Ignorance in Plato’s Protagoras

What is it about?

Plato’s Socrates famously professes to lack the knowledge that he is dedicated to pursuing. In the literature, it is common to infer that Socrates is professing to be ignorant. This inference is made under the assumption that ignorance just is a lack of knowledge. With this assumption, insofar as we understand what knowledge is, we will automatically understand what ignorance is; ignorance does not have to be studied in its own right. In this paper, I argue that the assumption at issue is mistaken. As I show, Socrates has a rich account of ignorance, which cannot be fully captured in terms of a lack of knowledge. In the Protagoras, as well as other Socratic dialogues, ignorance is conceived to be a substantive, structural psychic flaw: the soul’s domination by inferior elements that are by nature fit to be ruled instead of ruling. Understood in this way, ignorance is characterized by both false occurrent beliefs about evaluative matters in specific situations and an enduring deception about one’s psychic condition. On this interpretation, there is—unlike the common assumption—a middle ground between knowledge and ignorance, occupied by individuals who are alert to the deceptive nature of appearances. This interpretation of ignorance has broader impact on how to understand defects that are prominent on the dark side of humanity, such as akrasia, moral vices, and epistemic vices. As I suggest, they are products or forms of ignorance.

Featured Image