Ancient
Greek Thought
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. In
return for a fee, the sophists offered young wealthy Greek men an education in
aretē (virtue or excellence), thereby attaining wealth and fame while also
arousing significant antipathy. Prior to the fifth century B.C.E., aretē was
predominately associated with aristocratic warrior virtues such as courage and
physical strength. In democratic Athens of the latter fifth century B.C.E.,
however, aretē was increasingly understood in terms of the ability to influence
one’s fellow citizens in political gatherings through rhetorical persuasion;
the sophistic education both grew out of and exploited this shift. The most
famous representatives of the sophistic movement are Protagoras, Gorgias,
Antiphon, Hippias, Prodicus and Thrasymachus.
The
historical and philological difficulties confronting an interpretation of the
sophists are significant. Only a handful of sophistic texts have survived and
most of what we know of the sophists is drawn from second-hand testimony,
fragments and the generally hostile depiction of them in Plato’s dialogues.
The
philosophical problem of the nature of sophistry is arguably even more
formidable. Due in large part to the influence of Plato and Aristotle, the term
sophistry has come to signify the deliberate use of fallacious reasoning,
intellectual charlatanism and moral unscrupulousness. It is, as the article
explains, an oversimplification to think of the historical sophists in these
terms because they made genuine and original contributions to Western thought.
Plato and Aristotle nonetheless established their view of what constitutes
legitimate philosophy in part by distinguishing their own activity – and that
of Socrates – from the sophists. If one is so inclined, sophistry can thus be
regarded, in a conceptual as well as historical sense, as the ‘other’ of philosophy.
Perhaps
because of the interpretative difficulties mentioned above, the sophists have
been many things to many people. 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. For the
utilitarian English classicist George Grote (1904), the sophists were
progressive thinkers who placed in question the prevailing morality of their
time. More recent work by French theorists such as Jacques Derrida (1981) and
Jean Francois-Lyotard (1985) suggests affinities between the sophists and
postmodernism.
1. Introduction
The
term sophist (sophistēs) derives from the Greek words for wisdom (sophia) and
wise (sophos). Since Homer at least, these terms had a wide range of
application, extending from practical know-how and prudence in public affairs
to poetic ability and theoretical knowledge. Notably, the term sophia could be
used to describe disingenuous cleverness long before the rise of the sophistic
movement. Theognis, for example, writing in the sixth century B.C.E., counsels
Cyrnos to accommodate his discourse to different companions, because such
cleverness (sophiē) is superior to even a great excellence (Elegiac Poems,
1072, 213).
In the
fifth century B.C.E. the term sophistēs was still broadly applied to ‘wise
men’, including poets such as Homer and Hesiod, the Seven Sages, the Ionian
‘physicists’ and a variety of seers and prophets. The narrower use of the term
to refer to professional teachers of virtue or excellence (aretē) 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. This
much is evident from Aristophanes’ play The Clouds (423 B.C.E.), in which
Socrates is depicted as a sophist and Prodicus praised for his wisdom.
Aristophanes’
play is a good starting point for understanding Athenian attitudes towards
sophists. The Clouds depicts the tribulations of Strepsiades, an elderly
Athenian citizen with significant debts. 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.
When he fails to learn the art of speaking in The Thinkery, Strepsiades
persuades his initially reluctant son, Pheidippides, to accompany him. Here
they encounter two associates of Socrates, the Stronger and the Weaker
Arguments, who represent lives of justice and self-discipline and injustice and
self-indulgence respectively. On the basis of a popular vote, the Weaker
Argument prevails and leads Pheidippides into The Thinkery for an education in
how to make the weaker argument defeat the stronger. Strepsiades later revisits
The Thinkery and finds that Socrates has turned his son into a pale and useless
intellectual. When Pheidippides graduates, he subsequently prevails not only
over Strepsiades’ creditors, but also beats his father and offers a persuasive
rhetorical justification for the act. As Pheidippides prepares to beat his
mother, Strepsiades’ indignation motivates him to lead a violent mob attack on
The Thinkery.
Aristophanes’
depiction of Socrates the sophist is revealing on at least three levels. In the
first instance, it demonstrates that the distinction between Socrates and his
sophistic counterparts was far from clear to their contemporaries. Although
Socrates did not charge fees and frequently asserted that all he knew was that
he was ignorant of most matters, his association with the sophists reflects
both the indeterminacy of the term sophist and the difficulty, at least for the
everyday Athenian citizen, of distinguishing his methods from theirs. Secondly,
Aristophanes’ depiction suggests that the sophistic education reflected a
decline from the heroic Athens of earlier generations. Thirdly, the attribution
to the sophists of intellectual deviousness and moral dubiousness predates
Plato and Aristotle.
