Protagoras Biography

Protagoras was a Greek philosopher, thinker and teacher. He is considered as the most famous of Greek Sophists. In fact, he is attributed for inventing the role of a professional Sophist. He is the one who introduced the contemporary dialogue on morality and politics to Athens and taught on subjects like, how human beings ought to manage their personal affairs and manage their household in the most efficient way, how to run the social affairs and most importantly, how to contribute to the society in general through one’s words and actions. In his role as a Sophist, which he continued for over 40 years, he continually raised the questions whether or not virtue is something that can be taught. He also professed relativism, which meant that truth is an individual based concept as what is true for one person can be false for another, depending on their varied perceptions. He was also a propagator of agnosticism and got into trouble with the Athenians as he claimed his skeptic thoughts over the existence of God in his book ‘On the Gods’.