The Sophists mark a new period in ancient Greek Philosophy. Metaphysical thought in its development from Thales to Anaxagoras on the one hand and to the Atomists on the other shows a fairly logical, almost a dramatic pattern. First there are the naïve attempts to find the ultimate explanation of things in a single, perceptually recognizable kind of substance; out of them a growing interest in the "how"—in the finding of a principle by which to explain change; then the bold declaration of a Heraclitus that change itself is the ultimate reality and the ultimate basis for all explanation; the equally bold counter-declaration by Parmenides that change, being intellectually unacceptable, simply "is not"; and finally the three main and diverse attempts to reconcile the manifest fact of change with the Eleatic principle that what is intimate is necessarily changeless. Greek philosophy was soon to proceed, spurred and directed by the philosophical genius of Plato’s achievements of penetration and subtlety were made possible by his having brought man and the problems of human essentiality into the very center of the metaphysical problem. What Plato might still have accomplished without the example and goad of Socrates we do not know, nor what Socrates might have been and done without the challenge and contrariety of the Sophists. At all events, taking the known facts as they are, we cannot ignore the fresh humanistic interest which the Sophist, by their radical emphasis upon the problems of man and his activities, obliquely contributed to the subsequent development of Greek philosophy.
That is not to say that the problems of man had been altogether ignored in earlier philosophies. But the pithy remarks about man and his destiny by such writers as Heraclitus and Empedocles are secondary to and generally derivative from their metaphysical systems. In both the Pythagorean and the Hippocratic philosophies their is a more pronounced humanistic concern, but in the one it is limited to the confines of a school-community and cult, in the other it is particularized by the exacting demands of the medical practice. Both of these movements effected a partial modification of the older aristocratic faith that a man’s essential arête must have been transmitted by partrilinear inheritance and had originally been instilled by a divine progenitor—a view which has left its traces in the myth of Asclepius as the archetypical ancestor of all physicians and in the brotherhood clause in the so-called Hippocratic Oath. In any case it was left to the Sophists to go the whole way in secularizing and democratizing the ideal of arête.
Protagoras of Abdera (ca. 480-411 B.C.E.) wasthe acknowledged initiator of the Sophistic movement. The word sophists is composed by adding to the word for wisdom a suffix connoting a man who practices a profession, and who is thus in some way an expert; a sophist therefore means something like a "wisdom expert." There is a paradoxical shock in both the Greek and the English versions of the idea; for while there can perhaps be experts in any finite field of activity or inquiry, it is as meaningless to speak of an expert in wisdom as to speak of an expert in goodness. Nevertheless Protagoras and his followers did in fact make the claim.
It is very interesting to see what happened to the "idea" of wisdom in the Sophists, as a result of their doctrine, "wisdom can be taught" and their eager practice of it. In traditional Greek thought wisdom was taken as one of the four cardinal human virtues, the others being temperance, courage, and justice. The general idea of arête (inadequately rendered "virtue" or "specific excellence," or in a human context as "human excellence") was an idea, indeed an ideal, of supreme appeal and attractiveness to the Greek mind. Outside the area of human affairs it might refer to the distinguishing excellence of any species, natural or otherwise—the strength of a lion, the fleetness of a rabbit, and the sharp cutting edge of a pruning hook enabling it to clip branches effectively. Within the human context it was almost synonymous with that other high ranking Greek word kalokagathia—built from the words kalos (beautiful, admirable), kai (and), agathos (good). These two main value-words, arête and kalokagathia, were applied to man in his wholeness, composed of body, psyche, and mind—to a victor at the Olympic games provided he were both an athlete and something more, to a Parmenides and a Socrates, who were both thinkers and outstandingly more.
Involved in the meaning of arête there was an element or at least an overtone of political reference. A Greek of the fifth century B.C.E. lived in a polis—a civilized community the size of a small city but with the political autonomy (in most cases at most times) of a state. In such a situation a youth would grow to manhood feeling his constant interrelatedness with the life and aims of his polis and knowing that the principal road to success was likely to lie in a political (not, as in most cases today, a commercial) direction. The virtue, the arête, the human excellence that the youth would wish to develop for himself would be personal and political at once. Naturally enough it was apt to include the glamour of outward displays with there tangible benefits, such as the winning of debates before the Assembly, no less than, perhaps somewhat more then, a pure development of the inward virtues. It was a rarer voice that issued from time to time a reminder that the most genuine riches are to be found within rather than outside: Heraclitus (Fr. 8); the Delphic maxim, "Know thyself"; Socrates’ "The unexamined life is not worth living."