Hostility
towards sophists was a significant factor in the decision of the Athenian dēmos
to condemn Socrates to the death penalty for impiety. Anytus, who was one of
Socrates’ accusers at his trial, was clearly unconcerned with details such as
that the man he accused did not claim to teach aretē or extract fees for so
doing. 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). Equally as revealing, in terms of attitudes towards
the sophists, is Socrates’ discussion with Hippocrates, a wealthy young
Athenian keen to become a pupil of Protagoras (Protagoras, 312a). 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.
Plato
depicts Protagoras as well aware of the hostility and resentment engendered by
his profession (Protagoras, 316c-e). It is not surprising, Protagoras suggests,
that foreigners who profess to be wise and persuade the wealthy youth of
powerful cities to forsake their family and friends and consort with them would
arouse suspicion. Indeed, Protagoras claims that the sophistic art is an
ancient one, but that sophists of old, including poets such as Homer, Hesiod
and Simonides, prophets, seers and even physical trainers, deliberately did not
adopt the name for fear of persecution. Protagoras says that while he has
adopted a strategy of openly professing to be a sophist, he has taken other
precautions – perhaps including his association with the Athenian general
Pericles – in order to secure his safety.
The
low standing of the sophists in Athenian public opinion does not stem from a
single source. No doubt suspicion of intellectuals among the many was a factor.
New money and democratic decision-making, however, also constituted a threat to
the conservative Athenian aristocratic establishment. This threatening social
change is reflected in the attitudes towards the concept of excellence or
virtue (aretē) alluded to in the summary above. Whereas in the Homeric epics
aretē generally denotes the strength and courage of a real man, in the second
half of the fifth century B.C.E. it increasingly became associated with success
in public affairs through rhetorical persuasion.
In the
context of Athenian political life of the late fifth century B.C.E. the
importance of skill in persuasive speech, or rhetoric, cannot be
underestimated. The development of democracy made mastery of the spoken word
not only a precondition of political success but also indispensable as a form
of self-defence in the event that one was subject to a lawsuit. The sophists
accordingly answered a growing need among the young and ambitious. Meno, an
ambitious pupil of Gorgias, says that the aretē – and hence function – of a man
is to rule over people, that is, manage his public affairs so as to benefit his
friends and harm his enemies (73c-d). This is a long-standing ideal, but one
best realised in democratic Athens through rhetoric. Rhetoric was thus the core
of the sophistic education (Protagoras, 318e), even if most sophists professed
to teach a broader range of subjects.
Suspicion
towards the sophists was also informed by their departure from the aristocratic
model of education (paideia). 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 business model of the sophists
presupposed that aretē could be taught to all free citizens, a claim that
Protagoras implicitly defends in his great speech regarding the origins of
justice. The sophists were thus a threat to the status quo because they made an
indiscriminate promise – assuming capacity to pay fees – to provide the young
and ambitious with the power to prevail in public life.
One
could therefore loosely define sophists as paid teachers of aretē, where the
latter is understood in terms of the capacity to attain and exercise political
power through persuasive speech. This is only a starting point, however, and
the broad and significant intellectual achievement of the sophists, which we
will consider in the following two sections, has led some to ask whether it is
possible or desirable to attribute them with a unique method or outlook that
would serve as a unifying characteristic while also differentiating them from
philosophers.
Scholarship
in the nineteenth century and beyond has often fastened on method as a way of
differentiating Socrates from the sophists. For Henry Sidgwick (1872, 288-307),
for example, whereas Socrates employed a question-and-answer method in search
of the truth, the sophists gave long epideictic or display speeches for the
purposes of persuasion. It seems difficult to maintain a clear methodical
differentiation on this basis, given that Gorgias and Protagoras both claimed
proficiency in short speeches and that Socrates engages in long eloquent
speeches – many in mythical form – throughout the Platonic dialogues. 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. A further consideration is that Socrates is guilty of fallacious
reasoning in many of the Platonic dialogues, although this point is less
relevant if we assume that Socrates’ logical errors are unintentional.
G.B.
Kerferd (1981a) has proposed a more nuanced set of methodological criteria to
differentiate Socrates from the sophists. According to Kerferd, the sophists
employed eristic and antilogical methods of argument, whereas Socrates
disdained the former and saw the latter as a necessary but incomplete step on
the way towards dialectic. Plato uses the term eristic to denote the practice –
it is not strictly speaking a method – of seeking victory in argument without
regard for the truth. We find a representation of eristic techniques in Plato’s
dialogue Euthydemus, where the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysiodorous
deliberately use egregiously fallacious arguments for the purpose of
contradicting and prevailing over their opponent. 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.
This method of argumentation was employed by most of the sophists, and examples
are found in the works of Protagoras and Antiphon.
