be 'wise'--if only because to be good is to be wise, and the Sophist only aims at what appears 'better'. This interpretation leads to a method of action which only manipulates belief, getting us no closer anything that deserves to be called 'knowledge'.[see C387 footnote 3.] What is suggested then is that the followers understanding of their hero may be only a very shallow interpretation of the deeper meaning about which Protagoras may very well have intended to teach. Evidence for this claim is subtle, but by the dialectic method Socrates uses, with himself playing both voices, he can show the sense in which Protagoras may indeed be quite right about many things (including the complexity and encouragability of subjective perception), but without allowing the conclusion that there is no essential reality underlying and uniting our perceptions and our words. This popular mistake (then, as now) leaves us with nothing to qualify our beliefs as true beliefs, and (if they are not forgotten) as knowledge. But, again, it is a mistake made in the following, not the vision.
"No," Socrates thinks Protagoras would put forth, "[W]hat I actually say," and what Socrates needs to refute, is that we have particular perceptions, and that it follows from this that "what appears to each becomes--or is, if we may use the word 'is'--for him alone to whom it appears."[T166d] Socrates objection to this, of course, will be to the suggestion that something can be true for one person "alone" that is not true for others, which would rob all truth from the word 'is', not to mention the word 'true'. Hermogenes and others had interpreted Protagoras in this way, i.e. to believe that things have no permanent essence of their own.[C386a] But what Protagoras seemed to want to do was to emphasize the necessary idiosyncracy of our subjective perspectives, not to deny the objectivity of the truth itself. What he actually says is "that the truth is as I have written. Each one of us is a measure of what is and of what is not, but there is all the difference in the world between one and another just in the very fact that what is and appears to one is different from what is and appears to the other."[T166d] Socrates will be happy to admit, of course, that what appears is different to each, but not that this changing appearance entails a changing 'is'. Protagoras' followers may want to ask how we can ever tell the difference between them, and I think Socrates would say that this is what we need the dialectician's method for, i.e. to weigh the subjective experiences and thus reconcile appearances to show the truth of what 'is' which underlies our shifting beliefs. "What I mean," he supposes Protagoras to claim, is that, just as "to the sick man his food appears bitter and is so; to the healthy man it is and appears the opposite. Now there is no call to represent either of the two as wiser--that cannot be...what is wanted is a change to the opposite condition, because the other state is better."[T167] Thus, the wise man, according to this view of Protagoras, is not wise by virtue of health or illness in himself, or by virtue of being able to promote health or illness in others, but rather by virtue of being able to change the subjective appearances by which we perceive the world. While this view of teaching may actually encourage more, rather than less learning, this conclusion, in and of itself, will not set particularly wrong with Socrates. And what's more, this subjective realm of knowledge will be encouragable in that no one can deny that the sick persons food tastes bitter and that the healthy persons food tastes better. But Socrates will not let Protagoras pretend that there is not an objective good which is being measured by this subjective criterion, for the quality of these appearances depends on the actual condition of the soul, that is, whether it is healthy or sick--and changing this is apparently something that the Sophist cannot help us with. While Protagoras holds that the healthy are not wiser and the ill are not more ignorant, Socrates will have to show that it is the person in healthy condition which secures the most desirable experience. And therefore the task of the wise person will be, not merely to effect appearances, but to help change the actual condition of the soul which gives rise to appearances in the form of sweet or bitter experience. The debate remains then a question of who can best accomplish this task.
