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The word sophistry . Aristotle brilliantly clarifies his position in the very first sentence of his book, The Art of Rhetoric , where he refers to rhetoric as the counterpart to Plato's logic. To start with, it is interesting to note that this dialogue does not take a proper noun (the name of . Platos claim is that the capacity to divide and synthesise in accordance with one form is required for the true expertise of logos. His teachings were based on morality and he believed that the purpose of life is happiness. 530 Words 3 Pages Good Essays The sophist uses the power of persuasive speech to construct or create images of the world and is thus a kind of enchanter and imitator. Nehamas relates this overall purpose to the Socratic elenchus, suggesting that Socrates disavowal of knowledge and of the capacity to teach aret distances him from the sophists. He is depicted by Plato as suggesting that sophists are the ruin of all those who come into contact with them and as advocating their expulsion from the city (Meno, 91c-92c). This aspect of Platos critique of sophistry seems particularly apposite in regard to Gorgias rhetoric, both as found in the Platonic dialogue and the extant fragments attributed to the historical Gorgias. Caddo Gap Press has also published over 50 books during the past two decades, and continues to welcome book ideas that fit our "Progressive Education Publications" focus. The elimination of the criterion refers to the rejection of a standard that would enable us to distinguish clearly between knowledge and opinion about being and nature. Is There a Sophistic Ethics?, Harrison, E.L. 1964. The need for theSophists mainly arose because Greece, a small number of city-states at the time, had won the waragainst the mighty Persian army. No doubt suspicion of intellectuals among the many was a factor. The low standing of the sophists in Athenian public opinion does not stem from a single source. There is near scholarly consensus that Protagoras is referring here to each human being as the measure of what is rather than humankind as such, although the Greek term for human hanthrpos certainly does not rule out the second interpretation. But this does not entail the illegitimacy of Platos distinction. Here Plato reintroduces the difference between true and false rhetoric, alluded to in the Phaedrus, according to which the former presupposes the capacity to see the one in the many (Phaedrus, 266b). For Hegel (1995/1840) the sophists were subjectivists whose sceptical reaction to the objective dogmatism of the presocratics was synthesised in the work of Plato and Aristotle. Both Derrida and Foucault have argued in their writings on philosophy and culture that ancient sophism was a more significant critical strategy against Platonism, the hidden core in both of their views for philosophy's suspect impulses, than traditional academics fully appreciate. Australia, The Distinction Between Philosophy and Sophistry. This in large part explains why contemporary scholarship on the distinction between philosophy and sophistry has tended to focus on a difference in moral character. is generally considered as a member of the sophistic movement, despite his disavowal of the capacity to teach aret (Meno, 96c). The inconsistency between what the sophists claim to teach and their actual ability is Isocrates' second point. ), Bett, R. 1989. Protagoras thus seems to want it both ways, insofar as he removes an objective criterion of truth while also asserting that some subjective states are better than others. Others ahistorically blamed Plato and Aristotle for "brainwash [ing]" citizens into believing it was their duty to strive for virtue, thus "denying them independent thought" and emphasizing . Socrates, although perhaps with some degree of irony, was fond of calling himself a pupil of Prodicus (Protagoras, 341a; Meno, 96d). As Hadot eloquently puts it, citing Greek and Roman sources, traditionally people who developed an apparently philosophical discourse without trying to live their lives in accordance with their discourse, and without their discourse emanating from their life experience, were called sophists (2004, 174). It is perhaps significant in this context that Protagoras seems to have been the source of the sophistic claim to make the weaker argument defeat the stronger parodied by Aristophanes. Section 3 examines three themes that have often been taken as characteristic of sophistic thought: the distinction between nature and convention, relativism about knowledge and truth and the power of speech. In democratic Athens of the latter fifth century B.C.E., however, aret was increasingly understood in terms of the ability to influence ones fellow citizens in political gatherings through rhetorical persuasion; the sophistic education both grew out of and exploited this shift. Antimoerus of Mende, described as one of the most distinguished of Protagorass pupils, is there receiving professional instruction in order to become a Sophist, and it is clear that this was already a normal way of entering the profession. it increasingly became associated with success in public affairs through rhetorical persuasion. Understandably given their educational program, the sophists placed great emphasis upon the power of speech (logos). Caddo Gap Press, founded in 1989, specializes in publication of peer-reviewed scholarly journals in the fields of multicultural education, teacher education, and the social foundations of education. Stoicism. