BMCR 2009.05.09: Collins on Denyer, Plato, Protagoras. Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics

Nicholas Denyer (ed.), Plato, Protagoras. Cambridge Greek and Latin
Classics.  Cambridge/New York:  Cambridge University Press, 2008.  Pp.
xiii, 207.  ISBN 9780521549691.  $35.99 (pb).

Reviewed by James H. Collins II, University of Southern California,
([email protected])
Word count:  2980 words
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[Table of contents are listed at the end of the review.]

Nicholas Denyer's commentary on Plato's Protagoras is a welcome
addition to the Cambridge Greek and Latin Classics series, and an
essential resource for both advanced undergraduate readers of Greek and
scholars of Plato who wish to become acquainted with the dialogue's
sometimes difficult arguments and Plato's dramatic artistry and dynamic
vision of intellectual and philosophical life.  We have not had an
English commentary on the Greek text since James and Adela Marion
Adam's 1893 edition, which was reprinted with few corrections in
several runs from 1905 to 1971.[[1]]  This manifoldly superlative
dialogue offers so much: a rich palette of analytical tools used to
stirring, even if at times unbelievable, effects; the idiosyncrasies
and inconsistencies of an extraordinary cast of famous and infamous
intellectuals; a range of competing voices, discourses, and lifestyles;
the exuberance of this public contest.  It is a wonder then that we
have not had more efforts over the last century at making the whole
luxurious Greek text accessible to scholars of intellectual life and
Platonic philosophy.  Instructors who are looking for a longer Platonic
dialogue to teach at the advanced level, particularly to students who
have already read some Plato in Greek, are familiar with the usual
suspects in translation, and are ready for a fuller treatment of
Platonic artistry, ethical theory, and historical context, would do
well to use this dialogue and this edition.

The study of the Protagoras is full of possibilities.  The great range
of concerns and methodologies in scholarship of the last century makes
this perfectly clear.  In fact, a recent survey of approaches to the
Protagoras of just the last half century describes (with notable
exceptions) three distinct and successive phases of scholarship: the
first marked largely by a disciplinary division of labor between
philosophers and classicists and their respective focuses on discrete
episodes; the second, by an increasing interdisciplinarity and
sensitivity to thematic, dialectical, and dramatic features that unify
the dialogue; the third, by a growing interest in historical references
and context.[[2]]  Denyer's commentary is admirably sensitive to all of
these trends. Its interdisciplinarity could only be improved upon with
reference to some of the most formative scholarship.  In what follows,
this review will (1) provide an overview of Denyer's introduction, (2)
follow a number of these trends in scholarship as they are represented
in Denyer's commentary while providing some scholarly references, (3)
offer some remarks on Denyer's editorial work, and (4) present some
thoughts on how this dialogue and this edition in particular might be
explored in variously productive ways.

I. Introduction

Although Denyer prefaces his efforts with the suggestion that a reader
need not read his Introduction before reading the text and commentary,
not only is there much in the Introduction to orient the reader for a
more rewarding encounter, but it is perhaps inadvisable for a young and
enthusiastic scholar of Plato to approach such an odd and overwhelming
spectacle as the Protagoras with little more than a familiarity with
other relatively dramatically impoverished encounters with Socrates,
and the faith that our hero is content merely to tell the tale to an
enraptured audience.  There is too much at stake in this contest for
its audience to fall prey to the spectacular, to the incomparable
beauty of its participants (309c), to the seductions of their wares
(313c-314b).  Socrates would hardly want that, and, in any event, he is
too cunning a ventriloquist to be trusted, especially when it comes to
playing himself.

Denyer's Introduction provides the reader with signposts for navigating
this lively world of entertainment, celebrity, and entourage.  We find
in perhaps the richest household in Greece an extraordinary instance of
those "argumentative extravaganzas" and "frivolous entertainments" in
which contestants made great fortunes hawking "not merely unsettling or
improbable, but downright inconsistent" conclusions while compelling
stunned spectators (even young gentlemen) to abandon decent citizen
teachers for expert aliens in the pursuit of skills practical in an
increasingly litigious society (1-6).  Denyer searches out the
sophists' motives even apart from their tremendous earnings and power
among the elite: "Whether as calculated self-promotion, or from simple
exuberance in their own virtuosity, or sometimes even because they had
managed to persuade themselves, sophists loved to argue for the
unsettling and the improbable" (1).  Michael Gagarin has argued
similarly that these displays of intellectual virtuosity were produced
primarily for entertainment and pleasure rather than persuasion or
deception.[[3]]  And Denyer adds the delightful twist that, while the
sophists aimed to amuse others, they may have amused and even swayed
themselves too much.