Socrates gets at this by exploring an understanding of Protagoras which is more subtle and deep than his own followers attribute to him, asking "what after all do they mean when they say that all things are in change?"[T181c] (It is only one kind of change, or two? Alteration and/or local movement? If two, do they mean both kinds?[T181d])
If Protagoras meant this in the strong sense, as his followers have taken him to mean, it would follow that perception of this changing reality 'is' knowledge, and then there could be no belief truer than any other. If this were the case, communication would simply fail,[C387] and reconciliation of our separate subjective realities would be impossible. Clearly Socrates cannot grant that 'is' can be used in this way--lest its meaning disappear altogether. But the claim that appearances are particular perceptions and unique to the subject need not entail the strong claim that all is in flux--only the weaker claim that all perceptions are in flux, whatever else might be constant. The fact of such differences of subjective perspectives does not ential that these are not merely different points of view on the same essential truth. Socrates and Protagoras could both admit in this that there are an infinite number of such perspectives from which any object of knowledge might appear, and even that what appears to each is different and his alone in the subjective experience, and still never have to give up the claim that these flowing appearances have the same essential reality in common--that which 'is' in a deeper sense. And so, it does not follow from Protagoras' conception that subjective perceptions can never be reconciled in the objective world they view in common--in other words, it can be true "for him", but not "for him alone".[T166d] Hence, the less assailable claim that "what the individual experiences at the moment--the source of his sensations and the judgments in accordance with them...are transparently clear and are instances of knowledge," that is, knowledge of a kind the Sophists typically disregard in their claims to know what they cannot possibly, and this "may be in the right," after all, "and Theaetetus was not beside the mark when he said that perception and knowledge were the same thing."[T179d, 182e, 184b, 186e] Socrates thus qualifies Protagoras' use of "for him" in this. And if we take seriously what is said in the Cratylus, that 'knowledge' is ambiguous, and can seem to signify both "motion...expressed by names,"[C436e] and "stopping the soul at things [rather] than going round with them".[C437c] "We must, then, look more closely into the matter, as our defense of Protagoras enjoined, and study this moving reality, ringing its metal to see if it sounds true or cracked [see footnote 2 on theme of motion and action] ...there has been no inconsiderable battle over it...which is...actually growing in violence,"[T179d] led by the followers of Heraclitis. "You will never get anywhere with them, for that matter they cannot get anywhere with one another, but they take very good care to leave nothing settled either in discourse or in their own minds. I suppose they think that would be something stationary--a think they will fight against to the last and do their utmost to banish from the universe."[T180b] Theodorus says "there is no such thing as a master or a pupil among them...and not one of them thinks another understands anything."[T180c] And we are between these combatants, still today.[T181] The ancients hid their meanings of "flowing streams" in poetry, and the moderns say theirs straight out, provoking "the very cobblers may...abandon their simple faith that some things stand still while others move."[T180d] The moderns accordingly think, as Hermogenes, that names are mere convention, and so Socrates resolves to discuss not the names of things, but the things themselves that bear naming.[T177e] These are subject of a school which teaches just the opposite--that reality 'is one, immovable, being is the name of the all' , according to Parmenides, 'all things are a unity which stays still within itself."[T181].
Thus, Protagoras can hold that there are particular perceptions, and that there is something universal which unites what we see, if he admits that these may be only different subjective approaches to the same objective reality. As shown in the dialogues Cratylus and Protagoras, different names can represent the same thing[C385e]. If this is a concession Protagoras is willing to make, then we can perhaps reconcile subjective differences, and thus, have much left to learn from one another about the truth...or at least from the good and wise among us who remember it. If Protagoras would allow this interpretation of his work, then he can hold, with Socrates, that not every view is just as good as any other[i] (a claim his followers take him to affirm) and thus, that some men are wiser than others (a claim his followers take him to deny). (Just as 'true', perhaps, but not just as 'good'-- hence his talk of 'better' at Theaetetus 167bc.) Protagoras could not hold that all perception is 'knowledge' in the strict sense, any more than he can say that what appears also 'is'--lest 'to know' and 'to be' lose the objective referent that grounds them. But he can and apparently does disagree with Socrates about who the wise are and what special talents they have.