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics, and mathematics. The followers of Zeus, or philosophy, Socrates suggests, educate the object of their ers to imitate and partake in the ways of the God. Aristotle rejected Plato's theory of Forms but not the notion of form itself. He did not reveal answers. He claimed that the sophists were selling the wrong education to the rich people. The first accusation is that sophists make big promises that they cannot fulfill, especially relating to having the ability to teach the virtue and justice. was the most prominent member of the sophistic movement and Plato reports he was the first to charge fees using that title (Protagoras, 349a). In what are usually taken to be the early Platonic dialogues, we find Socrates employing a dialectical method of refutation referred to as the elenchus. But this was an individual matter, and attempts by earlier historians of philosophy to divide the Sophistic movement into periods in which the nature of the instruction was altered are now seen to fail for lack of evidence. Hulme Professor Emeritus of Greek, Victoria University of Manchester. The names survive of nearly 30 Sophists properly so called, of whom the most important were Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Prodicus, and Thrasymachus. Section 4 will return to the question of whether this is the best way to think about the distinction between philosophy and sophistry. We work with a variety of scholar editors and sponsoring educational organizations with the intent of sharing with the field the most recent, most provocative, and most progressive thinking in education. One of the more intriguing aspects of Protagoras life and work is his association with the great Athenian general and statesman Pericles (c. 495-429 B.C.E.). The biographical details surrounding Antiphon the sophist (c. 470-411 B.C.) 5. The basic thrust of Antiphons argument is that laws and conventions are designed as a constraint upon our natural pursuit of pleasure. For the utilitarian English classicist George Grote (1904), the sophists were progressive thinkers who placed in question the prevailing morality of their time. He travelled extensively around Greece, earning large sums of money by giving lessons in rhetoric and epideictic speeches. Theognis, for example, writing in the sixth century B.C.E., counsels Cyrnos to accommodate his discourse to different companions, because such cleverness (sophi) is superior to even a great excellence (Elegiac Poems, 1072, 213). Updates? Accused and convicted of corrupting the youth, his only real crime was embarrassing and irritating a number of important people. Socrates converses with sophists in Euthydemus, Hippias Major, Hippias Minor, Gorgias, Protagoras and the Republic and discusses sophists at length in the Apology, Sophist, Statesman and Theaetetus. In C.A. While the great philosopher Aristotle criticized the Sophists' misuse of rhetoric, he did see it as a useful tool in helping audiences see and understand truth. Gorgias original contribution to philosophy is sometimes disputed, but the fragments of his works On Not Being or Nature and Helen discussed in detail in section 3c feature intriguing claims concerning the power of rhetorical speech and a style of argumentation reminiscent of Parmenides and Zeno. Powell (ed. Hippocrates is so eager to meet Protagoras that he wakes Socrates in the early hours of the morning, yet later concedes that he himself would be ashamed to be known as a sophist by his fellow citizens. Platos dialogue Protagoras describes something like a conference of Sophists at the house of Callias in Athens just before the Peloponnesian War (431404 bce). However, since the publication of fragments from his On Truth in the early twentieth century he has been regarded as a major representative of the sophistic movement. This is not to deny that the ethical orientation of the sophist is likely to lead to a certain kind of philosophising, namely one which attempts to master nature, human and external, rather than understand it as it is. He is depicted as brash and aggressive, with views on the nature of justice that will be examined in section 3a. One might think that a denial of Platos demarcation between philosophy and sophistry remains well-motivated simply because the historical sophists made genuine contributions to philosophy. In this we behave like barbarians towards one another. Apart from supporting his argument that aret can be taught, this account suggests a defence of nomos on the grounds that nature by itself is insufficient for the flourishing of man considered as a political animal. One difficulty this passage raises is that while Protagoras asserted that all beliefs are equally true, he also maintained that some are superior to others because they are more subjectively fulfilling for those who hold them. Barney, R. 2006. This in large part explains the so-called Socratic paradox that virtue is knowledge. More recent attempts to explain what differentiates philosophy from sophistry have accordingly tended to focus on a difference in moral purpose or in terms of choices for different ways way of life, as Aristotle elegantly puts it (Metaphysics IV, 2, 1004b24-5). . Antilogic is the method of proceeding from a given argument, usually that offered by an opponent, towards the establishment of a contrary or contradictory argument in such a way that the opponent must either abandon his first position or accept both positions. The endless contention of astronomers, politicians and philosophers is taken to demonstrate that no logos is definitive. As a consequence, so the story goes, his books were burnt and he drowned at sea while departing Athens. The sophists were itinerant teachers. Plato's Apology of Socrates. Before this, however, it is useful to sketch the biographies and interests of the most prominent sophists and also consider some common themes in their thought. Disavowing