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Showing posts from February 12, 2017

What is teachable?- 1st Protagoras dialogue

This blog is inspired by Socrates questioning if wisdom of word can be taught, in other words if being a good citizen can be taught? We find this in his first dialogue with Protagoras, the sophist. Socrates first critiques Hippocrates for wanting to pay money to Protagoras to teach him how to become better. He then confronts Portagoras himself and asks him why he is teaching the not teachable.  For socrates the non teachable is something that can't "be imparted from one human being to another" (Plato, Prot. 319b). For him it is clear that knowledge is not something to purchase. Protagoras' reason for teaching wisdom, specifically the art of politics which requires reason, is because human beings were not made with this type of talent when the gods were making them, they ran out of talents for human beings and had to borrow from the gods, so they borrowed from Athena and Hephaestus wisdom of the practical arts.  Human beings were being killed by wild animals because

Return Home a Better Person - The Sophists

Can you imagine becoming better and better every single day. Isn't that what we all want and are supposed to do? Becoming better for the Sophists was a central goal, at least from what I perceived from Protagoras, the head of the team of the sophists, the non philosophers. The idea of 'becoming better' works under the assumption that the person is lacking what can make you better. This is also under the assumption that once you become better you cannot become better again the way you were better the day before, you continue getting better, but cannot go back, this defeats the point of getting better.  Hence why in my personal opinion this is one of the main flaws of the slogan, "Make America better again" by Trump. However, the sophist were nothing like him. It is true that back then they were not liked by Plato, but some of their arguments about the importance of rhetoric, the knowledge to use words, is something that we should always keep in mind and learn fro