Kerferd’s
claim that we can distinguish between philosophy and sophistry by appealing to
dialectic remains problematic, however. 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. As Nehamas has argued (1990), while the
elenchus is distinguishable from eristic because of its concern with the truth,
it is harder to differentiate from antilogic because its success is always
dependent upon the capacity of interlocutors to defend themselves against
refutation in a particular case. In Plato’s “middle” and “later” dialogues, on
the other hand, according to Nehamas’ interpretation, Plato associates
dialectic with knowledge of the forms, but this seemingly involves an
epistemological and metaphysical commitment to a transcendent ontology that
most philosophers, then and now, would be reluctant to uphold.
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). Section 4 will return to the question of
whether this is the best way to think about the distinction between philosophy
and sophistry. 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.
2. The Sophists
a. Protagoras
Protagoras
of Abdera (c. 490-420 B.C.E.) was the most prominent member of the sophistic
movement and Plato reports he was the first to charge fees using that title
(Protagoras, 349a). Despite his animus towards the sophists, Plato depicts
Protagoras as quite a sympathetic and dignified figure.
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.).
Pericles, who was the most influential statesman in Athens for more than 30
years, including the first two years of the Peloponnesian War, seems to have
held a high regard for philosophers and sophists, and Protagoras in particular,
entrusting him with the role of drafting laws for the Athenian foundation city
of Thurii in 444 B.C.E.
From a
philosophical perspective, Protagoras is most famous for his relativistic
account of truth – in particular the claim that ‘man is the measure of all
things’ – and his agnosticism concerning the Gods. The first topic will be
discussed in section 3b. Protagoras’ agnosticism is famously articulated in the
claim that ‘concerning the gods I am not in a position to know either that (or
how) they are or that (or how) they are not, or what they are like in
appearance; for there are many things that prevent knowledge, the obscurity of
the matter and the brevity of human life’ (DK, 80B4). This seems to express a
form of religious agnosticism not completely foreign to educated Athenian
opinion. Despite this, according to tradition, Protagoras was convicted of
impiety towards the end of his life. As a consequence, so the story goes, his
books were burnt and he drowned at sea while departing Athens. 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.
Plato
suggests that Protagoras sought to differ his educational offering from that of
other sophists, such as Hippias, by concentrating upon instruction in aretē in
the sense of political virtue rather than specialised studies such as astronomy
and mathematics (Protagoras, 318e).
Apart
from his works Truth and On the Gods, which deal with his relativistic account
of truth and agnosticism respectively, Diogenes Laertius says that Protagoras
wrote the following books: Antilogies, Art of Eristics, Imperative, On
Ambition, On Incorrect Human Actions, On those in Hades, On Sciences, On
Virtues, On Wrestling, On the Original State of Things and Trial over a Fee.
b. Gorgias
Gorgias
of Leontini (c.485 - c.390 B.C.E.) is generally considered as a member of the
sophistic movement, despite his disavowal of the capacity to teach aretē (Meno,
96c). The major focus of Gorgias was rhetoric and given the importance of
persuasive speaking to the sophistic education, and his acceptance of fees, it
is appropriate to consider him alongside other famous sophists for present purposes.
Gorgias
visited Athens in 427 B.C.E. as the leader of an embassy from Leontini with the
successful intention of persuading the Athenians to make an alliance against
Syracuse. He travelled extensively around Greece, earning large sums of money
by giving lessons in rhetoric and epideictic speeches.
Plato’s
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 Gorgias presents himself as
moderately upstanding, the dramatic structure of Plato’s 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.
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. Gorgias is also
credited with other orations and encomia and a technical treatise on rhetoric
titled At the Right Moment in Time.
c. Antiphon
The
biographical details surrounding Antiphon the sophist (c. 470-411 B.C.) are
unclear – one unresolved issue is whether he should be identified with Antiphon
of Rhamnus (a statesman and teacher of rhetoric who was a member of the
oligarchy which held power in Athens briefly in 411 B.C.E.). 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.
On
Truth, which features a range of positions and counterpositions on the
relationship between nature and convention (see section 3a below), is sometimes
considered an important text in the history of political thought because of its
alleged advocacy of egalitarianism:
Those
born of illustrious fathers we respect and honour, whereas those who come from
an undistinguished house we neither respect nor honour. In this we behave like
barbarians towards one another. 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).
Whether
this statement should be taken as expressing the actual views of Antiphon, or
rather as part of an antilogical presentation of opposing views on justice
remains an open question, as does whether such a position rules out the
identification of Antiphon the sophist with the oligarchical Antiphon of
Rhamnus.
d. Hippias
The
exact dates for Hippias of Elis are unknown, but scholars generally assume that
he lived during the same period as Protagoras. Whereas Plato’s depictions of
Protagoras – and to a lesser extent Gorgias – indicate a modicum of respect, he
presents Hippias as a comic figure who is obsessed with money, pompous and confused.
