Sophistics is the paradigm of a discourse that does things with words. It is not pure rhetoric, as Plato wants us to believe, but it provides an alternative to the philosophical mainstream. A sophistic history of philosophy questions the orthodox philosophical history of philosophy: that of ontology and truth in itself. In this book, we discover unusual Presocratics, wreaking havoc with the fetish of true and false. Their logoi perform politics and perform reality. Their sophistic practice can shed crucial light (...) on contemporary events, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, where, to quote Desmond Tutu, "words, language, and rhetoric do things," creating things like the new "rainbow people." Transitional justice requires a consistent and sustainable relativism: not Truth, but truth for, and enough of the truth for there to be a community. Philosophy itself is about words before it is about concepts. Language manifests itself in reality only as multiplicity; different languages perform different types of worlds; and difficulties of translation are but symptoms of these differences. This desacralized untranslatability undermines and deconstructs the Heideggerian statement that there is a historical language of philosophy that is Greek by essence and today is German. Sophistical Practice constitutes a major contribution to the debate among philosophical pluralism, unitarism, and pragmatism. It will change how we discuss such words as city, truth, and politics. Philologically and philosophically rethinking the sophistical gesture, relying on performance and translation, it proposes a new paradigm for the human sciences. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of these parts is now available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. The Sophists assesses the contribution of individuals like Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias to the (...) extraordinary intellectual and moral fermant in fifth-century Athens. They questioned the bases of morality, religion and organized society itself and the nature of knowledge and language; they initiated a whole series of important and continuing debates, and they provoked Socrates and Plato to a major restatement and defence of traditional values. (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

A fluent and accurate new translation of the dialogue that, all of Plato's works, has seemed to speak most directly to the interests of contemporary analytical philosophers. White's extensive introduction explores the dialogue's center themes, its connection with related discussions in other dialogues, and its implication for the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics.

AT Sophist 255b7-e the Eleatic Stranger gives two arguments, one to show that being and identity are not the same, and one to show that being and otherness are not the same. Scholars have not paid them particularly close attention, but it seems generally agreed that the two arguments are quite different. In this paper I shall offer an interpretation which shows that the two arguments, though superficially quite different, are intrinsically and importantly related. Specifically, in the first argument (...) the Stranger elicits an obvious falsehood from the hypothesis that being and identity are the same. I claim that in order to distinguish being and otherness an exactly parallel argument could have been given instead of the second argument we actually find. However, there are sound dramatic reasons why this was not done, for in this case the falsehood would not be obvious. Instead, the argument we are given takes us deeper and analyzes the source of the falsehood by introducing a distinction between absolute and relative uses of"being.". (shrink)

This is an English translation of Plato presenting a new conception of the Theory of Forms. Socrates and others discuss the epistemological and metaphysical puzzles of the Parmenides, with aims to define the meaning of the Sophist. The glossary of key terms is a unique addition to Platonic literature by which concepts central to each dialogue are discussed and cross-referenced as to their occurrences throughout the work. In such a way students are encouraged to see beyond the words into (...) concepts. Focus Philosophical Library translations are close to and are non-interpretative of the original text, with the notes and a glossary intending to provide the reader with some sense of the terms and the concepts as they were understood by Plato’s immediate audience. (shrink)

_Draws out numerous affinities between the sophists and Socrates in Plato's dialogues._.

The arrival of the Sophists in Athens in the middle of the fifth century B.C. was a major intellectual event, for they brought with them a new method of teaching founded on rhetoric and bold doctrines which broke away from tradition. In this book de Romilly investigates the reasons for the initial success of the Sophists and the reaction against them, in the context of the culture and civilization of classical Athens.

