1. SOPHISTRY AND THE GREAT SPEECH

The Great Speech comes as a response to Socrates’ interrogation of Protagoras. Socrates asks the sophist what the young Hippocrates will gain from his tutelage, and Protagoras’ reply, in short, is that Hippocrates will acquire a command of the political art in both its public and its domestic spheres. Socrates then gives two reasons to doubt that this can in fact be taught, both of which appeal to the renowned wisdom of the Athenians in political affairs.

The first concerns the practice of the Athenian assembly, which dismisses all laymen who try to give counsel on matters of ‘technical expertise’: the building of ships, the healing of the sick, etc. Anyone who dares advise the assembly on matters in which they have no expertise can expect harsh treatment and even violence (319b1–d1).Footnote ⁴ But when it comes to questions about the general management of the city, to which the political art applies, then the assembly is happy to listen to any citizen, regardless of his qualifications. So the wise Athenians clearly do not agree with Protagoras that the political art can be taught as, say, shipbuilding can. Otherwise, they would consult only experts, as they do in matters of shipbuilding.

For Socrates’ second objection he turns to the political art's other sphere, the household. He observes that great statesmen such as Pericles, who are thought to be wise in the political art, make sure to have their sons and others under their care educated in those disciplines that are teachable—presumably Socrates has in mind such disciplines as music, physical training, poetry, perhaps even rhetoric. Yet, these same statesmen cannot teach their wards the subject in which they themselves are wise, nor are they any better at finding someone who can, even though ignorance of the political art seems to carry far greater consequences than, say, ignorance of music does (319e1–320b10). Again, the moral Socrates wants to draw is that the political art cannot be taught as music can be. Otherwise, those who have mastered it would pass it on to their sons, as they do with the more technical disciplines. Having laid out these objections, Socrates turns the floor over to Protagoras.

Socrates’ objections foist a pair of uncomfortable dilemmas onto Protagoras. The first objection forces him either to withdraw his claim as a teacher of the political art and thus reveal himself as a fraud, or else to claim that his dear Athenian assembly is in fact unwise in political matters. Similarly, the second objection forces the sophist either to renounce his claim to teach the political art or to claim that Pericles, his most prestigious patron, was not really a master of the political art after all.Footnote ⁵ As we will see in greater detail in Section 2, Socrates’ twin dilemmas shrewdly exploit the sophist's avowed reluctance to criticize local customs.

Protagoras finds his way out of these dilemmas with his Great Speech. His strategy is to argue that the political art does not conform to Socrates’ model of the specialized crafts. It is indeed a genuine kind of skill, but it differs from the rest of the crafts in a couple of important ways.

The genesis myth of the Great Speech explains why this is so.Footnote ⁶ We are told that, when the time came for the gods to create all the mortal creatures, they charged Prometheus and Epimetheus with the distribution of abilities and powers (320d1–321b10). Epimetheus later convinced his brother to leave all the work to him. The main challenge of this enterprise seems to have been compensating each creature's disadvantages with other advantages, so that no creature would face extinction from predators and a harsh climate. All of Epimetheus’ provisions, we are told, were carefully balanced to ensure the preservation of every species.

But Epimetheus forgot about man in all of this, and by the time he noticed his mistake it was too late: he had used up all of his provisions on the other animals, and man was left naked and vulnerable (321c1–322a4). So Prometheus took matters into his own hands, stealing the specialized crafts (along with fire, the necessity of which is asserted but never explained) from Hephaestus and Athena, and delivering them to the human race. Thus equipped, man was expected to get by without further divine provisions, for now he could make his own pelts, hooves and dwellings.

But the story does not end there. Despite Prometheus’ best efforts, man still did not have everything he needed. For although he now had dwellings, blankets, clothing and agriculture, he was deprived of the political art, and hence of the ability to live with his fellow men in a stable political community. Prometheus had not managed to swipe this along with the crafts, as it was in Zeus's care (231d5–10).

Before proceeding to the next chapter of Protagoras’ myth, it is worth remarking on the stranger features of the chapter we have just recounted. Protagoras, in search of a way to wriggle out of Socrates’ challenge, needs to show that the political art differs radically from the technical model on which Socrates bases his own understanding of a teachable skill. So he asks us to imagine primordial man in possession of all of the crafts but bereft of the political art. The list of things man could accomplish without the political art is surprising, for it includes elements of human life that seem unmistakably social. Along with coats and shoes, he developed religious practices ‘and erected altars and sacred images’ (322a7–8).Footnote ⁷ Even less intuitively, Protagoras supposes that before man had the political art he developed language. And as we learn a bit later on, the distribution of the crafts was roughly the same before man acquired the political art as it was after—that is, one man made shoes, another built houses, another raised crops, and so on (322c5–d5). Since each man needs all of these things, we must assume that pre-political man routinely conducted some sort of trade, however primitive.Footnote ⁸ So, given that pre-political man managed religious life, language and trade, we may well wonder: what precisely was he missing out on?

