n traveling teachers and practical philosophers who earned a living teaching rhetoric (speech and clever argumentation) to men who wanted to get ahead
n focus on man (humanism), not on cosmology
n ethics - man’s end or goal is achieving pleasure (hedonism) and power
n (virtue in general - efficiency at a task, particularly the task of being human)
n man’s “virtue” (arete) are those things which lead to pleasure, namely cleverness, relativism, skill in arguing, etc. (Contrast with Socrates below.)
n Protagoras - “Man is the measure of all things.”
n truth is found on the level of sensation – what you sense is true for you
n civil law is merely custom; it is not rooted in God or nature (relativism)
n Gorgias - clever skepticism; claimed the following:
1. Nothing exists
2. If anything exists, we can’t know it
3. If we can know anything, we can’t communicate it
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