La présente recherche vise à faire ressortir certaines particularités chez deux grands penseurs de la Grèce Antique: Protagoras le sophiste et Socrate le philosophe. Le but fondamental de cette étude sera d'établir l'importance de cette maïeutique (la question de l'enseignement de la vertu en relation avec l'art de la citoyenneté) selon ces deux grands penseurs: Socrate ainsi que Protagoras. En effet, le Protagoras de Platon est un ouvrage qui suscite beaucoup de questions, surtout chez certains membres de la communauté philosophique qui s'y intéressent. En revanche, bien que Platon soit la source principale de cette œuvre, il est un témoin peu fiable de l'histoire de la philosophie. C'est la raison pour laquelle cette recherche est essentiellement basée sur l'étude du dialogue du Protagoras de Platon. II serait utile d'explorer d'autres dialogues de Platon afin d'approfondir cette analyse sur la question de l'enseignement de la vertu, mais l'auteur de cet ouvrage a préféré limiter sa recherche à une seule œuvre : Le Protagoras.

La thèse examine, à partir d’une relecture de Peirce et de certaines de ses interprétations des philosophes et des problèmes antiques, les arguments qui peuvent permettre à une conception pragmatiste des croyances et de la signification de parer aux accusations de conduire au relativisme. Ces arguments résident dans la façon dont ces conceptions s’articulent entre elles, et acceptent une forme de réalisme / This thesis examines arguments taken from Peirce’s reading in Ancient philosophy, which could be used to block accusations of relativism being latent in a pragmatist conception of belief and concepts. The argument lies in the articulation of the two conceptions and their compatibility with a realist view

On examine ici deux concepts fondamentaux touchant la genèse et la structure du système platonicien, en proposant de les rapporter à deux modèles empruntés à la mathématique ancienne. Le premier est un postulat, usuellement désigné sous le nom d’axiome d’Eudoxe – Archimède, le second un algorithme de calcul : l’anthyphérèse. Tous deux ressortissent à la théorie mathématique développée par Théétète à la suite des travaux logistiques de Théodore ; il a semblé que leur articulation constituait le socle théorique de la réponse platonicienne à la thèse protagoréenne de l’homo mensura. On a suggéré de replacer cette dernière dans le cadre d’une polémique ancienne regardant la consistance du concept mathématique de mesure, dont la notion naïve fut remise en cause par la découverte successive des rapports incommensurables puis d’ensembles non–archimédiens : les angles mixtilignes. Cela impliquait de réexaminer les rapports possibles entre mathématiques et sophistique : on a choisi à cet effet l’exemple de la quadratrice d’Hippias d’Élis. Il convenait aussi d’envisager la liaison étroite qu’entretiennent la dialectique platonicienne et cette science métrétique rénovée que Platon nomme «juste mesure». On a tenté de montrer comment celle-ci pouvait informer certains procédés de celle-là, à partir de l’étude de quelques passages des dialogues qui jalonnent la dernière période de Platon. La théorie de la division appliquée aux Idées, comme l’analyse et la constitution des mixtes cosmologique, politique et individuel ont ainsi paru pouvoir être examinées dans le cadre de cette hypothèse. / Two mathematical notions seem to structure Plato’s theory of measure. The first one is a postulate, usually known as the “Eudoxus axiom”, the other an algorithm called “anthuphairesis”. Both of them belonged to the mathematical theory developed by Theaetetus expanding Theodorus’ logistics. The main hypothesis of this work is that they constitute the core of Plato’s response against the Homo mensura thesis elaborated by Protagoras. We have thus proposed to replace Protagoras’ theory in the enlarged context of a serious crisis affecting the logical consistency of the mathematical notion of measure, provoked by the discovery of incommensurable magnitudes as well as non–Archimedean sets, exemplified by mixtilinear angles. This implied to examine anew the links between ancient sophistic and mathematics, and particularly Plato’s critics against Hippias’ quadratrix. It was also required to study the close relation between platonic dialectic and the new art of measurement exposed by Plato in the Statesman. Thus, by studying some passages mainly taken from Plato’s last dialogues, an attempt has been made to show how the higher art of measurement could inform dialectics. Plato’s theory of division, as well as the analysis and the generation of the mixed structures which constitute the universe, the city and the individual man have thus been tentatively reduced to this model.