In Platons Dialog Sophistes wird nach der Definition des Sophisten gefragt; das führt zum Begriff des Nichtseienden und schließlich unter dem Stichwort 'Dialektik' auf die Frage nach dem Seienden. Daß Platon dabei von der sophistischen Methode ausgeht, das Seiende als bloße Spitze einer Begriffspyramide zu deuten, haben seine Interpreten seit jeher als irgendwie widersprüchlich empfunden. Dieser Kommentar ist für Leser gedacht, die bereit sind, den Sophistes genau zu studieren, aber dabei einen Begleiter haben möchten, der ihnen in möglichst direkter und (...) knapper Form hilft, den oft schwierigen einzelnen Schritten zu folgen und zugleich die Übersicht über das nicht weniger schwierige Ganze zu behalten. Er will nicht in die kaum noch überschaubare wissenschaftliche Diskussion einführen, sondern nur das dort zunehmend ins Hintertreffen geratende unmittelbare Verständnis des Wortlauts sicherstellen. Er ist "kritisch", weil er zum unbefangenen Lesen anhalten möchte. Damit wendet er sich nicht gegen die idealistische Interpretation von Platons Dialogen, der Platon seinen Ruhm als Philosoph verdankt, sondern will zeigen, daß es falsch wäre, den Platon, der im Sophistes Grundlegendes u. a. über Begriffsbildung und Sprache zu sagen hat, darüber zu vernachlässigen. (shrink)

Stanley Rosen's book is the first full-length study of the Sophist in English and one of the most complete in any language. He follows the stages of the dialogue in sequence and offers an exhaustive analysis of the philosophical questions that come to light as Theaetetus and the Eleatic Stranger pursue the sophist through philosophical debate. Rosen finds the central problem of the dialogue in the relation between original and image; he shows how this distinction underlies all subsequent (...) technical themes and analyzes in detail such problems as non-being or negation and false statement. Arguing that the dialogue must be treated as a dramatic unity, he pays careful attention throughout to the setting, the events, the language used, and the relations between the natures of the speakers and the topics under discussion. (shrink)

This discussion emphasises the diversity, philosophical seriousness and methodological distinctiveness of sophistic thought. Particular attention is given to their views on language, ethics, and the social construction of various norms, as well as to their varied, often undogmatic dialectical methods. The assumption that the sophists must have shared common doctrines (not merely overlapping interests and professional practices) is called into question.

Against prevailing interpretations, this article contends that Plato's Sophist and Statesman accord the sophist a kind of ‘knowing-how’ (epistêmê). In Soph. 233c10‒d2, the Visitor and Theaetetus agree that the sophist has not truth but a δοξαστικὴ ἐπιστήμη. This phrase cannot mean ‘a seeming knowledge’, for –ικός adjectives formed from verbs express the ability to perform the action denoted by the verb—here, δοξάζω. Although not a first-order, subject-area knowledge, sophistry is a second-order knowledge of how to form and (...) use judgements (doxai). Other acknowledgements of the sophist's epistêmê and the ascription to him of τέχνη, ‘craft/expertise’, confirm that the Visitor's conclusion is not to be dismissed as irony. To critics who argue from the Gorgias and from other works that Plato must consider the Visitor's conclusion an error, the author replies: 1) other dialogues do not control the Visitor dialogues; 2) the Visitor does not validly demonstrate that the sophist lacks all knowledge; 3) by admitting sensibles into Being, the Visitor and Theaetetus allow the objects of epistêmê to include things in the embodied world, even likenesses. Non-philosophers’ epistêmê in the Visitor dialogues is not implicated in the difficulties that critics have raised about epistemology in the so-called Two Worlds dialogues. On this new ontology, even the sophist, if guided by philosophical rulers, can benefit citizens by employing his elenctic expertise as Socrates did, aiding their growth toward virtue. (shrink)

The Sophists, the Socratics and the Cynics had one important characteristic in common: they mainly used spoken natural language as their instrument of investigation, and they were more concerned to discover human nature in its various practical manifestations than the facts of the physical world. The Sophists are too often remembered merely as the opponents of Socrates and Plato. Rankin discusses what social needs prompted the development of their theories and provided a market for their teaching. Five prominent Sophists – (...) Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias and Thrasymachus – are looked at individually. The author discusses their origins, aims and arguments, and relates the issues they focussed on to debates apparent in contemporary literature. Sophists, Socratics and Cynics, first published in 1983, also traces the sophistic strand in Greek thought beyond the great barrier of Plato, emphasising continuity with the Cynics, and concludes with a look forward to Epicureans and Stoics. (shrink)

