Protagoras, Socrates, is it genius? Or a liar?

There are two kinds of philosophers, one who seriously thinks about the wisdom of the universe, and the other who is a liar full of words. And the two are difficult to distinguish.

The famous sages of ancient Greece, Protagoras, Golgia, Socrates, etc., were they geniuses? Or a liar?

When I write the history of philosophy, I have already skipped the Wise Men, but when I write about Hegel, the King of Philosophy, I find that I cannot avoid the Wise Men, because this is the source of Hegel's thought. Hegel built an incomparably intricate philosophical system, and strangely enough, since then, Western philosophy has basically completely declined, or even disappeared. Hegel is the key factor in this.

1. Man is the measure of all things

Serious nonsense is characteristic of a liar.

The fairy tale "The Emperor's New Clothes" is an accurate description of this phenomenon.

Protagoras famously said, "Man is the measure of all things." It is a sophistry negation of Parmenides' theory of "existence".

This idea of ignorance resonates with the layman, but it can do nine harms:

1. Arrogant and selfish way of thinking.

2. Split narrow ways of thinking.

3. Focus on the way you think in front of you.

4. Unreasonable and sophistry language.

5. Arbitrary and domineering behavior.

6. Morally corrupt values.

7. International relations of hegemonic wars.

8. Racism is prevalent in society.

9. Inciting the political atmosphere of the people.

People who possess this idea are extremely ignorant and ignorant, they deny the existence of objective truth, they think that all their ideas are right, all their feelings are true, they like to invert black and white at will, refer to deer as horses, confuse, play with sophistry, advocate that public theory is justified, that all opposites are right and true.

The principle proposed by Protagoras is to make a statement of opposition to everything. Diogenes Larsio recounts: "Protagoras was the first to say, 'There are two opposing statements about all things.'" That is to say, there are two opposing "truths" in everything, and we can say it casually.

2. Socrates was also a psychic

The controversy between Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and the Wise is an internal contradiction of the Wise. They all belong to the Wise Men sect in essence, because they inherit and develop the core idea of the Wise Men school - "Man is the measure of all things".

Socrates said, "The wise man is the measure of justice."

Plato said, "Only by devoutly godlike man can he be the measure of all things."

But the crux of the matter is: Who has the wisdom to be judged by whom? Or: What is the criterion for judging?

Socrates studied the essence and supreme experience of the sophistry of the wise men. Socrates' only career was to debate moral and ethical philosophy with everyone he met on the streets of Athens. The result, according to Plato, was that quite a few people, especially young people, learned sophistry, devoted themselves to "saying bad things as good", and then went around doing bad things, so Socrates was eventually executed for "poisoning young people".

Socrates called Protagoras "the wisest man of our generation." When Teatides argued that "knowledge is feeling", Socrates said: "Your statement about the nature of knowledge must not be underestimated, and Protagoras expressed the same view, he said: 'Man is the measure of all things, the measure of how the beings exist, and the measure of how the non-beings do not exist.'"

One of the criteria for distinguishing a philosopher and a liar is to see if he has insight. Although Socrates was very strong in language and invincible in his eloquence, he did not accomplish anything about theory, Nietzsche said: "Although Socrates asked thousands of questions, not a single question was answered. ”

Seeking truth from facts is the criterion for judging a person's logic. The sophistry philosopher Protagoras ignored basic logic and said unashamedly: "Man is the measure of all things." The supremacy of subjectivity over objectivity is the gold standard for judging schizophrenics. Because from a scientific point of view, the human brain's cognition is far less than one hundred millionth of the understanding of the reality of the universe. It will take time for human beings to fully understand the laws of the universe. In this world, only modesty is allowed. Humility is seeking truth from facts, that is, logical objectivity. Confucius said: To know is to know, not to know is not to know, is to know.

Plato: "Truth is, as I have written, that each of us is the measure of existence and non-existence. "

Plato even changed Parmenides' ontology to a term called "theory of ideas", as his new clothes, which is still the content of the theory of the wise: he said that only a philosophical king can govern the country, and the rest of the people are not to mention, of course, this philosophical king must be himself, he is the standard and yardstick of governing the country, which inherits and carries forward the arrogance of the wise, and has lost the basic logic of a normal person, belongs to the category of ignorance and ignorance, and his governing philosophy is also chaotic, like a child's play, without logic.

