 The point just made is crucial for a correct reconstruction of the overall meaning of Protagoras’ position. The transition to a broader conception of human activities (not only sense-perceptions but human judgements as a whole) brings out one aspect of the thesis that scholars have all too often overlooked. From the example of wind it seems that Protagoras was addressing the problem of human knowledge in abstract terms, by examining the general ways in which the process of knowledge-acquisition unfolds—in other words, by investigating what happens to a subject X who at a given moment t experiences sensation f (let us think of the example of the wind). This is not correct. It is certainly true that Protagoras’ thesis was concerned with human knowledge. However, it is not true that it focused on it in an “abstract” way, as though men could be stimulated from the outside so as to study their reactions at given moments and in specific circumstances. This approach might work in the case of the wind, but not in that of judgements concerning what is good or bad. “Man” refers to the individual, yet not to a generic, impersonal, subject: Protagoras has concrete, historically well-defined people in mind, with their ideas and prejudices. What is meant by “man”, therefore, is each person with his or her own personal history, experiences, and expectations with a past and a future, i.e., people whose judgements largely reflect their individual experience. When I claim that a certain thing or action is good (or beautiful or unjust), I do so on the basis of a series of ideas and opinions that I have acquired over the course of my life and that I have continued to put to test through my engagement with facts—in other words, on the basis of my experience, which is different from that of other people. The true measure, then, is not man in the abstract sense but rather each individual’s experience (Mansfeld 1981: 44–46). Clearly this claim also carries a polemical undertone with respect to the so-called “masters of truth”, that is, philosophers like Parmenides (see also 80B2 DK), for whom terms such as “man” and “opinion” were synonymous with error, and the poets who claimed to be divinely inspired. There is no privileged access to any divine or higher reality. The ultimate purpose of Protagoras’ statement is to re-evaluate human experiences.