Protagoras · Philosophy

Man Is the Measure

Protagoras opened his book <em>Truth</em> with the most famous sentence of the sophistic age: &lsquo;Man is the measure of all things - of the things that are, that they are; of the things that are not, that they are not.&rsquo; With it he made human experience, rather than an independent reality, the standard of what is true.

What you'll be able to recall

You learned that Protagoras declared &lsquo;man is the measure of all things - of the things that are, that they are; of the things that are not, that they are not.&rsquo; This makes the human perceiver, not an independent reality, the standard of truth: things are for each person as they appear to that person. The wi…

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