First courage-wisdom argument (349b-351b)

When Protagoras tells Socrates at 349d that he will find many people who are most unjust, most impious, most immoderate, and most unwise (amathestatous), and yet surpassingly courageous (andreiotatous de diapherontôs), Socrates is very surprised.2 _{This claim is at odds} with his own way of thinking about courageous behavior. For Socrates evidently distinguishes between merely bold behavior, e.g., that of a daring rogue, and the kind of bold behavior that is in keeping with the whole of virtue, justice and wisdom included. While Socrates appears to want to reserve the term ‘courageous’ for the latter kind of behavior, Protagoras seems happy (at

1

Cf. 357d: “If on the spur of the moment (ei men oun tote euthus) we had replied, “Ignorance,” you would have laughed us to scorn (kategelate an hêmôn). . . .”

2 _{Socrates informs the company later (359b6): “His answer caused me great surprise at the moment (kai egô euthus} tote panu ethaumasa tên apokrisin).”

this point, at least) to apply the term ‘courageous’ to the bold behavior of a thief. And so it is natural for Socrates to ask, by way of clarification, “By the courageous, do you mean [the] bold, or something else? (poteron tous andreious tharraleous legeis ê allo ti;)”.1 In asking this question Socrates seems to me to be trying to determine whether by ‘courageous’ Protagoras means nothing finer or nobler than ‘bold’. While it soon becomes clear that Protagoras does distinguish between the courageous and the bold (he thinks the former is a subset of the latter) and that he takes himself to have been asked by Socrates only whether the courageous are bold, not whether the bold are courageous (nor whether by ‘courageous’ he means nothing finer or nobler than ‘bold’),2 at this point Protagoras simply says: “And eager, too, [to go] for what the many are afraid to go for” (kai itas ge . . . eph’ ha hoi polloi phobountai ienai).3 _{It is at this} point, the point at which Protagoras says kai itas ge, that Socrates, quoting these very words, will resume his line of questioning after a long hiatus, i.e., after the section on akrasia.4

When Socrates does resume this line of questioning at that later point, he soon refutes Protagoras; here, however, he fails to refute. If Socrates was hoping to lead the inquiry in such a way as to turn up flaws either in his own way of thinking or in Protagoras’s way of thinking, here is one place where he seems to turn up a flaw in his own way of thinking—or at any rate, where he tries to lead Protagoras too hastily and crudely to assimilate cases of courageous behavior to cases of knowledge-guided behavior. But rather than examine the inadequacies of the argument, let me point out certain respects in which this first courage-wisdom argument, though

inadequate, prepares the way for the second.

1 349e2. 2 _{See 350c6-d2.} 3 _349e3. 4 359b7ff.

Almost immediately after Protagoras has said, in effect, that people can act most

shamelessly and yet most courageously, Socrates establishes a link between the courageous and the noble (to kalon). Socrates leads Protagoras to agree that every part of virtue is a noble thing (kalon)1 and to imply in one of his answers that any claim that would make courage out to be something shameful (aischron) must be mistaken.2 _{Thus already in the first courage-wisdom} argument Socrates leads Protagoras away from the view that courage is compatible with injustice, impiety, intemperance (assuming that this, too, is necessarily shameful), and ignoble ignorance (e.g., the ignorance that leads foolish laymen to dive confidently into wells), while leading him closer to the ‘epistemic’ thought that a courageous man’s behavior must be in keeping with justice, wisdom, and the whole of virtue.

Another thing that Socrates does to pave the way for the second courage-wisdom argument is establish a link, albeit not as close a link as he would like, between wisdom and confidence. Through a series of questions about expert divers, etc., Socrates leads Protagoras to agree that those who have knowledge (hoi epistêmones) in some area of activity are more

confident in that area than those who do not (tôn mê epistamenôn).3 _{Protagoras is put in mind of} the fact that there is something about knowledge that lends knowers a feeling of confidence, and although he resists it now, he will later be forced to accept the conclusion that what lends the courageous man his feeling of confidence is also a kind of knowledge.

A third thing that Socrates leads Protagoras to do at this point is distinguish between noble and shameful feelings of confidence, as well as between the noble and shameful sources of those feelings. Courage is a source of noble confidence in the courageous man, whereas

1 _349e3-8. 2 _350b5. 3

foolishness or madness is a source of shameful confidence in the madman or fool.1 This distinction helps prepare the way for a decisive move in the second courage-wisdom argument: the step to the conclusion that what causes cowards, over-bold men, and mad fools (hoi deiloi kai

hoi thraseis kai hoi mainomenoi) to feel ignoble confidence in their pursuit of things that are bad

[for them] is their ignorance of what is bad and good, i.e., their ignorance of what is and what is not to be feared.2

One final thing that emerges from the first courage-wisdom argument is that Protagoras’s way of thinking about courageous behavior is somewhat confused. We learn from Protagoras’s opening assertion at 349d (that some people are most unjust, etc., and yet exceedingly

courageous) that he is inclined to think that courageous behavior is compatible with injustice.3 But we later learn that he is also inclined to say that courage is something noble (kalon), as is justice and the rest of virtue,4 and that shameful bold behavior cannot be deemed courageous, since that would make courage out to be something shameful (aischron).5 Protagoras thus seems to be somewhat confused about whether courageous behavior is compatible with injustice, and hence about what is responsible for courageous behavior: whether, for example, nature alone might make a person courageous, or whether courage necessarily involves the kind of moral education without which human beings cannot distinguish the just from the unjust.6 I say this in support of my suggestion in section 3.1.2.1 that Protagoras enters this conversation inclined to think about courageous behavior in the somewhat confused way described in section 3.1.1.3.

1

350b6, 351b1.

2 _360bc.

3 _{Indeed, we learn this already at 329e, where Protagoras asserts that many people are courageous but unjust (. . .} polloi andreioi eisin, adikoi de . . .).

4

349e.

5 _350b.

6 _{Note the ambiguity of kai (‘and’? ‘or’? ‘and/or’?) in Protagoras’s comment at 351b: andreia de apo phuseôs kai} eutrophias tôn psuchôn gignetai.