Protagoras answers this question in the next chapter of his myth, identifying two related deficiencies of pre-political life. First, man could not defend himself against attacks from wild beasts. This is because he lacked the art of war, which, according to Protagoras, is a sub-department of the political art. Protagoras here seems to have in mind the sorts of larger animals against whom one man cannot prevail. A pack of hunters is required to attack such an animal on multiple fronts, create diversions, etc. Consider, for example, the sort of cooperation that your average bear hunt might demand.Footnote ⁹ Second, pre-political man then tried to protect himself by founding cities, but this was short-lived. The reason we are given is that, without the political art, man was doomed to wrong and be wronged by his fellow men, and so any political union soon disbanded.

Once again a god came to the rescue. This time it was Zeus, who had been watching these failed attempts to form cities and was worried that the wild animals would soon drive man into extinction (322c2–c3). So he sent Hermes to deliver justice and shame, which Protagoras later identifies with εὐβουλία, ensuring ‘order within cities and bonds of friendship to unite them’ (322c4–5).Footnote ¹⁰ Before setting off to deliver justice and shame, Hermes asks Zeus how these are to be distributed (322c6–d3):

Here the myth of the Great Speech essentially ends, and with good reason.Footnote ¹¹ Protagoras has just laid out almost all he needs to answer Socrates’ objections.Footnote ¹² In the remaining, λόγος-based portion of the speech, he undertakes to fuse Zeus's gifts with the εὐβουλία he teaches. For example, at 322e2–323a1 Protagoras characterizes civic virtue (πολιτικῆς ἀρετῆς)—the craft of which he has already identified at 318e3–319a4 with the very subject he claims to teach, εὐβουλία—as an enterprise ‘which must proceed entirely from justice and temperance’ (ἣν δεῖ διὰ δικαιοσύνης πᾶσαν ἰέναι καὶ σωφροσύνης). A little later on he refers breezily to ‘justice or any other social virtue’ (ἐν δὲ δικαιοσύνῃ καὶ ἐν τῇ ἄλλῃ πολιτικῇ ἀρετῇ) (323b1–2). The clear implication of these moves—an implication Socrates will seize upon, sparking the dialogue's main debate concerning the unity of the virtues—is that Protagoras takes the εὐβουλία he teaches to be identical with justice (and the rest of virtue), and hence with Zeus's gifts.Footnote ¹³

With this identification established, the core insight of the Great Speech comes into sharper relief. Protagorean εὐβουλία is not like the technical arts, the myth insists. It was sent down to man from a higher god in a separate event, and so Socrates’ technical model of education does not apply. Specifically, the political art differs in its distribution. The Promethean crafts were specialized—a city only needs one cobbler for everyone to have shoes, after all. On the other hand, the city could only come into being if all men received some share of εὐβουλία. While Zeus never bothers to explain why this is so, this paper will develop a defence in due course.

From the distinct original distribution of εὐβουλία, Protagoras derives another difference concerning its transmission. For since we all have it, we are all in a position to teach it to one another (327b3–5). Through an elaborate network of praise, blame, correction and formal education, a political community perfects as best it can the virtue of every one of its members. Once again, Socrates’ technical model, on which only an expert can make another like himself, turns out to be misguided.Footnote ¹⁴

Whether this picture leaves room for Protagoras’ claim to be an expert in the political art is questionable. To take up the sophist's own analogy—an early nod to the relationship between the dialectical and the political that we will develop further—Protagoras observes that every competent speaker of Greek contributes in some small way to the learner's education, and yet this does not undermine the grammarian's claim to be an expert in that same language (327e2–328a1). Whatever the merits of this analogy, for now let us consider how the myth furnishes Protagoras with the resources he needs to block Socrates’ specific objections.

First, it vindicates the egalitarianism of the Athenian assembly concerning deliberation on general matters of state, for it rightly recognizes that every citizen, regardless of his formal qualifications, must have some share of εὐβουλία, and so his counsel on general political matters is at least worth hearing (323c4–5). Second, Pericles is exonerated for failing to find an expert in εὐβουλία for his sons, since all citizens are held to instruct each other on this subject. Once again, this deviates from Socrates’ technical model, on which an expert makes another (often his son) like himself through one-on-one instruction; when it comes to εὐβουλία, it takes a village to raise a child. On both counts, then, Protagoras takes himself to have shown that—pace Socrates—Athenian democratic practice is perfectly consistent with his claim to teach sound deliberation.

Let this suffice as our reconstruction of Protagoras’ myth. The next section will illuminate a neglected parallel between this myth of primordial man's progress towards a reliable method of self-preservation, on the one hand, and Protagoras’ account elsewhere in the dialogue of the sophist's own progress towards a reliable defence against persecution, on the other. Section 3 will then examine the dialogue's methodological dispute and argue that it gives us a clue as to why Zeus in the myth insists that political life would not be possible unless εὐβουλία were distributed to all.