Hippias
is best known for his polymathy (DK 86A14). His areas of expertise seem to have
included astronomy, grammar, history, mathematics, music, poetry, prose,
rhetoric, painting and sculpture. Like Gorgias and Prodicus, he served as an
ambassador for his home city. His work as a historian, which included compiling
lists of Olympic victors, was invaluable to Thucydides and subsequent
historians as it allowed for a more precise dating of past events. In
mathematics he is attributed with the discovery of a curve – the quadratrix –
used to trisect an angle.
In
terms of his philosophical contribution, Kerferd has suggested, on the basis of
Plato’s Hippias Major (301d-302b), that Hippias advocated a theory that classes
or kinds of thing are dependent on a being that traverses them. It is hard to
make much sense of this alleged doctrine on the basis of available evidence. As
suggested above, Plato depicts Hippias as philosophically shallow and unable to
keep up with Socrates in dialectical discussion.
e. Prodicus
Prodicus
of Ceos, who lived during roughly the same period as Protagoras and Hippias, is
best known for his subtle distinctions between the meanings of words. He is
thought to have written a treatise titled On the Correctness of Names.
Plato
gives an amusing account of Prodicus’ method in the following passage of the
Protagoras:
Prodicus
spoke up next: … ‘those who attend discussions such as this ought to listen
impartially, but not equally, to both interlocutors. There is a distinction
here. 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. For respect is guilelessly inherent in the souls of listeners, but praise
is all too often merely a deceitful verbal expression. And then, too, we, your
audience, would be most cheered, but not pleased, for to be cheered is to learn
something, to participate in some intellectual activity; but to be pleased has
to do with eating or experiencing some other pleasure in the body’ (337a-c).
Prodicus’
epideictic speech, The Choice of Heracles, was singled out for praise by
Xenophon (Memorabilia, II.1.21-34) and in addition to his private teaching he
seems to have served as an ambassador for Ceos (the birthplace of Simonides) on
several occasions.
Socrates,
although perhaps with some degree of irony, was fond of calling himself a pupil
of Prodicus (Protagoras, 341a; Meno, 96d).
f. Thrasymachus
Thrasymachus
was a well-known rhetorician in Athens in the latter part of the fifth century
B.C.E., but our only surviving record of his views is contained in Plato’s
Cleitophon and Book One of The Republic. He is depicted as brash and
aggressive, with views on the nature of justice that will be examined in
section 3a.
3. Major Themes of Sophistic Thought
a. Nature and Convention
The
distinction between physis (nature) and nomos (custom, law, convention) was a
central theme in Greek thought in the second half of the fifth century B.C.E.
and is especially important for understanding the work of the sophists. Before
turning to sophistic considerations of these concepts and the distinction
between them, it is worth sketching the meaning of the Greek terms.
Aristotle
defines physis as ‘the substance of things which have in themselves as such a
source of movement’ (Metaphysics, 1015a13-15). The term physis is closely
connected with the Greek verb to grow (phuō) and the dynamic aspect of physis
reflects the view that the nature of things is found in their origins and
internal principles of change. Some of the Ionian thinkers now referred to as
presocratics, including Thales and Heraclitus, used the term physis for reality
as a whole, or at least its underlying material constituents, referring to the
investigation of nature in this context as historia (inquiry) rather than
philosophy.
The
term nomos refers to a wide range of normative concepts extending from customs
and conventions to positive law. It would be misleading to regard the term as
referring only to arbitrary human conventions, as Heraclitus’ appeal to the
distinction between human nomoi and the one divine nomos (DK 22B2 and 114) makes
clear. Nonetheless, increased travel, as exemplified by the histories of
Herodotus, led to a greater understanding of the wide array of customs,
conventions and laws among communities in the ancient world. This recognition
sets up the possibility of a dichotomy between what is unchanging and according
to nature and what is merely a product of arbitrary human convention.
The
dichotomy between physis and nomos seems to have been something of a
commonplace of sophistic thought and was appealed to by Protagoras and Hippias
among others. Perhaps the most instructive sophistic account of the
distinction, however, is found in Antiphon’s fragment On Truth.
Antiphon
applies the distinction to notions of justice and injustice, arguing that the
majority of things which are considered just according to nomos are in direct
conflict with nature and hence not truly or naturally just (DK 87 A44). The
basic thrust of Antiphon’s argument is that laws and conventions are designed
as a constraint upon our natural pursuit of pleasure. In a passage suggestive
of the discussion on justice early in Plato’s Republic, Antiphon also asserts
that one should employ justice to one’s advantage by regarding the laws as
important when witnesses are present, but disregarding them when one can get
away with it. Although these arguments may be construed as part of an
antilogical exercise on nature and convention rather than prescriptions for a
life of prudent immorality, they are consistent with views on the relation
between human nature and justice suggested by Plato’s depiction of Callicles
and Thrasymachus in the Gorgias and Republic respectively.
