A Quote from Protagoras

One of Plato's dialogs has Socrates arguing moral and related issues with Protagoras, portrayed here as the leader of the Sophists.

Although as usual Socrates is the vehicle for Plato's presentation of what are almost certainly Plato's own views, Protagoras has some really striking lines. I like to think of at least one of these lines as a bit of the historical Protagoras, embedded here like the DNA of a dinosaur within a mosquito within amber.

"The Athenians are right to accept advice from anyone, since it is incumbent on everyone to share in that sort of excellence, or else there can be no city at all."

That speaks to the greatness of Periclean Athens, when it attracted the best minds from all around the Hellenic world, an extensive world stretching from the coast of Asia Minor to Sicily. Athens would, in that sense "accept advice from anyone. A closed city in in danger of becoming "no city at all." That brief passage speaks to the idea of an Open Society.

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