Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen

Institut für Philosophie

S: Platon: Menon und Protagoras

Prof. Dr. phil. Timo-Peter Ertz

SS 2018

Virtue in Plato's Meno and Protagoras:

A Positive Sketch

Nicolás Gracia Varela

Grünberger Straße 190

35394 Gießen

Nicolas.Gracia@sowi.uni-giessen.de

Matrikelnummer: 7003494

7 August, 2018
Introduction

Both the Meno and the Protagoras seem to stand out among Plato's other dialogues due to
certain particularities in their thematic centers and the argumentative methods employed in them.
The Meno is commonly regarded as a study piece in the argumentative delivery that will
characterize Plato's work, and as the dialogue in which many of his most important theses first
appear, at least in an embryonic stage, something that partly justifies the dialogue's
inconclusiveness. On the other hand, the Protagoras offers a somewhat strange image of
Socrates. In conversation with the sophist, he makes mistakes and sometimes becomes stubborn
for no apparent reason. Overall, although both dialogues are concerned with the concept of
virtue, the movements and sections in them remain many times ambiguous and chaotic. The
resulting startled reader may be a common product of Plato's work, but one could argue that in
these dialogues the thematic cohesiveness is particularly unstable, and that Plato's and Socrates'
theories and true positions are here harder to discern.

In what follows I will try to give a general account of the concept of virtue, I will attempt a
general description of the characteristics we can almost certainly ascribe to it beyond the
confusion of the dialogues. I will not try to hint at a coherent theory of virtue, which I believe is
not to be found in these texts, nor will I make reference to the possible relation between the
formal construction of the dialogues and their meaning. I will restrict my text to an attempt at
answering the question 'How is virtue?', considering those arguments in both dialogues that are,
explicitly or implicitly, considered valid or sound by those partaking in them. To do so I will
explain and develop three propositions, three positive statements that I consider to be true of
virtue, when considered in the adequate context: 1) The possibility of virtue comes to man by
nature, 2) Virtue is a quality that can be improved and 3) Virtue is wholly or partly knowledge.

The possibility of virtue comes to man by nature

In the Meno, right after showing how wisdom and knowledge are linked to what is good and
profitable and therefore with virtue, Socrates arrives at the conclusion that good men cannot be
good by nature (Cf. Plato, Meno, 89c). If only a particular way of managing one's soul could
accomplish the rightness of one's actions, some kind of education must be needed to become
good. Immediately afterwards, Socrates points out a complication brought up by this conclusion,
namely, the contradiction that represents having a kind of knowledge that is not taught in reality,
that is to say, the lack of teachers of virtue, because “if anything at all, not merely virtue, is
teachable, must there not be teachers and learners of it?” (Plato, Meno, 89d). This problem poses
a tension that remains unsolved in this dialogue, one that also drives Socrates' questions to
Protagoras and that makes necessary an important distinction, that is to be made in two different
levels.

On the first level, it concerns the difference between liberal and technical education (Cf. Gagarin,
1969 p.141). This distinction is made by Socrates in the Protagoras, while discussing with
Hippocrates his motivation for visiting the sophist. Concerned with the naivety of the young man
and with his careless and irreflexive following of a well known and highly reputed man, Socrates
asks him “What sort of workmanship is he [Protagoras] master of?” (Plato, Protagoras, 312d),
what kind knowledge he hopes to obtain from him and to what purpose. He asks him whether he
wants to become a sophists himself, to which Hippocrates answers negatively with overt
indignation. Then Socrates leads him to the conclusion that the kind of learning he is looking for
is not the one that makes the expert or the craftsman, but one similar to that provided by general
education, that one gets from language teachers, for instance. This helps to find a middle point,
on a first level, between virtue being something that comes by nature and something to be
learned as one learns to become a doctor or a flutist. Virtue is therefore not a technical skill, but
something that belongs to a more general register. Even though we do not know to what kind of
knowledge virtue is linked to, we know that it is not the kind that makes the expert, acquired to
perform particular actions adequately, but one by which one could profit in a larger sense.