his ability to compete with the expertise of Gorgias and Prodicus in this respect, Socrates nonetheless admits his knowledge of the erotic things, a subject about which he claims to know more than any man who has come before or indeed any of those to come (Theages, 128b). We ought to listen impartially but not divide our attention equally: More should go to the wiser speaker and less to the more unlearned In this way our meeting would take a most attractive turn, for you, the speakers, would then most surely earn the respect, rather than the praise, of those listening to you. The actual number of Sophists was clearly much larger than 30, and for about 70 years, until c. 380 bce, they were the sole source of higher education in the more advanced Greek cities. Plato and Aristotle altered the meaning again, however, when they claimed that professional teachers such as Protagoras were not seeking the truth but only victory in debate and were prepared to use dishonest means to achieve it. Platos Objections to the Sophists. The narrower use of the term to refer to professional teachers of virtue or excellence (aret) became prevalent in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E., although this should not be taken to imply the presence of a clear distinction between philosophers, such as Socrates, and sophists, such as Protagoras, Gorgias and Prodicus. In response to Socratic questioning, Gorgias asserts that rhetoric is an all-comprehending power that holds under itself all of the other activities and occupations (Gorgias, 456a). Perhaps because of the interpretative difficulties mentioned above, the sophists have been many things to many people. He asserts that these sophists do not have enough respect for the art of discourse to actually spend the time studying it thoroughly, and because they lack solid understanding of the art, they teach it incorrectly. Suspicion towards the sophists was also informed by their departure from the aristocratic model of education (paideia). Secondly, Aristophanes depiction suggests that the sophistic education reflected a decline from the heroic Athens of earlier generations. As suggested above, Plato depicts Hippias as philosophically shallow and unable to keep up with Socrates in dialectical discussion. Socrates Heeded an Internal 'Voice'. Once we attend to Platos own treatment of the distinction between philosophy and sophistry two themes quickly become clear: the mercenary character of the sophists and their overestimation of the power of speech. Firstly, much of what we think we know about individual sophists rests on very meagre evidence, and Gorgias also suggests, even more provocatively, that insofar as speech is the medium by which humans articulate their experience of the world, logos is not evocative of the external, but rather the external is what reveals logos. Most of the major Sophists were not Athenians, but they made Athens the centre of their activities, although travelling continuously. This point has been recognised by recent poststructuralist thinkers such as Jacques Derrida and Jean Francois-Lyotard in the context of their project to place in question central presuppositions of the Western philosophical tradition deriving from Plato. Socrates is Best-Known as a Moral Philosopher. Gorgias visited Athens in 427 B.C.E. It is sometimes said to have meant originally simply clever or skilled man, but the list of those to whom Greek authors applied the term in its earlier sense makes it probable that it was rather more restricted in meaning. Journal of Thought is a nationally and internationally respected, peer-reviewed scholarly journal sponsored by the Society of Philosophy and History of Education. His texts shaped philosophy from Late Antiquity, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. 1983. The first topic will be discussed in section 3b. The philosopher is someone who strives after wisdom a friend or lover of wisdom not someone who possesses wisdom as a finished product, as the sophists claimed to do and as their name suggests. There is a distinction here. Phillips, A.A. and Willcock, M.M (eds.). Gill and P. Pellegrin (eds.). In the Sophist, in fact, Plato implies that the Socratic technique of dialectical refutation represents a kind of noble sophistry (Sophist, 231b). The dictum of Protagoras can be viewed against the background of earlier Greek philosophy and as part of the sophists' critique of the efforts of earlier thinkers to understand their . Nevertheless, Gorgias is commonly associated with the . It is moreover simply misleading to say that the sophists were in all cases unconcerned with truth, as to assert the relativity of truth is itself to make a truth claim. The reason for this is because he felt the masses would become ignorant which causes democracies to fail. In mathematics he is attributed with the discovery of a curve the quadratrix used to trisect an angle. All who have persuaded people, Gorgias says, do so by moulding a false logos. Gorgias of Leontini (c.485 c.390 B.C.E.) Athens was a democracy, and although its limits were such that Thucydides could say it was governed by one man, Pericles, it nonetheless gave opportunities for a successful political career to citizens of the most diverse backgrounds, provided they could impress their audiences sufficiently in the council and the assembly. The Theages, a Socratic dialogue whose authorship some scholars have disputed, but which expresses sentiments consistent with other Platonic dialogues, makes this point with particular clarity. In the fifth century B.C.E. It can thus be argued that the search for the sophist and distinction between philosophy and sophistry are not only central themes in the Platonic dialogues, but