But these gatherings of performers afford more than amusement and
embarrassment, and we would miss a great deal in them and in this
dialogue especially if we did not also expect to find earnestness and
something of great philosophical value on all sides.  Though Socrates
charges his company to set aside the games and extraneous voices of
sophistic discourse (347c-348a), he may be at his most frivolous in the
Protagoras, while at the same time his adversary formulates, with some
playful embellishments, one of the most serious accounts about
virtue--what it is, who has it, and how one gets it.  Denyer reminds
his reader that, in spite of Protagoras' vacillation, the sophist's
claim--that virtue is widespread and already practiced well, but
without refinements which are teachable and advantageous--appears so
plausible and compelling that the whole dialogue may be reduced to the
examination of a man who may have hit the mark, even if in the end he
appears incapable of giving a full account (4).  After all, Socrates
imagines the outcome of the dialogue wagging a finger at them both for
having in the end swapped positions (361ac).  It is not so much that
Socrates aims, as Werner Jaeger put it, "to pierce through the babble
of words" in the spectacle of sophistry; he is portrayed as engaged
instead in a far more delicate and intimate undertaking of negotiating
and building consensus among the various claims and forms of discourse
that might all have some role to play in the approach to wisdom.[[4]]

After a brief look at the varying degrees to which different sources
characterize Socrates as a sophist, Denyer's Introduction further
prepares the reader for one of Plato's most baffling and seemingly
incoherent portraits.  In the Protagoras, we find a Socrates who
asserts that he is not a sophist (314d7-e1) but is ready to argue the
implausible--e.g., that philosophy is <greek>palaiota/th te kai\
plei/sth</greek> in Crete and Sparta (342a6-343b4)--and to engage in
perverse interpretations of poetry (343c1-347a5).  Protagoras himself
accuses Socrates of fallacious argument (350cff.).  George Grote found
one argument "so futile, that if it were found in the mouth of
Protagoras and not in that of Sokrates, commentators would probably
have cited it as an illustration of the futilities of the
Sophists."[[5]]  But we also find, Denyer adds, a Socrates who is
flagrantly inconsistent, long-winded, and false in several other ways
(9).  Denyer suggests that Plato offers these characterizations in
order to keep his audience from equating his views with those of an
unlikely surrogate.  Beyond the question of Plato's intent, we discover
in the commentary many of Socrates' motives for engaging (and
portraying himself as having engaged) in apparently unphilosophical
discourse.[[6]]

II. Approaches in commentary

In order to highlight the breadth of concerns in Denyer's commentary, I
will briefly draw attention to three topics that either have been
addressed elsewhere in isolation by specialists or have not been
addressed at all: the unity of virtues, the drama of the dialogue, and
the commodification of ideas.

The problem of the unity of virtues--"whether virtue is one thing, and
justice and temperance and reverence are parts of it, or whether these
things... all are names for one and the same thing" (329c6-d1)--has
been explored intensely by philosophers.[[7]]  Socrates drags an
unwilling Protagoras to the conclusion that temperance and wisdom are
one (333b5); but in the Laches, courage is found to be one part of
virtue (196d-199e), and in the Meno, virtue appears to be a sort of
prudence (88c-d).  Rather than providing references to scholarship that
has aimed to resolve inconsistencies, Denyer directs the reader to all
of these passages and others in Plato as well as Xenophon's report of
Socrates' own view on the matter (Mem.3.9.4-5) and Isocrates' appraisal
(10.1) of, as Denyer puts it, "frivolous theses maintained by
pretentious intellectuals" (329c7-d1n).

