Protagoras and Meno

by Plato

  ‘So there you go, Socrates, that's why it is that the Athenians do things the way you say (along with everyone else): if they're discussing how to be good at carpentry, say, or some other technical field, then, yes, they take the view that only a few people have the right to give them any advice, and if anyone outside that small group tries to tell them what to do, they [e] don't put up with it (just like you say) – and that makes perfect sense, if you ask me. But when it comes to discussing how to be good citizens, which is entirely a matter of being ethical and [323 a] being sensible, it makes sense for them to accept advice from any man at all, because they assume it's everyone's business to be good in that way – or societies couldn't exist at all. There's your explanation for that, Socrates.

  ‘But I don't want you to think you're being duped; so let me give you another reason for thinking that it is, definitely, a universal assumption that everybody has some degree of respect for what's right, along with the other parts of being a good citizen.

  ‘With all other forms of being good, as you pointed out yourself, if you claim to be good at playing the flute, say, or good at anything else technical when you're not good at it, people will laugh at you or get angry; your family will take you [b] to one side and tell you to stop being crazy. But when it comes to doing what's right and the other aspects of being a good citizen, even if everybody knows you're a criminal, if you go round telling the truth about yourself in public, then what counts as sensible behaviour in the other cases – being honest about yourself – in this case just looks like a kind of madness. People feel that everyone has to claim they care about what's right, regardless of whether they really do or not; if you don't even make a pretence of being ethical*, you must be crazy, because it's a basic requirement, on absolutely everyone, that they should have some degree of respect for what's right – or [c] they have no place in civilized society.

  ‘So, what I've been claiming so far is that it's quite understandable that they take advice from anyone about how to be a good citizen, because they believe that's something everyone has their share of. What I'll try to show next is that they don't believe it comes naturally, and they don't believe it develops all by itself; they think that it's taught and that it comes about in people, when it does, by care and effort.

  ‘It's like this: there are defects that we think people have because they're born that way or through bad luck. In those [d] cases, nobody gets angry or criticizes anybody; there's no question of teaching people, or punishing them, to stop them being the way they are; we just feel sorry for them. Nobody thinks of treating ugly people in any of those ways, for example, or people who are short or weak. What kind of thoughtless idiot would do that? Everyone knows that it's just an accident of birth whether we end up with those defects* or their opposites. But when it comes to things that we think are acquired through effort, and practice, and teaching, this time, if someone [e] is found lacking and has the corresponding faults, we do respond with anger, and criticism, and punishment. And among those kinds of faults are disregard for what's right, and disrespect for religion, and, basically, everything that's the opposite of being a good citizen. That's an area of life where everyone [324 a] gets angry with everyone, and everyone criticizes everyone else, obviously because the attitude is that this is something you get people to acquire by taking trouble over them and teaching them.

  ‘I mean, all you have to do is look at punishment, Socrates, and ask yourself: What's the point of punishing people who do wrong? That'll be enough on its own to show you that humane societies, at least, believe that people can be “supplied with” what it takes to make them good. The fact is, you don't punish wrongdoers with the single-minded aim of paying them back for the wrong they've done not unless you're behaving like [b] an animal and taking some kind of pointless revenge. No, if your aim in punishing someone is rational, then it's not about the wrong that's been done – because after all, what's done is done. It's for the future. The idea is to stop the person who did wrong from doing wrong again, and to make other people think twice when they see a wrongdoer punished. But that way of thinking amounts to believing that you can make people good through education – at any rate, you're punishing people as a deterrent. So it follows that that must be the attitude of all those who've ever punished anyone, whether in private or as [c] an institution. And, of course, as a rule, societies do punish wrongdoers, and Athenian society is no exception. So by that line of reasoning the Athenians must in fact be among those who believe that people can be taught and “supplied with” what it is that makes them good.

  ‘So now I've shown two things: first, that it's perfectly reasonable of your fellow citizens to listen to the opinions of a smith, or a shoemaker, on civic and ethical matters, and second, that they believe that being good is something people can be taught and “supplied with”. I think I've demonstrated both those claims well enough. [d]

  ‘So let's see; that leaves you with just one more puzzle: you're puzzled about why on earth it is that, in all other areas, good people have their children taught everything that calls for teachers, and turn them into experts, but then don't make them any better than anyone else at being good the way they are themselves. All right; for this one I'm not going to tell a story; I'll just set out another argument.

