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Single Idea 1659

[filed under theme 25. Social Practice / D. Justice / 3. Punishment / b. Retribution for crime ]

Full Idea

The distinction of punishment from revenge must be regarded as one of the most momentous of the conceptual discoveries ever made by humanity in the course of its slow, tortuous, precarious, emergence from barbaric tribalism. Protagoras originated it.

Gist of Idea

Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge

Source

report of Protagoras (fragments/reports [c.441 BCE]) by Gregory Vlastos - Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher p.187

Book Ref

Vlastos,Gregory: 'Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher' [CUP 1992], p.187

Related Ideas

Idea 7340 Mosaic law was the first to embody the rule of law, and equality before the law [Johnson,P]

Idea 7810 The 'Eumenides' of Aeschylus shows blood feuds replaced by law [Aeschylus, by Grayling]

The 17 ideas from Protagoras

3317 You can only state the problem of the relative warmth of an object by agreeing on the underlying object [Benardete,JA on Protagoras]
247 God is "the measure of all things", more than any man [Plato on Protagoras]
1549 Everything that exists consists in being perceived [Protagoras]
3313 If my hot wind is your cold wind, then wind is neither hot nor cold, and so not as cold as itself [Benardete,JA on Protagoras]
3305 There is no more purely metaphysical doctrine than Protagorean relativism [Benardete,JA on Protagoras]
606 Protagoras absurdly thought that the knowing or perceiving man is 'the measure of all things' [Aristotle on Protagoras]
612 Relativists think if you poke your eye and see double, there must be two things [Aristotle on Protagoras]
6016 Early sophists thought convention improved nature; later they said nature was diminished by it [Protagoras, by Miller,FD]
1580 For Protagoras the only bad behaviour is that which interferes with social harmony [Protagoras, by Roochnik]
205 Protagoras contradicts himself by saying virtue is teachable, but then that it is not knowledge [Plato on Protagoras]
1659 Protagoras seems to have made the huge move of separating punishment from revenge [Protagoras, by Vlastos]
1552 He spent public money on education, as it benefits the individual and the state [Protagoras, by Diodorus of Sicily]
1545 Protagoras was the first to claim that there are two contradictory arguments about everything [Protagoras, by Diog. Laertius]
1551 He said he didn't know whether there are gods - but this is the same as atheism [Diogenes of Oen. on Protagoras]
1547 Man is the measure of all things - of things that are, and of things that are not [Protagoras]
1553 No perceptible object is truly straight or curved [Protagoras]
532 Successful education must go deep into the soul [Protagoras]