Skip to content
Vinony
English
EnglishBahasa IndonesiaDeutschEspañolFrançaisItalianoNederlandsPolskiPortuguêsSvenskaTiếng ViệtTürkçeРусскийالعربيةفارسیहिन्दी한국어中文日本語
Protagoras

File:Ribera_-_Protagoras,_1637.jpg · Wikimedia Commons · See Wikimedia Commons

EntityQ169243· pop 107· linked from 764 articles

Protagoras

Sign in to save

Also known as Protagoras of Abdera

Protagoras ( ; ; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and rhetorical theorist. He is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with inventing the role of the professional sophist.

OverviewAI-generated

Protagoras was a male philosopher associated with the movements of sophism and Pre-Socratic philosophy. He was born in Ancient Abdera and died in the Ionian Sea due to drowning. His significant places included Teos and Ancient Abdera. He wrote in Ancient Greek and is described by sources such as the Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary and the Granat Encyclopedic Dictionary.

His worldview included agnosticism. He is referenced by 764 other encyclopedia articles. Notable works attributed to him include *La parole de Protagoras*, *Dissoi Logoi - Textos Relativistas*, and *Protagora*. He is also associated with the quote "Πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπον εἶναι, τῶν μὲν ὄντων, ὡς ἔστι, τῶν δὲ μὴ ὄντων, ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν."

Synthesized by Vinony from 27 facts across 6 sources: Wikidata, Crossref, Open Library, Last.fm, Wikiquote, Vinony graph. Generated from structured data (not the Wikipedia text) and checked against those facts — may still contain errors.

Person · Open Library

Born
5th cent. BC
Works
3

Top works

  • La parole de Protagoras
  • Dissoi Logoi - Textos Relativistas
  • Protagora
  • Protágoras de Abdera. Dissoi Logoi

via Open Library + Wikidata

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
4
Total plays
6

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Protagoras">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Protagoras

Recent publications · Crossref

5 total works indexed

  1. Spinal Cord Stimulation for Axial Low Back Pain

    · 2005 · cited 128x

  2. Spinal Cord Compression Complicating Subarachnoid Infusion of Morphine: Case Report and Laboratory Experience

    · 1991 · cited 121x

  3. Spinal cord stimulation with percutaneous and plate electrodes: side effects and quantitative comparisons

    · 1997 · cited 27x

  4. Enskog and van der Waals play hockey

    · 1977 · cited 20x

  5. Patient-Interactive, Microprocessor-Controlled Neurological Stimulation System

    · 1998 · cited 18x

via Crossref · CC0

Quotes

  • “Πάντων χρημάτων μέτρον ἄνθρωπον εἶναι, τῶν μὲν ὄντων, ὡς ἔστι, τῶν δὲ μὴ ὄντων, ὡς οὐκ ἔστιν.”
  • “Δύο λόγους εἶναι περὶ παντὸς πράγματος.”
  • “Περὶ μὲν θεῶν οὐκ ἔχω εἰδέναι οὔθ᾽ ὡς εἰσίν, οὔθ᾽ ὡς οὐκ εἰσίν· πολλὰ γὰρ τὰ κωλύοντα εἰδέναι, ἥ τ᾿ ἀδηλότης καὶ βραχὺς ὢν ὁ βίος τοῦ ἀνθρώπου.”
  • “When they [the Athenians] meet for a consultation on civic art, where they should be guided throughout by justice and good sense, they naturally allow advice from everybody, since it is held that everyone should partake of this excellence, or else that states cannot be.”
  • “You, Socrates, began by saying that virtue can't be taught, and now you are insisting on the opposite, trying to show that all things are knowledge, justice, soundness of mind, even courage, from which it would follow that virtue most certainly can be taught.”

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Philosopher.region
Western philosophy
Philosopher.era
Pre-Socratic philosophy
Philosopher.image
250px
Philosopher.caption
Protagoras by Jusepe de Ribera, 1637
Philosopher.name
Protagoras
Philosopher.birth_place
Abdera
Philosopher.death_date
(aged c. 70)
Philosopher.school_tradition
Sophism
Philosopher.main_interests
Language, semantics, rhetoric, agnosticism, ethics
Philosopher.notable_ideas
RelativismThe "man measure" thesis

via Wikipedia infobox

~12 min read

Encyclopedic overview

9 sections
Contents
  • Biography
  • Philosophy
  • Relativism
  • Agnosticism
  • Spectrum of topics
  • See also
  • Notes
  • References
  • External links

Protagoras ( ; ; ) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher and rhetorical theorist. He is numbered as one of the sophists by Plato. In his dialogue Protagoras, Plato credits him with inventing the role of the professional sophist.

Protagoras is also believed to have created a major controversy during ancient times through his statement that "Of all things the measure is Man, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not" which was usually rendered simply as "Man is the measure of all things", interpreted (possibly wrongly, since he disagreed) by Plato to mean that there is no objective truth; Protagoras seems to have meant that each person's own personal history, experiences and expectations, developed over their lifetime, determine their judgments, opinions, and statements regarding "truth" (which is the title of the book in which Protagoras made this statement). When a person makes a judgment about a certain thing—good or bad or beautiful or unjust—that person will differ from other people's judgments because their experience has been different.

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Protagoras” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.

Gallery (7)

Available in 72 languages

Show 53 more

via Wikidata sitelinks · CC0