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Protagoras' Famous StatementAuthor(s): P. H. EppsSource: The Classical Journal, Vol. 59, No. 5 (Feb., 1964), pp. 223-226Published by: The Classical Association of the Middle West and SouthStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3295019 .

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PROTAGORAS' FAMOUS STATEMENT

MANIS

THE MEASURE of all things,of the things that are how theyare, and of the things that are not how

they are not" (pinto.n chre-mito-n

m'tron estin inthro*pos,t6.n

m"n 6nto-nho*s stin,

t6.nde ouk 6nto.n ho*s ouk

estin) - Protagoras.This statement, like many others of

comparable import, has suffered

egregiously at the hands of expositors.In the first place, they generally quote

only the first five words of the Greeksentence as though they embracedthe complete quotation, which theydo not. In the second place, they reg-ularly seem to miss the statement'smost likely meaning. They take no ac-count of the character of the works

this statement is said to have comefrom. Plato says (Theaetetus 161c)that it was stated by Protagoras atthe beginning of his work on Truth.

Sextus Empiricus says (Adv. mathe-matikos 7,60) that it was given at the

beginning of a work called Refuta-tions. Although neither of these worksmakes clear, as far as is known, justwhat Protagoras had in mind in mak-

ing this statement, they should never-theless receive consideration by any-one trying to determine what he most

likely meant.

Since the Greeks appear to have

been the first people we know of to dis-cover the fuller powers of the human

mind, they were the first to envision

theextensive part

man could accord-

ingly play in managing, changingand controlling his life and environ-ment. The Greeks very naturallytherefore made more of man and of

man's powers than any people priorto their time. It is little wonder, then,that man and his possibilities consti-

tute the chief subject of Greek litera-

ture. Man was, for the Greeks, the

paragon of all created beings, most

"fearfully and wonderfully made."This persistent emphasis of the

Greeks on man, on his precarious sta-

tus in the nature of things and on his

fearful possibilities has, at times,tricked religious protagonists and

even some scholars, over-anxious to

maintain exclusive dichotomies, into

asserting that the Greeks so idolized

man that their culture was anthropo-centric only. They strongly imply that

the Greeks recognized no higher be-ing than man. They further insist that

a genuine humanist can have no com-

merce in his thinking or writings with

any degree of theism. This erroneous

idea seems to have gained in preva-lence ever since humanism came to

be classified as a philosophy of life de-

void of all theistic implications. "Man

the measure of all things," even

though an ex parte statement, seemed

too convenient a handle for those eagerto derogate humanism as an a-theistic

philosophy to pass over.



224 P. H. EPPS

There are passages in Greek litera-

ture which dwell on the indomitable

spiritand extensive achievements of

man. They occur in plays, and theyhave a dramatic import and signifi-cance which should not be forgottenwhen they are abstracted from theircontexts. The most extensive of theseare the long recital of man's accom-

plishments by Prometheus in Aeschy-lus' play by that name (436ff.), the fa-mous chorus in Sophocles' Antigone

(332ff.), and Theseus' statement in

Euripides' Suppliants (196ff.). But allthis praise and glorification of manand his achievements do not mean

that the Greeks considered man theultimate being of importance in the

universe, as interpreters of Pro-

tagoras' statement frequently imply.Greek writers from Hesiod throughPlato have too much to say about

gods, beneficent spirits, and evenabout an ever-watchful, all-seeing,

sin-avenging deity, not to be escapedor thwarted, for any one to claim legit-imately that Greek civilization was

anthropocentric only. It is true that

man, that strange mixture of goodand evil and of folly and wisdom, evenat his best, was the central visible be-

ing and enigma for the Greeks. Yet,as Livingstone reminds us (Greekideals and modern life, p. 154), God,as Pindar and others speak of him, is

always there - a remote, invisibleand mysterious presence in the back-

ground: a power with which man must

ever reckon.

