Protagoras c 500 - 430 bc

Protagoras is used by Russell as the key figure in the sceptical philosophy of the Sophists. The Sophists were basically smart-arses for hire and made their living teaching young men from the Athenian aristocracy.The poorer citizens of Athens were suspicious of the rich both because of envy and because they were believed to be subverting both traditional beliefs and probably democracy also. We tend to look back at Greek philosophers as the founders of democracy but many were in fact the enemies of democracy, Plato particularly.

Russell compares the Sophists with modern day lawyers; intellectual defenders of the rich, hired and valued on the basis of their ability to make clever arguments, regardless of the rightness or otherwise of the cause they were arguing. Indeed, the Sophists were often hired to teach gentlemen how to argue in court, or wrote their court speeches for them.

Despite this, many Sophists were genuinely interested in philosophy. Protagoras is mainly known for his doctrine that 'Man is the measure of all things, of things that are that they are, and of things that are not that they are not'. This is interpreted to mean that each man is the measure of all things, and if they disagree, there is no objective truth that shows which is right, an essentially sceptical position.

Understandably this kind of unprincipled philosophy-for-hire was much sneered at by other philosophers, Plato for example and many more modern philosophers. Russell makes a couple of valid points about this; firstly the simple observation that it was easy for rich gentlemen like Plato to sneer at those who needed to earn a living. More importantly, Russell argues that there is a certain merit in following an argument wherever it goes, regardless of 'principles'. He contrasts it with the way Plato makes arguments, where he has already decided upon the principle he wishes to illustrate before he makes the argument. The questions he asks, although seemingly innocent, are clearly chosen to lead to where he wants to go and the whole argument is twisted to fit his preconceptions.