However, this helps the tension afore mentioned move forwards, but does not solve it, as there
are still not unambiguous teachers of virtue in this general sense. Socrates demands to Meno and
later to Protagoras for ontological clarity concerning virtue, he asks whether it is one or many,
not because he just wants to introduce another topic; he is in fact concerned with that general
quality that makes virtue what it is, that makes it not susceptible of being defined by or reduced
to indoctrination or the mere acquiring of management skills. In this sense, the existence of
preceptors, teacher of morals and sophists, who teach a 'liberal', general education, in opposition
to a technical one, does not account sufficiently for the teachability of virtue. A distinction on a
second level is therefore needed, and it comes withing what is commonly called Protagoras'
'Great Speech'
With the fable of Prometheus, Protagoras hopes to answer mainly one of Socrates questions: if
virtue can be taught, how come is everyone's opinion concerning the management of the state in
the assembly considered equal? The speech (Cf. Plato, Protagoras, 320d-322e) tackles this
question claiming that reason was given to the human species to compensate for its physical
weakness, so that it could thrive amongst the difficulties of weather and the dangers posed by
wild beasts. But once mere instrumental reason proved insufficient to secure subsistence, the
gods provided humans with virtue, equally distributed among men, so they could be strong living
with one another. Virtue represents therefore the possibility for men to form contracts, create
laws and maintain a stable social order that enables them to survive. In this sense, the mere
participation of a particular society would account for the individual having some basic relation
to virtue. The argument behind this mythical explanation answers the question by stating a basic
anthropological notion of men as sociable and of virtue as being the quality that enables this
sociability. If everyone has this basic quality, everyone's opinion concerning social life should be
equal.

This idea, which we have no reason to believe is not accepted by Socrates (Cf. Gagarin, 1969,
p.133-134), offers another distinction, that counts as an option to Socrates exclusive opposition
between something that is taught and something that is provided by nature. The notion of virtue
as an anthropological basic property accounts for it being present in everybody, for its possibility
being given by nature, but also as a quality that varies in degree from person to person. If that
difference is due to the individual's relation to knowledge is to be seen, but for now we could
admit that virtue has to do not with technical skills nor exclusively with general, liberal,
education, but with a basic structure of the moral self.

Virtue is a quality that can be improved

Protagoras's answer attempts to justify his own trade, and in order to do so he has to show how
“arete is similar to other technai in that it is taught, but different from them in that it should be
possessed to some degree by all” (Gagarin, 1969, p.144). The latter he has already attempt to
prove with the fable of Prometheus, but the former, in conjunction to Socrates' question 'If virtue
is taught, how come virtuous parents can raise non virtuous children?' remains unsolved. The
fable only indirectly approaches Socrates' question, making the teaching of virtue, to a certain
extent, something accomplished collectively. If everyone partakes in it, our own neighbor could
by example teach us something about it. However, Protagoras then tries to answer the question
directly with an argument, that consolidates his rather pragmatical views: the teachability of
virtue is presupposed in punishment, because if punishment is to be a rational product of human
societies and cannot be mere retribution or revenge, then it is a pedagogical opportunity to install
virtue in the individual. If virtue were to be haphazardly acquired, viciousness in turn could not
be punished, because it would fall into the same category as natural disasters and other factors
subjected only to chance.

Socrates does not seem to oppose to this argument and only demands afterwards for a more
precise determination of what is meant by virtue and, as it was stated before, whether it is one or
many and in which ways do the different virtues relate to one another. Furthermore, in the Meno,
it is made clear that Socrates' inquiring does not come from a purely skeptical point of view, that
negates the possibility of improving in virtue. Actually, his analogy of the merchant and the
sophist (Cf. Plato, Protagoras, 313c) could be interpreted as a rather neutral stand towards the
role of sophistry and therefore to the possibility of becoming better at it. If the sophist is a
merchant of the nourishment of the soul, of course it is a risk to blindly commend oneself to his
advice, considering he is not a doctor and does not truly understand what is beneficial for the
costumer. This, however, does not exclude the possibility of him actually proving some truly
nourishing products, in his case sound and beneficial doctrines.

Moreover, two arguments support this characteristic of virtue. One of them comes from an
implicit assumption made by both dialogues, and the other concerns one of their main theses,
namely, that virtue is knowledge. The assumption I meant is the truly Socratic disposition that
teaches and encourages moral growth through inquiry and dialogue: “to engage his fellows in
intellectual argument calculated to advance their discernment of moral truth is ipso facto to
improve them morally, to make them better men” (Vlastos, 1972, p.425). This means that while
discussing the teachability of virtue and its true nature, an indirect teaching is taking place.
Socrates, upon the assumption that virtue can be improved through critical inquiry, invites those
who read and listen to become better and, in honestly and unselfishly following his questioning,
they actually do so.
Virtue is wholly or partly knowledge

