A sophist () was a professional travelling teacher in ancient Greece in the fifth and fourth centuries BC. Sophists specialized in one or more subject areas, such as philosophy, rhetoric, music, athletics, mathematics, and arete: "virtue" or "excellence". The sophists sold their tutoring expertise predominantly to young statesmen and nobility. Certain sophists are regarded as philosophers in their own right.Grayling, A. C. (2019). The History of Philosophy. Penguin Press. p. 57. The first credited sophist, Protagoras, argued that "man is the measure of all things" and openly strove to "make the weaker argument the stronger".
The arts of the sophists were known as sophistry and gained a negative reputation as arbitrary, inauthentic, or deceptive styles of reasoning, beginning with the notable philosophers of Classical Athens who criticized sophists for valuing artistic speech or cleverness in debate over a genuine pursuit of truth and knowledge.Grayling, 2019, p. 57. Thus, in modern usage, sophism, sophist, and sophistry are used disparagingly. Sophistry, or a sophism, is a fallacious argument, especially one used deliberately to deceive. Today, a sophist is a person who reasons with clever but deceptive or intellectually dishonest arguments.
Etymology The Greek word () 'a wise man' is related to the noun () 'wisdom'. Since the times of Homer, it commonly referred to an expert in his profession or craft. Charioteers, sculptors, or military experts could be referred to as in their occupations. The word has gradually come to connote general wisdom and especially wisdom in human affairs such as politics, ethics, and household management. This was the meaning ascribed to the Greek Seven Sages of the 7th and 6th centuries BC (such as Solon and Thales), and it was the meaning that appears in the histories of Herodotus.
The word gives rise to the verb () 'to instruct, make learned', the passive voice of which means 'to become or be wise', or 'to be clever or skilled'. From the verb is derived the noun (), which originally meant 'a master of one's craft' and later 'a prudent man' or 'wise man'.A Lexicon Abridged from Liddell and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford: Clarendon, 1996, s.v.v. σοφίζω and σοφιστής. The word for a sophist in various languages comes from .
The word sophist could be combined with other Greek roots to form compounds. Examples include meteorosophist, which roughly translates to 'expert in celestial phenomena'; gymnosophist 'naked sophist', a word used to refer to Indian philosophers, deipnosophist 'dinner sophist' (as in the title of Athenaeus's ); and iatrosophist, a type of physician in the later Roman period.
History In the second half of the 5th century BC, particularly in Athens, sophist came to denote a class of mostly itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in various subjects, speculated about the nature of language and culture, and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others. Nicholas Denyer tells that "Sophists did have one important thing in common: whatever else they did or did not claim to know, they characteristically had a great understanding of what words would entertain or impress or persuade an audience."Denyer, N., Plato, Protagoras: Introduction, p. 1, Cambridge University Press, 2008 Sophists went to Athens to teach because the city was flourishing at the time. It was good employment for those good at debate, which was a speciality of the first sophists, and they received the fame and fortune they were seeking. Protagoras is generally regarded as the first of these professional sophists. Others include Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, Thrasymachus, Lycophron, Callicles, Antiphon, and Cratylus. A few sophists claimed that they could find the answers to all questions. Most of these sophists are known today primarily through the writings of their opponents (particularly Plato and Aristotle), which makes it difficult to assemble an unbiased view of their practices and teachings. In some cases, such as Gorgias, original rhetorical works are extant, allowing the author to be judged on his own terms, but in most cases, knowledge about what individual sophists wrote or said comes from fragmentary quotations that lack context and are usually hostile.
The Greeks were "experimenting with a new form of government, democracy" (W. Keith, 5). Therefore, they were navigating how to make decisions without a higher authority. They needed to create laws based on demand and the popular vote of the people. In the fifth century BC there was no mass media, printing presses, or even many texts. Political information sharing mostly relied on speech. This meant that "the Athenians needed a strategy for effectively talking to other people in juries, in forums, and in the senate" (W. Keith, 5). This is when the sophist began to come about. Originally known as Sicilians, they began to teach Athenians how to speak in a persuasive manner in order to work with the courts and senate. It is not really known how these Sicilians, who came to be Sophists, initially developed an interest in teaching others how to speak persuasively. However, interest in receiving training from the Sophists increased.Keith & Lundberg, The Origins of Rhetoric
Sophists could be described both as teachers and philosophers, having travelled about in Greece teaching their students various life skills, particularly rhetoric and public speaking. These were useful qualities of the time, during which persuasive ability had a large influence on one's political power and economic wealth. Athens became the center of the sophists' activity, due to the city's freedom of speech for non-slave citizens and its wealth of resources. The sophists as a group had no set teachings, and they lectured on subjects that were as diverse as semantics and rhetoric, to ontology, and epistemology. Most sophists claimed to teach ("excellence" or "virtue") in the management and administration of not only one's affairs, but the city's as well. Before the 5th century BC, it was believed that aristocratic birth qualified a person for arete and politics. However, Protagoras, who is regarded as the first sophist, argued that arete was the result of training rather than birth.
