The problem of praise: Plato's Protagoras against free society

• Autores: J.P.W. Muller
• Localización: History of political thought, ISSN 0143-781X, Vol. 39, Nº 4, 2018, págs. 569-590
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Plato's Protagoras is often read as an argument about the nature of virtue and the proper practice of philosophy. But Plato is also advancing a political argument. Working from the Protagoras' theory of socialization and critique of competitive conversation, this article rereads the Simonides episode and Socrates' praise of an imagined Philosophical Sparta to explain the text's neglected political claim: that free society will be corrupted by unscrupulous clever speakers and that cities would be and that cities would be better off unfree and ruled by philosophers. In the Protagoras, then, Plato argues for something like the Kallipolis of the Republic