constitutive of the very idea and practice of philosophy, at least in its original sense as articulated by Plato. The related questions as to what a sophist is and how we can distinguish the philosopher from the sophist were taken very seriously by Plato. Interpretation of Protagoras thesis has always been a matter of controversy. The historical and philological difficulties confronting an interpretation of the sophists are significant. Deciding that the best way to discharge his debts is to defeat his creditors in court, he attends The Thinkery, an institute of higher education headed up by the sophist Socrates. Apart from the considerations mentioned in section 1, it would be misleading to say that the sophists were unconcerned with truth or genuine theoretical investigation and Socrates is clearly guilty of fallacious reasoning in many of the Platonic dialogues. Plato, like his Socrates, differentiates the philosopher from the sophist primarily through the virtues of the philosophers soul (McKoy, 2008). Some philosophical implications of the sophistic concern with speech are considered in section 4, but in the current section it is instructive to concentrate on Gorgias account of the power of rhetorical logos. Since Homeric Greece, paideia had been the preoccupation of the ruling nobles and was based around a set of moral precepts befitting an aristocratic warrior class. The farmer Demodokos has brought his son, Theages, who is desirous of wisdom, to Socrates. Criticizing such attitudes and replacing them by rational arguments held special attraction for the young, and it explains the violent distaste which they aroused in traditionalists. Although Gorgias presents himself as moderately upstanding, the dramatic structure of Platos dialogue suggests that the defence of injustice by Polus and the appeal to the natural right of the stronger by Callicles are partly grounded in the conceptual presuppositions of Gorgianic rhetoric. The two supporters of the idea that sophistry was distinct from philosophy were Plato and Aristotle. Essentially, the motives of the Sophists were corrupt and they lacked the morality that the majority of the philosophers claimed to possess despite any refuting evidence to this fact. Gorgias is suggesting that rhetoric, as the expertise of persuasive speech, is the source of power in a quite comprehensive sense and that power is the good. For by nature we all equally, both barbarians and Greeks, have an entirely similar origin: for it is fitting to fulfil the natural satisfactions which are necessary to all men: all have the ability to fulfil these in the same way, and in all this none of us is different either as barbarian or as Greek; for we all breathe into the air with mouth and nostrils and we all eat with the hands (quoted in Untersteiner, 1954). The term sophist in classical Greek was a general appellation denoting a "wise man." They were important figures in Greece in the 4th and 5th centuries, and their social success was great. Platos Gorgias depicts the rhetorician as something of a celebrity, who either does not have well thought out views on the implications of his expertise, or is reluctant to share them, and who denies his responsibility for the unjust use of rhetorical skill by errant students. Although the sophist Thrasymachus does not employ the physis/nomos distinction in Book One of the Republic, his account of justice (338d-354c) belongs within a similar conceptual framework. Encyclopaedia Britannica's editors oversee subject areas in which they have extensive knowledge, whether from years of experience gained by working on that content or via study for an advanced degree. Logos is a notoriously difficult term to translate and can refer to thought and that about which we speak and think as well as rational speech or language. One need only follow the suggestion of the Symposium that ers is a daimonion to see that Socratic education, as presented by Plato, is concomitant with a kind of erotic concern with the beautiful and the good, considered as natural in contrast to the purely conventional. Perhaps reluctant to take on an unpromising pupil, Socrates insists that he must follow the commands of his daimonion, which will determine whether those associating with him are capable of making any progress (Theages, 129c). He is thought to have written a treatise titled On the Correctness of Names. Part of Aristotles point is that there is an element to living well that transcends speech. Socrates Stuck Out. The Sophist philosophywas very popular with the Greeks during Sophocles's time, mainly because there was a new need foreducation due to a number of things connected to the political situation at the time. He is best known for his subtle distinctions between the meanings of words. The sophists were itinerant professional teachers and intellectuals who frequented Athens and other Greek cities in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC and lasted through the Hellenistic period (323 BC-30 BC). The Socratic position, as becomes clear later in the discussion with Polus (466d-e), and is also suggested in Meno (88c-d) and Euthydemus (281d-e), is that power without knowledge of the good is not genuinely good. Callicles argues that conventional justice is a kind of slave morality imposed by the many to constrain the desires of the superior few. Lyotard views the sophists as in possession of unique insight into the sense in which discourses about what is just cannot transcend the realm of opinion and pragmatic language games (1985, 73-83). Reporting upon Gorgias speech About the Nonexistent or on Nature, Sextus says that the rhetorician, while adopting a different approach from that of Protagoras, also eliminated the criterion (DK, 82B3).