PROTAGORAS

FROM COSMOLOGY TO ANTHROPOLOGY

Abstract

The thought of the sophist Protagoras would be, within the scope of Greek philosophy, a new way of understanding the world, different from its predecessors. We see in Protagoras the passage from cosmology to anthropology. Of course, this novelty did not happen suddenly. Anthropology is already in the germ in Heraclitus, who, together with Parmenides, exerted a great influence on Protagoras. It is against the backdrop of these two apparently antagonistic thoughts and at the height of democracy that a new doctrine emerges, a shift from thinking about physis to thinking about man.