Philosopher Protagor Biography

According to one version, he was accused of atheism of “wickedness”, condemned for his essay “On Gods” and sentenced to exile, but Plato depicts him who survived to a very old age and surrounded by universal honor in Athens. In ancient philosophy, Protagor is the most important representative of phenomenalism in the theory of cognition, anthropologism in ethics and philosophy of law and a champion of folk government of democracy, i.e.

the works of Protagoras have not been preserved, his views are known for the few fragments of quotes among the later authors, primarily at Plato, who devoted the same dialogue to Protagor, depicting the meeting and depicting the meeting and the meeting and The conversation of Protagora with Socrates on the topic of virtue. The author of the famous saying “man is the measure of all things: the actual is that they are valid, invalid in that they are invalid.” Plato in the dialogs “Teetet” and “painted” brought this saying with the Heraclitian “flow of all things” and interpreted it as the principle of relativism and subjectivity: objective truth does not exist, for everyone only his own statements and sensations are true.

Such an interpretation is based on an understanding of the word "man" as an individual subject. However, Plato himself in the “laws” pointed to the possibility of a fundamentally different understanding of the word “man” in the sense of the human race, as opposed to the gods.

With this understanding, the fragment has nothing to do with subjectivity, but proclaims the principle of anthropologism: a person, and not God is a criterion for the truth of reality and the legislator in the field of moral and legal values, such as justice, etc. The anthropocentric thesis of Protagoras cancels the contrast of the “human” of the lower and “divine” higher knowledge, for example, in Parmenides and heracles, to which The conservative thinkers of Plato and Pythagoreans appealed, and proclaims freedom of morality from religion, and also serves as a substantiation of sovereign folk will in politics and legislation that does not need a divine sanction, for example, a Delphic oracle.

In the treatise “On the primitive state of mankind”, Protagor developed a typical theory of human progress with a transition from a state of wildness and lawlessness to civilization and law without any help of the gods. In the rhetoric and erystry of the art of dispute, Protagor described techniques how to “turn” the losing thesis of winning, in grammar for the first time proposed the division of names into three kinds: male, female and “instrumental” t.

Published on July 25, the last update on July 25 to contact the editors.