This thesis examines the role appearances play, with notable continuity, in the psychology and ethics of Plato's Protagoras, Gorgias, and Republic. Common to these dialogues is the claim that evaluative appearances are almost invariably false: what appears to be good or bad is typically not in fact so and what is good or bad typically does not appear so. I argue that this disparity between apparent and real value forms the basis of Plato's diagnoses of a wide range of practical errors: psychological phenomena like akrasia, mistaken conceptions of the good like hedonism, and the influence of cultural sources of corruption like oratory, sophistry, and poetry. It also, relatedly, forms the basis of his account of lower passions like appetite, anger, or fear. Such passions are especially prone to lead us astray because their objects -- appetitive pleasures like food, drink, or sex, for example -- present especially deceptive appearances. One of the principal aims of this thesis is to show that this presents a significant point of agreement between the psychologies of the Protagoras, Gorgias, and Republic. In all three dialogues, I argue, motivational errors result from a specific kind of cognitive error: the uncritical acceptance of appearances. Plato's early and middle psychologies differ in their account of the subject of this error -- in the Protagoras and Gorgias, the whole person; in the Republic, the appetitive or spirited part of a person's soul -- but not in their basic theory of how our passions arise or, crucially, why they are liable to motivate us towards harmful ends.

[pt] O presente estudo tem como foco o pensamento de Protágoras, bem como o contexto em que este pensador se insere, enfatizando o significado da sua famosa sentença do homem como medida de todas as coisas. Nosso objetivo geral consiste em fazer um panorama do contexto filosófico em que o sofista pôde forjar-se como autor. O objetivo específico por sua vez consiste em compreender a sua doutrina a partir da sentença que é o coração de seu pensamento. Em dependência do testemunho principalmente de Platão em seu diálogo Teeteto, a reconstrução do pensamento de Protágoras inicia-se por nós a partir da concepção da irrevogabilidade de todas as percepções/sensações experimentadas por cada indivíduo. O homem-medida protagórico nos leva do tema da realidade sensível à formulação do problema em termos de julgamento e opinião, e a medida, que inicialmente é pensada como cada indivíduo, passa a ser pensada para além de cada homem, para ser pensada como cada cidade. A fronteira entre medida e desmedida, o problema da responsabilidade, a questão da educação e o próprio surgimento da filosofia são abordados em nossa investigação, tal como nos estimula a fazer Platão em sua exposição e crítica ao sofista, assim como acerca dos problemas que acometiam a Grécia daquele tempo. / [en] The present study focuses on the thought of Protagoras and the context in which this thinker belongs, emphasizing the significance of his famous sentence of man as the measure of all things . Our overall objective is to make an overview of the philosophical context in which the sophist could be formed as an author. The specific goal in turn is to understand his doctrine from the sentence that is the heart of his thinking. Dependence mainly on the testimony of Plato in his dialogue Theaetetus, the reconstruction of the thought of Protagoras begins for us from the conception of the irrevocability of all perceptions/sensations experienced by each individual. The protagoric man-measure theme leads us from the formulation of sensible reality to the problem in terms of judgment and opinion, and so far, which is initially thought to each individual, shall be considered in addition to every man, to be thought of as each city. The boundary between what is measured and what is unmeasured, the problem of responsibility, the issue of education and the very emergence of philosophy are covered in our research, as Plato urges us to do in his exposition and critique of the sophist, as well as of the problems that affected Greece during that time.

Dans le "Protagoras" et le "Théétète", Platon affronte la pensée de Protagoras, d'abord sur le plan de la politique et de la morale, ensuite sur celui de la science et de la connaissance. Le sophiste le confronte à un ensemble de questions tournant autour du relativisme épistémologique et de la possibilité d'enseigner la vertu. Dans les deux dialogues, il soumet Platon à un ensemble de difficultés parallèles du moins pour une lecture attentive au grand discours dans le "Protagoras" et à l'apologie dans le "Théétète" qui se répercutent dans d'autres dialogues. La première partie de cette thèse s'emploie à explorer l'importance que Platon attribue à la notion de mesure chez Protagoras et la manière dont celle-ci rejaillit à travers les dialogues ("Politique", "Philèbe", "Lois") pour s'ériger en concept de la philosophie platonicienne. La seconde partie, axée sur la figure du sophiste expert et professeur, s'attache à étudier la manière dont Protagoras, par son attachement au semblable et au dissemblable, contraint Platon à une entreprise de clarification des concepts structurants de la pensée, afin de rétablir une vérité contre le principe de l'expertise et de la contradiction.

In both the Meno and the Protagoras, Plato investigates the unity, acquisition and nature of virtue (ἀρετή). Although these dialogues appear to reach opposing conclusions—the Protagoras that virtue is knowledge and the Meno that virtue is divinely dispensed true opinion—in fact they both articulate the same moral principle. Both dialogues argue that virtue is knowledge of the good. I investigate these two dialogues independently and on their own respective terms, dedicating Chapter 2 to the Protagoras and Chapter 3 to the Meno. Although both dialogues argue that virtue is knowledge of the good, neither offers an account of the good. This is because each dialogue is but a single part of a larger argument which culminates in the Republic, wherein we find a more complete explanation of knowledge of the good in the description of the philosopher-king.