The Sophists, who rose to prominence in democratic Athens during the mid-fifth century b.c., understood the art of rhetoric and the importance of being able to transform effective reasoning into persuasive public speaking. Their inquiries-into the gods, the origins of religion, and whether virtue can be taught-influenced the next generation of classical philosophers and formed the foundations of the European prose style and formal oratory. In this new translation each chapter is organized around the work of one character, including Gorgias, (...) Prodicus, Protagoras, and Antiphon, among others. (shrink)

This book explores the place of the sophists within the Greek wisdom tradition, and argues against their almost universal exclusion from serious intellectual ...

The Exclusion Argument, which aims to deny the causal efficacy of irreducible mental properties, is probably the most serious challenge to non-reductive physicalism. Many proposed solutions to the exclusion problem can only reject simplified exclusion arguments, but fail to block a sophisticated version I introduce. In this paper, I attempt to show that we can refute the sophisticated exclusion argument by appeal to a sophisticated understanding of causation, what I call the 'Dual-condition Conception of Causation'. Specifically, I argue that the (...) dual-condition account of causation gives strong support to the so-called 'Autonomy Solution', which contends that even if mental properties are unable to cause (fundamental) physical properties, they can still cause higher-level properties (such as mental, behavioral, and social properties)—if so, human agency would be preserved in the physical world. (shrink)

The Sophists were the first supporters of the values of knowledge, education and political self-determination. Their attitude and tactics demonstrated that human nature and especially every individual’s personality is of prior importance. The Sophists rejected the idea of the ontological stability of the laws and declared their confidence in the eternal values of the natural law and cosmopolitanism, in the individual ability of every human being and in the concurrent refusal of traditions and of any form of authenticity. In addition, (...) the Sophists were the first innovative enlightenment philosophers, who tried to exert their influence on society by using their teachings. (shrink)

Why do multinational corporations frequently encounter corporate social responsibility crises in leading emerging markets in the new century? Existing research about institutional impacts on MNC CSR has developed a void-based account about how the flawed institutional system allows misdeeds to happen. But the fact that such misdeeds have turned into increasing CSR crises in the new century along with institutional change is rarely taken into account. This paper combines studies of institutional voids, institutional entrepreneurship, and stakeholder theory to develop a (...) concept of institutional sophistication, which refers to both the top-down maturation of the regulatory system that standardizes firm behavior and the bottom-up diversification and intensification of grassroots initiatives that redefine stakeholder membership. Based on this concept, we developed a framework to comprehensively demonstrate how both institutional voids and sophistication drive the MNC CSR crisis in leading emerging markets. Empirically, we established an original database that includes 309 publicized CSR crises encountered by major foreign MNCs in China, India, and Russia, 2000–2011. Through a content analysis, the paper reveals six common sophistication processes that drive the MNC crisis across contexts and also specifies stakeholder strategies that make these processes happen and vary by social problems and national contexts. We also discussed the value of studying corporate social irresponsible behavior in understanding the institution–MNC relationship. (shrink)

Suppose that one thinks that certain symmetries of a theory reveal “surplus structure”. What would a formalism without that surplus structure look like? The conventional answer is that it would be a reduced theory: a theory which traffics only in structures invariant under the relevant symmetry. In this paper, I argue that there is a neglected alternative: one can work with a sophisticated version of the theory, in which the symmetries act as isomorphisms.

In this paper, I oppose the now-dominant view that Thrasymachus offers a definition of justice in Book I of the Republic. This way of interpretation Thrasymachus does not pay sufficient attention to the methodological assumptions he makes during his disagreement with Socrates. To better understand Socrates’ antagonist, it is crucial to remember that he was, in fact, a sophist. I argue that what the character Thrasymachus is doing in Book I is importantly akin to a certain genre of sophistic (...) arguments from the 5th century. In his discussion with Socrates, Thrasymachus attempts a genealogical unmasking of justice, which he hopes will change the action-guiding beliefs of his audience. Although my discussion is primarily about the methodology or structure of Thrasymachus’ argument, I conclude by offering a brief discussion of its substance, as well. (shrink)