Major figures Most of what is known about sophists comes from commentaries by others. In some cases, such as Gorgias, some of his works survive, allowing the author to be judged on his own terms. In one case, the important sophist text Dissoi logoi survived, but knowledge of its author has been lost. However, most knowledge of sophistic thought comes from fragmentary quotations that lack context. Aristotle wrote Sophistical Refutations which references sophists and criticizes some common deceptive or misleading styles of argumentation, but he does not refer to individual sophists there in any detail, as Plato does.Grayling, 2019, pp. 55-57.
Protagoras
Protagoras was one of the best-known and most successful sophists of his era; however, some later philosophers, such as Sextus EmpiricusOutlines of Pyrrhonism, Book I, Chapter 32. treat him as a founder of a philosophy rather than as a sophist. Protagoras taught his students the necessary skills and knowledge for a successful life, particularly in politics. He trained his pupils to argue from both points of view because he believed that truth could not be limited to just one side of the argument. Protagoras wrote about a variety of subjects and advanced several philosophical ideas, particularly in epistemology. Some fragments of his works have survived. He is the author of the famous saying, "Man is the measure of all things", which is the opening sentence of a work called Truth.
Xeniades
Xeniades was a skeptical philosopher from Corinth, probably a follower of the pre-Socratic Xenophanes. There may have been two such persons, as he is referenced by Democritus c. 400 BC, though he was also supposedly the purchaser of Diogenes the Cynic c. 350 BC, when he was captured by pirates and sold as a slave. Xeniades was supposed to have been the man who persuaded Monimus to become a follower of Diogenes, and was the source of his skeptical doctrines.Diogenes Laërtius, vi. 82 The little that is known of him is derived from Sextus Empiricus, who represents him as holding the most ultrasceptical opinions, and maintaining that all notions are false, and that there is absolutely nothing true in the universe.Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicos vii. 388, 399 He more than once couples him with Xenophanes.Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhōneioi hypotypōseis ii. 18,; Adversus Mathematicos vii. 48
Gorgias
Gorgias was a well-known sophist whose writings showcased his ability to make counter-intuitive and unpopular positions appear stronger. Gorgias authored a lost work known as On the Non-Existent, which argues that nothing exists. In it, he attempts to persuade his readers that thought and existence are different. He also wrote Encomium of Helen in which he presents all of the possible reasons for which Helen could be blamed for causing the Trojan War and refutes each one of them.
Lycophron
Lycophron is mentioned as a sophist by Aristotle, and was probably among the students of Gorgias.Quarles (2004), pp. 135–136 He rejected the supposed value of an aristocratic birth, claiming that "Now the nobility of good birth is obscure, and its grandeur a matter of words." meaning that there is no factual difference between those well-born and those low-born; only words and opinion assign value to these different circumstances of birth.Diels, Dent Sprague (2001), pp. 68–69 This statement may indicate that Lycophron shared the beliefs of Antiphon, that (regardless of their ancestry) both Greeks and barbarians are born with the same capacities: An egalitarian belief that was a minority view in the 5th century BC.quoted in Mario Untersteiner, The Sophists, tr. Kathleen Freeman (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1954), p. 252 He is also known for his statement (reproduced by Aristotle, in the latter's Politics, 1280b10), that "law is only a convention, a surety to another of justice".,Mulgan (1979), pp. 121–128 also translated as "a guarantor of men's rights against one another". He, thus, believed that law is a matter of agreement, a social convention and not a natural or universal standard (there is no evidence that Lycophron rejected the idea that law is a universal standard – indeed his view appears far more universalist than that of Aristotle, in that Lycophron proposes a single standard, what would now be called the non aggression principle, in relation to all states). In this respect his views on law are similar to those of Protagoras.Quarles (2004), pp. 121–122 This means that he treats law as a mere means, in the context of a (perhaps primitive) social contract theory, without considering it as something special, in contradistinction to, e.g., Plato but similar to both Thrasymachus and Callicles, albeit that their theories have – as far as can be ascertained from the information available about them – more specific characteristics.
Criticism