Of course, Socrates does not believe there is anything frivolous about
understanding the nature of the means to a life worth living, only
something irresponsible about claiming to possess and teach those means
without being able to give a coherent account of them.  But Denyer
reminds us that not everyone shared Plato's interest in trying to
resolve the problem.  Protagoras may have equated justice and
temperance in his Great Speech (323a) and speculated that the virtues
may go by one name (324e-325a), but he is adamant in his
uncontroversial view that some people are courageous but unjust, others
just but not wise (329e).  Denyer notes the similarities between this
view and beliefs expressed by Callicles thereby situating the
relatively abstract problem of unity within a larger arena of competing
views on the nature and advantage of virtue.  Readers may pursue the
difficult and significant problem of unity but not without recognizing
that few people found it practical, perhaps with good reason.

The second topic also concerns the context surrounding and shaping
argumentation in the dialogue.  Denyer's commentary frequently
emphasizes the dramatic qualities of the dialogue which is, after all,
both an agonistic performance and a protreptic reperformance.  The
relationship of characterization and narrative to argumentation has
received growing scholarly interest.[[8]]  In support of his
introductory remarks on this spectacle of sophistry, Denyer comments on
numerous examples: the various sorts of versatility that sophistic
performers demonstrate--Hippias' acceptance of any question (315c6n), a
flattering but false attribution of the same versatility to Protagoras
(329b2-3n), critical and admiring attitudes on such flexibility
(335b7-c1n); the amusement but logical incoherence and incompatibility
of demonstrations on poetry (347b2n); some of the accoutrements and
degrees of vigor of philosophical performers (315c2-3n, 314e4n); the
unique use of theatrical language (314d2n).  Denyer also focuses on
some of the effects of sophistic performance on an audience: e.g.,
Protagoras' charmed and chorus-like "mass of followers, systematically
subordinated" (315b2n); indiscriminate applause (337c5-6n); erotic
excitement (310d3n), bewitchment (328d2n), dizziness (339e2-3n), and
forgetfulness (334d1n).  Notes on Eupolis' Flatterers and Aristophanes'
Clouds contribute further to the understanding that Plato's audience
must have appreciated a great deal of the dialogue as dramatic
(311a2n., 311a5-6n).

But Denyer goes a step beyond this dramatic context when he observes
how Plato delivers the entire spectacle through the mouth of a
theatrical Socrates.  Grote noted that the Protagoras presents "more
frequent breaks and resumptions in the conversation, than any dialogue
of Plato."[[9]] And it is in these spaces where we find Socrates urging
towards and against particular paths of thought and interpretation.
Denyer thus describes a mere <greek>toutoui+/</greek> as an effort on
Socrates' part to "direct his anonymous companions' attention" in the
framing conversation, and on Plato's part "to mark a break in the flow
of conversation narrated by a break in the flow of narrative" (335d2n).
Denyer underscores this interruption of the inner conversation with a
note on how Socrates again reminds his audience (and Plato, his
readers) of themselves (339e4n).  I believe this interruption and
reminder serves to awaken the outer audience to the extent to which
Socrates as narrator and actor is characterizing and parodying the
earlier assemblage of characters including the audience and himself.
This interruption also forces the outer spectators to recognize how
unthinkingly they have surrendered themselves to spectacle.  Denyer
reminds his reader that there is more going on here than meets the lazy
eye.

A third topic that receives attention in Denyer's commentary concerns
the commodification of ideas.  I mention this topic only briefly
because it has not been treated elsewhere systematically though it is
especially important to this dialogue and to Denyer's interdisciplinary
approach.  Denyer comments on the language of commerce which pops up
all over the dialogue, from regular mention of Protagoras' fee and
payment plan (310d7-8, 328c1-2, 349a3-4) to the unsettling
juxtapositions of common commercial interests and elite pastimes
(313c5-6, 347c4-5).  When Socrates asks Hippocrates if a sophist is a
sort of merchant or dealer (<greek>e)/mporo/s tis h)\ ka/phlos</greek>)
of provisions for the soul, Denyer argues, "Either form of trade is
liable to elicit the disdain of a young gentleman like Hippocrates"
(313c5-6n).  And when Socrates compares the exegesis of Simonides to
symposia of "low types from the marketplace" (<greek>tw=n fau/lwn kai\
a)gorai/wn a)nqrw/pwn</greek>), Denyer rightly notes Aristotle's
disdain for low-born market-life at Pol.1328b39-41 (347c4-5n).  But
Aristotle's and Plato's anxieties about philosophical transactions are
even more complicated than this.  Aristotle praises the Thessalians for
establishing a free agora for leisurely and virtuous activities apart
from the necessary agora of business (1331a31-b13, cf. 1319a19-30).
The problem is that free activities are resembling necessary commerce
more and more: profligate citizens are spending their fortunes on,
among other things, performances of wisdom (311a2n), and gentlemen like
Hippocrates seem quite comfortable, in fact, with the idea of emptying
their own pockets and the pockets of their friends (310d-e).  In the
pursuit of wisdom, private residence and political assembly look too
much like public space.  Plato and Aristotle can only imagine a world
in which the exchange of ideas escapes the contaminant of commerce.

