The Measure Doctrine in Plato's Protagoras
In this dissertation, I develop an interpretation of the Protagoras in the context of the historical Protagoras' famous measure doctrine: man is the measure of all things. Scholars have not properly appreciated how the measure doctrine fits in with the dialogue. My reading helps illuminate the views about practical success, virtue, and moral education that Plato attributes to Protagoras, as well as the theory of motivation that Socrates develops in response. I argue against the dominant view that Socrates thinks that only knowledge or belief can motivate action. On my reading, Socrates proposes that appearances of value can motivate action all by themselves. These appearances are not reliable guides for achieving practical success, because they tend to distort the value they represent. Against the measure doctrine, Socrates thinks that human beings are not measures because their temporal perspective makes them prone to be motivated by these distorting appearances. I argue for two important implications of this view. Firstly, that the art of measurement is not intended as an account of virtue, as most scholars think; rather, Socrates develops it as an example of a defective type of virtue that Protagoras would have to teach his students to make good on his promise to make them practically successful by their own lights. Secondly, that Socrates is not committed to hedonism in the dialogue, as many scholars think; he proposes that most people are hedonists in response to Protagoras' consequentialist account of moral education based on rewards and punishments
Thesis, Dissertation, English, 2013