2. SOPHISTRY AND THE TRADITIONAL DISCIPLINES

As Socrates’ opening exchange with Protagoras makes clear, the sophist has enemies of his own. When Socrates reveals young Hippocrates’ wish to study with Protagoras, he makes a point of asking the sophist whether this is a matter best discussed in private. Protagoras seems to appreciate the gesture (316c6–317a2):

Like primordial man, the sophist of ancient times found himself in a harsh and inhospitable environment. Travelling from city to city, peddling an exclusive education to wealthy, well-born youths, sophistry raised suspicions then just as it does in Protagoras’ time. But the sophists of old thought that they had discovered a reliable set of ‘covers’ to disguise their true profession and avoid persecution. These were the more traditional disciplines Protagoras lists towards the end of our passage: poetry, mastery religions and prophecy, even athletics and music. The important parallel between these ‘covers’ and the crafts of Protagoras’ myth is their shared protective value. Just as the technical arts were meant to protect primordial man from extinction, so these traditional disciplines were meant to protect the ancient sophist from persecution.

Unfortunately for the ancient sophist, the similarity does not end there. For his ‘covers’ protected him no better than the Promethean crafts protected primordial man. Let us pick up where we left off in Protagoras’ genealogy of sophistry (317a3–c3):

Protagoras does not tell us why these ‘covers’ failed to protect the ancient sophist. He tells us only that they did not work. Under the influence of powerful men, the masses presumably either killed the ancient sophists or banished them from their cities.Footnote ¹⁵ But Protagoras purports to have found a more secure method of self-preservation: full disclosure that he is a practising sophist, along with other precautions he does not bother to explain. Whatever they are, his point seems to be that anyone like himself who manages to practise sophistry well into old age must be on to something.

So Protagoras’ account of ancient sophistry takes the same shape as his account of primordial man. In his original state, the ancient sophist was without resources and vulnerable to persecution by the masses at the direction of powerful men. The traditional disciplines were adopted for reasons of self-preservation. Moreover, their patterns of distribution resembled those of the Promethean crafts: one sophist used poetry as a cover, another used music, still another used athletics. But these failed, and persecution of the ancient sophist continued. In what seems to be a rather immodest analogue of Zeus's dispensation of εὐβουλία, the practice of pure sophistry—that is, sophistry without one of the traditional disciplines as a cover—is Protagoras’ gift to his profession, an effective method for avoiding the usual backlash from the locals.

Protagoras seems eager to set his own practice against the traditional disciplines early on in the dialogue when he surreptitiously accuses one of his competitors of burdening his students with the same old traditional subjects they learned in school. Included in his list are music and poetry, two of the ‘covers’ the ancient sophist adopted in vain (318d8–e5):

The implication seems to be that most of the sophistry in Protagoras’ time is regressive, mired in the tired divisions of the traditional disciplines.Footnote ¹⁶ Protagoras claims to have discovered something purer.

What is this ‘purer’ sophistry on offer from Protagoras? It would be easier to answer this question if he were to give more content to his brief history of sophistry. Given that later in the dialogue he will explicitly challenge a claim made by one of the ancient sophists he identifies—Simonides, in the dialogue's exercise in poetic interpretation—and given the historical Protagoras’ notorious takedown of Homer, another name appearing on the character's list of ancient sophists, it seems unlikely that Protagoras’ history of sophistry refers to a unified set of doctrines.Footnote ¹⁷ What he seems to be pointing to instead is a unified intellectual method, which is yet to be fleshed out.Footnote ¹⁸

We will return to this question in due course. For now, it will suffice to establish that Protagoras’ history of sophistry conforms to the same pattern as his account of pre-political man: 1) The ancient sophists were afraid of being banished or killed by the many—the analogue of the wild beasts in the myth; 2) To cope, they used the traditional disciplines as ‘covers’ in the hope that the true nature of their professional activities would go undetected; 3) These ‘covers’ had a Promethean pattern of distribution—that is, one sophist used prophesy as a cover, another used music, and so on; 4) The specialized disciplines failed to save the sophists from persecution, just as Prometheus’ gifts failed to save pre-political man; 5) A new discipline—pure sophistry—is identified, which succeeds where its specialized predecessors failed. So just as Zeus's gifts were distributed to all, so too Protagoras’ new brand of sophistry appears to be common to everyone within the sophistic movement, a unified tradition lying behind their various disguises. In the myth and in Protagoras’ history of sophistry alike, true salvation comes only from a non-specialized art.

With Protagoras’ myth and its sophistic parallel now in view, the next section will turn to the methodological dispute at 333b8–338e6. It will argue that this episode follows the same lines as Protagoras’ myth. In the myth, primordial man could not unite with his fellows even when he possessed all of the technical arts. As we will see, the methodological dispute shows the sophists gathered at Callias’ house in a similar condition of mutual hostility. The next section will argue that Plato traces the problem in both cases to acute inequalities of authority generated by specialization. This will allow us to identify a ground for the myth's undefended claim that the political art must be widely distributed.