The connection between virtue and knowledge evidently supports the teachability of virtue. In
the Meno, as it was mentioned before, this proposition is treated as an hypothesis, that proves to
be valid if one considers that what is good is inevitably linked to good sense and wisdom. In this
simple formulation many complications are not dealt with, for instance, the problem of the
weakness of the will and the possibility of a perverse one. I believe this is due to a strong
assumption concerning the conception of good that is at play, one that will be maintained and
developed in other dialogues, like The Republic, and that is characterized by a highly idealistic
tone. Interpreters like Desjardins (1985), propose a reading that shows the continuity between
these two stages of the conception of good, rendering it possible for the theory of recollection in
the Meno to be read as a fourfold process fully applicable to virtue (Cf. p.273). And although I
don't think a parallel could be fully implemented without making knowledge and virtue
completely the same thing, it provides a useful reading in regards to what up to now has been
discussed in this text.

The paradox of knowledge, as restated by Socrates is as follows:

[…] a man cannot inquire either about what he knows or about what he does not know [..] For he
cannot inquire about what he knows, because he knows it, and in that case is in no need of
inquiry; nor again can he inquire about what he does not know, since he does not know about
what he is to inquire. (Plato, Meno, 80e)

To this he answers with the theory that states that the soul is eternal and therefore has already
lived and acquired all knowledge through all its lives. Getting to know something is then
remembering a past experience of the soul. This theory is to be read as an analogy, that focuses
on the similarity between the process of remembering and that of understanding. It is not likely
that this theory is meant to explain empirical inquiry, because if that were the case, the paradox
could be solved in two steps, understanding the problem and verifying it empirically (Cf.
Moravcsik, 1971, p.54). Therefore, the theory hopes to explain something else. By Desjardin's
(1985) interpretation it explains a kind of activity that underlies “the operation of intelligence at
every level and in every context” (Cf. p.265), that is to say, a structural capacity that enables
knowledge, or also, in other terms, the rational ability to think conceptually and understand, in
opposition to only decoding information, as would be the case for what is commonly understood
by learning (Cf. Moravcsik, 1971, p.67).

This general and basic structure is a more concrete and epistemologically inclined version to the
common virtue share by all members of a community, proposed by Protagoras. This is the case if
we admit the connection between knowledge and virtue, as mentioned in the Meno and in the
demonstration involving pleasure and evil in the Protagoras, but also if we understand that they
both refer to the same constituent level of human nature. One that enables conceptual
understanding and the also the moral capacity of man, the latter being understood also as our
ability to live in communities. Overall, this understanding of virtue as knowledge, as linked to a
general conceptual capacity in man, enables a broader perspective that allows to think virtue
outside indoctrination, chance or divine dispensation (in opposition to the conclusion the Meno
arrives at in 100b).

Conclusion

As I stated in the introduction, I only attempted to characterize virtue in three specific and simple
points: its possibility is given by nature, it can be taught to a certain extent and it relates deeply
to cognitive abilities and knowledge. What is constantly missing is the true content of what can
be learned, that is to say, of the concepts recollected and the nature of the improvements made.
This content is, however important, not the principal goal of these dialogues. They attempt to
offer a more general perspective to virtue and the good life. To the constant definitions by Meno
and Protagoras of virtue as the capacity to manage one's own affairs adequately, Socrates
questioning offers the possibility of an existential disposition that cannot be reduced to a
practical set of skill, or even to prestige and recognition. Virtue is therefore not a set of actions or
rules, but, a disposition, one that can be nourished and made a task, not only for the statesmen
but also for every citizen.
References

Desjardin, R. (1085). Knowledge and Virtue: Paradox in Plato's 'Meno'. The Review of
Metaphysics, Vol. 39, No. 2. pp. 261-281. Richmond: Philosophy Education Society Inc.

Gagarin, M. (1969). The Purpose of Plato's Protagoras. Transactions and Proceedings of the
American Philological Association, Vol. 100. pp. 133-164. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins
UP.

Moravcsik, J. (1971). Learning as Recollection. Plato: Metaphysics and Epistemology. pp. 53-
69. New York: Doubleday and Company, Inc.

Plato. (2006). Laches, Protagoras, Meno, Euthydemus. Ann Arbor: Harvard Up

Vlastos, G. (1972). The Unity of the Virtues in the 'Protagoras'. The Review of Metaphysics, Vol.
25, No. 3. pp. 415-458. Richmond: Philosophy Education Society Inc.