Resumen de Il filosofo, il sofista, il male e la "omoìousia to theò" nel "Teeteto"
I will discuss the main thesis Plato attributes to Protagoras in his Teethetus, and his own critique, in order to give a new possible interpretation of 167 a. The thesis amounts to the following: a) Phenomenalism in defining knowledge as aisthesis; b) Utilitarianism in practical life; c) Conventionalism in politics; d) Relativism in ethics. In order to save Protagoras (167 d) Plato lastly goes beyond the possibility Protagoras could hold that in ethical and political life everybody i s autarkes on his own judgment or phronesis (169 d 5-8). Therefore, his philosophical position could be a pluralistic one and not a relativistic one, and hence one could distinguish expertise as techne from practical or ethical wisdom, anthropine kai politike sophia. But this argumentation fails because the existence of evil, to escape which we are forced into the omoiousia to theo expounded in the “digression on rhetoric” (172 b 7-8). We do not believe the passus is a digression on rhetoric, but instead the main point of the dialogue, because he shows the only real possibility of confuting Protagoras in referring to the main problem of omoiousia to theo, whose meaning was expounded in Republic III.