3. THE METHODOLOGICAL DISPUTE

We rejoin the dialogue at 333b8. Socrates has just run an apparently successful elenchus on Protagoras, which both men accept as a proof for the identity of wisdom and temperance.Footnote ¹⁹ Socrates then trains his sights on the identity of temperance and justice, asking Protagoras whether it is his view that one can act temperately (σωφρονεῖν) in committing injustice (ἀδικῶν) (333b8–c3). The sophist's reply: I would be ashamed (αἰσχυνοίμην) to say that is so, Socrates, although many people (πολλοί … τῶν ἀνθρώπων) do say it. Protagoras fits into this succinct answer several reminders both of his myth and of its sophistic analogue. That he is ashamed to take a certain view about justice recalls Zeus's twin political gifts, which taken jointly are equivalent to εὐβουλία. But this same answer pits Protagoras at once against the many, which, the sophist himself has already stressed, places him in peril. Perhaps sensing Protagoras’ discomfort, Socrates kindly offers him an escape, allowing the sophist to defend the popular view rather than his own. Serving now as the public's spokesman, Protagoras asserts that an action may indeed be both unjust and temperate. Socrates then gets Protagoras to agree that acting temperately implies acting with good sense (εὖ φρονεῖν), which in turn implies planning well (εὖ βουλεύεσθαι). Socrates then gets Protagoras’ agreement that those who commit injustice plan well only if they do well (εὖ πράττουσιν). And if they do well, Socrates proposes, then they obtain good things (ἀγαθά), which means these things are beneficial (ὠφέλιμα) to men.

On this last point Protagoras digs in his heels: ‘Whether they are beneficial to men or not, by Zeus, […] I still call them good’ (333e1–2). He argues at length that a single thing may be beneficial for one creature and harmful for another, and this goes even for different parts of the same living thing. For example, dung is good for a plant's roots, but destroys its shoots and young branches.Footnote ²⁰ So long as the thing in question benefits someone or something, Protagoras insists, then it makes sense to call that thing good. It need not benefit any man, much less men in general.

The next to weigh in on the debate is not Socrates but the audience, who had remained silent and largely forgotten for some time. Plato makes a point of telling us that they applauded Protagoras’ long-winded reply. Both in style and in reception, this performance resembles his Great Speech more than anything else we have heard from him in some time. It is also a much-needed shot in the arm. After a lacklustre performance as Socrates’ respondent, Protagoras is back on his own turf. A pattern is beginning to emerge: twice now Protagoras has deployed a long-winded answer to protect his stellar reputation.

But Socrates is fed up with Protagoras’ speeches. His specific complaint is that he cannot follow long replies on account of his poor memory. But the more cynical reading is that Socrates recognizes that the recent shift in argumentative method favours his opponent.Footnote ²¹ His own elenctic method, which is designed to expose inconsistencies in his interlocutor's views, only works if the inconsistency in question is made painfully clear, and this is more easily accomplished when the answers are brief and in quick succession. When an interlocutor is allowed to deliver a lengthy reply, this gives him more room to stall, obfuscate, and so on, which makes it more difficult for Socrates to expose the inconsistency with the previous claim. In other words, the shift at this moment in the dialogue is from a method favouring the offence to one favouring the defence. Naturally, Socrates wants this shift to be reversed.

But Protagoras will not let this happen without a fight. He has not won acclaim throughout Greece by letting his opponents dictate the rules of the game. Socrates argues that part of Protagoras’ renown is for his versatility in debate: he can speak either at great length or in short, punchy questions and answers. Socrates, on the other hand, admits that he can manage only the latter, so Protagoras ought to be a good sport and restrict himself to Socrates’ preferred method.

The rest of this methodological dispute merits more attention than we can afford here, and certainly more than it has received in recent commentaries.Footnote ²² But for our purposes its dramatic elements are most noteworthy. For in dramatic terms, the episode appears to serve as the sophistic analogue to pre-political man's state of chronic enmity. Recall that, after Prometheus’ dispensation, primordial man's residual problem was that he lacked the ability to join with his fellows and work toward a common purpose, and so his attempts to form cities and alliances disintegrated into mutual resentment. Similarly, here we find Socrates and Protagoras unable to agree on the rules of debate and thus unable to make philosophical progress, as though they too are stuck in an original, anti-social condition. What primordial man lacked was εὐβουλία, without which cities were impossible. Similarly, Socrates’ pleas to Protagoras imply that communication itself depends on a shared dialectical method: ‘It was up to you, who have the ability to do both, to make this concession, so that the discussion could have had a chance’ (ἵνα ἡ συνουσία ἐγίγνετο). A little later Socrates asks rhetorically: ‘If he doesn't [cooperate], what turn will our dialogue take?’ (εἰ δὲ μή, τίς ὁ τρόπος ἔσται τῶν διαλόγων;). Socrates has had enough and heads for the door. Protagoras says nothing to stop him. Much like primordial men after their failed political experiments, they are about to retreat to their separate corners.

