Socrates and Protagoras on teaching virtue and kindness

¶ … Goodness of Virtue

Virtue can be taught, for as Protagoras asserts first and as Socrates assents at the end of the dialogue, virtue and knowledge are the same and so therefore, since knowledge is something that can be taught, virtue is too. Virtue is also one and indivisible, for it is a good habit that is whole, not incomplete: if one only possesses something incompletely, it could be argued that he does not wholly possess it or even possess it at all. Virtue is a complete action or habit that is not deficient in any sense. For example, one who has honor cannot act dishonorably and still possess the virtue of honor. If one acts a little honorably and a little dishonorably, how can he be said to have the virtue of honor? Or if one has the virtue of perseverance, can he be said to be one who will give up? Not at all. This essay will show how kindness as a virtue can be taught, for all wisdom can be given from one to another by way of experiential lessons, as wisdom exchanges in this dialogue from Protagoras to Socrates and from Socrates to Protagoras.

Socrates argues at the beginning of the dialogue that technical knowledge can be taught but that wisdom and virtue cannot be taught (140). Socrates is engaging in a manner of discourse that is similar to the devil's advocate approach, getting Protagoras to see his point-of-view by first adopting a false one and then encouraging Protagoras to find the correct one. Protagoras correctly disagrees and points to the teaching of children about the goodness of right actions: "Now when there is all this care about virtue private and public, why, Socrates, do you still wonder and doubt whether virtue can be taught? Cease to wonder, for the opposite would be far more surprising" (145). His point is that goodness and virtue and knowledge can all be taught. Socrates asserts that if they can all be taught then they must all be the same because they are their opposite is folly or vice, and "everything has only one opposite" (152). So just as gold fused together in a vase or some such image shows how parts are really one, so too do the differences in the virtues disappear when they are thought of being one thing in "the nature of the holy" (149) -- all parts of the same whole or transcendental good.

This is how kindness is as a virtue. A pitiful, base person may not possess any kindness but if he is pitied and charity is shown to him, the person may realize that he too can be charitable and kind to others because in this is a more beneficial way of being, not only for others but for himself too, because it elevates him out of his miserable state and puts him in a lighter, much better state.

Indeed, it is a kindness to teach someone and to impart wisdom to others, and so virtue begets virtue in this sense, just as love begets love, and so on. To not teach virtue or kindness or wisdom on the other hand is to spread error, and misery and unhappiness: it is to spread vice instead of virtue. Kindness thus embodies all the other virtues -- perseverance, humility, honor, etc. -- which shows that all the other virtues are linked to one another and chain up to one another like a chain link fence, each coupling to each so that the protection is solid and will not fall down. In this way, one can see that the whole of virtue is composed of parts but that the parts are all the same in the fence of virtue that gives a person character.

This links up to Socrates' most famous argument -- namely, that of the existence of the ultimate good, to which all things must be ordered in order for them to be good or holy, as Socrates prefers to call it. Holiness is the unity of virtues, the expression of goodness in action, and as he says to Protagoras, "Nothing can be holy if holiness is not holy" (149). This is, of course, always Socrates' main intention -- to drive home the point that the whole of existence emanates from the Holy, the transcendent unum, bonum, verum. It is also a religious argument as well as a philosophical one and a metaphysical one too. It is Socrates' main method to move all discourse towards the point of holiness if he can manage to do so with his partner in the discussion. Here, Protagoras assents and admits that there is such a thing as absolute holiness, which essentially means that virtue is whole and indivisible even though virtues themselves can be distinct.