  ‘This is what you've got to think about: Is there, or is there not, one thing that every citizen has to have if society is to exist at all? That's the crucial question: the only one that's going to [e] clear away your puzzlement. – Yes, there is one thing that everyone's got to have, and it isn't skill as a carpenter, smith or potter. It's respect for what's right, and moderation, and [325 a] religiousness, and, in short, what I refer to as the quality of being a good man. That's what we've all got to have. That's the thing that every man has got to be exercising all the time, so that whatever he chooses to learn or do, doing it has to include being good (or else he shouldn't be doing it). And anyone who doesn't have it – man, woman or child – has to be taught and punished, until punishment turns them into a better person; and if they don't respond to being taught and punished, they have to be treated as incurable, and thrown out of society, or put to death. So if that's the way things are, if that's its nature, [b] and yet good people have their children taught everything else but not how to be good – think about how bizarre that makes good people. After all, we've just shown that they think of this as something that can be taught, in both the public and the private spheres. But if it can be taught and developed in a person, is it likely that they'd have their children taught all those other things (where there's no death penalty for not knowing anything) and then not bother teaching them something where the penalty if they don't learn – if they don't [c] develop into good people – is death, or banishment; and as well as death the confiscation of their property and basically, all in all, the complete and utter ruin of their families? Do you think they don't devote the utmost care and attention to it? Of course they do, Socrates!

  ‘In fact, right from when they're small children, and through the whole of their lives, they teach them and set them straight. From the first moment children can understand what people are saying, their nurses, their mothers, their minders and even [d] their fathers – they all battle constantly to make sure the children turn out as good as possible, teaching them with every single thing they do, with every single thing they say, showing them: “That's right; that's wrong! That's well done! Shame on you for that! The gods like this; the gods don't like that! Do this! Don't do that!” And if the children do what they're told, fine; but if not, then they treat them like timber that's crooked and warped, and straighten them out – with threats and spankings.

  ‘And then at the next stage, when they send them off to school, they instruct the teachers to be far more concerned with encouraging good behaviour in the children than with [e] teaching them to read and write or play guitar. So the teachers take care of all of that, and once the boys learn the alphabet and are just starting to understand written texts
, just like when they started to understand spoken language, the teachers set out beside them, on their desks, the works of great poets for [326 a] them to read, which they force them to learn by heart; poems that are packed with ethical guidance and full of stories which praise and celebrate good men of the past, for the children to look up to and imitate, to make them strive to be like that themselves.

  ‘And then there's the guitar teachers – it's the same story. They take care to foster sensible behaviour and make sure the boys don't do anything naughty. But as well as that, once the children have learned to play the guitar, they teach them the compositions of another set of great poets – songwriters – [b] setting their lyrics to music and forcing the boys' souls to become familiar with rhythm and tuning, to make them more gentle, and with the idea that by having a better internal rhythm, and by being better tuned, they'll be useful to society in their speech and in their actions – because every area of life calls on us to have a good internal rhythm and to be in tune within ourselves.

  ‘And then, of course, on top of all that, the parents even send them off to trainers, so that they'll have healthier bodies to be the servants of their healthy souls, and so they won't be forced by poor physical condition into losing their nerve, not just on [c] the battlefield but in their other actions too.

  ‘Now the people who do these things more than anyone else are just the people who can do them more than anyone else – and the people who can do them the most are simply the people with the most money. So it's their sons who start going off to school at the earliest age and who are the last to finish with teachers. But even when they do finish with teachers, society takes over; society makes them learn its laws and live their lives according to the standards set by those laws, so that they aren't left to work things out for themselves and act just any old how. [d] It's exactly like the way that teachers who are teaching boys to write will trace out lines with the stylus (nice and light) for the ones who've not yet got the knack, then hand the writing tablet back and make them write by following the guides; society's. the same: it draws up its “guidelines” – its laws, devised for us by good people in the past – and it forces people both to govern, and to accept government, according to those laws; and anyone who strays outside the law, it punishes. And the name used for that kind of punishment here in Athens, and in lots of other places, is “straightenings”, 44 because the idea is that the penalty [e] straightens you out.

  ‘So, Socrates; with all this trouble being taken, both privately and publicly, to make people good, do you really find it so surprising, are you really so baffled about whether being good is something that can be taught? The fact is, it would be far more surprising if it weren't something that could be taught.

  ‘So in that case why is it that fathers who are good men so often have sons who turn out not to be much good? Let me explain that one. There's really nothing in the least bit surprising about this if what I was saying earlier on is right – that when it comes to this particular field, the field of being good [327 a] people, everyone has to be an expert45 if society is going to exist at all. Look, assuming that what I'm saying is right – and it definitely is right – just do this thought experiment. Put some other form of behaviour in its place, or something else that people learn: imagine, say, that it was impossible for society to exist at all unless we were all flute players, every one of us as good a flute player as they could possibly be; imagine that everyone, in public and in private, was always teaching everyone else how to play the flute and getting angry with anyone who didn't play it well; imagine that this was something everybody freely gave advice on, just as in the real world everybody freely gives out their opinions about what's right and what's [b] lawful (no one keeps what they know a secret, the way they do in the skilled professions – presumably that's because we benefit from each other's respect for what's right, and from people being good to one another; that's why everyone's so keen to tell everyone else, and teach everyone else, what's right and what's lawful). Imagine that was the situation with flute-playing; suppose we were all highly motivated to teach one another, and entirely free with our advice; do you think the sons of good players would be any more likely to become good players than the sons of bad players, Socrates? No, I don't think so. What you'd actually find is that where a man happened to have a son with a natural talent for playing the flute, that boy[c] would grow up to be a famous player; whereas if a man's son lacked the natural talent, he'd grow up an ordinary player. And plenty of times the son of a good player would turn out to be nothing special, and plenty of times the opposite would happen. But of course, they'd all at least be flute-players; they'd all be reasonably good, compared with non-players, compared with people with no knowledge of playing the flute at all. That's how it is in the real world too; what you've got to realize is that the person who strikes you as the most completely unethical out of those who've been brought up in a law-abiding, humane society is actually ethical – an expert in that field – if he's to be judged alongside people with no education, no judicial system, [d] no laws, no constraint of any kind constantly forcing them to care about being good – some gang of savages, like the ones Pherecrates46 had in the play he put on at the Lenaea festival last year. You can be quite sure that if you found yourself surrounded by people like that, people like those monsters in that chorus, you'd be more than happy to run into a Eurybatus or a Phrynondas; 47 you'd find yourself longing for the kind of immorality you find in people here! Crying out for it!

