Philosophical assignment 4 - Essay Example

Philosophical Assignment 4 The ment that “human being is the measure of all things” is key among Protagoras most celebrated words. Protagoras’s statement of relativism in ethics and epistemology enable individuals to have two distinct interpretations. The first interpretation signifies the individual while the other meaning implies a collection of individuals, for instance, a particular society at a specified period. Plato’s Theaetetus provides an interpretation of “human being” as relating to an individual.

For this reason, it is apparent that Protagoras advocates for a relativism, which is subjective since he said that the sensation that an individual possess may differ radically from others. “Things”, on the other hand, implies the object of experience. However, in the historical context, it is profoundly imperative to comprehend what type of function the meaning of Protagoras’s statement plays as well as the influence that it has on the contemporary society. In addition, the statement advocates subjectivistic individualism, which concerns the sense perception, as well as the general truth (Ophuijsen, Raalte, and Stork 198).

Plato argues that values such as morality cannot be objective but subjective similar to the matter of taste. Protagoras’ thesis offered a profound philosophical basis for the sophistic understanding of wisdom. This Protagoras epistemology disapproves the statement that if information is knowledgeable, then it should be true universally and not to a particular individual irrespective of the societal background. Additionally, Protagoras and his followers did not agree that ethical duties and morality must be universal.

Thus, if it is true that knowledge is relative to a particular person, then the wisdom must be non-existent. Work CitedOphuijsen, Johannes M. van, Marlein van Raalte, and Peter Stork. Protagoras of Abdera: The Man, His Measure. Leiden: Brill, 2013. Print.