Socrates and the famous sophist Protagoras debate whether virtue can be taught, framed by the myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus.
Protagoras is Plato's dialogue staging a single day's encounter between Socrates and the celebrated sophist Protagoras, in Athens at the house of Callias, before an audience that includes the sophists Hippias and Prodicus. The young Hippocrates has dragged Socrates out before dawn to help him decide whether to pay Protagoras for lessons, and the dialogue opens with Socrates warning him that buying teachings for the soul is riskier than buying food, since you cannot taste-test them or send them back once absorbed.
The central question is whether virtue (arete) can be taught at all, and whether it is one thing or several distinct parts (wisdom, courage, justice, piety, moderation). Protagoras answers with a set-piece myth: Epimetheus botched the distribution of natural gifts to animals, leaving humans naked and defenseless, so Prometheus stole fire and craft-skill from the gods; but political skill remained with Zeus until he had Hermes distribute a share of justice and shame to every human, on pain of death for cities, which is why everyone -- not just specialists -- is expected to have some capacity for civic virtue. Socrates presses Protagoras through a long, often combative cross-examination, including a detour into interpreting a poem of Simonides, and eventually corners him into a highly intellectualist position: that courage is really just knowledge of what is and isn't dangerous, and that no one who truly knows the good chooses the worse over it -- a hedonic calculus in which wrongdoing is essentially miscalculation.
The dialogue famously refuses to resolve its own question. Socrates ends by noting the irony that he has argued virtue is not teachable while acting as though it is (by trying to teach Protagoras something), and Protagoras has argued the opposite while acting as though it might not be. It matters as an early and vivid document of what the sophists actually offered and charged for, as a showcase of Socratic elenchus deployed against a formidable rival rather than an amateur, and as the source of one of Plato's most striking anthropological myths about the origin of human society and justice.
“Aren't you the one who praises Homer, who said the most charming time of youth is when the beard first appears”
— Protagoras · read this chapter →
“when it comes to something you value more than your body — your soul, on whose being good or bad your whole life's faring well or badly depends — about this you've consulted neither your father nor your brother”
— Protagoras · read this chapter →
“because of his kinship with god, he alone among the animals believed in gods, and set about establishing altars and images of them”
— Protagoras · read this chapter →
“humans at first lived scattered about; there were no cities. So they were destroyed by wild animals, since they were weaker than the beasts in every way”
— Protagoras · read this chapter →
“about which you and I each delivered a long speech — I arguing that virtue isn't teachable, you that it is”
— Protagoras · read this chapter →
It is a dialogue about whether virtue (arete) can be taught, staged as a debate between Socrates and the sophist Protagoras at the house of Callias in Athens. Socrates cross-examines Protagoras over the course of a single day, using a myth, a poetry interpretation, and a long argument about courage and knowledge, and the two men end up trading positions without resolving the question.
Protagoras of Abdera was a real, famous sophist and the first to openly charge fees for teaching virtue and rhetoric, presented in the dialogue as confident, urbane, and drawing a large crowd of admirers including Hippias and Prodicus. In the dialogue he argues that virtue can be taught and offers the Prometheus/Epimetheus myth to explain why all citizens are expected to share in political virtue.
Epimetheus mismanages the distribution of natural traits to animals and leaves humans defenseless, so Prometheus steals fire and craft skill from the gods for them. Political skill and justice remain with Zeus, who eventually has Hermes distribute a share of it to every human being, which is why Protagoras says all citizens, not just specialists, are expected to have some civic virtue.
Socrates argues in the dialogue that virtue is not teachable, while Protagoras argues that it is -- but by the end each man notes that his own behavior contradicts his stated position, and the question is left explicitly unresolved. The dialogue instead pushes toward the claim that virtue, especially courage, reduces to knowledge of what truly benefits or harms a person.
Socrates presses Protagoras until courage looks less like fearlessness and more like correct knowledge of what is genuinely dangerous versus what merely seems so. On this view reckless people who fear nothing are not courageous but ignorant, since true courage requires knowing what is worth fearing.
Socrates tells Hippocrates that buying teachings for the soul is riskier than buying food, because food can be inspected, stored, and vetted by an expert before you consume it, but a doctrine is absorbed into the soul the moment you hear it and cannot be returned. He urges Hippocrates to think hard about entrusting something as valuable as his soul to any teacher, sophist or otherwise.
Alcibiades 1 · Alcibiades 2 · Apology · Charmides · Cleitophon · Cratylus · Critias · Crito · Epinomis · Euthydemus · Euthyphro · Gorgias