In this presentation on Plato's Protagoras, Roger goes far beyond a standard academic read of the dialogue, arguing that even the most respected scholarly editions (like the Bollingen edition) miss what's actually happening in the text. Mr. Weir frames the dialogue as a hidden battle between Socrates, who represents the pursuit of the soul's real nature, and Protagoras, the great sophist whose spellbinding rhetoric offers only appearance and image rather than truth. Along the way, the lecture unpacks Plato's buried symbolism—quotations from Homer's Odyssey and Iliad, the archetype of the Gorgon/Medusa, and the recurring theme of "equanimity" between mind and voice—to show how the dialogue's structure mirrors its philosophical content. Touching on comparisons to Jung, Faulkner, Kipling, and Eastern concepts like Prajnaparamita, this is a dense, discursive exploration of how Socratic dialogue works as a spiritual technology for self-discovery, not just an argument to be won.

This is the fifth presentation in a series on Plato created and presented by Roger Weir.

More information about these presentations can be found at
https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato
https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/platos-theory-of-education
https://sharedpresencefoundation.org/presentations/plato-ii

More presentations by Roger Weir are available at the Shared Presence Foundation website and on our YouTube channel