From the Beginning to Plato

302 FROM THE BEGINNING TO PLATO
are faced with a decision regarding the management of the city they are willing
to consider the advice of anyone, ‘be he carpenter, smith or cobbler, merchant or
ship-owner, rich or poor, noble or low-born’ (319d2–4, [9.82]).
If this is supposed to provide evidence that the Athenians fail to believe that
virtue can be taught the idea must be something like this. The Athenians
distinguish between those decisions that require virtue and those that do not. In
the case of those that do not, the Athenians permit only the experts to be heard.
In the case of those that do, the Athenians permit any and everyone to be heard.
Thus, the Athenians do not regard virtue as an expertise, and so do not believe it
can be taught. When Protagoras responds to this first Socratic argument, he does
not deny that everyone—or at least everyone in a political community—
possesses virtue sufficient for giving advice about such matters. Instead,
Protagoras denies that virtue—so understood—fails to be an expertise. 21
Protagoras maintains that the Athenians believe that virtue is an expertise
possessed by all the citizens to some degree or other. This, however, is
apparently not how Socrates understands their view.
Here then we have Socrates’ conception of common Athenian morality.
According to Socrates, the common or folk view is that virtue is not an expertise
—at least, if by expertise one has in mind some sort of special or unique ability.
Instead virtue is something possessed to one degree or another by everyone; it is
easily or automatically acquired; and everyone is a competent adviser concerning
it. Thus, if Socrates contrasts his own moral view with this folk view, he must
believe that virtue is an expertise like temple-building, ship-building, and the
rest; not something possessed by everyone; nor easily acquired. For Socrates,
decisions that require virtue require the advice of an expert. But why should we
think that Socrates contrasts his own moral view with this folk view? Doesn’t
Socrates put this view forward not only as the common view, but also as his own
in contrast to Protagoras? Yes he does, but there are a number of reasons to
doubt that Socrates is genuinely committed to the view he attributes to the
Athenians in this passage. 22
First, at the end of the Protagoras (361a5–c2) Socrates expresses his dismay
that he and Protagoras appear to be arguing for the opposite of what they had
maintained at the beginning. Immediately prior to this passage they had been
discussing the relationship between courage (andreia) and wisdom (sophia).
Protagoras maintained that the two are altogether different on the grounds that
many men are ignorant yet courageous. Socrates argued on the contrary that
courage is wisdom (sophia) about what is to be feared and what isn’t (360d4–5),
and so those who are ignorant cannot be courageous. Socrates concludes by
noting that while he had earlier maintained—presumably at 319b3–d7 —that
virtue is not knowledge (epistēmē) and so cannot be taught, he is now arguing
that it is knowledge, on the basis of the claim that all the virtues—courage,
justice, temperance and piety—are nothing other than knowledge. Protagoras on
the other hand had maintained that virtue was knowledge and so could be taught
and now he is arguing that it is not knowledge. 23 Exactly how to take Socrates’