This paper examines the sophistic practice of antilogikê or antilogic, which consists in, as G. B. Kerferd described, “causing the same thing to be seen by the same people now as possessing one predicate and now as possessing the opposite or contradictory predicate.” Although, since Plato, antilogic has been cast in a cloud of suspicion, understood primarily as the dubious practice of making the weaker argument stronger, I explore a contrary interpretation that antilogic was a technique for pursuing the suspension (...) of judgment, or epochê. In this paper, I define the practice of antilogic through the tale of Corax and Tisias and the surviving fragments of Protagoras and Gorgias. In so doing, I hypothesize that antilogic was a method for averting the natural tendency of language to assign stability and durability to being. Through the perpetual displacement of one logos by another, antilogic grants thought access to the ceaseless flux and becoming of nature. As it barred language from assigning stability to being, so too did it provide a “way out” of the inexorable human drive captured in the opening line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “All humans naturally desire to know.”. (shrink)

The Stoic is often seen as the forerunner of Adam Smith’s market man of morals, but others have suggested that the sophist played a role in the formation of market morality and political economy. This article traces Smith’s treatment of ancient sophists and his use of the term sophistry in the Wealth of Nations. Smith praised ancient sophists for their effective didactic oratory and their ability to make money through teaching. Smith criticized arguments as sophistic when they promoted monetary (...) advantage for a few over and above the principle of competition. This varied reception of sophists and sophistry suggests a keen understanding of the rhetorical tradition and its capacity to influence the development of the discourse of political economy. Smith’s use of sophistry and reference to the sophists invites a deeper awareness of the essential vitality of effective argumentation for Smith’s “system of natural liberty. (shrink)

The past fifty years have witnessed the flourishing of scholarship in virtually every area of ancient Greek philosophy, but the sophists have for the most part been neglected. This is certainly true of Prodicus of Ceos: of the four most well-known sophists--Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, and Antiphon--he has received the least attention. Robert Mayhew provides a reassessment of his life and thought, and especially his views on language, religion, and ethics. This volume consists of ninety texts with facing translations--far more than (...) have appeared in any previous edition--and provides the first commentary on the extant evidence for Prodicus' life and thought. The texts are drawn from the best available editions; the translations are new, and faithful to the original. Mayhew's commentary is designed to serve the needs of a wide range of readers: both scholars of ancient philosophy, and advanced students curious about this intriguing figure who appears in over a dozen Platonic dialogues. (shrink)

The Sophists, and the Socratic response they provoked, are considered in order to elucidate issues raised by present-day skill-talk. These issues include: whether skills avoid questions of ends and truth; the existence of general skills, such as critical thinking; the importance of knowledge; skills and the personality; and some implications for teaching and philosophy.

Summary: The paper provides an argument for modal primitivism, the view that necessity is not defined and is therefore part of the structure of reality. It then raises the explanation-challenge for primitivists: how can modal truths be explained by hyper-intensional truths, if necessity is not defined in terms of hyper-intensional phenomena? To address the challenge, the paper introduces 'sophisticated modal primitivism' which gives a substantive analysis of the notion of a 'source of necessity'. The final part of the paper offers (...) some applications of that novel piece of ideology. (shrink)

The 'Second Sophistic' is arguably the fastest-growing area in contemporary classical scholarship. This short, accessible account explores the various ways in which modern scholarship has approached one of the most extraordinary literary phenomena of antiquity, the dazzling oratorical culture of the Early Imperial period. Successive chapters deal with historical and cultural background, sophistic performance, technical treatises (including the issue of Atticism and Asianism), the concept of identity, and the wider impact of sophistic performance on major authors of the time, including (...) Plutarch, Lucian and the Greek novelists. (shrink)

From Socrates and Plato onwards, the Sophists were often targeted by the authoritative philosophical tradition as being mere charlatans and poor teachers. This book, translated and significantly updated from its most recent Italian version, challenges these criticisms by offering an overall interpretation of their thought, and by assessing the specific contributions of thinkers like Protagoras, Gorgias and Antiphon. A new vision of the Sophists emerges: they are protagonists and agents of fundamental change in the history of ancient philosophy, who questioned (...) the grounds of morality and politics, as well as the nature of knowledge and language. By shifting the focus from the cosmos to man, the Sophists inaugurate an alternative form of philosophy, whose importance is only now becoming clear. (shrink)

