Political Psychology in the Great Speech of the Protagoras

Abstract

Chapter 4 argues that in the Great Speech of the Protagoras, Plato characterizes spirited motivation as the sine qua non of human social and political life. Protagoras provides a mythic comparison of the conditions of pre-political vs. political human life and claims that human beings were incapable of living together in cities until the gods granted them “the art of politics.” The chapter argues that this “art” consists in capacities for (what Plato will eventually identify as) distinctively spirited forms of motivation. Both the aggressive and the gentle sides of thumos are the necessary psychological conditions of human civilization, without which moral education and political life are impossible.