Protagoras

(490-421 B.C.E.)

 

Among the Sophists who had come to Athens, Protagoras of Abdera was the oldest and, in many ways, the most influential. He is best known for his statement that "man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, they are not." To say that man is the measure of all things apparently meant to Protagoras that whatever knowledge one could achieve about anything would be limited to one’s human capacities. He dismissed any discussion of theology, saying that "About the gods, I am not able to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form; for the factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of human life." Knowledge said Protagoras, is limited to our various perceptions and these perceptions will differ with each person. If two persons were to observe the same object, their sensations would be different, because each would occupy a different position in relation to it. Similarly, the same breeze blowing at two people would feel cool to one, while it would be warm t the other. Whether the breeze is or is not cold cannot be answered in a simple way. It is in fact cold for one person and warm for the other. To say that "man is the measure of al things" is therefore, to say that our knowledge is measured by what we perceive, and if there is something about each of us that makes us perceive things different ways, there is no standard foe testing whether one person’s perception is right and another person’s wrong. Protagoras thought that the objects we perceive by our various senses must possess all the properties that different people perceive as belonging to them. For this reason, it is impossible to discover what the "true" nature of anything is: a thing has as many characteristics as there are people perceiving it. There is no way to distinguish between "appearance" and "reality"; for the person who says that the breeze is cold it really is cold and does not simply appear so just because it feels warm to someone else. On this theory of knowledge, it would be impossible to build any scientific knowledge, because it rejects the possibility of discovering what nature is really like since there are built-in differences in each observer leading each one to see things differently. Protagoras concluded, therefore, that knowledge is relative to each person.

When he turned to the subject of ethics, Protagoras maintained that moral judgments are relative. He was willing to admit that the idea of law reflects a general desire in each culture for a moral order among all people. But he denied that there was any uniform law of nature pertaining to human behavior that all peoples everywhere could discover. He distinguished between nature and custom, and said, that laws and moral rules are based, not upon nature, but upon convention. Each society has its own laws and its own moral rules, and there is no way, apart from certain common-sense observations about their relative "soundness," of judgment some to be true and others wrong. But Protagoras did not carry this moral relativism to the extreme revolutionary position of saying that because moral judgments are relative, every individual can decide what is moral. Instead, he took the conservative position that the state makes the laws and that these laws should be accepted by everyone because they are as good as any that can be made. Other communities might have different laws, and individuals within a state might think of different laws, but in neither case are these better laws; they are only different. In the interest of a peaceful and orderly society, then, people should respect and uphold the customs, laws, and orderly rules their tradition has carefully developed. In matters of religion, Protagoras took a similar view, saying that the impossibility of knowing with certainty about the existence and nature of the gods should not prevent anyone from participating in the worship of the gods. The curios outcome of Protagoras’ relativism was his conservative conclusion that the young should be educated to accept and support the tradition of their society, not because this tradition is true but because it makes possible a stable society. Still, there could be no question that Protagoras’ relativism had seriously dislodged confidence in the possibility of discovering true knowledge and had brought upon his skepticism the heavy criticism of Socrates and Plato.

FRAGMENTS

Man is the measure of all things: of things that are, that they are; of things that are not, that they are not.

All matter is in a state of flux. A fluctuating thing may retain its shape, because the changes may be such that the additions compensate for the losses. It is our sense-impressions of the thing that get modified, because affected by age and other bodily conditions.

There are intelligible principles inherent in the matter of every phenomenon; because matter is essentially the sum of all the seemings that it has for any and all persons.

Learning requires both natural endowment and self-discipline. It has to begin when one is young.

Skill without concern, and concern without skill, are equally worthless.

As for the gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist; nor, if they exist, of what form they are. For the obstacles to that sort of knowledge are many, including the obscurity of the matter and the brevity of human life.