III. Editorial work

Denyer makes few changes to Burnet's text, but where he diverges
typically offers the reader great insight into critical dynamics at
play in the dialogue.  Of special importance, I think, are his choices
between variant readings of personal pronouns.  In the first case, when
Hippias helps set the terms of continued discussion between the
previously long-winded Protagoras and the elenctic Socrates, Denyer
prefers the variant <greek>u(mi=n</greek> to <greek>h(mi=n</greek> as
evidence that Hippias considers himself "somehow above the fray"
(338a4n).  This variant, Denyer argues, is in keeping with the
beginning of his speech (<greek>u(ma=s</greek>, 337c7) and DK 86 B6 in
which Hippias identifies both the community of all the wise and his own
mastery over that community (337c7n).  On this occasion, however,
<greek>h(mi=n</greek> reminds us of how much rival sophists themselves
might also be ardent spectators; in other words, when the terms have
been established by his authority, Hippias is still hoping to catch a
good show.  In any event, Denyer does well to draw attention to the
variant so that we might consider the broader question of relationships
among rivals.

Another variant pronoun underscores the extent to which Socrates
himself might be implicated by the scrutiny of another's argument.
When Socrates, while interrogating Protagoras, establishes the
allegedly popular claim that the salvation of our life depends on
choosing correctly between pleasure and pain, every manuscript attests
that the claim belongs to everyone including Socrates (<greek>e)fa/nh
h(mi=n</greek>, 357a7).  Denyer notes, however, that one corrected
manuscript intriguingly has Socrates indirectly disavow the position by
attributing it to the others (<greek>u(mi=n</greek>).  Denyer wonders
if the corrector might have wished to see Socrates avoid the agreements
of <greek>oi( a)/nqrwpoi</greek>.  In summary, he explains that "how we
choose [between the pronouns] again has consequences for who is
agreeing to what part of the argument" (357a7n., cf. 358a4n).  This
predicament of ownership of the philosophical process and conclusions
among participants is, of course, a constant concern given Socratic
irony and what Vlastos famously called the "double objective" of the
elenchus: "to discover how every human being ought to live and to test
that single human being that is doing the answering."[[10]] Vlastos
explained that, when you converse with the elenctic Socrates, "whatever
decision you take will have to be yours."[[11]] But if the elenchus is
doing its job properly, your decisions should also lead to an
understanding of how everyone, including Socrates, ought to live.
Denyer serves his reader well, yet again, by elegantly drawing
attention to one of the most pressing issues of this sort of
philosophical investigation.

IV. Using this commentary

Given that this dialogue is unparalleled in these various ways that
defy a simple read-through, and that this edition brings so many
approaches--philosophical, dramatic, literary, historical,
sociological--to bear on the text, it would seem a shame for advanced
language students and scholars of Plato not to use Denyer's work as a
point of departure for further work.  Denyer's limited bibliography
already directs his reader to rousing places: e.g., the gymnastics and
metaphysics of Stoppard's Jumpers (London 1972) and the odd allotment
of talents in Paul Colinvaux's Why Big Fierce Animals Are Rare
(Princeton 1978).  And I have in this review offered scholarly
citations for further reading.