When Pericles assumed power in Greece in the middle of the fifth century the political aspect of the ethical problem took on a new relevance and a new tone. Under his leadership Athens entered into the larger political life of Greece, changing from the older self-sufficient city-state to a more dynamic imperial state. As Jaeger remarks, a rationalization of Athenian life thereby began to take place, and the rationalization of political education at the hands of the Sophists was only a part of it.
The principal skill which the Sophists taught, and of which an ambitious Greek youth would be eager to acquire mastery, was the ability to win debates and to influence public opinion through the art of persuasive speech. At least two leading Sophists, Protagoras and Gorgias evidently performed such teaching with marked success: for both of them lived to be very old and in their long careers they amassed considerable wealth; moreover both of them produced successful orators, statesmen, and other men of eminence from among their pupils. The visible and tangible evidence of their success could not be denied.
The temptation was, as sometimes happens with successful men, to push their claims of success to far, failing to distinguish between the specific skills which they were demonstrably able to teach and that general human excellence which, while it may make use of, can never be reduced to a matter of know-how. Protagoras claimed for the sophist the ability to teach arête by essentially the same method as he might teach the rules of grammar and the art of oratory. Ethics was thus, for him, but one field of investigation among others. Gorgias added to this a doctrine of ethical pluralism—that different virtues are of varying importance according to one’s station in life: a soldier needs courage, a lawgiver needs practical wisdom and justice, a philosopher needs contemplative wisdom. It was mainly Socrates who critically attacked Protagoras’ claim, by his double insistence that virtue is essentially one, finding its unity in wisdom, and that virtue in the full human sense cannot be taught but can only be encouraged and challenged to grow. Subsequently Plato, in the third and fourth books of The Republic, undertook to meet Gorgias’ ethical pluralism, by defining the sense in which the virtues pertain to different political classes and the sense in which a healthy republic requires human virtue in all its citizens, whatever their special aptitudes and special duties.
Protagoras
(490-421 B.C.E.)
Among the Sophists who had come to Athens, Protagoras of Abdera was the oldest and, in many ways, the most influential. He is best known for his statement that "man is the measure of all things, of the things that are, that they are, and of the things that are not, they are not." To say that man is the measure of all things apparently meant to Protagoras that whatever knowledge one could achieve about anything would be limited to one’s human capacities. He dismissed any discussion of theology, saying that "About the gods, I am not able to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form; for the factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of human life." Knowledge said Protagoras, is limited to our various perceptions and these perceptions will differ with each person. If two persons were to observe the same object, their sensations would be different, because each would occupy a different position in relation to it. Similarly, the same breeze blowing at two people would feel cool to one, while it would be warm t the other. Whether the breeze is or is not cold cannot be answered in a simple way. It is in fact cold for one person and warm for the other. To say that "man is the measure of al things" is therefore, to say that our knowledge is measured by what we perceive, and if there is something about each of us that makes us perceive things different ways, there is no standard foe testing whether one person’s perception is right and another person’s wrong. Protagoras thought that the objects we perceive by our various senses must possess all the properties that different people perceive as belonging to them. For this reason, it is impossible to discover what the "true" nature of anything is: a thing has as many characteristics as there are people perceiving it. There is no way to distinguish between "appearance" and "reality"; for the person who says that the breeze is cold it really is cold and does not simply appear so just because it feels warm to someone else. On this theory of knowledge, it would be impossible to build any scientific knowledge, because it rejects the possibility of discovering what nature is really like since there are built-in differences in each observer leading each one to see things differently. Protagoras concluded, therefore, that knowledge is relative to each person.
When he turned to the subject of ethics, Protagoras maintained that moral judgments are relative. He was willing to admit that the idea of law reflects a general desire in each culture for a moral order among all people. But he denied that there was any uniform law of nature pertaining to human behavior that all peoples everywhere could discover. He distinguished between nature and custom, and said, that laws and moral rules are based, not upon nature, but upon convention. Each society has its own laws and its own moral rules, and there is no way, apart from certain common-sense observations about their relative "soundness," of judgment some to be true and others wrong. But Protagoras did not carry this moral relativism to the extreme revolutionary position of saying that because moral judgments are relative, every individual can decide what is moral. Instead, he took the conservative position that the state makes the laws and that these laws should be accepted by everyone because they are as good as any that can be made. Other communities might have different laws, and individuals within a state might think of different laws, but in neither case are these better laws; they are only different. In the interest of a peaceful and orderly society, then, people should respect and uphold the customs, laws, and orderly rules their tradition has carefully developed. In matters of religion, Protagoras took a similar view, saying that the impossibility of knowing with certainty about the existence and nature of the gods should not prevent anyone from participating in the worship of the gods. The curios outcome of Protagoras’ relativism was his conservative conclusion that the young should be educated to accept and support the tradition of their society, not because this tradition is true but because it makes possible a stable society. Still, there could be no question that Protagoras’ relativism had seriously dislodged confidence in the possibility of discovering true knowledge and had brought upon his skepticism the heavy criticism of Socrates and Plato.
