5 A Meeting of the Minds
In which Socrates crashes a party full of professional wise men who have come to town to teach young men how to succeed in life, and he challenges one of them to show how he can teach virtue.
5.1 The Sophists Have Come to Town
After Socrates’ voyage to Samos we hear nothing of his exploits for the next decade. We meet him next at a gathering of educators set in 433 BC, at a time when he was about thirty-six years old, with perhaps a modest reputation as an intellectual. What he was learning or doing during those missing years we do not know, except from what we can infer from later accounts and an occasional swipe by a comic poet (see ch. 10*). We can presume he lived a fairly quiet, private life in Athens, pursuing intellectual inquiries with little fame or notoriety.
In the Protagoras Plato tells us of a meeting between Socrates and the great teacher, as told by the former. We need to say something here about Plato’s Socratic dialogues. They are (as mentioned in the Prologue) fictional compositions, and not meant to be taken as documentary reports (with one or two possible exceptions, to be mentioned later). But they seem to show the character Socrates using Socratic methods, making Socratic assumptions, and pursuing Socratic agendas. The Protagoras is set at a time before Plato was born, so there is no question here of a documentary account of what happened. It is very possible, and even likely, that Socrates did meet the famous sophist, who apparently did come to Athens at about the time the dialogue is set. Plato uses the dialogue to introduce Protagoras and a number of his important colleagues, and to contrast him with the young Socrates. As we shall see later, there are reasons to think that at the dramatic date Socrates already held the paradoxical views that Plato puts in his mouth in this dialogue. We will at least learn how Plato sees the relationship between the youngish Socrates (in his mid-thirties) and the sophists. The following scenes, incidentally, offer the only ancient portrayal of the broad range of sophistic teaching methods, and allow us to experience some of the excitement and hostility their visits generated. (For more on the nature of our sources for understanding Socrates, see Appendix**.)
The story begins with a visit from an admirer of Protagoras. “Last night, while it was still dark, Hippocrates son of Apollodorus, the brother of Phason, banged loudly on my door with his staff, and when someone opened it, he rushed in saying in a loud voice, ‘Socrates! Are you awake or asleep?’ Recognizing his voice, I said, ‘Hippocrates, my boy. What news do you bring?’”
“‘Only the best!’ he said.”
“‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘What is it that is so urgent?’”
“‘Protagoras is here!’ he said, moving next to me.”[1]
The breathless boy cannot wait to see the sophist and begs Socrates to introduce him. Like many other young men of Athens, Hippocrates is anxious to become Protagoras’ student and learn what the sophist has to teach. Like other sophists, Protagoras travels from city to city, teaching seminars to young men wishing to make a name for themselves. He commands a respectable fee for teaching skills, such as public speaking, business management, and leadership. His reputation is so great that he can be choosy in picking his students, taking only the most promising and best connected.
Socrates walks around the courtyard with his young friend and begins to explore his motives. “So tell me, Hippocrates, since you are planning to go to Protagoras and pay him a fee for your education, to whom are you going and what do you want to become? For instance, if you were going to your namesake Hippocrates of Cos of the Asclepiads, and would pay him a fee, and if someone asked you, ‘Tell me, Hippocrates, you are going to pay Hippocrates because he Is what?,’ what would you answer?”
“I would say,” he replied, “‘a physician.’”
“So you could become what?”
“A doctor.”
“. . . So if someone asked us urgently concerning this, ‘Tell me, Socrates and Hippocrates, in what capacity do you think to pay money to Protagoras?,’ what should we answer? . . .”
“A sophist, Socrates, is what they call the man.”
“So we’re going to pay him money in that capacity, as a sophist?”
“Yes.”
Socrates puts the question less delicately to Hippocrates now. “And if someone went on to ask you this: ‘Then you’re going to Protagoras so you yourself can become a sophist?’ And as he said this [Hippocrates] blushed—the day was just breaking, so you could see his face.”
“If this case is like the others, it follows that I would go to become a sophist.”
“But of all people, by the gods, aren’t you ashamed to make yourself a sophist for all Greece to see?”[2]
And here was the heart of a strange paradox. While rich young gentlemen were dying to sit at the feet of sophists like Protagoras, there was a certain air of impropriety attached to the occupation of sophist. To be a sophist was to be a kind of tradesman or huckster — of highly desirable wares, to be sure, but a huckster nonetheless. Most respectable of all was to be a gentleman with no trade or occupation whatsoever, but to have one’s own land and servants and to live off the income of one’s property.
Socrates continues, “Perhaps then this isn’t the kind of instruction you expect to get from Protagoras, but rather the kind you got from the schoolmasters who taught you letters and music and gymnastic. You didn’t learn these for professional purposes, to become a practitioner, but in the way of a liberal education, as a layman and a gentleman should.”
“That exactly describes the sort of instruction I expect from Protagoras!”[3]
Protagoras was a member, indeed one of the originators, of a new movement in education. In a time when formal education was limited to the primary instruction of children, the sophists now offered adult education. For a tuition of four or five pounds,[a] the sophist would teach eager young men seminars regarding the topics young men most wanted to learn: politics and management. The visit from a famous sophist — indeed from a group of leading sophists to a rich patron — was an occasion of considerable excitement for ambitious young men.
Thus reassured, Hippocrates hopes to get on with the introduction. But Socrates is just warming up. What kind of instruction does Hippocrates think he will get from a sophist? If you went to a painter you would learn about painting; if you went to a builder, you would learn about building. But what kind of knowledge will you get from a sophist? Pressed by Socrates, Hippocrates replies, “What could we say he was, Socrates, but a master of the art of producing expert speakers?” “Well,” Socrates responds, “our answer might be true, but it would hardly be sufficient. It invites the further question, On what subject does the sophist produce an expert speaker?”[4] At this point Hippocrates gives up, for he doesn’t know what knowledge the sophist specializes in.
Socrates now reveals his reservations about sophistic education: “Do you realize the sort of danger to which you are going to expose your soul? If it were a case of putting your body into the hands of someone and risking the treatment’s turning out well or badly, you would ponder deeply whether to entrust it to him or not, and would spend many days over the question . . . But when it comes to something which you value more highly than your body, namely your soul . . . you have not consulted either your father or your brother or any of us who are your friends.”[5]
[a]A mina, about a pound in weight; in coinage, a pound of silver, equal to 100 drachmas, where a drachma is about a day’s wage for a skilled worker in the fifth-century BC.
[1].Plato Protagoras 310a-b.
[2].Plato Protagoras 311b-312a.
[3].Plato Protagoras 312a-b.
[4].Plato Protagoras 312d.
[5].Plato Protagoras 313a-b.