Protagoras would call Sophists wise men in their fields, [T167c] at least if they actually are "honest public speakers [who] substitute in the community sound for unsound views of what is right."[T167c] The Sophist can do this, Socrates agrees, i.e. "guide his pupils in the way they should go,"[T167d] and when he does, he "is wise and worth a considerable fee to them"...but only "when their education is completed."[T167d] That is, when their condition is actually bettered by becoming more sound and good. For "in education, a change has to be effected from the worse condition to the better...not that a man makes someone who previously thought what is false think what is true, for it is not possible either to think anything but what one experiences, and all experiences are true..."[T167b] Rather, Socrates thinks Protagoras would say, when someone has depraved thoughts, the wise person can help them "by reason of a sound condition, think other and sound thoughts, which some people ignorantly call true, whereas I...say...better, but not in any way truer..."[T167bc] For words are true and false [C385c], but experiences are always true.[T167b] And thus, in this way, Socrates takes Protagoras to have said that it is the case "both that some men are wiser than others and that no one thinks falsely," and because both things can be concluded, you, Socrates, must put up with being a measure...whether you like it or not.[T167d]
Thus, we have here a plausible alternative to Hermogenes interpretation of Protagoras, for it seems he need not agree to the claim that there are no wise men and no essential reality. However, we are still left with the question of just who these men will be. Socrates can show that there may very well be wise men, if they are good, but these are not the same people who most profess themselves to be 'wise', or think that they 'know' what they only believe to be true.
Thus, I take the Theaetetus to be, most fundamentally, about teaching, i.e. how to change peoples' views toward what is real, true, good, and right, rather than toward the mere appearance of these things.[see footnote 1.] The Sophists method amounts to manipulating beliefs and selling the appearance of pleasure, and has no end in understanding or promoting the truth about the good. It assumes, unnecessarily, that words have no essential referents, that anyone can know and define them, and that all is in flux and flow, and so 'wisdom' is reduced to the ability to change appearances for others, that is, to change their opinions and beliefs. For Socrates this will not do because, as they agreed at the outset of Cratylus, the good are the wise, and so only those who help better the actual conditions of others, and not merely those who can change their beliefs and appearances, will qualify as 'wise', in the strict sense of the term. Likewise, only those beliefs which are grounded in essential reality will qualify as 'knowledge'.
(In Cratylus, we are offered Socrates view of the etymology of the names of the gods, where we can see how men misname in an effort to possess,[C393de] and how different names can have the same meaning,[C394bc] and how good men can misname their not so good sons by wishful thinking of what they might be.[C394de] But the names need not necessarily fit the thing it signifies. Hence, the danger of taking others word for things,[c436b] the only other option being to discover the truth for ourselves.[C438b] The truth of names--which are given by the law,[C388e] and thus made by the legislator,[C389] who looks to the dialectician,[C390d] who in turn looks to "the true or ideal" form [C389b]--is best found in the asking of questions.[C390c] This suggests a proper method for knowing the forms, which Socrates elaborates on at Theaetetus 168bc, where he is challenged to either state "the case on the other side" or ask questions "if you prefer that method, which has no terrors for a man of sense on the contrary it ought to be specially agreeable to him. Only there is this rule to be observed. Do not conduct your questioning unfairly...Unfairness here consists in not observing the distinction between a debate and a conversation. A debate need not be taken seriously and one may trip up an opponent to the best of one's power's, but a conversation should be taken in earnest; one should help out the other party and bring home to him only those slips and fallacies that are due to himself or to his earlier instructors. If you follow this rule, your associates will lay the blame for their confusion's and perplexities on themselves and not on you; they will like you and court your society, and disgusted with themselves, will turn to philosophy, hoping to escape from their former selves and become different men. But if, like so many, you take the opposite course"--like the Sophists, who seek to prove themselves to be of "noble breed of heroes [which] are a tribe of Sophists and rhetors"[C398e]--"heroes in debate"--"you will reach the opposite result; instead of turning your companions to philosophy, you will make them hate the whole business when they get older."[T168bc] This effect is called 'misology' in Phaedo, come of hearing contradictory things both called true, and so learning to hate ideas altogether. Such a method is thus unlikely to prove successful in "making the good appear" or bettering the condition of your partner in dialogue.[T168bc] He himself would have been turned off, Socrates said, if he had not had "so deep a passion" as to adhere him to the exercise of such inquiry.[T169c] "This is the reason," he says in the Cratylus, "why every man should expend his chief thought and attention on the consideration of first principles...and all the rest will follow."[C436d] "I myself do not deny that the givers of names did really give them under the idea that all things were in motion and flux, which was their sincere, but, I think, mistaken opinion...[but] tell me whether there is or is not any absolute beauty or good, or any other absolute existence."[C439c] "[L]et us seek the true beauty, not asking whether a face is fair...for all such things appear to be in a flux, but let us ask whether the true beauty is not always beautiful."[C439c])
[See T177-183 for the argument from the future, for discussion of why the weak sense cannot qualify as 'knowledge'.] Protagoras' apparent willingness to equate perception with knowledge makes for much confusion in these terms and the meaning of wisdom itself. And so I take Socrates intention in this dialogue to be to purge our understanding of Protagoras of its tendency to ignore the object, the things themselves, in favor of a focus on changing subjective perceptions. For even if Protagoras is right about much, this does not preclude the possibility of wisdom and ignorance.
