The Protagoras

Recall…

Protagoras: a Sophist, who claims to be an expert on (among other things) how to run a society.

Socrates: an Athenian philosopher, skeptical of Protagoras's claims about how to make good citizens

Socrates' method:

Get Protagoras to think through the consequences of his own theories.

One thing that Protagoras believes:

… knowledge is something noble, and able to govern man, and that whoever learns what is good and what is bad will never be swayed by anything to act otherwise than as knowledge bids …

So, Protagoras (perhaps because he's claiming that he himself possesses the kind of knowledge that Socrates is asking about), thinks people who genuinely know the difference between right and wrong will always do what's right.

But, there's a problem.

We often think that people who understand what's right do the wrong thing anyway.

As Socrates points out:

… most people … say that many, while knowing what is best, refuse to perform it … And whenever I have asked them to tell me what can be the reason of this, they say that those who act so are acting under the influence of pleasure or pain, or under the control of [love, or fear, or passion]

Are “most people” right about this?

Socrates has his doubts.

What's really happening when we’re “overcome” by some impulse?

Usually, Socrates thinks, we're trading some nearby, smaller good (or something that we think is good) for some futher away good (or something that we don't recognize as good).

Examples:

1. Drinking too much, and getting a hangover.
2. Flirting with a stranger, and alienating your true love.
3. Violently striking a player on the opposing team, forgetting it's just a game.

In these cases, do we really know what's best, and do the worst?

Socrates thinks this is absurd. Just because something good is nearby, that doesn't make it more important than something good far away.

If you weigh pleasant against painful, and find that the painful are out-balanced by the pleasant—whether the near by the remote or the remote by the near—you must take that course of action to which the pleasant are attached”

But, thinking what's nearby is more important is a mistake that humans are very prone to.

Nearby objects seem larger. Nearby noises seem louder.

So perhaps when we’re “overcome” with some impulse, this isn’t actually a case of knowing what’s right and doing what’s wrong.

It’s an error of measurement.

The Protagoras Theory of Evil

Summing up:

1. Socrates explores, with Protagoras, the idea that knowledge of what is good and what is bad can govern our actions.
2. The main problem is, it seems like people sometimes do the worse thing, while knowing what's better.
3. Socrates’ solution: maybe those people don't really know what's best, because they confuse “nearer” and “better”

So, we get something like this:

The Protagoras Theory of Evil:

Evil is error. Evil comes from mistaking the worse for the better, and vice versa.

By the way: what does this have to do with the main debate between Protagoras and Socrates, about how to improve Athens?

If evil is error, then we make good people by educating, not merely by training through by punishment and reward.

The theory also implies that all the virtues (courage, temperance, justice) are all forms of one “keystone virtue”.

On this theory, all virtues are forms of Wisdom.

Evaluation

So, is this this theory true?

In Favor:

The Power of Knowledge

Let's think about an example.

Megan Phelps-Roper

Raised in Westboro Baptist Church: a hate group known for picketing the funerals of American soldiers and of children killed in school shootings, mocking Jewish victims of the Holocaust, and publically burning the Quran.

(No relation to mainstream Baptists, who have repeatedly denouced the group.)

In September 2009, Phelps-Roper, preparing for the end of the world, tried to use Twitter to convert some influential Jewish people to join the WBC.

David Abitbol

She was rebuffed, but continued to follow a lot of the people she tried to convert.

By learning about their lives, their food, their thoughts, their children, she said,

I [began] to see them as human.

She empathized with their suffering, reached out, and even joked with them.

Abitbol, impossibly, became a friend.

They debated scripture.

She was convinced.

Megan Phelps-Roper ultimately left the Westboro Baptist Church.

Against:

Weakness, Ignorance, and Wickedness.

Maybe Phelps-Roper left because she learned something.

She learned about the humanity of the people she had previously villianized.

She learned about perspectives on scripture that she hadn't been exposed to.

BUT

Does that mean that evil is the same thing as error?

It seems like there can be ignorance and harmful error without evil.

Example

A child who doesn't know that dogs can't eat chocolate, and kills your dog by feeding it chocolate.

Versus:

A child who does know that dogs can't eat chocolate, and kills your dog by feeding it chocolate.

Sometimes the presence of knowledge seems to be evidence of evil or wrongdoing. Sometimes ignorance is evidence of innocence.

Maybe evil is a special kind of ignorance.

Maybe evil is ignorance about a certain kind of thing?

But what? about Good and Evil?

If Evil is ignorance about Good and Evil, the definition is “circular”.

It doesn't really tell us what evil is, any more than you know what kind of fruit a pomme is if I tell you that it's the fruit of a pomme-tree.

More generally, these all seem different:

1. Error and Igorance
2. Weakness of will
3. Evil

How are they different?

We seem to need to treat them differently.

Is Evil Ever Rational?

So, it seems, we can have error without evil.

Can we have evil without error?

A question for next time.