Callicles,
a young Athenian aristocrat who may be a real historical figure or a creation
of Plato’s imagination, was not a sophist; indeed he expresses disdain for them
(Gorgias, 520a). His account of the relation between physis and nomos
nonetheless owes a debt to sophistic thought. According to Callicles, Socrates’
arguments in favour of the claim that it is better to suffer injustice than to
commit injustice trade on a deliberate ambiguity in the term justice. Callicles
argues that conventional justice is a kind of slave morality imposed by the
many to constrain the desires of the superior few. What is just according to
nature, by contrast, is seen by observing animals in nature and relations
between political communities where it can be seen that the strong prevail over
the weak. Callicles himself takes this argument in the direction of a vulgar
sensual hedonism motivated by the desire to have more than others (pleonexia),
but sensual hedonism as such does not seem to be a necessary consequence of his
account of natural justice.
}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. Like Callicles, Thrasymachus accuses Socrates of
deliberate deception in his arguments, particularly in the claim the art of
justice consists in a ruler looking after their subjects. According to
Thrasymachus, we do better to think of the ruler/ruled relation in terms of a
shepherd looking after his flock with a view to its eventual demise. Justice in
conventional terms is simply a naive concern for the advantage of another. From
another more natural perspective, justice is the rule of the stronger, insofar
as rulers establish laws which persuade the multitude that it is just for them
to obey what is to the advantage of the ruling few
An
alternative, and more edifying, account of the relation between physis and
nomos is found in Protagoras’ great speech (Protagoras, 320c-328d). According
to Protagoras’ myth, man was originally set forth by the gods into a violent
state of nature reminiscent of that later described by Hobbes. Our condition improved
when Zeus bestowed us with shame and justice; these enabled us to develop the
skill of politics and hence civilized communal relations and virtue. Apart from
supporting his argument that aretē 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.
b. Relativism
The
primary source on sophistic relativism about knowledge and/or truth is
Protagoras’ famous ‘man is the measure’ statement. Interpretation of
Protagoras’ thesis has always been a matter of controversy. Caution is needed
in particular against the temptation to read modern epistemological concerns
into Protagoras’ account and sophistic teaching on the relativity of truth more
generally.
Protagoras
measure thesis is as follows:
A
human being is the measure of all things, of those things that are, that they
are, and of those things that are not, that they are not (DK, 80B1).
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’ –hōanthrōpos– certainly does not rule out the second
interpretation. Plato’s Theaetetus (152a), however, suggests the first reading
and I will assume its correctness here. On this reading we can regard
Protagoras as asserting that if the wind, for example, feels (or seems) cold to
me and feels (or seems) warm to you, then the wind is cold for me and is warm
for you.
Another
interpretative issue concerns whether we should construe Protagoras’ statement
as primarily ontological or epistemological in intent. Scholarship by Kahn,
Owen and Kerferd among others suggests that, while the Greeks lacked a clear
distinction between existential and predicative uses of ‘to be’, they tended to
treat existential uses as short for predicative uses.
Having
sketched some of the interpretative difficulties surrounding Protagoras’
statement, we are still left with at least three possible readings (Kerferd,
1981a, 86). Protagoras could be asserting that (i) there is no mind-independent
wind at all, but merely private subjective winds (ii) there is a wind that
exists independently of my perception of it, but it is in itself neither cold
nor warm as these qualities are private (iii) there is a wind that exists
independently of my perception of it and this is both cold and warm insofar as
two qualities can inhere in the same mind-independent ‘entity’.
All
three interpretations are live options, with (i) perhaps the least plausible.
Whatever the exact import of Protagoras’ relativism, however, the following
passage from the Theaetetus suggests that it was also extended to the political
and ethical realm:
Whatever
in any particular city is considered just and admirable is just and admirable
in that city, for so long as the convention remains in place (167c).
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.
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. His appeal to better and worse beliefs could, however, be taken to
refer to the persuasiveness and pleasure induced by certain beliefs and
speeches rather than their objective truth.