Mr. G. B. KERFERD, in C.Q. xlviii , 84 ff. writes of ‘Plato's Noble Art of Sophistry’. He suggests that Plato thought there was a ‘Noble Art’ of sophistry, other than philosophy itself; and he seeks to find this Art in the better and worse arguments of Protagoras. This suggestion is, unfortunately, based on a mistranslation of Plato, Sophist 231 a:.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sophistics, Rhetorics, and Performance; or, How to Really Do Things with WordsBarbara CassinTranslated by Andrew Goffey"How to do things with words?" How can you really do things with nothing but words? It seems to me that sophistics is in a way the paradigm of discourse that does things with words. Doubtless it is not a "performative" in Austin's sense of the word, although Austin's sense varies considerably in extension (...) and intension. But it is for real a discourse that operates, that transforms or creates the world, and has what I call a "world effect."Making the connection with performativity is all the more tempting, as epideixis, the word that serves in Plato to designate sophist discourse, cannot be rendered better than by "performance," on condition that "performance" is also understood in the sense of contemporary aesthetics as a "happening," an "event," an improvisation that requires engagement (Gorgias is the inventor of discourse ex tempore, according to Philostratus)—something like an "exploit."1"Performative" is Austin's own invention, acclimated to French by Austin himself at a colloquium held at Royaumont (Austin 1962); thereafter it was immediately adopted and popularized by Émile Benveniste (1966). "Performance" is a much older term, which, after ceaseless borrowings to and fro between English and French, has seen its meaning shifted and extended accordingly. Klein's Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of English Language (Klein 1971) maintains that in English "performer" [End Page 349] was coined from Old French parfournir (from medieval Latin perfurnire) and/or parformer; in addition French borrowed the term at least three times, if the Dictionnaire culturel de la langue francaise (Rey 2005) is to be believed: in 1869, by analogy with the vocabulary of horse races to mean the "manner of developing a subject, of executing a work in public"; in 1953, to denote "individual result in the accomplishment of a task"; and in 1963, in the wake of Chomsky, to mean the opposite of "competence." In sum, the word is a fluid, bilingual term that bridges sport (performance in the sense of a record), technique (performance in the sense of the output of a machine), psychology (performance of a test), linguistics (performance/competence), and modern art (performance in the sense of happening).Let us start with the relationship between performance and performative. It is a way to interrogate the status of rhetorics, for which Austin, without naming it, reserves a somewhat unstable place between the "locutionary" on the one hand and the "illocutionary" or performative on the other, calling it the "perlocutionary" ("per" precisely as in "performative").2But it is not of Austin that I will speak. Austin is simply the contemporary frame of reference that informs us today: he "invented" the performative as such for us, by trying to isolate it. And he never hides the difficulty, the permeability, of his taxonomy. Just one citation is enough to show the difficulty. In the seventh lecture of the twelve that make up How to Do Things with Words (quite late then) he writes: "It is time [...] to make a fresh start on the problem. We want to reconsider more generally the senses in which to say something may be to do something, or in saying something we do something (and also perhaps to consider the different case in which by saying something we do something). Perhaps some clarification and definition may help us out of our tangle. For after all, 'doing something' is a very vague expression. When we issue any utterance whatsoever, are we not 'doing something'?" (1975, 91–92).In the framework of the generalized theory of speech acts, the difference between the locutionary, the illocutionary, and the perlocutionary has for a long time been in a "tangle". It is not so easy to differentiate between the three. All three are, precisely, "acts" of language, and without doubt the categories are at once abstract, slippery, and overlapping. The "locutionary" or "constative," a "normal" statement, is an utterance that "says something"; it is an "act of saying something" (1975, 100): "The cat is on the mat" has a meaning (both a "sense" and a "reference") and is susceptible of being either true or false. For... (shrink)