  ‘But as it is, Socrates, you're spoiled – spoiled by the fact that [e] everybody teaches us how to be good, every single person teaches it as much as they possibly can; and you can't see anyone doing it. It's just the same as if you tried to find out who teaches us to speak Greek. You wouldn't find a single [328 a] teacher. Or if you tried to find out who could teach our craftsmen's sons – teach them that same craft they've learned from their fathers, as far as their fathers could teach it, and their fathers' friends who practise the same craft. If you said, “But who could we find to teach them besides them?” I think it would be hard to come up with anyone – for those boys; but it would be perfectly easy to find teachers for people who don't practise the craft. That's just how it is with being good, and other things as well. The fact is, if you can find a man who's even just a little bit better at advancing someone towards being good, that's really the most we can ask for. And that's exactly [b] what I think of myself as being – one of those people: I believe that when it comes to helping someone become a good and decent man, I can offer something out of the ordinary and worth the fee that I charge, or even more so that people who've been taught by me will feel it's been a bargain. That's why I've set up my own special method of charging my fee, which works like this: when someone's taught by me, if they want to, they pay the sum of money that I charge; but if they don't want to do that, they can go to a temple, state under oath [c] how much they think the teaching was worth and leave an offering of that amount.

  ‘So there you are, Socrates. That's it. I've told my story, and I've set out my argument I've shown that being good is something people can be taught, and that the Athenians believe it's something that can be taught, and that there's nothing at all surprising about the fact that the sons of good people can turn out bad, and the sons of bad people can turn out good – after all, even Polyclitus' sons, who are the same age as Paralus and Xanthippus here, aren't a patch on their father, 48 and the same goes for various sons of artists and craftsmen – although it really isn't fair to lay the same charge against these boys here. [d] In their case we still have great expectations; 49 they're only young, after all.’

  Protagoras, after this long and wonderful performance, broke off from his speech. And for quite some time I just sat there gazing at him, mesmerised, waiting for him to say something, longing to hear more! But once I realized that he really had entirely finished, it was as though I had to struggle to regain my senses, and I turned to Hippocrates, and said: ‘Son of Apollodorus,
I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am to you for talking me into coming along with you – I really appreciate [e] having heard the things I've just heard from Protagoras. Because up until now I didn't think it was through other people's care and attention that good people become good people. But now I'm convinced… except, that is, for one little thing that's bothering me – but I'm sure Protagoras will easily clear it up with some extra information, seeing as he's explained all these other things so thoroughly. I mean, no doubt if you consulted [329 a] any one of our leading orators on these same questions, you'd hear a similar sort of speech; from Pericles, say, or from any of those men who are good at making speeches. But here's the thing: if you go and ask one of them some follow-up question, well, you might as well be talking to a book. They're incapable of answering you or of asking anything themselves. If you ask even some minor question following up on something they've said, they're like bronze bowls, which bong when you tap them, and go on and on bonging until you grab hold of them: [b] tap a politician with some little question, and he drones on and on, endlessly. But Protagoras here – yes, he can produce long, stylish speeches, as what we've just heard shows; but he's also capable of giving precise answers when he's asked particular questions, and of asking questions himself and having the patience to consider the replies – a rare package of talents!

  ‘So, Protagoras; in this case there's just one little thing leaving me short of being completely satisfied – if you could just answer the following question. You say being good is something people can be taught, and if there's anyone I'm going to believe about that, it's you. But there was something in your talk that rather puzzled me, and I'd just like you to fill in the little gap it left in [c] my thoughts. You said that Zeus sent humankind a sense of what's right and a sense of wrong, and then again at various points in your arguments you talked about “respect for what's right” and “being sensible” and “religiousness”, and implied that all these things together made up a single thing – being good. Well, that's what I want you to go over for me in more detail. Explain: is the idea that being good is a single quality, and that respect for what's right, being sensible and religiousness are parts of it, or are these things that I've just mentioned all just different labels for one and the same thing? That's [d] what I'm still missing.’