No god intervenes this time, however. Only mortal help is on the way. As if to drive home that this is a distinctively social problem, distinguished members of the audience begin to chime in, revealing bitter divisions within the crowd as well.Footnote ²³ The first to speak is the host of the sophistic convention, Callias. Though he wants Socrates to stay and continue the debate, Callias agrees with Protagoras that each man is entitled to his own preferred method (336b1–d4). Next in line is Alcibiades, who takes Socrates’ side.Footnote ²⁴ Critias is even-handed in his condemnation of both his predecessors, accusing Callias of bias and complaining that Alcibiades is just trying to get his way as usual. Let us not take sides in the ‘jealous rivalry’ between Socrates and Protagoras, he cautions (336e3).Footnote ²⁵ Next we are treated to Plato's caricatures of two of the other leading sophists in attendance, Prodicus and Hippias. Prodicus seizes the moment to advertize his own services, insisting upon a number of his trademark verbal distinctions in a plea for peace. Not to be outdone, Hippias forces his own signature contrast between nature and convention. He then remarks that it is a sad day when Greece's luminaries are reduced ‘to bickering among ourselves like the most vulgar (φαυλοτάτους) of mankind’ (337e1–2).Footnote ²⁶

For all their combined expertise, the sophists gathered at Callias’ house fare no better than pre-political men in putting aside their differences. Indeed, that the disputants are mostly sophists with reputations for wisdom on the line seems to be the source of the problem. Especially in the cases of Prodicus and Hippias, one gets the impression that the competitive impulse to show the superiority of one's own method trumps any genuine commitment to peacemaking in the name of intellectual progress. And Protagoras, who never denies that he is able to compete in the manner in which Socrates would like, declines, because restricting himself to one method would place him at a competitive disadvantage.

In short, the methodological dispute reveals the limitations of the sophistic movement in Protagoras’ time. Each sophist is an exceptional intellect, and yet the need to outdo one's rivals in an exceedingly competitive bid for students ensures that any joint effort will perform well below the sum of its parts. What is missing is a regard for one's colleagues as partners instead of rivals.

But all is not lost for the sophists gathered at Callias’ house, for Hippias takes up the cause of compromise. He proposes that Socrates make his answers a little longer and Protagoras reign his in, so that they meet somewhere in the middle. And to enforce this resolution, Hippias urges Socrates and Protagoras to submit to mediating arbitration: ‘So that's what you shall do, and take my advice and choose a referee or moderator or supervisor who will monitor for you the length of your speeches’ (338b1–b4). Most in attendance are pleased with Hippias’ solution, and they urge Socrates to name an umpire.Footnote ²⁷

But Socrates has his reservations. He reckons he has three choices: either nominate an inferior, an equal, or someone who is superior to both Protagoras and himself (338b4–e2). An inferior will make a poor judge, whereas an equal will judge no better than the disputants themselves. As for a superior, Socrates insists that there is none superior to Protagoras in wisdom. So Socrates proposes his own solution. This time he will submit to Protagoras’ interrogation and try to demonstrate the sort of answers he would prefer. Then it will be Protagoras’ turn to answer Socrates’ questions. And unlike Hippias’ solution, this one will require no umpire, since they ‘will all supervise together’ (ἀλλὰ πάντες κοινῇ ἐπιστατήσετε).

The Great Speech is still with us. Recall that one of the key differences between εὐβουλία and the crafts lay in their distribution: Zeus insisted that cities were possible only if all had a share of the former. A technical model, on which a single expert speaks authoritatively to many laymen as their superior, would not do. Similarly, here Socrates rejects Hippias’ suggestion that a single umpire could preside over their discussion. Instead, he assumes that every participant is competent to share in the responsibility of regulating the debate. Whatever skill this requires, Socrates evidently takes it to be as widely distributed among the sophists as εὐβουλία is distributed among men in general.

So far I have argued that the methodological dispute follows the pattern of Protagoras’ myth. But now I want to move in the opposite direction, to show that Socrates’ line of reasoning suggests a parallel reason for Zeus's decision in the myth to distribute the political art to all. Given that we have experts in shoemaking, weaving and the rest, why not a corresponding ‘justice expert’? If we transpose Socrates’ ground for rejecting an umpire in the debate back into the myth, then we seem to get the beginning of an answer. No single expert in the political art could unite pre-political men as the city required, because this ‘expert’ would be either an inferior and thus no expert at all, or equal to his fellows and thus in no position to dictate to any of them.

But why could he not be their superior? As we have seen, Socrates’ official reason for rejecting this option is that none is wiser than his opponent. But this smacks of mere flattery, given that Protagoras’ claim to wisdom is still very much on trial. The next section will build on the link between the methodological dispute and the myth of the Great Speech to explain why a claim to superiority, particularly if this is meant to be akin to a craftsman's superiority over laymen, is ruled out in the debate between Socrates and Protagoras. Along the same lines, it will explain why a claim to a similar superiority in εὐβουλία can also be ruled out. As we will see, what these two activities have in common—both dialectic and deliberation—is that neither one admits of a technical model of expertise.