I think Plato shows this well by allowing us to see that the term 'knowledge' is ambiguous, the way that the Sophists use it, and that Socrates is trying to show that there is something deeper to which the word more properly stands, and what's more, a proper method for discovering it.[see footnote 7.] By using the term 'knowledge' to represent our changing subjective perceptions, the Sophists leave us with no name for that deeper consciousness about which Parmenides spoke, and thus, no way to distinguish ignorance from wisdom. But again, I think Socrates is exempting Protagoras from this mistake, or at any rate, giving him the benefit of the doubt, assuming he would have seen this mistake for what it is. And he shows this at T166c, where he admits to this equivocation of terms, and reproves Socrates for acting like a pig, and unfairly,[T166d] when he tempts people to think that Protagoras meant to deny this dual use of terms. Protagoras admits to this distinction between one and another use of 'knowledge' when he denys that "ones present memory of a past impression is an impression of the same character as one had during the original experience. It is nothing of the sort... Will anyone shrink from admitting that it is possible for the same person to 'know' and not to know the same thing? Or if he is frightened of saying that, will he ever allow that a person who is changed is the same as he was before the change occurred, or rather, that he is one person at all..."[T166c] In other words, I take Protagoras to be aditting here that those who do not recognize their own equivocation regarding the term 'to know' will not be able to see the continuity underlying their changing experiences, even within themselves, and so cannot be expected to see it in nature either. They are thus not likely to see the essential forms underlying their words. They will interpret Protagoras to be saying that all is in flux, rather than merely that all appearances are. I think Plato is thus generously attributing a broader vision to Protagoras than to his followers, and this in an effort to reconcile him with Socrates. I think Protagoras is 'hip', so to speak, to that which Socrates calls 'essence', what Plato calls 'form', and Buddhists simply don't talk about...and perhaps for good reason. (There are those who would argue that Plato violated this essence by talking about the forms so directly; perhaps Socrates himself might have criticized him for this...)
So, I think we should not take Protagoras to be a solipsist, though clearly many of his followers are. Rather, I think we must read very carefully, recognizing that Socrates takes great pains to choose Protagoras' words very carefully, so as not to commit him to the view that there is nothing constant which underlies our perceptions, which, they seem to agree, it is the function of the mind to weigh and reconcile. "For we should not admit that knowledge is perception, not at least on the basis of the theory that all things are in change," for some things are absolutely unchanging.[T183c]
I think Socrates wants to show us that such extreme subjectivism/relativism/idealism as some attribute to Protagoras is not a necessary conclusion of his argument, which may very well be a sound account of the subjective realm, as far as it goes, and yet not go far enough to include all of what is knowable. 'Knowledge', Protagoras admits, has an objective referent about which it is very difficult to talk without equivocation, if not ambiguity. Yet it is the 'things themselves' which Socrates wants to reserve as 'knowable', distinguishing them from the appearances which are indeed always in flux, and thus, constitute mere beliefs, and are not 'knowable' in the same sense as are essential forms. By giving Protagoras only as much credit as he deserves, I think Socrates wants us to see the subtlty of the interaction between subject and object, and where Protagoras' views properly fit into this understanding--at the same time warning us not to take the importance of this subjective instrument too far--so far as to pretend that we or anyone 'knows' more than we, or anyone, can.
