Title: Unseen Teachers and the Limits of Diversity
Abstract: In Plato’s Protagoras, Socrates raises the question of whether the art of citizenship can be taught; he then takes the position that it cannot. To support his claim, Socrates observes that the Athenians themselves act as though virtue cannot be taught and, in fact, the very best Athenians do not pass virtue on to their sons, either by undertaking to teach it themselves or by hiring someone else to teach it to them. Protagoras, though, having presented himself as one who will form his students into good citizens by making them better and better persons every day, seeks to refute Socrates’ argument (318b and 319a). Towards the end of his reply to Socrates, Protagoras turns on him and says, “As it is, Socrates, you affect delicate sensibilities, because everyone here is a teacher of virtue, to the best of his ability, and you can’t see a single one. You might as well look for a teacher of Greek; you wouldn’t find a single one of those either” (327e–328a). This is a striking observation that Plato gives to Protagoras, namely that there are some things for which teachers are all around even when neither seen nor recognized. It is just this — something that everyone teaches but for which no teachers are seen — that, it will be argued, marks a decisive boundary of diversity, in fact a limit of tolerable diversity.