PLATÃO, PROTÁGORAS E O HOMEM-MEDIDA

In Theaetetus, Platon proceeds to bringing together Protagoras’ doctrine of the man-measure and the Heracleitus one. So in Plato’s presentation, the doctrine of the man-measure seems to be attached to sensations and to their relation to the individual. By bringing it back to a doctrine of the perception and the sensation, Plato is trying to set apart Protagoras’ doctrine from its linguistic bases and its political signifiance. Still, he acknowledge that this doctrine needs any rectifications. The rectified version which he introduces, through Protagoras’ words, leads him towards the reconsideration of Protagoras’ doctrine, in relation to the action of the logos especially in matter of education. The analysis of the manner in which the logos intervenes in education allows to introduce in Protagoras’ discourse a political dimension, position which is confirmed by the Protagoras. The status itself of the education gives its full measure to the political dimension of the man-measure. Such an education operates, through the power of the logos, a change in souls, and this modification extends on the State in the sense of helpful, advantageous and beneficial. The doctrine of the man-measure is compatible with the rhetoric and political aspect of the doctrine of the sophist as we know it on other regards. As long as he speaks and acts by the means of the logos, which is the measure through which man measures himself, the man-measure puts the basis on which later on will be inserted Aristotle’s politics, and prefigures in any way the famous definition which Aristotle will give of the man as a political animal who possesses speech (Politics, I, 2, 1253 a 8-10).