Thanks for both these responses. (I’m not really sure where to put my response to them, so it’ll go here.) On Popper on Plato, I’d definitely agree that there are better books to read on Plato, and even better introductory books. That said, as a teacher I do think there’s something to be said for books which excite people and draw them into something whose importance they otherwise might have missed. I definitely think Popper can play that role in making it dramatically clear to students what’s at stake in the kinds of questions Plato is discussing. Maybe Popper’s an especially alluring hook because he was also an important philosopher of science, and has had such a big influence outside the academy. I get the sense from the more classical liberal internet that there are plenty of young people out there for whom Popper is probably the best gateway drug to Plato, funny as that might sound. What you say about Popper’s precise influence is spot on: I’m not sure how exactly to characterize it. Hopefully I was suitably modest in my paper, but being more precise about his influence (especially compared to e.g. Strauss) would need to be tested more thoroughly, and I haven’t even thought about how to do that yet.

I’m actually really grateful you’ve raised an empirical challenge to the Protagorean claim that, when it comes to moral capacity (politikê aretê), we’re all more or less equal. As you say, we may not be, so I do wonder to what extent I should integrate that claim into the neo-Protagorean defence of democracy that I’ve been hawking over the past few years. (Here, for example). It might be better to start not (as Protagoras does) with the claim that we all have equal endowments of moral capacity, but with a claim I think he also makes, that we all have equal obligations to develop and exercise our cooperative abilities. That would actually get us to a surprisingly Aristotelian place, to the argument that participatory politics is a naturalistic good for humans, the way mice (or, at least, scratching pads) are a naturalistic good for cats. Anyway I obviously need to think more about that too. But I will say (as a kind of Parthian shot) that there might be a risk of taking the kind of moral reasoning Protagoras has in mind in too lofty a sense. After all, all it breaks down to for him is a sense of justice (dikê) and a conscience (aidôs). Oh, and also that a higher type of wisdom may be required to wield a fully-developed state apparatus — but the more participatory, democratic, and liberal the state becomes, the less fearful the responsibilities of power become, and the less impressive the qualifications that are needed to shoulder them.

That should probably be it for now, but I’ll definitely have a read of that Kraut paper. And yes, I actually had a memory of that meeting at the APA come up as I was replying to you last time. I believe we were introduced by my friend Matt Simonton. It was just after probably the most shambolic interview of my life with UT Austin. Et haec olim…Anyway thanks again for your engagement!