Do Chairs Exist?

[vulcanlogician]

It's best to understand that even if Protagoras wasn't a die-hard relativist, Plato wrote a dialogue depicting the idea of relativism. He presented the idea and proposed arguments for and against it. He was a philosopher. Not a historian.

-and failed at that, spectacularly, as a philosopher.  It even seems out of character for the arguments to be as bad as they are - but then you realize that it's tied up into what he wishes to assert is true.  That his beliefs depended on the loopier arguments he made for them, in the context of strawmanning other philosophers and philosophies, lol.

Yes. You are absolutely right. Plato makes straw arguments all the time. His logic can be very bad, and his ideas can be very poorly argued. Credit Aristotle for first examining logic and distinguishing good reasoning from bad reasoning. Plato didn't do that, otherwise he might not have made so many straw arguments, arguments from metaphor, etc.

Plato was also wrong about tons of stuff. Objectively wrong.

But the man had a vision. Nobody denies that. And he didn't preach the vision from on high. He supported it with logical argument. If there was one thing Plato prized, it's our reasonable nature. He advocated for logic and reason like nobody else, and he thought all arguments (even his own) should be subjected to rational scrutiny. And that's one thing he got right.

Some theories are stepping stones to better ideas. Sometimes when you knock down a bad idea, you learn something. Plato put down a bunch of ideas and said "Here. Knock these down if you can." Turns out, a bunch of them got knocked down. But it's cool. Plato really got the ball rolling for philosophy.

I appreciate that.