Socrates is famous for claiming that ‘I know one thing: That I know nothing’. There is one subject that Socrates repeatedly claims to have expertise in, however: ta erôtika. Socrates also refers to this expertise as his erôtikê technê, which may be translated as ‘erotic expertise’. I argue that the purposes this expertise serve are, to a significant extent, educational in nature: Socrates has certain erotic educational methods that participate in his expertise on erôs. In addition, I suggest that Socrates (...) uses two kinds of psychological techniques while practicing his erotic expertise through these erotic educational methods. (shrink)

The Protagoras is a contest of philosophical methods. With its mix of μῦθος and λόγος, Protagoras’ Great Speech stands as a competing model of philosophical discourse to the Socratic elenchus. While the mythical portion of the speech clearly impresses its audience—Socrates included—one of its central claims appears to pass undefended. This is the claim that the political art cannot be distributed within a community as the technical arts are. This apparent shortcoming of the Great Speech does not seem to trouble (...) philosophical commentators: it is amyth, after all, and it seems reasonable to suppose that the sly sophist slips certain claims into his myth precisely to avoid having to defend them. Nevertheless, it is worth subjecting the claim to philosophical scrutiny. What could be the reason that the political arthadto be distributed differently than were the technical arts, as the myth insists? (shrink)

Greek literature prior to Plato featured two conceptions of education. Learning takes place when people encounter “teacher-guides”—educators, mentors, and advisors. But education also occurs outside of a pedagogical relationship between learner and teacher-guide: people learn through painful experience. In composing his dramatic dialogues, Plato appropriated these two conceptions of education, refashioning and fusing them to present a new philosophical conception of learning: Plato’s Socrates is a teacher-guide who causes his interlocutors to learn through suffering. Socrates, however, is not presented straightforwardly (...) as a pedagogical success story. Socrates’ failures are, paradoxically, part of what makes him an ideal literary model for a philosophical teacher-guide. Plato requires his readers to question why Socrates’ interlocutors are not converted to philosophers. (shrink)

En este trabajo me propongo comparar el patrón argumentativo de los sofistas del siglo V a. C. tal como son retratados en la obra de Platón con el de los erísticos del Eutidemo. Defenderé que ninguno de estos sofistas es presentado por Platón como experto en dialéctica refutativa, actividad discursiva que caracteriza a la erística. Por el contrario, el retrato platónico de Pródico, Hipias, Gorgias y Protágoras los muestra como incapaces, desinteresados u hostiles a la argumentación de tipo dialéctica.

In Plato’s Protagoras, prompted by Socrates, Protagoras grapples with the complex problem of the nature of the sophistike techne that he professes. To clarify the nature of his teaching, he reconstructs a history of his discipline, identifying a series of figures who preceded him, concealing their own activities under the guise of other technai. Furthermore, through the famous myth of Prometheus, he places the sphere in which he operates, the politike, at the center of the development of human communities. In (...) response to Protagoras, Socrates, through a curious reinterpretation of the past, identifies Spartan brachylogy and the activities of the Seven Sages as precursors to his own philosophy. As is also evident from the comparison with the Ancient Medicine, in the Protagoras, Plato, not without a hint of irony, seems to stage the fifth century intellectuals’ attempt to define their activity through a skillful reworking of human history. (shrink)