Therefore, I think we see that the forms are presupposed here, but Socrates is careful not to suggest that they can be 'known' in the sense that we usually understand the term. To talk about the arguments of those who think "the universe is one and at rest", as Parmenides, can be deep and hard to understand, and can make us lose sight of the question "what is knowledge," for it cannot be a side issue, it is too "importunate".[T184] So he limits himself here to the current task, i.e. delivering Theaetetus of his mistaken view that knowledge is perception,[T184b] and leaving us to ponder what is meant by such knowledge as that which grasps the "true and ideal" forms.[C389b] He ends Protagoras' defense by distinguishing between ipressions and reflective knowledge, showing that we perceive through the senses, rather than with them,[T184d] and that that they "converge and meet in some single nature--a mind, or whatever it is to be called--with which we perceive all the objects of perception through the senses as instruments.'[T184d] This then explains his earlier talk of having the criterion within oneself. "It is clear to me that the mind in itself is its own instrument for contemplating the common terms that apply to everything."[T185e] "All the impressions which penetrate to the mind through the body are things which men and animals alike are naturally constituted to perceive from the moment of birth; reflections about them with respect to their existence and usefulness only come, if they come at all, with difficulty through a long and troublesome process of education."[T186c] "If that is so, knowledge does not reside in the impressions, but in our reflection upon them."[T186d] And if we keep this in mind, he concludes, then "we shall be less inclined to imagine we know something of which we know nothing whatever..."[T187c]
The Protagorean dictum as applied to legality is stated at 172ab Theaetetus; "[I]n social matters, the theory will say that, so far as good and bad customs or rights and wrongs of matters of religion are concerned, whatever any state makes up its mind to enact as lawful for itself, really is lawful for it, and in this field no individual or state is wiser than another. But where it is a question of laying down what is for its advantage or disadvantage...the theory will admit of difference between two advisors or between the decisions of two different states in respect of truth, and would hardly venture to assert that any enactment which a state supposes to be for its advantage will quite certainly be so."[T172b]
The argument from the future first arises in the claim that when a state holds by the practices that seem right to it, it is right to do so,[T167c] and "when the practices are, in any particular case, unsound for them, the wise man substitutes others that are and appear sound."[T167d] However, he notes at 177e that the state always has its own advantage at heart, and not being able to see into the future, it sometimes misses the mark of what will actually be good for it.[178] So, the argument goes, enactments that the state decides to be right may or may not actually hold to what is good. Good is a broader, more inclusive thing than advantage. Thus, we should "start from a question covering the whole class of things which includes the advantageous. it is, I suggest, a thing that has to do with future time. When we legislate, we make our laws with the idea that they will be advantageous in time to come," in effect, predicting "'what is going to be.'"[T178] So the challenge for Protagoras is that man will only be the measure of all things, color, weight, light and such, if "he possesses in himself the test of these things, and believing them to be such as he experiences them, he believes what is true and real for him... Is it also true Protagoras, we shall continue, that he possesses within himself the test of what is going to be in the future."[T178c] The wise man is wise only in as much as "what he believes will be, will actually come to pass."[T178c] The 'for him' here indicates that man is the measure of what seems to him to be the case, but, as noted earlier, he is only a good measure if he is wise, that is, if his predictions come to be. Thus, it will not be enough for the followers of Protagoras to believe he can simply make up reality as he goes along, as a solipsist might read Protagoras, for one is compelled by one's own best interest and the interest of the state to discover and interpret the truth about the things of the world. [Q7ciii] It is the fact that there is more than one opinion in the state which presses Protagoras to admit that the layman is not as good a predictor of health as the physician,[T178c] the flute player not as good a judge of the sweetness or dryness of wine as the vinegrower,[T178d] and the gymnastic trainer is not a better tuner than the musician about what he "himself will later judge to be in good tune."[T178d] [Here again, the criterion is within, as regarding Q7iv] However, in the question of the relation between the guest and the confectioner regarding the pleasure to be had in the eating, we see that this discussion involves a distinction between pleasure already had and that which is yet to come, one which Socrates sets aside. "We will not dispute yet about what already is or has been pleasant to any individual, but about what will in the future seem and be to anyone, is every man the best judge for himself, or would you, Protagoras...have a better opinion beforehand than any untrained person?"[T178e] Theaetetus admits that Protagoras thought he was "superior to everybody" in such matters. [T179] "Bless your soul, I should think he did..." Socrates says, for "huge sums" would not have been paid for his talk unless he had indeed "convinced the people who came to him that no one whatever, not even a prophet, could judge better than he what was going to be and appear in the future."[T179] Theodorus admits this is a weak point in Protagoras' theory, "though it is assailable in that it makes other people's opinions valid when, as it turns out, they hold Protagoras' assertions to be quite untrue."[T179c] In other words, in as much as Protagoras is right, he must be open to the claim that he is wrong...a qualification which saves his theory, I think. The conclusion that the wise man is the measure can be taken to show either that Protagoras is not a wise man, and thus not the proper measure of knowledge, and wrong to think himself the best judge of what is yet to be and appear, or that he is a wise man after all in as much as he has used words well enough and made the good appear to us such that we have benefited from his teaching.
