Socrates vanquishing the Sophists: Plato’s Protagoras (Live Reading)
Details
Can excellence and virtue be taught? Can virtuous politics be taught? Can political excellence be taught or transmitted in any way, shape or form? These are only some of the questions with which Protagoras wrestles and the provide Plato with ample opportunity to engage with diverse topics such as the constitution of human societies, the ultimate unity of virtues and the responsibilities of teachers.
Protagoras, possibly the most famous sophist of his day and a leading figure in the sophistic movement, is charging a king’s ransom as a fee for his professorial services and a young man by the name of Hippocrates is prepared to pay. He persuades Socrates to act as a mediator and convince Protagoras to take him on as a student. The ensuing dialogue will cast doubt on Protagoras’ claim that he is able to prepare the future leaders of the political community.
The dialogue is supposedly taking place some time before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, probably in 434-432 BC but was written in the 380s and belongs to the early platonic period.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
This will be a live reading of Plato's Protagoras. Saturday March 21 will be the first session on the Protagoras and thus the ideal time to join our group. Reference will be made to contemporary and older scholarship. Historical context will be brought up whenever necessary to illuminate the dialogue.
We will be using Benjamin Jowett’s translation, which can be found here.
This Plato group meets on Saturdays and has previously read the Symposium, Phaedo, the Apology, Philebus, Gorgias, Critias, Laches, Timaeus, Euthyphro, Crito and other works, including ancient commentaries and texts for contextualisation such as Gorgias’ Praise of Helen. It is our aspiration to read the Platonic corpus over a long period of time.
The host is Constantine Lerounis, a distinguished Greek philologist and poet, author of Four Access Points to Shakespeare’s Works (in Greek) and Former Advisor to the President of the Hellenic Republic.