Yoon Cheol Lee

PhD Student

AWARDS: Durham Doctoral Fellow.

SUPERVISED BY: Dr Luca Castagnoli

TITLE: A (re)construction of Protagoras' philosophy

PROJECT DESCRIPTION:

My research concerns Protagoras’ philosophy in the context of the history of philosophy. It identifies the historical Protagoras as an empirical relativist with social and anthropological preoccupations. My project will aim at proposing a systematic comparison between his ontological and epistemological views and his social practice in political art and rhetoric, in three specific areas. First, Protagoras’ epistemology as including two parts, knowledge and agnosticism (and partly scepticism), in terms of his own criteria for knowledge. Second, Protagoras’ sophistic projects and activities closely linked with his philosophy. Third, Protagoras’ response to the debate over the correlation of onoma-logos (as related to the nomos-physis debate), with focus on his concept of logos and the intentional use of its ambiguity (in a comparison with other early thinkers such as Homer, Anaximander, Xenophanes and Plato).