The
other major source for sophistic relativism is the Dissoi Logoi, an undated and
anonymous example of Protagorean antilogic. In the Dissoi Logoi we find
competing arguments on five theses, including whether the good and the bad are
the same or different, and a series of examples of the relativity of different
cultural practices and laws. Overall the Dissoi Logoi can be taken to uphold
not only the relativity of truth but also what Barney (2006, 89) has called the
variability thesis: whatever is good in some qualified way is also bad in another
respect and the same is the case for a wide range of contrary predicates.
c. Language and Reality
Understandably
given their educational program, the sophists placed great emphasis upon the
power of speech (logos). 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. The sophists were interested in particular with
the role of human discourse in the shaping of reality. Rhetoric was the
centrepiece of the curriculum, but literary interpretation of the work of poets
was also a staple of sophistic education. 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.
The
extant fragments attributed to the historical Gorgias indicate not only
scepticism towards essential being and our epistemic access to this putative
realm, but an assertion of the omnipotence of persuasive logos to make the
natural and practical world conform to human desires. 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). 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. Whereas Protagoras asserted that
man is the measure of all things, Gorgias concentrated upon the status of truth
about being and nature as a discursive construction.
About
the Nonexistent or on Nature transgresses the injunction of Parmenides that one
cannot say of what is that it is not. Employing a series of conditional
arguments in the manner of Zeno, Gorgias asserts that nothing exists, that if
it did exist it could not be apprehended, and if it was apprehended it could
not be articulated in logos. The elaborate parody displays the paradoxical character
of attempts to disclose the true nature of beings through logos:
For
that by which we reveal is logos, but logos is not substances and existing
things. Therefore we do not reveal existing things to our comrades, but logos,
which is something other than substances (DK, 82B3)
Even
if knowledge of beings was possible, its transmission in logos would always be
distorted by the rift between substances and our apprehension and communication
of them. 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. An understanding of logos about nature as constitutive rather than
descriptive here supports the assertion of the omnipotence of rhetorical
expertise. Gorgias’ account suggests there is no knowledge of nature sub specie
aeternitatis and our grasp of reality is always mediated by discursive
interpretations, which, in turn, implies that truth cannot be separated from
human interests and power claims.
In the
Encomium to Helen Gorgias refers to logos as a powerful master (DK, 82B11). If
humans had knowledge of the past, present or future they would not be compelled
to adopt unpredictable opinion as their counsellor. The endless contention of
astronomers, politicians and philosophers is taken to demonstrate that no logos
is definitive. Human ignorance about non-existent truth can thus be exploited
by rhetorical persuasion insofar as humans desire the illusion of certainty
imparted by the spoken word:
The
effect of logos upon the condition of the soul is comparable to the power of
drugs over the nature of bodies. For just as different drugs dispel different
secretions from the body, and some bring an end to disease and others to life,
so also in the case of logoi, some distress, others delight, some cause fear,
others make hearers bold, and some drug and bewitch the soul with a kind of
evil persuasion (DK, 82B11).
All
who have persuaded people, Gorgias says, do so by moulding a false logos. While
other forms of power require force, logos makes all its willing slave.
This
account of the relation between persuasive speech, knowledge, opinion and
reality is broadly consistent with Plato’s depiction of the rhetorician in the
Gorgias. Both Protagoras’ relativism and Gorgias’ account of the omnipotence of
logos are suggestive of what we moderns might call a deflationary epistemic
anti-realism.
4. The Distinction Between Philosophy and
Sophistry
The
distinction between philosophy and sophistry is in itself a difficult
philosophical problem. This closing section examines the attempt of Plato to
establish a clear line of demarcation between philosophy and sophistry.
As
alluded to above, the terms ‘philosopher’ and ‘sophist’ were disputed in the
fifth and fourth century B.C.E., the subject of contention between rival
schools of thought. Histories of philosophy tend to begin with the Ionian
‘physicist’ Thales, but the presocratics referred to the activity they were
engaged in as historia (inquiry) rather than philosophia and although it may
have some validity as a historical projection, the notion that philosophy
begins with Thales derives from the mid nineteenth century. It was Plato who
first clearly and consistently refers to the activity of philosophia and much
of what he has to say is best understood in terms of an explicit or implicit
contrast with the rival schools of the sophists and Isocrates (who also claimed
the title philosophia for his rhetorical educational program).
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. He also
acknowledges the difficulty inherent in the pursuit of these questions and it
is perhaps revealing that the dialogue dedicated to the task, Sophist,
culminates in a discussion about the being of non-being. 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. 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.
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. Derrida attacks the interminable trial prosecuted by Plato
against the sophists with a view to exhuming ‘the conceptual monuments marking
out the battle lines between philosophy and sophistry’ (1981, 106). 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).
The
prospects for establishing a clear methodological divide between philosophy and
sophistry are poor. 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. In the Sophist, in fact, Plato
implies that the Socratic technique of dialectical refutation represents a kind
of ‘noble sophistry’ (Sophist, 231b).
