Protagoras
The Sophist philosopher named Protagoras -- ca 490-411 BCE, was a native of Thrace, in Greece, and was supposedly one of the first philosophers to have actually made use of his higher education to make money for himself, and this he did, successfully. As a matter of fact, it is reputed that Plato once stated that Protagoras was making more money through teaching his students that he was rivaling the money that Phidias, the sculptor who created the Parthenon, must have made, and ten times over, at that. The main contribution that this Greek philosopher made to the world in general was the principle that "man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, that they are not," in other words, that 'truth' as such, is relative to the individual who maintains it; and the knowledge that the individual receives about anything in the world is relative to his experience and prior knowledge about that subject. (Skepticism's ancient origins (Part I))
Therefore, the acquisition of knowledge as such would be limited to an individual's own capabilities of the assimilation of such knowledge. Therefore, all knowledge is subjective, and never is objective. This therefore means that there are no real universal truths; truth is seen by the several different people who perceive it, in as many different ways, depending on their own perception and previous knowledge of it. This also means that one can interpret the truth with his own perception, and therefore, there cannot be just one single truth about anything in the world. It was in this way that Protagoras denied the presence of so called 'absolutes', and this fact was extended to the moral judgments that he made, as well. However, he did have to concede to one particular theory, that the very concept of law did indeed reflect the desire of a particular culture to maintain a sense of moral order in the society.
Although Protagoras became a great teacher, he was eventually accused of being completely impious, by Pythodorus, an Athenian political leader, especially after Protagoras released his book entitled "On the Gods," in which the first opening statement was "About the gods, I am not able to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form; for the factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of human life," a statement that reportedly revealed Protagoras's basic skepticism about both natural as well as moral 'absolutes', and which also revealed his skepticism in theological and spiritual matters. (Skepticism's ancient origins (Part I)) Protagoras is remembered as a philosopher and the anti-geometrician who steadfastly and stubbornly and also irreverently maintained that 'man' is the 'measure' of all things, and that the most important things were what man is and how he is, and what he is not, and how he is not. (Camilo Jose Cela, Nobel Lecture)
It is a fact that 'Amoralism' as such is more often than not attributed to the Sophists, and the reason for this tendency is that these early philosophers may have found it extremely difficult to comprehend the nature of man's knowledge and the nature of 'absolute truth', as we know it today. However, Protagoras in fact utilized a less radical position in which to expound on his theories, and his basic starting point was not so much Skepticism as relativism. Protagoras did not however, apply this principle of relativism to all moral questions, but in fact limited it according to the principle of utility, and this reveals that he was a pragmatist and a utilitarian in his heart. His theory of 'Relativity' wherein he explained that how things exist for one individual may not exist in the same way for others is one of the more important theories of the time, and his point was that however he was able to see things, that way would be true for him and not for the next person, and the way in which that other person would be able to see things would exist for that person and not for himself; if one saw things differently, then that would exist for him and not for others. Therefore, there is neither absolute truth, because all things are relative, and neither is there a true falsehood. (Relativism)
However, the problem that Protagoras encountered while expounding on these beliefs was that, in his profession as a teacher, where he would have to basically...
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