Position
Protagorean Relativism
Man is the measure of all things: what seems true to a person is true for that person, and there is no further fact about what is true absolutely.
Classification
- Position level
- specific
- Domains
- Epistemology
Overview
The oldest surviving form of relativism about truth, credited to the sophist Protagoras and transmitted mainly through Plato's hostile report in the Theaetetus. The measure doctrine drops the idea of one standpoint-independent truth: the wind is cold for the one who shivers and not cold for the one who does not, and neither is wrong. Plato's famous counterattack, the peritrope or "turning of the tables", argues the view undermines itself — if every belief is true only for its holder, so is the belief that Protagorean relativism is false. The position is the sophists' signature answer about truth, but it is narrower than Sophism the movement, which also carries distinctive practices of rhetoric and civic teaching.
Position on
- The Nature of Truth
On what truth is: there is no perspective-independent truth — as things appear to each judge, so they are for that judge, so a claim is only ever true for someone.
Broader position
References
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Relativism, §3
- Plato, Theaetetus 152a
- Plato, Theaetetus 152a (the measure doctrine) and 166a–168c (the Defense of Protagoras)
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Relativism, §3 (Protagoras as the first overt champion of relativism)