Proefschrift--Utrecht. / Includes bibliography.

Submitted by Franciele Moreira (francielemoreyra@gmail.com) on 2018-09-21T13:12:11Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - João Victor Albuquerque - 2018.pdf: 1662894 bytes, checksum: 9a5a4f420ab7c3e80929d60c2cae30ff (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luciana Ferreira (lucgeral@gmail.com) on 2018-09-24T11:14:44Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - João Victor Albuquerque - 2018.pdf: 1662894 bytes, checksum: 9a5a4f420ab7c3e80929d60c2cae30ff (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-09-24T11:14:44Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Dissertação - João Victor Albuquerque - 2018.pdf: 1662894 bytes, checksum: 9a5a4f420ab7c3e80929d60c2cae30ff (MD5) license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2018-08-29 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior - CAPES / The present text will address the theme about the unity of virtue in Plato's Protagoras dialogue. The question that will be analyzed is limited to understanding the argumentative paths used by Socrates for the refutation of the sophist Protagoras with his perspective of unity of virtue. Another point that will be approached as a reflection of this analysis will be the understanding of the unity thesis between the virtues - justice, piety, courage, wisdom and wisdom - that the philosopher establishes. / O presente texto abordará a temática sobre a unidade da virtude no diálogo Protágoras de Platão. A questão que será analisada se limita a compreender os caminhos argumentativos utilizados por Sócrates para a refutação do sofista Protágoras com sua perspectiva de unidade de virtude. Outro ponto que será abordado, como reflexo dessa análise, será o entendimento da tese da unidade entre as virtudes – justiça, piedade, coragem, sabedoria e sensatez – que o filósofo estabelece.

Doctor Educationis / Three questions are central to this thesis: First, can the practice of teaching be made safe from luck through the controlling power of knowledge and reason? Second, even if it can be made safe from luck, should it be? Third, if it is neither possible nor desirable to exclude luck from teaching, what knowledge and personal qualities will put practitioners in the strongest position to face the contingencies of luck and, more especially, to face those conflicts which arise as a consequence of circumstances beyond the practitioner's control? Martha Nussbaum's account of luck and ethics in Greek philosophy and tragedy prompts the questions and provides, with Aristotle, many of the conceptual tools for answering them; Thomas Nagel's work on moral luck provides the categories for a more refined account of luck and its place in teaching. With respect to the first two questions, I argue that as a human practice teaching is open to the vicissitudes of fortune and cannot be made safe from luck, except at the expense of its vitality. Like other human practices, teaching is mutable, indeterminate and particular. Both its primary and secondary agents (teachers and pupils) and the practice itself are vulnerable to luck in four categories: constitutive, circumstantial, causal and consequential. But teaching is not just a matter of luck; it is a public practice in which some people are put into the hands of others for specific purposes, usually at public expense. If we have no way of holding practitioners accountable for their actions, the practice loses credibility. Any money or trust put into it is simply a gamble. For these and other reasons, the drive to exclude luck from practice is strong. Yet strong luck-diminishment projects are themselves a threat to the vitality of the practice. During the twentieth century two strong luck-diminishment projects have been especially detrimental to teaching: one rooted in the science of management, the other in the empirical sciences. Both have resulted in a proliferation of unfruitful and often trivial research projects, to misconceived programmes of teacher education, to distorted notions of knowledge and excellence in teaching, and to self-defeating and impoverished practice. Luck-diminishment projects rooted in logic are more or less threatening to vital practice, depending on how far they are committed to instrumental reasoning and a science of measurement. These are blunt and controversial claims. A central task of the thesis is to refine and defend them. The refinement proceeds by way of a contrastive analysis of strong luck-diminishment projects and others which are more responsive to the indeterminacy of practice. With respect to the final question, I argue that there are at least three sets of necessary conditions for a flourishing practice in the face of luck. One concerns what Aristotle calls the virtues of intellect and character. Central among these are practical rationality (conceived non-instrumentally), situational appreciation, and the knowledge required for an intelligent pursuit of the definitive ends of teaching. A second set concerns enabling institutions. A third concerns the kind of community best able to nurture those qualities necessary for vital and excellent practice. All three sets are themselves vulnerable to reversal. Keeping the practice of teaching alive and ensuring that it remains true to its definitive ends is thus a matter of sustained struggle.