This article shows that important questions remain to be answered about the topics the sophists studied and taught, and their views, both positive and negative, about truth, religion, and convention. The sophists are united more by common methods and attitudes than by common interests. All sophists, for example, challenged traditional thinking, often in ways that went far beyond questioning the existence of the gods, or the truth of traditional myths, or customary moral rules, all of which had been questioned before. (...) Gorgias, for example argued that nothing exists; Protagoras found fault with Homer's Greek; and Antiphon presented arguments for the innocence of someone who seems obviously guilty. In challenging traditional views, the sophists liked to use deliberately provocative, sometimes paradoxical arguments that seem aimed at capturing the audience's attention rather than enlightening them. (shrink)

This book offers a new way of looking at the 5th century BCE Sophists, rejecting the bad reputation they have had since antiquity and presenting them as individuals rather than a "movement", each with his own speciality and personality as revealed through the scant surviving evidence. It provides an account of the Sophists of this period that explains the historical and social developments that led to their prominence and popularity, demonstrating the reasons for their importance and for their seeming disappearance (...) in the 4th century BCE. Restricted to discussion of the few Sophists for whom there are surviving quotations or other texts, The Sophists avoids generalizations often found in other books. It contains accurate translations of most of the surviving material, which forms the securest possible basis for understanding the Sophists as individuals in their various roles, not only as educators but also as ambassadors and pioneers in other fields. After a general introduction, the following chapters present each of the Sophists individually, followed by three chapters which present topics treated by more than one Sophist, such as Logos, Definition and the Nomos-Phusis contrast. The final three chapters reveal the way three important intellectuals of the fourth century (Plato, his rival Isocrates and Aristotle) dealt with the Sophists. An appendix contains several longer passages or works in their entirety in translation, allowing readers to have access to the original source materials and develop their own interpretations. This thorough treatment of the fifth-century Sophists is of interest to scholars working on the subject and on ancient Greek philosophy more broadly, while also being accessible to undergraduate students and the general public interested in the topic. (shrink)

A discussion of whether Habermas as a representative modernist and Lyotard as a representative postmodern echo the ancient dispute between Plato and the Sophists. My conclusion is that they do not quite do so. Each is more complex and ancient dichotomy should be revised.

In the Sophist Plato introduces a very peculiar character, the eleatic stranger who plays both for Theaetetus and for us the role of a perfect sophist. His terrific power simply comes of his refusal to understand the examples. He just requires his interlocutors that absolutely all what is to be understood by them must be explicitly said. And “all” means really all: even the most evident for everybody, all what is not necessary to say and perhaps is not (...) possible either. The eleatic visitor, in order to hunt the sophist whose role himself is playing, trays to say all indeed, even the most difficult: the meaning of words as being, not-being, same, other or similarity. In this way, the language shows oneself as a play of likeness and unlikeness. (shrink)

The many difficulties the book contains are not due to its translator; Miss Freeman's well-marshalled English seldom leaves us in search of the intended sense. They are due rather to the complex character of the author's mind and to the exigencies of the thesis he is defending. One encounters flights of imagination in which lyrical transports alternate or combine with bold dialectical constructions offered as sober interpretations, and multiple quotations from ancient thinkers and modern critics, confusingly blended with our author's (...) own comments. Signor Untersteiner displays an ability like that of the anatomist Cuvier, and can reassemble the entire structure of a lost sophistic writing from a single bone. He exhumes from the works of many other writers--Thucydides, Plato, Theophrastus, Demosthenes, Sextus Empiricus, Cicero--major conceptions, chapters, or whole treatises, mistakenly incorporated there by later editors, or borrowed without acknowledgment; these and sundry anonymous writings on relevant themes he confidently assigns to this or that beneficiary among the sophists. As the inevitable consequence of this process other thinkers, notably Socrates and Plato, are sadly diminished. Socrates becomes, indeed, almost a superfluity, in whose absence the history of Greek thought would have remained unimpaired. Plato's works serve as happy hunting-grounds for supposed incorporations of sophistic insights; for the rest, he is shown as stone-and-gravel blind to the merits of these rival thinkers. Now, some discounting of Plato's satirical portrayal of the sophists may be admitted as legitimate and necessary. Untersteiner, however, has so far exceeded his allowance here as to reach the counter-absurdity, of which his interpretation of Thrasymachus in the ne plus ultra: to a proper reading, we are told, Thrasymachus is far from being a cynical denier of the claims of moral obligation. On the contrary, he is a broken-hearted idealist, and in calling justice "the advantage of the stronger" he is offering not his own conception of justice but, out of his bitter disillusion, describing what men in their tragic folly have made of that noble virtue. (shrink)

