A quote by Susan Jarrattt from Rereading the Sophists: Classical Rhetoric
Refigured':
"The sophists seem to fall between two ethical eras--the older Greece guided
by traditional practices and gods, and the new metaphysics of Plato's fourth
century philosophy.
"... The third he (Jaeger, Werner) attributes to Protagoras alone, providing a
positive picture of sophistic education as a mediation between individual
and group:
It differed from both the formal and the encyclopaedic methods
of treating man not abstractly, as a lone individual, but as a
member of the community; and thereby it gave him a firm
position in the world of values, and made intellectual culture
one part of the great whole which was human arete. This
method also was intellectual education; however, it treated
the mind neither formally nor factually, but as conditioned by
the social order. (293)"
---
The way I see this is that arete during Homer's time was a dedication to the
gods and a becoming one with them, a hero, a celebrity. Plato and
Aristotle turned arete into a concrete abstract entity and man became an
independent individual. For Plato and Aristotle it is all about the
intellect.
Protagoras, on the other hand, considered man a product of both community
and intellect. Protagoras was a democrat.
___
Moq_Discuss mailing list
Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
Archives:
http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
http://moq.org/md/archives.html
