A metretiké téchne como exercício da areté no Protágoras de Platão

Abstract

This aims to present how Plato, in Protagoras, makes Socrates sustain the “art of measurement” (μετρητική τέχνη) as the manifestation of true excellence (ἀρετή). The Socratic argumentation develops in a dispute with the sophist Protagoras, who proposed the teaching of an “art of citizenship” (πολιτικὴ τέχνη) capable of making the Athenians “better citizens” (ἀγαθοὺς πολίτας), both in the private and political spheres, through teaching of the capacity to deliberate well (εὐβουλία). Asked about the teachability of his art, Protagoras will defend his role as an educator with a version of the Myth of Prometheus, a picture in mythical language about the human nature and the spread of the political community, in which he presents the emergence of human society as the result of technical and political wisdom learning, such as shame (αἰδώς) and justice (δίκη). After this, Socrates, on dramatic level, is persuaded about the teachability of the virtue, and begins, in the dialectical level, to investigate more accurately the relations between ἀρετή and knowledge (ἐπιστήμη). From this investigation, he will conclude that ἀρετή, to be able to be taught, depends on his equivalence with ἐπιστήμη. From that Socrates will argue that the true virtue, being identical to knowledge, manifests itself as μετρητική τέχνη, “art of measurement”, an ability of uncover the real value of the choice subjects that enables man to correct the temporal deformations which unclear his choices by adoption of a supratemporal criterion, the ἀγαθόν, that serves as a basis for the good action.