One can argue that the problem posed by difference/identity in contemporary philosophy has its roots in the persistent epistemological imperative to be certain about what we know. We find this demand in Plato’s Theaetetus and Sophist. But beyond this demand, there is a sense in the earlier dialogue that difference is not a passive feature waiting to be identified. “Difference” points towards an active differentiating. In the Sophist, difference appears in the method of dividing and gathering deployed to (...) hunt for the elusive “sophist.” Difference is also one of the great kinds that weaves together other kinds. Practically, difference enables the sophist’s expertise of appearance-making as he knowingly confuses things with words. This paper then quizzes the concept of difference in all these guises in the two dialogues. (shrink)

Plato's Sophist provides a careful translation of the Sophist, one of Plato's most complex and difficult dialogues, and includes materials designed to facilitate its usefulness as a text in college courses. The translation employs a minimum of interpretative paraphrasing while being presented in clear, readable English. Special attention has been given to consistency in translating key Greek terms. The book presents a special list of these terms and discusses them in the endnotes. The result is a translation that (...) enables the reader who lacks a knowledge of Greek to get much closer than usual to the original text. Cobb's introduction contains a detailed summary of the entire dialogue, clarifying the main themes and the general structure. He offers a fresh interpretation of the dialogue that shows how each theme contributes to the exploration of the nature of, and the relation between, philosophy and sophistry. The introduction is particularly useful to first readers of the Sophist. (shrink)

This collection of essays sheds new light on the relationship between two of the main drivers of intellectual discourse in ancient Greece: the epic tradition and the Sophists. The contributors show how throughout antiquity the epic tradition proved a flexible instrument to navigate new political, cultural, and philosophical contexts. The Sophists, both in the Classical and the Imperial age, continuously reconfigured the value of epic poetry according to the circumstances: using epic myths allowed the Sophists to present themselves as the (...) heirs of traditional education, but at the same time this tradition was reshaped to encapsulate new questions that were central to the Sophists' intellectual agenda. This volume is structured chronologically, encompassing the ancient world from the Classical Age through the first two centuries AD. The first chapters, on the First Sophistic, discuss pivotal works such as Gorgias' Encomium of Helen and Apology of Palamedes, Alcidamas' Odysseus or Against the Treachery of Palamedes, and Antisthenes' pair of speeches Ajax and Odysseus, as well as a range of passages from Plato and other authors. The volume then moves on to discuss some of the major works of literature from the Second Sophistic dealing with the epic tradition. These include Lucian's Judgement of the Goddesses and Dio Chrysostom's orations 11 and 20, as well as Philostratus' Heroicus and Imagines. (shrink)

A single question marks our departure, a question that, while apparently straightforward, has assumed so many shapes and disguises that it would not be unjust to claim it has infected all of Western history. In its current manifestation, however, we will take our cue from Plato in phrasing it thus: What is a Sophist? When Plato first formulated the question in these terms, he well understood that its self-evident simplicity could be deceptive and that its effects might proliferate uncontrollably. (...) As Jacques Derrida comments, "The question of what the Sophists really were is an enormous question" (Olson 17). In Plato's case, attempting to "hunt down" the Sophist led from a disturbing journey through the world of images to an unsettling encounter with the existence of nonbeing. (shrink)

Of the later dialogues of Plato, the Sophists stand out. This article highlights the concept of sophist as propounded by Plato. A didactic approach runs through the text. Socrates harps on the relation between sophist, philosopher and a statesman. Are they three different or they are the same. The basic idea that Plato wants to convey is, both features highlight some of the key enigmas of the dialogue: What is the relation between the outer and middle parts? How (...) seriously are we to take the outer part? And is there a genuine, and successful, attempt to say what the sophist is? The article focuses on two key problems discussed and solved in the middle part: the late-learners' problem, and the problem of false statement. The article also discusses communion of kinds and Plato's idea of the four quartets. (shrink)

