At 327b-d of Protagoras, Protagoras draws a parallel between a community in which people teach each other the “aulos” (a Greek wind instrument) and one in which the laws are taught. Explain the parallel and its significance in the text. In light of what we already have studied, what would have been a few ways in which Athenian citizens would have learned the laws?<\/p>\n
In this extract, Plato presents the sophist !i.e., professional philosopher” Protagoras
\ntalking with Socrates about how people become good.
\nThe extract contains a theory of moral education, and a theory of punishment. But
\nmost importantly, it is a discussion of the principles of democracy. The view that
\nSocrates puts forward, and that Protagoras endorses and explains # that ethical
\ncompetence is a non-technical matter, and a universal human quality # is understood
\nby both him and Socrates to be one of the basic ideas behind democracy. Think
\nabout why this is so.
\nDo not assume that the \u2018story\u2019 that Protagoras tells shows that he thinks our ethical
\nabilities have a divine origin. The story is certainly allegorical. Protagoras was a
\nknown agnostic, who famously declared that he had no view at all on whether or not
\nthe gods exist. In which case, you need to consider what its allegorical meaning
\nmight be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
At 327b-d of Protagoras, Protagoras draws a parallel between a community in which people teach each other the “aulos” (a Greek wind instrument) and one in which the laws are taught. Explain the parallel and its significance in the text. Read More …<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-426640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426640\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.benedictsol.com\/blogs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}