FRAGMENTS
Man is the measure of all things: of things that are, that they are; of things that are not, that they are not.
All matter is in a state of flux. A fluctuating thing may retain its shape, because the changes may be such that the additions compensate for the losses. It is our sense-impressions of the thing that get modified, because affected by age and other bodily conditions.
There are intelligible principles inherent in the matter of every phenomenon; because matter is essentially the sum of all the seemings that it has for any and all persons.
Learning requires both natural endowment and self-discipline. It has to begin when one is young.
Skill without concern, and concern without skill, are equally worthless.
As for the gods, I have no way of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist; nor, if they exist, of what form they are. For the obstacles to that sort of knowledge are many, including the obscurity of the matter and the brevity of human life.
Gorgias
(450+/- B.C.E.)
Gorgias came to Athens from Sicily as ambassador from his native city of Leontini in 427 B.C.E. He took such a radical view regarding truth that he eventually gave up philosophy and turned to the practice and teaching of rhetoric. This radical view differed from Protagoras’ in that while Protagoras said that everything is true, that truth is relative to persons and circumstances, Gorgias denied that there is any truth at all. With hair-splitting keenness, employing the mode of reasoning used by the Eleatic philosophers Parmenides and Zeno, Gorgias propounded the extraordinary notions (1) that nothing exists, (2) that if anything exists it is incomprehensible, and (3) that even if it is comprehensible, it cannot be communicated. Taking this third notion, for example, he argued that we communicate with words, but words are only symbols or signs and no symbol can ever be the same as the thing it symbolizes. For this reason, knowledge can never be communicated. By this mode of reasoning Gorgias thought he could prove all three of his propositions, or at least that his reasoning was as coherent as any used by those who disagreed with him. He was convinced, consequently, that there could be no reliable knowledge and certainly no truth.
Abandoning philosophy, Gorgias turned to rhetoric and tried to perfect it as the art of persuasion. It is said that he developed, in this connection, the technique of deception, making use of his knowledge of psychology and the powers of suggestion. Having earlier concluded that there is no truth, he was willing to employ the art of persuasion for whatever ends he chose.
FRAGMENTS
Our struggle in life requires two virtues, bravery and wisdom—readiness to endure a danger and skillful knowledge of how to manage it.
In contending against adversaries, destroy their seriousness with laughter and their laughter with seriousness.
While a friend may often choose to serve his friend by unjust actions, he will never expect unjust actions from his friend in return.
Tragedy produces a deception in which the deceiver is more honest than the non-deceiver and the deceived is wiser than the undeceived.
Being is unrecognizable unless it manages to seem, and seeming is feeble unless it manages to be.
The bright jewel of a city is courage; of a human body it is beauty; of the soul, wisdom; of human action, virtue; of speech, truth. To lack the quality in each case is to lack the specific excellence.
Thrasymachus
(450+/- B.C.E.)
In the Republic, Thrasymachus is portrayed as the Sophist who asserted that injustice is to be preferred to the life of justice. He did not look upon injustice as a defect of character. On the contrary, Thrasymachus considered the unjust person as positively superior in character and intelligence. Indeed, he said that "injustice pays," not only at the meager level of the pick-pocket, although there is profit in that too, but especially in the case of those who carry injustice to perfection and male themselves masters of whole cities and nations. Justice, he said, is pursued by simpletons and leads to weakness. Thrasymachus held that people should aggressively pursue their own interest in a virtually unlimited form of self-assertion. He regarded justice as being the interest of the stronger and believed that "might is fight." Laws, he said, are made by the ruling party for its own interest. These laws define what is right. In all states alike "right" has the same meaning for "right" is the interest of the party established in power. So, says Thrasymachus, "the sound conclusion is that what is "right" is the same everywhere: the interest of the stronger party."Here, then, is the reduction of morality to power, an inevitable logical consequence of the progressive radicalism of the Sophists, which led to a nihilistic attitude toward truth and ethics. It was Socrates’ chief concern to unravel the logical inconsistencies of the Sophists and to rebuild some notion of truth and also to establish some firm foundation for moral judgments.
FRAGMENTS
Justice is simply the advantage of the stronger.
The gods evidently do not see human affairs;
if they did they would not neglect to bestow justice on mankind,
for it is the greatest of blessings and yet men make little use of it.
| Last Updated: 10/19/22 |