Protagorean Epistemology and Dialectic.

Contemporary dispute among teachers of rhetoric between those who prefer the classical tradition of rhetoric and those who champion an epistemic view of rhetoric has antecedents among the disputes of the ancient Greek scholars. Some of the vital themes of epistemology can be traced back to Protagoras of Abdera, one of the two great leaders of the Sophistic movement and a pioneer of epistemic rhetoric. Comparatively little contemporary attention has been paid to his work, and there are only four or five sentences that can with any confidence be attributed to his authorship. Other evidence of Protagoras' views must be sought in the works of Diogenes Laertius, Sextus Empiricus, and Plato. While Parmenides rejected all assertions of not-being, and Socrates and Plato objectified being in a world of "ideal forms," Protagoras and his fellow Sophist Gorgius of Leontini took an opposing view. Gorgius identified flaws in Parmenidean logic and went on to demonstrate that nothing absolutely "is." In Plato's dialogue "Theaetetus," Protagoras calls upon Socrates to look beyond the surface of Protagoras' assertion that man is the measure of all things to the logos of the statement. This call to anti-logic was a particularly Protagorean approach to dialectic. A coherent dialectical method emerges from Protagorean epistemology: (1) that there are at least two opposed "logoi" in everything; (2) that it is the function and excellence of discourse to bring both out; and (3) that it can be demonstrated that there is no contradiction between the two. (SG)