4. DIALECTIC AND DELIBERATION

Our reading of the methodological dispute in the previous section proposed that sophistic specialization was itself the source of strife in that episode. Now let us consider the political counterpart to this claim, that is, the view that the seeds of discontent in pre-political life were sown in Prometheus’ original distribution. This hypothesis as to the source of primordial man's troubles may seem speculative at this point. After all, why not suppose that garden-variety avarice for scarce resources, a congenital πλεονεξία that often seems to be to blame in Plato's estimation, is the culprit here too?Footnote ²⁸ Perhaps specialization provided the vehicle through which greed was expressed, but why suppose instead that the crafts, or more precisely their Promethean distribution, was itself to blame?

Support for this hypothesis comes in several places. First, while the Great Speech does not explicitly confirm this view, it does give us the ground for an argument on its behalf. This comes only after Protagoras swaps μῦθος for λόγος. In his defence of the Athenian justice system, Protagoras insists that ‘[n]o one in his right mind’ (τίς οὕτως ἀνόητος) holds that human frailties resulting from ‘a natural process or by chance’ (φύσει τε καὶ τύχῃ) are a legitimate target for blame or punishment. Rather, we reserve blame for deficiencies in ‘the good things that accrue to men through practice, training and teaching’ (ὅσα δὲ ἐξ ἐπιμελείας καὶ ἀσκήσεως καὶ διδαχῆς οἴονται γίγνεσθαι ἀγαθὰ ἀνθρώποις) (323d1–e4). Protagoras’ point seems to be that implicit in every legitimate assignment of blame is the assumption that some reasonable opportunity to avoid the blameworthy act was open to the offender. If we may safely assume that Protagoras limits the scope of genuine ‘wrongs’ to those areas in which blame is appropriate, then whatever wrongs pre-political man committed flowed from deficiencies in skills obtained through practice, training and teaching. And since the only candidates for a teachable, trainable body of knowledge on the table in the dialogue are the specialized crafts and a political art that has yet to arrive on the scene, it follows that pre-political man's wrongs were conceptually tied to the crafts. It would be indecent to blame pre-political man for wrongs he could not have avoided, as his species did not yet have the art of politics.

How are these wrongs conceptually tied to the specialized crafts, exactly? Plato has already dropped hints in several places. Indeed, a theme running through the dialogue is that technical matters, whether in the crafts or among the traditional sophistic disciplines, are inherently contentious. Just before airing his theory of criminal punishment, Protagoras contrasts our responses to deficiencies in the crafts, on the one hand, with our responses to deficiencies in justice, on the other. When one's pretensions to, say, musical excellence (Protagoras’ example is flute-playing) are found to be without merit, the social backlash is harsh. The audience does not just laugh—they get angry, until the offender's family stages an intervention ‘and remonstrates with him as if he were mad’ (323a5–c3). Meanwhile, deficiencies in the art of politics are received with sensitivity and compassion, so much so that the mob even refuses to believe someone who convicts himself of utter injustice.

Even before Protagoras’ speech we hear about technical disputes ending in violence. Recall that one prong of Socrates’ challenge concerned the practice of the Athenian assembly. In technical matters, the experts are taken to have a monopoly on all of the relevant knowledge. Counsel from any layman is not simply rejected. On Socrates’ telling, when anyone tries to weigh in on matters outside their expertise the response is again swift and heavy-handed, with more derision, more shouting and escalating quickly to outright violence: ‘They laugh at him and shout him down until he either gives up trying to speak and steps down himself, or the archer-police remove him forcibly by order of the board. This is how they proceed in matters which they consider technical’ (319c2–7). Contrast this with the cooperation and inclusiveness of that same assembly in those matters to which Zeus's gifts apply—in which, Socrates observes, ‘anyone can stand up and advise them, carpenter, blacksmith, shoemaker, merchant, ship-captain, rich man, poor man, well-born, low-born—it doesn't matter—and nobody blasts him for presuming to give counsel without any prior training under a teacher’ (319d1–5).Footnote ²⁹

Even earlier, Socrates in laying out his challenge to Protagoras seems to exploit a similar competitiveness at work in the ancient sophists’ technical pursuits. When Protagoras promises that he will make the young Hippocrates ‘better and better’ with each day of tutelage, Socrates promptly pulls the sophist into a competition with practitioners of the more technical disciplines: Zeuxippus and Orthagoras make their students better and better at painting and flute-playing respectively, so what is so special about Protagoras’ instruction?Footnote ³⁰ And as we have already seen, in making his case Protagoras seizes the opportunity to take a swipe at rival Hippias’ ‘inferior’ curriculum of music, poetry and the like (318b3–319a3). Subjecting students to these subjects constitutes child abuse, Protagoras insists, as it forces them to return against their will to the very subjects from which they wanted to escape (οἱ μὲν γὰρ ἄλλοι λωβῶνται τοὺς νέους: τέχνας αὐτοὺς πεφευγότας ἄκοντας πάλιν αὖ ἄγοντες ἐμβάλλουσιν εἰς τέχνας).Footnote ³¹

