Note 57 — Chapter XXIII · PROTAGORAS.

Plato, Protag. pp. 328-329.

Very different indeed is the sentiment of the principal Platonic commentators. Schleiermacher will not allow the mythus of Protagoras to be counted among the Platonic mythes: he says that it is composed in the style of Protagoras, and perhaps copied from some real composition of that Sophist. He finds in it nothing but a “grobmaterialistiche Denkungsart, die über die sinnliche Erfahrung nicht hinaus philosophirt” (Einleitung zum Protagoras, vol. i. pp. 233-234).

To the like purpose Ast (Plat. Leb. p. 71) — who tells us that what is expressed in the mythus is, “the vulgar and mean sentiment and manner of thought of the Sophist: for it deduces every thing, both arts and the social union itself, from human wants and necessity”. Apparently these critics, when they treat this as a proof of meanness and vulgarity, have forgotten that the Platonic Sokrates himself does exactly the same thing in the Republic — deriving the entire social union from human necessities (Republ. ii. 369 C).

K. F. Hermann is hardly less severe upon the Protagorean discourse (Gesch. und Syst. der Plat. Phil. p. 460).

For my part, I take a view altogether opposed to these learned persons. I think the discourse one of the most striking and instructive portions of the Platonic writings: and if I could believe that it was the composition of Protagoras himself, my estimation of him would be considerably raised.

Steinhart pronounces a much more rational and equitable judgment than Ast and Schleiermacher, upon the discourse of Protagoras (Einleitung zum Prot. pp. 422-423).