sophist ppt

8/3/2019 Sophist Ppt

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Introductiony The fifth-century sophists were the first exponents of

higher education of the West.

y Sophist means professional practioner of wisdom(sophia).

y To call someone wise (sophos) was ascribed thehighest, most desirable, expertise.

y During the 5th century, Greek city states, the expertisewas skill in civic speech, debate, exhortation, pleading.


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y The Sophists do not constitute a school like the

Milesians and the Eleatics. Rather, they are group ofoutstanding individual.

y Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, Prodicus, Antiphon,

Thrasymachus who are associated not by a commondoctrines but by a common outlook in life andlearning.

y The term sophist was not originally a term of abuse.

When Herodotus calls Solon and Pythagoras sophists,he is praising them as sages and men of wisdom.


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Sophistes to to sophon

y Plato defines the Sophists as a tradesman of cleverness(Sophist 231)

yAristoles defines the Sophists as a man who makesmoney from apparent but unreal wisdom.

yXenophon defines the Sophists as an intellectualharlot...

y


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Sourcesy Very little survives of the writings. The only complete

works are two short rhetorical display pieces ofGorgias.

y Sophist lacks the doxographical tradition which thepresocratics possess.

y There were no interest in the Sophists in the post-Aristotleian period until the so called Second Sophsitic

movement of the 2nd and 3rd CE.y Flavius Philostratus works Lives of the Sophists,

contains a brief sections on most of the main fifth-century Sophists.


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Sources... Cont.

y The most extensive information about the Sophistsand the Sophistic movement comes from Platos

dialogues (Pr

otagoras, Go

rgias, Hippias, Lesse

rHippias, and Sophists)

y Plato and Socrates is hostile to the Sophists. (Menoand Sophists)


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Protagorasy

Born in Abdera (490-420BC)

y He was a contemporaryof Zeno, Empedocles and

Gorgias.y He became famous in

Athens and was part ofthe intellectual circle

surrounding Pericles.


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Parmenidian responsey What is is radically different from how things seem.

y Protagoras asserts that one cannot make distinction

between how things are and how they are seem. Whatseems to be so to you is so.

y There is nothing behind appearances as Parmenidesand the physicist had imagined.

y Unlike Gorgias, Protagoras does not eliminate truth,but rather relative to each and every person.


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Relativismy Man is the measure of all things. Each person is the

determiner of truth and falsity.

y He was the first to use the dialectic argument ofAstisthenes that attempts to prove that contradictionis impossible. (Diogenes Laertius)

y


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Testimonies1. A human being is the measures of all things of

things that are, that they are, and of things that are

not, that they are not. (Sextus Empiricus,A

gainstthe Mathematician)

3. There are two oppossing arguments (logoi) concerning

everything.(Diogenes Laertius, Lives ofPhilosophers)


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Cont.4. To make the weaker argument (logos) the stronger.

(Aristotle, Rhetoric 1402a23)

5. Education is not implanted in the soul unless onereaches a greater depth.

(Plutarch, On Practice)


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Commentariesy The doctrines are backed up by theories about the nature

of perception and the relation between perception andjudgment.

y Perception depends upon the individual and the thingsperceived. (sense organs and the object)

y If honey is taste so sweet to a healthy person and bitter to asick person

y

Perception is relative, since our judgment are based onperception.

y Truth is relative to the individual. (epistemological andontological)


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Gorgiasy 483-375 BC

yA Sicilian Greek, a studentof Empedocles

y One of the greatrhetoricians of the 5th

centuryBC

y He came to Athens as an

ambassador

yWork: On Nature orWhatIs Not


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y He condemed the entire tradition of cosmological,

metaphysical (nihilism)y Gorgias was a skilled orator who can make an eqully

impressive case of every position.

y For him, the aim of intellectual activity is not truth(Parmenides), but persuassion.

y Three paradoxical theses:

yNothing exists

yThat even if something is, it is

unintelligible, andyEven if it were intelligible, it would be

impossible to communicate it.


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Testimonies

(66) He concludes that nothing is.(Sextus Empiricus, Against the

Mathematician)


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(77) Next in order is to teach that even if something is, it

is unknowable and inconceivable by humans.

y Gorgias argues that there is no necessary correlation

between thought and reality. It is possible to think of ahuman flying eventhough no human flies.

y Parmenidian response to: I cannot think about what-is-not.


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(83) But even if it should be comprehended it

cannot be expressed to another.

yWhat can be seen i.e., colors, cannot be heard, andvice versa.

ySpeech is audible and therefore cannot becommunicated even the audible things. Therefore, itcannot be communicated.


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