This link between specialization and hostility crops up even at the level of the gods in Protagoras’ myth. Recall that it was Epimetheus who pioneered the art of specialized distribution. To this animal he gave size but slowness, to that one he gave speed but smallness, etc. This was the distribution necessary to ensure stable if brutal competition within the animal kingdom (320e1–321b10).Footnote ³² Prometheus’ hasty distribution appears to imitate that of his hapless brother, dispensing weaving and shoemaking as Epimetheus had handed out hides and hooves, with the expectation of a similar war of all against all, it seems. And to drive home the link even further, the dispensation of these technical arts is all thanks to a crime, with Prometheus trespassing on Mount Olympus to steal them (along with fire) from their rightful owners, his crime spree ending only when he encounters Zeus's ‘terrifying’ (φοβεραί) security forces. He, of course, pays the price for his wrongdoing (321c1–322a4). No such shadow hangs over Zeus's benefaction.

What are we to make of this consistent association of technical subjects with aggression and wrongdoing? Plato seems to be putting his finger on a particular intersection of the epistemic with the political: the idea that specialization generates dramatic inequalities in know-how, which in turn generate inequalities in authority. In short, craftsmen have a monopoly on their respective crafts, and so an outsider's counsel is utterly worthless and can be safely silenced. But to return to our main question: Why does Protagoras’ myth assume that the same model could not apply to the political art? What justifies the Athenian democratic conceit that dramatic epistemic inequalities simply could not exist in the political realm as well? What rules out the existence of a superior in the political art, just as we have superiors in shipbuilding and carpentry?

Paul Woodruff's reconstruction of εὐβουλία as the historical Protagoras (and others) would have understood it supplies an answer. At the risk of oversimplifying Woodruff's careful and intriguing account, the difference lies in the distinct spheres of εὐβουλία and of the crafts. While both enterprises are concerned with practical life, they differ with respect to knowledge. Possession of a craft concerned with subject matter x entails knowledge of x. And where there is knowledge, on Plato's conception of knowledge at any rate, there is no need for consultation. Woodruff explains: ‘That's how it is with my computer: when I want to know how to heal it […] I ask an expert and then I do what she says. In such a case—what Plato would call a case of technê—we have no need for deliberation or consultation.’Footnote ³³ To repurpose Socrates’ reasoning in the methodological dispute, counsel from an inferior in the craft of computer-repair can only lead the expert astray, and counsel from an equal (that is, a fellow expert) will be no better than her own, and indeed no different in so far as she reliably applies her craft. A craftsman can thus monopolize a certain sphere of genuine knowledge and preside as a genuine superior over many laymen.

However, Woodruff argues that εὐβουλία is concerned with complex and contingent events in the future, about which certainty is possible only for the gods. So εὐβουλία necessarily proceeds in the absence of knowledge, generating a rigid boundary between the spheres of the crafts and of εὐβουλία. As Woodruff explains, εὐβουλία concerns itself with broad generalizations about human affairs that can nevertheless be defeated in particular cases. Like decisions about how to fix a computer, the decision about, say, whether to declare war admits of a certain pattern of reasoning that one can get right or wrong, to be sure. However, Woodruff proposes that any generalization being applied to the question of declaring war in a particular case will be in principle defeasible. For example, a general could have good reason to expect victory because his enemy has a much smaller, less experienced fighting force. And yet this generalization—that a larger, more experienced army will vanquish a smaller, less experienced one—can be defeated by further considerations: say, the enemy's unusually high morale will make them fiercer fighters, which will compensate for their disadvantages in size and training. The general is never in the computer expert's position of knowing all that could be relevant to the question of whether or not to declare war, because every generalization by which he reasons is in principle defeasible by certain details about the case at hand. And unlike the computer expert, the general cannot safely silence outside counsel on the ground that he has a monopoly on the relevant know-how. Owing to the sheer complexity of the matters with which εὐβουλία is concerned, no single expert could be expected to have a comprehensive, knowledge-like grasp of all of the relevant generalizations, not to mention all of the relevant facts about the proposed war to which these generalizations apply.Footnote ³⁴

Although the spheres of the technical arts and of εὐβουλία are rigidly divided, Woodruff's picture of εὐβουλία suggests that there is a sense in which we can take them to fall on a continuum. As one narrows the scope of one's subject matter—to computer repair, for example—one acquires genuine knowledge, and with it a set of indefeasible generalizations and a claim to an exclusive expertise. But all of this comes at the price of considerable narrowness—venture beyond the computer technician's restricted field and all bets are off. As we move towards the other end of the spectrum, the scope of our subject broadens, but again at the expense of the knowledge and consequent claim to exclusive authority enjoyed by the technician. As we reach complex systems, and as we begin to ask questions about how these complex systems will behave in the future, as we invariably do in debates about economics, public policy and warfare, we leave behind any claim to technical expertise and are instead navigating uncertain terrain in which even the best-supported generalizations are routinely being refined. And since the evidence by which we refine these generalizations is in principle available to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear, contributions from all quarters are always potentially useful.

