Educational Synousia of Protagoras and Socrates -The Birth of Ironist as Ignorant Sophist-

‘Socrates and sophists walked different paths like parallel lines that cannot meet. Socrates deserves to be praised as great sage, but sophists deserve to be blamed as corrupt professional teachers.’ This paper aims to challenge and refute this widely-accepted academic opinion about Socrates and sophists by illuminating the educational intercourse called ‘synousia’ between Protagoras and young Socrates. They held intensive educational synousia continuously whenever they meet, and passionately taught and learned about ‘What is arete?’, ‘What is the implications of the theory of man as the measure of all things?’, and ‘How can education transform a man to be more advanced measure?’ Through these educational synousia, Protagoras established the way of true sophist, and Socrates became an ignorant sophist as ironist who carried out unprecedented educational activities with his famous midwifery. This paper can be considered to be an interim report of long term research project trying to redescribe the reciprocal relation of Protagoras and Socrates. Although far from satisfactory, this paper argues that the original form of sophist, Protagoras’ influence on Socrates, and the entanglement of living, knowing and education of Protagoras and Socrates must be rediscussed from new perspective.