The argument from the future will be conclusive against Protagoras then [Q7b] if he means what his followers too often take him to mean, i.e. that any man is the measure of all things, and that all is in flux, and thus, mere perception will qualify as knowledge. But as Socrates says in Cratylus, if all is in flux, "nor yet can they be known by anyone, for at the moment that they observer approaches, then they become other and of another nature, so that you cannot get any further in knowing their nature or state, for you cannot know that which has no state...nor can we reasonably say...that there is knowledge at all, if everything is in a state of transition and there is nothing abiding. For knowledge too cannot continue to be knowledge unless continuing always to abide and exist..."[C440b] "[A]ccording to this view, there will be no one to know and nothing to be known."[C440cd] "If all things are in change," he says in Theaetetus, "any answer that can be given to any question is equally right; you may say it is so and it is not so,"[T183] but "what is 'so' would cease to be."[T183]
This is why the discussion at 179-183 matters [Q7e] for if Protagoras held this, he would surely be a solipsist,[Q7d] and if he were, Socrates would not be ready to concede to him that every man is the measure of all things, not, at least, if he is not a wise man. But, if Protagoras agrees that only "the wiser man is the measure," [T179b] then the argument will not be conclusive against him in the end, for he will have to admit to an essence underlying changing appearances, which he seems to want to do. At least if he is to be successful in doing what the wise man does best, which is using words well [C388d] and accurately predicting about the future,[T178c] and about how to best use words so that others will understand him, for he will be successful in making the good appear and be to them.[T166d][see footnote 1.] And there are other ways, Socrates says, of "proving that not every opinion of every person is true,"[T179c] and that the wiser man is the measure."[T179b] If he is unsuccessful in this, he himself must not be the wise man he takes himself to be nor the proper measure of the truth on the subject. It would seem from Hermogenes early expression of disbelief in what Protagoras taught him that Protagoras was not too successful educating others. And talk of the "violent" conflict over the issue in public debate would indicate that little real education was going on, and how could it, since they all belief no one understands anything...[T180c] And yet, if we do not make Hermogenes mistake, and do not take Protagoras for the solipsist some mistake him for, perhaps he was not that bad of a teacher after all.
Thus "recourse must be had to another standard [an inner criterion] which, without employing names, will make clear which of the two are right, and this must be a standard which shows the truth of things...[for] things may be known without names."[C438de] "How real existence is to be studied or discovered is, I suspect, beyond you and me. But we may admit so much, that the knowledge of things is not to be derived from names. No, they must be studied and investigated in themselves."[C439b] For "if that which knows and that which is known exist ever, and the beautiful and the good and every other thing also exist, then I do not think that they can resemble a process or flux... Whether there is this external nature in things, or whether the truth is what Heraclitus and his followers...say, is a question hard to determine, and no man of sense will like to put himself or the education of his mind in the power of names...reflect well and...do not easily accept such a doctrine..."[C440d]