This addresses what may have seemed to be a glaring disanalogy between the mythical distinction between the crafts and εὐβουλία, on the one hand, and Protagoras’ earlier distinction between the traditional sophistic disciplines and pure sophistry, on the other. That is to say, in referring to Homer, Simonides and the rest as ancient sophists, Protagoras clearly takes their activities to be continuous with—albeit inferior to—his own. And yet the myth has εὐβουλία being dispensed in a distinct event by a superior god, which implies that it is discontinuous with the earlier Promethean gifts. The thought seems to be that possession of no amount of technical know-how would have allowed primordial man to develop εὐβουλία on his own; otherwise, Zeus would not have had to step in. While this is true, we have seen that technical expertise and sound deliberation can indeed be conceived to lie on a continuum, with a narrow scope on one end and an exceedingly broad scope on the other. Their other key differences are in effect functions of their relative narrowness or breadth.

This explains why expertise of the sort we find among the craftsmen, and with it a claim to superiority over others, can be safely ruled out in the case of the political art. We are now in a position to supply a ground for Zeus's undefended claim in the myth that εὐβουλία could not be distributed as an additional Promethean craft. Plato appreciates that the subject in which Protagoras purports to make one wise, which involves exceedingly general questions about how best to run a city and a household, is by its nature simply too broad and complex to be mastered by a single expert. That Zeus had to distribute the political art as he did is the myth's way of expressing the insight that the raw data one considers when deliberating are themselves too diffuse to be confined to a single expertise. Hence εὐβουλία operates cooperatively, canvassing all points of view, in a way that seemed altogether inappropriate on Socrates’ technical model of a skill.

In his playful analogy between the political and the intellectual realms in the Protagoras, Plato applies this same model to the sophistic movement. Not only the sophists of old but also the more modern sophists gathered at Callias’ house have carved out for themselves a certain narrow jurisdiction of exclusive expertise: Homer ruled poetry; Iccus of Tarentum had mastered athletics; Prodicus is the undisputed wordsmith; whereas Hippias owns the νόμος vs φύσις distinction. But all of this comes with the same bickering and competitiveness associated with the crafts, as the dialogue's methodological dispute vividly illustrates. When Socrates insists that their dispute cannot be settled by a superior, officially on the ground that no one is wiser than Protagoras (338c2–3), he is merely being diplomatic. The real reason why no umpire will do is that the broad art of dialectic that both he and the adversary practise is, like its political counterpart of εὐβουλία, an exceedingly general and thus open and inclusive endeavour.

We are also now able to revisit the question of what it is that Protagoras teaches. A puzzle running through the dialogue is that the sophist cashes out his own intellectual activities in two seemingly independent ways: as a teacher of εὐβουλία, on the one hand, and as the father of ‘pure sophistry’, on the other. Given his repeated insistence that he teaches only ‘a single thing’, he must hold that εὐβουλία and pure sophistry are simply two names for the same discipline. But this on its face is counter-intuitive: why suppose that Protagoras’ great performances as a sophist—his Great Speech, for example—has anything to do with the skill set by which one governs a city or a household well?

The answer, I propose, is this: what Protagoras teaches, under the alternating banners of εὐβουλία and pure sophistry, is the ability to make the weaker argument the stronger. This is, of course, a slogan attributed both to the historical Protagoras and more generally to the sophistic movement he led, typically with at least a whiff of moral condemnation. It conjures images of slick defence lawyers and unscrupulous accusers. But it can be conceived in a more respectable way, if it is taken simply to be the skill of speaking on behalf of both sides in a debate. As we see in the dialogue itself, Protagoras responds to a formidable Socratic attack on his profession by pointing out that the attack assumes a false technical model of know-how—and rightly so, by Socrates’ (and presumably Plato's) lights. Similarly, given that εὐβουλία necessarily proceeds in the absence of knowledge and must concern itself instead with the merely likely, the ability to speak on behalf on both sides of political debates can in fact be a great force for good.

Woodruff considers a Thucydidean example. The decision of the Athenians to go to war with Syracuse was a matter for εὐβουλία. Woodruff observes that the pro-war party surely had a reasonable argument on its side: Athenian sieges against Syracuse had a good record of success. But advocates for war were so certain of their position that they cut short the debate through intimidation and other procedural manoeuvres. Woodruff argues that, in this case, a Protagorean ability to come to the rescue of the ‘weaker argument’ would have saved the Athenians from making what we now know was a disastrous decision:

Once one recognizes the defeasibility of all reasoning in matters of εὐβουλία, the Protagorean ability to come to the rescue of the losing side in any debate emerges as a salvation in practical affairs. This is perhaps what Protagoras means when he characterizes the sophistry of old as operating under various covers. What the poets, music and gymnastics teachers, and others were really up to was pioneering the ability to make a case for the persecuted or paradoxical view. In presenting himself as a pure sophist, Protagoras professes to have distilled this essence from the sophistic movement of old.