New Essay Volume 3
Appendix 4. (1127)
[Protagoras and modern philosophy]
The subjective truth of modern critical philosophy reproposes the system proposed by Protagoras in antiquity. Sextus Empiricus describes Protagoras' teaching as follows:
|
|
The human being is the measure of all things. Protagoras makes the human being (the subject) the criterion of the value to be given to the reality of entia in so far as they exist, and to nothing in so far as it does not exist. Thus, Protagoras admits only what is visible to individual eyes. In his opinion, this is the general principle of acts of knowledge. |
Can we believe that Protagoras admitted a subjective truth in good faith or, as Sextus calls it, a relative truth (Advers. Logic., 7)? Can we believe that he truly did not know that relative truth is no truth? Or can we reasonably suspect that he used the phrase 'relative truth' to avoid a clash wlth common sense by leading others to believe he had safeguarded truth at the very moment he intended to deny and destroy it?
This lack of honesty characterises sophists throughout history. This shiftiness, equivocation, and desire to insinuate teachings which fear the light (while having us believe otherwise) is the usual behaviour of those who disturb and destroy intelligence.
We are not being temerarious in thinking this of Protagoras; his bad faith is attested by all antiquity. It is sufficient to turn to Socrates as a witness, who indicates Protagoras' bad faith in Plato's Theaetetus. After presenting Protagoras' teaching on relative truth, which conforms exactly to the passage quoted above, he adds that this was the way Protagoras presented his philosophy to the people, while speaking more openly to his followers and plainly denying the existence of truth:
Socrates: Is not Protagoras indeed a very wise man? He has indicated this truth obscurely to us, simple members of the common people, but revealed it clearly to his followers.
Theaetetus: What do you think, Socrates?
Socrates: I'll tell you, because the matter is important. He really meant that there is nothing true, nothing real. What a person says is large could be small, what is foul could be pretty, and so on. There is nothing that is one, nothing that is something with a determined quality. What we, using a false way of speaking, say exists, is only a kind of mixture coming together, a continual changing. Nothing exists; everything happens and changes ceaselessly.
Here we see that: 1. Protagoras' real and obvious intention was to remove all truth; 2. he did not dare reveal his intention to the public but spoke frankly to his followers; 3. he made the public understand that he safeguarded truth, declaring it relative or subjective for human beings (not everybody understood that these words contained the absolute proscription of truth); and finally 4. Protagoras had fallen into this error because he had observed only sense-knowledge which contains nuch that is subjective, that is, dependent on the nature and state of the subject, as I have shown (cf. vol. 2, 887 ss.). He had not observed nor risen to formal knowledge, nor had he penetrated its objective, absolute nature. Without grasping this nature of knowledge, he included it in the proscription of knowledge about sensible things. Thus, Protagoras' sophistry is reduced to 'applying to the whole of human knowledge that which applies to only a part'. And this is the formula to which I have reduced the error of scepticism (cf. 1066 ss.).