Certainly Greek civilization was not

as deity-centered as the Hebrew was.

Yet this neither implies nor necessi-

tates that Greek civilization was man-

centered only. It was only more man-

centered than the Hebrew civilization

was. And we may well be grateful thatit was; for it is difficult to see how theGreeks could have initiated into the

world the many worthy things theydid initiate, if they had been as priest-controlled as the Hebrews were.To be correct, therefore, interpretersshould say only that Greek civilizationwas more man-centered and initiallymind-centered than Hebrew culturewas. In fact, it would be difficult tofind any literature of the pre-Chris-tian era, apart from the Old Testa-

ment, that is more deity-centered or

more replete with exhortations to a de-

ity-centered morality and moral liv-

ing than Greek thoughtand

literature.Pindar, Aeschylus, Sophocles and the

body of Socratic-Platonic teachingsand expositions make this clear.

It will help to keep one's thinking on

this subject within the limits of the

facts, if one will remember the generaldifference between the Greek and He-

brew method and approach to the God-

man problem. Simply stated, the Greeks

proceeded from the seen to the un-

seen (the inductive approach), where-as the Hebrews proceeded from the

unseen to the seen (the deductive meth-

od). As Livingstone correctly says

(ibid. p.154), for the Greeks, God was

the conclusion to which they were led

by their studies and investigations;but for the Hebrews, God was the

major premise from which they always

started, and everything was viewed

by them first of all from that premise.

This simple fact, if kept in mind, willdo much to help one keep these two

cultures in their proper perspectives on

this matter.

With these matters out of the way,

what does Protagoras seem most likely

to have had in mind when he declared

that "man is the measure of all things,

of the things that are how they are,

and of the things that are not how

they are not?"1 Interpretations willvary, of course. But was he not simply

stating the inescapably inherent sub-



PROTAGORAS' FAMOUS STATEMENT 225

jectivity of all human knowledge and

thinking? Why may not that be all

Protagorashad in mind in this famous

statement-- just that, with all its im-

plications, and nothing more? He mayvery well have seen, through his logi-cal and metaphysical thinking, thatman was doomed in the nature of

things to be, as Sextus says,2 thecriterion for judgment in all that he

interpreted. Protagoras doubtless saw

that nothing - literally nothing - can

be understood by any person until it

has been interpreted and brought toterms, to some extent, with that per-son's mind, values and thinking; that

things had to be judged as good or

bad, beautiful or ugly, etc. to or for

man--i.e. from man's, and not from

some other creature's, point of view.How could (or can) it be otherwise?

The only mind, eyes, senses and per-ceptive powers man has or can have

to interpret anything by must inevi-

tably be his own personal ones. Hecannot see or conceive of things as

suprahuman or other-planetary beings

might. He can see more than sub-

human primates, but less no doubt

than suprahuman beings, if there be

such. Steak, for example, is good,from man's point of view, but cattle

could never be persuaded to agree. In

other words, man cannot escape, in

any situation or in any circumstances,

his finiteness and his limitations; andany judgment he renders is, and must

be in all cases, colored and influenced

by man's limitations and by his inter-

est and point of view. He cannot enter

into perfect or unconditioned empathywith another being, but only into a

humanly conditioned one. No matter

how hard man may try to project his

thinking and feelings unconditionally

outside himself, his interests andstandards and values go inevitablywith his projected thoughts and feel-

ings. All this is inherent in the natureof things. Yet few people really be-lieve that or act

uponit.

Protagoras,though, doubtless saw this clearly andstated it with this unusual clarity.