But more than suggestions for reading philosophy, the Protagoras itself
offers a study of style, of intellectual purpose and procedure.  The
interruptions in Socrates' narrative, Denyer notes, remind the outer
audience and reader that Socrates is narrating and that they are
spectators.  Socrates would clearly prefer that everyone do something
else, that everyone converse (<greek>diale/gesqai</greek>),
particularly, I imagine, when faced with the plausible belief that
ordinary people practice virtue well and might practice it better with
refinement.  Martha Nussbaum argues that "philosophical books are to
philosophizing as tennis manuals are to tennis" with the exception that
"tennis manuals are neither coercive nor self-important."[[12]] But the
Protagoras is neither mere philosophical book nor purely intellectual
drama.  It is an occasion for us to stretch ourselves philosophically,
to try on the arguments and strange characters for size, to experiment
with purpose and procedure, and to improvise a different ending to the
dialogue in which we, like Socrates and Hippocrates in Callias'
doorway, converse until we can come to an agreement (314c).

Table of Contents

Preface
Abbreviations and references
Introduction
1 The sophists, Protagoras and the Protagoras
2 Socrates the sophist?
3 Plato and the example of Socrates
4 Evidence for the text
<greek>PLATWNOS PRWTAGORAS</greek>
Commentary
Indexes
General
Proper names
Greek words
------------------
Notes:


1.   Now available electronically for reuse and distribution via
Perseus(http ://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Perseus:
text:1999.04.0093).

2.   J. Lavery, "Plato's Protagoras and the frontier of genre research:
a reconnaissance report from the field," Poetics Today 28.2 (2007)
191-246. This survey provides a lengthy, but not exhaustive,
bibliography which should serve well students and professional scholars
using Denyer's commentary.

3.   M. Gagarin, "Did the Sophists aim to persuade?" Rhetorica 19.3
(2001) 275-91.

4.   W.  Jaeger, Paideia. Trans. Gilbert Highet. Vol 2. Chapter V:
"Protagoras: Sophistic or Socratic Paideia?" (Oxford, 1986) 107.  On
the Socratic art of fostering, and the Platonic art of portraying,
assent and consensus, see A. Long, "Character and Consensus in Plato's
Protagoras", Cambridge Classical Journal 51.1 (2005) 1-20.  See
Gagarin, "The Purpose of Plato's Protagoras", TAPhA 100 (1969) 133-64,
for a sympathetic Protagoras, unsympathetic Socrates, and the "basic
continuity between Protagorean and Socratic thought" (134).

5.   Grote, Plato and the Other Companions of Sokrates. v.2 (1867) 5I.

6.   See Nehamas, Virtues of Authenticity, Chapter 5: "Eristic,
antilogic, sophistic, dialectic: Plato's demarcation of philosophy from
sophistry" (Princeton, 1999).  Nehamas argues that the difference
between the sophists and a sometimes apparently sophistic Socrates is
one of purpose--"one serious and the other not" (115)--rather than
method.

7.   G. Vlastos, "The Unity of the Virtues in the Protagoras", Review
of Metaphysics 25 (1972) 415-58; T. Penner, "The Unity of Virtue",
Philosophical Review 82 (1973) 35-68; P. Woodruff, "Socrates on the
Parts of Virtue", Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume
2 (1977) 101-116; D. Devereux, "The Unity of the Virtues",
Philosophical Review 102 (1993) 765-789; T. Brickhouse and N. Smith,
"Socrates and the Unity of the Virtues", Journal of Ethics 1 (1997)
311-324.

8.   See, e.g., S. Dubose, "The Argument Laughs at Socrates and
Protagoras", Tulane Studies of Philosophy 22 (1973) 14-21; M. Stokes,
Plato's Socratic Conversations. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins, 1986); J.
Arieti, Interpreting Plato (Savage, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1991)
117-131; A. Long (2005).

9.   Grote, v.2 (1867) 259.

10.   Vlastos (1983) 37.  Of course, a great deal of the Protagoras
concerns the purpose and procedure of wisdom in a party (e.g.,
334c-338e).  For an array of thoughts on the proper art of conversation
(<greek>diale/gesqai</greek>) in this dialogue, other dialogues, and
Xenophon, see Denyer 314c4n.

11.   Vlastos (1956) xxx.

12.   Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness. (Cambridge, 1986) 125.