Sophists

Sophists , originally, itinerant teachers in Greece (5th cent. BC) who provided education through lectures and in return received fees from their audiences. The term was given as a mark of respect. Protagoras was perhaps the first to style himself a Sophist and to receive payment for his instruction. He and Gorgias were respected thinkers, but others after them, notably Thrasymachus and Hippias, and many lesser figures, turned education into the development of skills useful to political careers. Hence, they cared little for the disciplined search for truth (dialectics), teaching in its place the art of persuasion (rhetoric). Although not properly speaking a philosophical school, they appear to have shared a basic skepticism regarding the possibility of knowing truth. The more notorious of them boasted of their ability to "make the worst appear the better reason." They were criticized by Plato and Aristotle for their emphasis on rhetoric rather than on pure knowledge and for their acceptance of money, a judgment that has passed into history and has given the term sophist its present meaning. George Grote's History of Greece (1846) was one of the first defenses of the Sophists. Modern studies have stressed the contributions of Protagoras and Gorgias to a theory of knowledge and to ethics. They are frequently cited today as forerunners of pragmatism.

Bibliography: See W. K. C. Guthrie, Sophists (1971); H. Diels, ed., The Older Sophists (1972).

sophists Professional Greek teachers of the 5th–4th centuries bc. Although not a formal school, they emphasized the intellectual and rhetorical skills needed to succeed in ancient Greek society, and regarded law and ethics as convenient human inventions with no basis in natural law. Serious philosophers, such as Socrates and Plato, disapproved of them.

sophists (Greek sophistes, “wise man”) Itinerant professional teachers in Greece, the Greek colonies in Sicily, and southern Italy in the 5th century BC. Sophists offered instruction in a wide range of subjects and skills considered necessary for public life, especially rhetoric, in return for fees. Gorgias of Leontini (c.483–376 BC) specialized in teaching rhetoric, and his visit to Athens in 427 BC encouraged the development of oratory there. Young Athenian democrats needed rhetoric to persuade the democratic assemblies. By questioning the nature of gods, conventions, and morals, and by their alleged ability to train men “to make the weaker argument the stronger” through rhetoric, they aroused some opposition. Their readiness to argue either cause in a dispute brought them condemnation from Plato as self-interested imitators of wisdom lacking any concern for the truth. However, the most renowned sophists, such as Gorgias and Protagoras (c.485–415 BC) drew relativist or sceptical conclusions from the defensibility of opposed claims, indicating a seriousness of purpose that Plato failed to acknowledge.

During the Roman empire sophists were essentially teachers of rhetoric. The word sophistry, meaning quibbling or fallacious reasoning, reflects both Plato's view and the popular distrust of sophists.