If this is all Protagoras meant by hiscelebrated statement - that, as far asman is concerned, everything must of

necessity be conceived and interpretedthrough man's senses and their inevi-table limitations - the intellectual cli-mate of Greece seems to have been

ripe at that time for such a statement

as this by Protagoras. For Gorgias, acontemporary of Protagoras, had al-

ready proved, we are told, in his

treatise On not being or concerningnature, (1) that nothing existed (ap-

parently as a pure, unconditioned, ob-

jective reality); (2) that, if it did, itcould not be comprehended (evidentlyby any living organism); and (3) that,if it could be comprehended, it could

not be communicated.3 Gorgias thus

seems to be saying that nothing existsor can exist objectively in this world;or if it does, man has no way of deal-

ing with it. Whatever of reality be-

comes known to any living organism,

including man, has to become known

to that organism through the fog and

mist, so to speak, of that organism's

limitations, values and response-capa-bilities. Therefore, by the time any

portion of what may have been genuine

reality becomes intelligible to a per-son, it is no longer pure, objective

reality but a modified version of it. In

similar fashion, if reality could be

comprehended in a pure, objective

form, the only means of communica-

tion possible for man would have cor-

rupted it by the time it became

communicated to man. Thus, while

Protagoras was stating the inherent

subjectivity of all human knowledge,Gorgias was stating the impossibilityof man's knowing anything in its pure,



226

objective form. The two prounounce-ments complement each other.

If the above is a correctinterpreta-tion of Protagoras' notable statement,

and if the inevitable subjectivity of all

human knowledge is what and onlywhat he meant his declaration to con-

vey, then Plato must have misunder-

stood Protagoras, unless Plato's clear

dislike of sophists made him captiousabout the statement. However that may

be, if the above is what Protagoras had

in mind, he would have found it easy

to dispose of both of Plato's objections.When Plato asks (Theaetetus 161c)

why Protagoras did not make a swine

or a baboon the measure of all things,

Protagoras could have answered: be-

cause a swine or a baboon would have

to measure things only on the basis of

what they could perceive and think,i.e. only on the basis of subhuman

thoughts. But since man can see more

than a swine or a baboon, including all

that swine and baboons can see, andcan therefore measure things with a

more adequate subjectivity, to make a

swine or a baboon the measure would

mean the exclusion from a swine-

measured world of all that would be

encompassed in a human-measured

world. It would therefore be folly of

the first order to make a less percep-

tive creature instead of the most per-ceptive one the measure of all things.

In the samemanner,

when Plato

theistically proclaims in his latestwork (Laws 716c) that God, ratherthan man, should be the measure of

all things for man, Protagoras could

readily have answered: exactly so. Butwhat God? It would have to be God asman could best conceive him. That is

the only God man can know. Here too

man still remains the measurer. Thereis no escape. Man's conception of the

deity will grow and be refined, as italways does, even though the deity

may not. Even the Bible shows such

growth. So did the Greek conceptionof Zeus, their supreme deity, as can

be seen by reading the literature from

Hesiod through Cleanthes' majestic

hymn to Zeus. Thus Protagoras' state-

ment, as interpreted above, remains

true. Man must inexorably interpret all

things from the standpoint of man or

from his conception regarding thosethings. And man has no escape from

doing so. That, and only that, seems

to one person at least to be what Pro-

tagoras was trying to make clear in

his memorable statement.

P. H. EPPsUniversity of North Carolina

1 I have taken ho.s in this statement to mean"how," in the relative sense. This is contrary,as Kranz says (Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker[1959] vol.2, p.263), to Diels, who insists that ho.shere means "that, not how" (dass, nicht wie).How one can be so sure that any word as am-biguous as ho.s with a participle must meandass and only dass is difficult to see. This is espe-cially true with ho.s meaning "how" in the rela-tive sense, so well documented as it is in Liddell-Scott under ho.s, Ac. Moreover, as Kranz sanely

adds, only the rest of the context of Protagoras'statement, whatever it was, could make certainthe exact meaning of ho.s in this statement as ithas survived. The ancient commentators seem tothink that what Protagoras meant was this: how-ever anything appeared to a man, that was theway it was for him.

2 Diels-Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokrat-iker, vol.2, p.258.

3Diels-Kranz, vol.2, pp.279ff.

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