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. Nehamas, for example, has argued that ‘Socrates did not differ from
the sophists in method but in overall purpose’ (1990, 13). Nehamas relates this overall purpose to the
Socratic elenchus, suggesting that Socrates’ disavowal of knowledge and of the
capacity to teach aretē distances him from the sophists. However, this way of
demarcating Socrates’ practice from that of his sophistic counterparts, Nehamas
argues, cannot justify the later Platonic distinction between philosophy and
sophistry, insofar as Plato forfeited the right to uphold the distinction once
he developed a substantive philosophical teaching, that is, the theory of
forms.
There
is no doubt much truth in the claim that Plato and Aristotle depict the
philosopher as pursuing a different way of life than the sophist, but to say
that Plato defines the philosopher either through a difference in moral
purpose, as in the case of Socrates, or a metaphysical presumption regarding
the existence of transcendent forms, as in his later work, does not in itself
adequately characterise Plato’s critique of his sophistic contemporaries. Once
we attend to Plato’s 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. For Plato, at least,
these two aspects of the sophistic education tell us something about the
persona of the sophist as the embodiment of a distinctive attitude towards
knowledge.
The
fact that the sophists taught for profit may not seem objectionable to modern
readers; most present-day university professors would be reluctant to teach pro
bono. It is clearly a major issue for Plato, however. Plato can barely mention
the sophists without contemptuous reference to the mercenary aspect of their
trade: particularly revealing examples of Plato’s disdain for sophistic
money-making and avarice are found at Apology 19d, Euthydemus 304b-c, Hippias
Major 282b-e, Protagoras 312c-d and Sophist 222d-224d, and this is not an
exhaustive list. Part of the issue here is no doubt Plato’s commitment to a way
of life dedicated to knowledge and contemplation. It is significant that
students in the Academy, arguably the first higher education institution, were
not required to pay fees. This is only part of the story, however.
A good
starting point is to consider the etymology of the term philosophia as
suggested by the Phaedrus and Symposium. After completing his palinode in the
Phaedrus, Socrates expresses the hope that he never be deprived of his ‘erotic’
art. Whereas the speechwriter Lysias presents erōs (desire, love) as an
unseemly waste of expenditure (Phaedrus, 257a), in his later speech Socrates
demonstrates how erōs impels the soul to rise towards the forms. The followers
of Zeus, or philosophy, Socrates suggests, educate the object of their erōs to
imitate and partake in the ways of the God. Similarly, in the Symposium,
Socrates refers to an exception to his ignorance. Approving of the suggestion
by Phaedrus that the drinking party eulogise erōs, Socrates states that ta
erōtika (the erotic things) are the only subject concerning which he would
claim to possess rigorous knowledge (Symposium, 177 d-e). When it is his turn
to deliver a speech, Socrates laments his incapacity to compete with the
Gorgias-influenced rhetoric of Agathon before delivering Diotima’s lessons on
erōs, represented as a daimonion or semi-divine intermediary between the mortal
and the divine. Erōs is thus presented as analogous to philosophy in its
etymological sense, a striving after wisdom or completion that can only be
temporarily fulfilled in this life by contemplation of the forms of the
beautiful and the good (204a-b). 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.
Plato’s
emphasis upon philosophy as an ‘erotic’ activity of striving for wisdom, rather
than as a finished state of completed wisdom, largely explains his distaste for
sophistic money-making. The sophists, according to Plato, considered knowledge
to be a ready-made product that could be sold without discrimination to all
comers. 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. The farmer Demodokos has
brought his son, Theages, who is desirous of wisdom, to Socrates. As Socrates
questions his potential pupil regarding what sort of wisdom he seeks, it
becomes evident that Theages seeks power in the city and influence over other
men. Since Theages is looking for political wisdom, Socrates refers him to the
statesmen and the sophists. 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). In response to the suggestion that he study with a sophist, Theages
reveals his intention to become a pupil of Socrates. 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). The dialogue ends with an
agreement that all parties make trial of the daimonion to see whether it
permits of the association.
One
need only follow the suggestion of the Symposium that erōs 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. Whereas the sophists accept pupils
indiscriminately, provided they have the money to pay, Socrates is oriented by
his desire to cultivate the beautiful and the good in promising natures. In
short, the difference between Socrates and his sophistic contemporaries, as
Xenophon suggests, is the difference between a lover and a prostitute. The
sophists, for Xenophon’s Socrates, are prostitutes of wisdom because they sell
their wares to anyone with the capacity to pay (Memorabilia, I.6.13). This –
somewhat paradoxically – accounts for Socrates’ shamelessness in comparison
with his sophistic contemporaries, his preparedness to follow the argument
wherever it leads. By contrast, Protagoras and Gorgias are shown, in the
dialogues that bear their names, as vulnerable to the conventional opinions of
the paying fathers of their pupils, a weakness contributing to their
refutation. The sophists are thus characterised by Plato as subordinating the
pursuit of truth to worldly success, in a way that perhaps calls to mind the
activities of contemporary advertising executives or management consultants.
