The Sophists
And why my blog is named after them
Like “cynic”, “sophist” is a word with ancient roots and a pejorative modern meaning.
In fact, most ancient philosophies have a modern meaning that contradicts the original meaning. “Skeptic” doesn’t mean “to not believe”, it means “to enquire”, that is, “test your beliefs and non-beliefs” — something we should all do a lot more. “Stoic” doesn’t mean “cool-hearted indifference”, it means “loving everything and everybody”. “Epicurean” doesn’t mean “indulging in luxuriant pleasures”, it means “appreciating the simple pleasures”. “Sophistic” isn’t “being cunningly deceptive”, it’s “improving yourself intellectually.”
In its modern use, Sophistry is the use of smart but specious arguments to bend and warp the real nature of things to suit the purposes of the person making the argument. It’s a useful way to call out deceit, especially in politics.
We tend to abuse the original labels of ancient philosophies while holding their progenitors in high esteem, but a general disdain and distaste for the Sophists themselves lingers.
Sophists Are Misunderstood
Why do the Sophists have such a terrible reputation these days? Well, the Sophists are best known as antagonists in Plato’s dialogues, and Plato’s ideas have an indelible imprint on Western Philosophy. In fact, few original sources of the Sophists exist. Only fragments of sayings and writings have been salvaged, largely from hostile texts. So, already, the Sophists are on a bad footing.
Who were they? They were itinerant teachers of all kinds of life skills essential for ambitious young men to thrive, especially in the new democratic society that had emerged in Athens. The most famous of them were Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, and Hippias, but there were many more.
The key life skill among those they taught was rhetoric — using persuasive language in the public domain to sway opinion. In democratic Athens, courts were run by men appointed by lot, not by their knowledge of law, and defendants had to defend themselves.
A judiciary staffed by people lacking requisite professionalism was potentially a toxic mix. Sophists helped people negotiate their way through an erratic and often vindictive legal system by teaching them to be clever and give excellent speeches.
Because of their trade, the Sophists had a pragmatic and practical approach to philosophy, which they also taught as a skill of sorts. This distinguished them from the philosophers of the pre-Socratic era, who indulged in speculative cosmologies as they attempted to explain the world and its workings.
The material of the Sophist’s trade was opinion, not truth. And so they explored reality through human thought, rather than trying to access reality directly.
This makes them very modern in outlook. Protagoras famously uttered the words “man is the measure of all things” and this is commonly taken to mean that there’s no absolute or objective view of things, or at least, there is no absolute that man can access.
A good way to think about this is how ideas can change depending on context and experience. The same room can be too hot for a Norweigian, and too cold for a Mexican. There’s no such thing as “hot” or “cold” as a true and eternal measure, these terms only have meaning in relation to the circumstances in which they are used.
We could say the same for many concepts, including “good” and “evil”. The Sophists travelled from city to city, experiencing the different values held by different cultures. What was good or valued to one culture was bad or cheap for another. Seeing these differences, they understood — and taught — the fundamental malleability of meaning and the fragility of certainty. This is not the same as relativism, as we’ll see.
Money, Truth, and Perspectivism
Plato took exception to the Sophists being paid to teach, but Plato was also an aristocrat from one of the most rich and powerful families in Athens, he could afford not to be paid for teaching. Plato was so blue-blooded, in fact, that it was said that his family tree could be traced back to the god Neptune. Some would argue that Plato’s class prejudices played a role in his hostility to democracy and to the Sophists.
The irony seems to be lost on professional philosophers and anybody in the philosophical community who speak of the Sophists pejoratively in the vein of Plato’s mistrust, yet are paid a salary or charge money for doing talks or writing articles.
But the main issue for Plato was that the Sophist’s worldview was fundamentally relativistic.
Gorgias is a Sophist whom Plato openly loathed. He made a solid case for the idea that nothing exists to demonstrate that no truth can really be proven — ideas only relate to other ideas.
This actually makes Sophists “perspectivists” in that they believed that human beings cannot access the absolute truth, but only construct tacit truths based on qualified opinions. That is, there are no always right ideas, just better or worse ideas in the light of our needs and circumstances. This view is now more widely accepted among serious philosophers than Plato’s insistence on eternal truths coming from a perfect world of Forms.
To Bertrand Russell, the Sophists had the “intellectual honesty” to follow logic to “wherever it might lead them” — usually philosophical scepticism, i.e. you can’t really access reality — rather than constructing arguments around their instincts and prejudices.
In Russell’s sense, it’s Plato who is cunning — bending the notion of truth to fit his preconceived ideas, while the Sophists are the loyal followers of impersonal reason.
“The Sophist”, a later work by Plato, uses an argument against the Sophists as a ruse to expound upon Plato’s own philosophical ideas. Plato divides existence into a hierarchy of realness — being, becoming, and appearance. While the true philosopher — i.e. Plato — deals with eternal truths that are most real, the Sophists deal with mere appearances — what is least real. But to the Sophists, Plato’s idea of what is most real and true is merely a conjecture.
The Shadow of Sophism
Despite Plato’s hostility, his mentor Socrates was not entirely oppositional towards the Sophists. He was in fact accused of being a Sophist himself in different contexts. He was accused of taking money for teaching during his trial, and in Aristophanes’ play The Clouds he is presented as an eccentric — and ludicrous — leader of the Sophists. So it seems that to many of his contemporaries, Socrates was a Sophist.
In their pragmatism and perspectivism, the Sophists were radically egalitarian — virtue (arete) could be taught, as opposed to being a birthright of the aristocratic classes — as Aristotle, another enemy of the Sophists, believed.
Protagoras advocated for tax-funded public education — an odd notion at the time, but now practically universal — to enlighten and enrich society as a whole. Plato disagreed with these ideas. His Republic, from our perspective, looks like a dystopia — a rigid and stratified society ruled by a clique of initiates. Most of us live in a fluid and meritocratic Protagarean world of innovation and reinvention, and we should be thankful for it.
In the modern era, many defenders of the Sophists emerged. Prominent among those was Friedrich Nietzsche. For Nietzsche, there are no facts, only interpretations — a perspectivist point of view that resonates with the Sophists. Truths and morals are always agreed upon within a changing framework at the mercy of social forces. Nietzsche claimed that advances in our understanding of knowledge and morality are always the result of Sophist-type thinkers.
In his Manifesto for Philosophy, France’s preeminent thinker Alain Badiou wrote, “Philosophy must forever endure the Sophist’s company and sarcasm”, such is the long shadow that the Sophists have cast over the history of Western thought.
I make a modest amount of money through my writing, which is largely invested back into expensive books — like this one. Like the Sophists, I explore philosophical ideas to help people navigate a complicated and sometimes distressing world. I also write about art, music, and literature — aspects of our culture that edify us and enhance our appreciation of life. So I thought I’d make a wry nod to those much maligned but influential teachers by calling my blog “The Sophist”.
That’s the story behind the name.
Great piece! Thanks for offering a counterpoint to Plato’s view.
I've always been a little sceptical of Plato’s sweeping theories. I look forward to learning more about the Sophists.