Universe of Platonic Thought 2020

Seminar “Paideia in Ancient Culture”

Nikolay Gursky; Tomsk State University (Tomsk, Russia), Postgraduate

The Аbducting of the payday

Paideia is not one of the sections of human knowledge, but exceptionally important question about the future. No education will create a real future unless the Protagorean man of measure is found. We understand the measure in the context of our study of abduction, thus distinguishing it from the singular statements of analysts. Abduction is a bridge to the future.

Keywords: Paideia, Protagoras, measure of things, abduction, future

Plato's Protagoras is a dialogue about upbringing. Its core is thinking about man as a measure of things. Ideas about this measure are ambiguous along the line of interpretation Protagoras-Socrates-Plato-Aristotle-Sextus Empiricus. Knowing the measure, we establish a bridge between the past and the future. Such a bridge can only be built in the experience of educating a person of measure. For two millennia, being inside the theocentric model of the world, humanity appeared to be paralyzed by the idea of a single subject controlling the world, of a single world, for a long time forgetting the self-worth of the human measure. Paideia is not one of the sections of human knowledge, but exceptionally important question about the future. No education will create a real future unless a person of measure is found. The question of measure immediately turns into differences in the idea of man: a man in General, a concrete individual, a representative of the aristocracy, a representative of democracy. Paideia expresses the hallmarks of the aristocracy, but how does it differentiate itself from the worst? Protagoras was sometimes credited with a secret intent, believing that behind the demonstrative statements of his "Aletheia" there was an invisible plan for educating the elite in a closed mode. Analysts who are used to dealing with atomistic statements do not notice that in "Antilogies" Protagoras is not a logical ambiguity, but an analogical one - they are free from the paradoxes of self-reference. But to see this difference is to enter the circle of the chosen, to whom "Paideia opens the eyes". "The divine nature of man must be cultivated as well as good grapes." The Paideia of Protagoras can be reinterpreted through consideration of the method of abduction - through hypothetical judgments that never become General and unambiguous statements. Abduction as a kind of abduction of "man" from the captivity of universal concepts and its dissolution in the political set with its disjunctive syntheses.