The
overestimation of the power of human speech is the other theme that emerges
clearly from Plato’s (and Aristotle’s) critique of the sophists. In the
Sophist, Plato says that dialectic – division and collection according to kinds
– is the knowledge possessed by the free man or philosopher (Sophist, 253c).
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). Plato’s claim is that the capacity to
divide and synthesise in accordance with one form is required for the true
expertise of logos. Whatever else one makes of Plato’s account of our knowledge
of the forms, it clearly involves the apprehension of a higher level of being
than sensory perception and speech. The philosopher, then, considers rational
speech as oriented by a genuine understanding of being or nature. The sophist,
by contrast, is said by Plato to occupy the realm of falsity, exploiting the
difficulty of dialectic by producing discursive semblances, or phantasms, of
true being (Sophist, 234c). 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.
This
aspect of Plato’s 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. 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).
He later claims that it is concerned with the greatest good for man, namely
those speeches that allow one to attain freedom and rule over others,
especially, but not exclusively, in political settings (452d). As suggested
above, in the context of Athenian public life the capacity to persuade was a
precondition of political success. For present purposes, however, the key point
is that freedom and rule over others are both forms of power: respectively
power in the sense of liberty or capacity to do something, which suggests the
absence of relevant constraints, and power in the sense of dominion over
others. 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’. What we have here is an assertion of the omnipotence of speech, at
the very least in relation to the determination of human affairs.
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. Without such
knowledge not only ‘external’ goods, such as wealth and health, not only the
areas of expertise that enable one to attain such so-called goods, but the very
capacity to attain them is either of no value or harmful. This in large part
explains the so-called Socratic paradox that virtue is knowledge.
Plato’s
critique of the sophists’ overestimation of the power of speech should not be
conflated with his commitment to the theory of the forms. For Plato, the
sophist reduces thinking to a kind of making: by asserting the omnipotence of
human speech the sophist pays insufficient regard to the natural limits upon
human knowledge and our status as seekers rather than possessors of knowledge
(Sophist, 233d). This critique of the sophists does perhaps require a minimal
commitment to a distinction between appearance and reality, but it is an
oversimplification to suggest that Plato’s distinction between philosophy and
sophistry rests upon a substantive metaphysical theory, in large part because
our knowledge of the forms for Plato is itself inherently ethical. Plato, like
his Socrates, differentiates the philosopher from the sophist primarily through
the virtues of the philosopher’s soul (McKoy, 2008). Socrates is an embodiment
of the moral virtues, but love of the forms also has consequences for the philosopher’s
character.
There
is a further ethical and political aspect to the Platonic and Aristotelian
critique of the sophists’ overestimation of the power of speech. In Book Ten of
Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle suggests that the sophists tended to reduce politics
to rhetoric (1181a12-15) and overemphasised the role that could be played by
rational persuasion in the political realm. Part of Aristotle’s point is that
there is an element to living well that transcends speech. 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).
The
testimony of Xenophon, a Greek general and man of action, is instructive here.
In his treatise on hunting, (Cynēgeticus, 13.1-9), Xenophon commends Socratic
over sophistic education in aretē, not only on the grounds that the sophists hunt
the young and rich and are deceptive, but also because they are men of words
rather than action. The importance of consistency between one’s words and
actions if one is to be truly virtuous is a commonplace of Greek thought, and
this is one important respect in which the sophists, at least from the
Platonic-Aristotelian perspective, fell short.
One
might think that a denial of Plato’s demarcation between philosophy and
sophistry remains well-motivated simply because the historical sophists made
genuine contributions to philosophy. But this does not entail the illegitimacy
of Plato’s distinction. Once we recognise that Plato is pointing primarily to a
fundamental ethical orientation relating to the respective personas of the
philosopher and sophist, rather than a methodological or purely theoretical
distinction, the tension dissolves. 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.
Sophistry
for Socrates, Plato and Aristotle represents a choice for a certain way of
life, embodied in a particular attitude towards knowledge which views it as a
finished product to be transmitted to all comers. Plato’s distinction between
philosophy and sophistry is not simply an arbitrary viewpoint in a dispute over
naming rights, but is rather based upon a fundamental difference in ethical
orientation. Neither is this orientation reducible to concern with truth or the
cogency of one’s theoretical constructs, although it is not unrelated to these.
Where the philosopher differs from the sophist is in terms of the choice for a
way of life that is oriented by the pursuit of knowledge as a good in
itself while remaining cognisant of the necessarily provisional nature of this
pursuit.