Plato was a standard sophist, and his conception of ontology was always divided, sometimes referring to it as "inherent reality" (Parmenides, The State), sometimes as "negating the non-existent ontology" (Filibu, Gorggia), and there were also sudden and contrapuntal defects in specific interpretation, often appearing in the middle of the same dialogue.

Some philosophers of later generations also realized a little strangeness: "The philosophy of form created by Plato must be understood from outside the form, and if it is understood purely in terms of the philosophy of form itself, the only function is to overthrow it." (Schopenhauer, The World is will and ideas)

Plato's definition of goodness and beauty, the logic and dialectics of things, is also rather confusing, and Plato sophistrys this as follows: "All examination becomes insignificant outside the divine revelation... Certain ideas are shared for all other things, and things are given their names at the same time; similarities are similar because they share similarities, great things are great because they share greatness; things that are righteous and beautiful are just and beautiful because they share justice and beauty. ”

3. The three propositions of Golgia

In order to break Parmenides' ontology and prove that sensual beings are the only measure by which all things are judged, Golgia proposed three interrelated propositions: first, that nothing exists; second, that even if something exists, one cannot grasp it; and third, even if it is grasped, one cannot express it and tell others.

Examples of sophistry are as follows: 1. Everything that is generated has some beginning", and "if existence is eternal", "it has no beginning", "it is infinite", and "if it is infinite, it is not anywhere", because "if it is somewhere", where it is contained by other things, or by existence itself, then it is "no longer infinite". In short, if something exists is eternal, it leads to the paradoxical conclusion that something does not exist.

2. "Existence cannot be generated". For if it is generated, then it is either born of existence or of non-existence, but neither is possible. If existence is born of existence, it is already existent, it is not generated; if it is born of non-existence, it cannot be, because everything that is generated must be divided into real existence and non-existence, and non-existence cannot produce anything, so existence is not generated.

3. Since both of the above cases are not possible, the existence of something "is both eternal and generative" does not hold, "because the two are mutually exclusive". If something exists, "it is either one or many," neither is possible. "For if existence is one, then it is either a divisible quantity, or a continuous, or measurable size", or an "object" that is "of length, width, and height", it is "severable", and it is not "·" Existence cannot be "many", "because many is the sum of one, and if one is abolished, the multitude disappears with it'".

In short, if something exists, it will be deduced that existence is the same absurd result of non-existence, existence and non-existence, and after a series of counter-proofs, "there is no other choice to think about, then it is obvious that nothing exists".

4. The dangers of the ancient Greek wise men

The ancient Greek wise men immersed themselves in the study of sophistry techniques. They are bent on getting ahead, going in and out of high-end places such as markets and councils, and always pretending as if they are self-taught. Their polemics are by no means aimed at serious topics, nor do they have any correct form of thinking, but degenerate into a kind of sophistry that plays with concepts arbitrarily and is extremely absurd in logic. For example: you have a puppy and an old dog, the old dog is the father of the puppy, the old dog as a father is yours, so the old dog is your father, you are the brother of the puppy, and you hit the old dog to beat your father.

They provide the ideological tools of the demagogues who incite the populace to gain their own self-interest and accelerate the collapse of the law and social order. They preached the perverse theory that "justice is the interest of the strong" and other perverted theories of the weak and the strong, which provided a theoretical basis for the occupation and plundering and military conquest between the Greek city-states at that time, and played a bad role in fueling the chaos of the political order throughout Greece. They preach happiness and virtue as the infinite satisfaction of individual selfish desires and corrupt social ethics and public morality.

They argue that man-made laws can be constantly modified and interpreted at will by the will of those in power (including pro-democracy demagogues). "It is the weak who are the majority of people who make the norms agree, and it is they who make the normative agreements for their own interests, determine the criteria for approval and criticism, and prevent the strong from surpassing them and getting more than their benefits." "If the inferiors enjoy equal status, they are satisfied." When Athens invaded, diplomats spoke nakedly: "The standard of justice is based on equal coercion, and the strong can do everything they are powerful and do, while the weak can only accept everything they must accept." Nature itself is clearly to allow the strong to overtake the weak, to allow some better people to have interests above the bad, to think that this is just. Looking at all animals and all city-states and people, the so-called justice is the rule of the strong over the weak and the interests of the strong."

5. Conclusion

The Socratic school and the school of the wise are in the same breath, and although they quarrel with each other, their essential attributes remain unchanged. Many of the later Western philosophies were branches of the Wise Men. We'll talk about that in the next issue.

The eighth day of February 2022