RESUMEN El propósito de este trabajo es mostrar que Sofista puede leerse como una recreación no-alegórica de la imagen de la caverna expuesta en República VII. Por medio de una lectura en paralelo de sendos textos, buscaremos probar que aquel diálogo tardío recrea sistemáticamente no solo las sucesivas fases del relato socrático, sino también parte de su vocabulario cavernoso, sus gradaciones ontológicas, sus preocupaciones pedagógicas e incluso sus compromisos práctico-políticos. Dicha lectura nos ayudará en dos direcciones: a esclarecer ciertos sentidos (...) oscuros de un relato como el de la alegoría que, en tanto bosquejo, deja muchas cosas sin decir y a leer de forma conjunta una obra como Sofista cuya unidad ha sido puesta en duda, no sin evidenciar dimensiones de la misma soslayadas por los intérpretes. ABSTRACT The purpose of this paper is to show that the Sophist dialogue can be read as a not-allegorical recreation of the cave's image found in Republic VII. Through a parallel reading of both texts, we will try to prove that this late work systematically recreates not only the successive phases of the said Socratic image, but also parts of its vocabulary, its ontological classifications, its pedagogical interests and even its practical and political commitments. This reading will lead us both to clarify some unclear senses of an image such as the Allegory's (that, being an outline, leaves much unsaid) and to read the Sophist dialogue, whose unity has been questioned, as a whole, while evidencing some dimensions of the dialogue overlooked by the interpreters. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Sophistical Wisdom:Politikê Aretê and “Logosophia”Christopher Lyle JohnstoneThe pursuit of Wisdom is at the center of the Western intellectual tradition, its attainment the literal ideal and end of all philosophical inquiry. It is recognized by various religions and belief systems as the key to a meaningful, fulfilling, happy life. Yet for all this, its nature remains unclear and the means of its attainment uncertain. Is it one thing, or are (...) there different kinds of wisdom? How is it acquired? Can it be taught or communicated to others? How, if at all, do speech and language figure in the attainment and dissemination of wisdom?The relationship between wisdom and utterance, reflected in the connection between philosophy and rhetoric, has been a focus of intellectual interest in the West since at least the time of Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca. 500 BCE): Parmenides, Empedocles, Protagoras, Gorgias, Socrates, Plato, Isocrates, Aristotle, Cicero, Quintilian, Augustine, Bacon, Vico—all have been concerned, either directly or indirectly, with the interrelation of speech or eloquence and what they view as the highest form of knowledge. Recent scholarship has pursued this relationship along several related lines of inquiry, albeit sometimes obliquely. Some investigators have examined the role of speech in the creation of all human knowledge.1 Others have concentrated more particularly on the role of rhetoric in the creation or exercise of wisdom.2 In an effort to illuminate the ancient foundations of these connections, several scholars have lately studied the link between language and thought in Greek philosophy and rhetoric.3My present interest centers on the linkages between wisdom and speech—between sophia and logos—in the teachings of those pivotal thinkers of the fifth-century Greek "Enlightenment," the Older Sophists. Although the doctrines of Heraclitus, Pythagoras, Empedocles, Archelaus, and the Atomists took up moral and political topics, presocratic thinkers generally had concentrated on the origins and mechanical workings of the physical world in which human beings live. As contemporaries of Protagoras and Gorgias, the Atomists—Leucippus and Democritus—are particularly noteworthy for having initiated inquiry into [End Page 265] the relationship between custom or law (nomos) and nature or objective reality (physis), which became a central concern for many of the Older Sophists.4 Such moral and political themes were taken up in earnest by the thinkers and teachers who resided in or were drawn to Athens in the fifth century BCE. Protagoras, Gorgias, Socrates, Antiphon, and others raised questions that were fundamentally political and moral: How should one live one's life? What are the values that should guide one's conduct? By what moral standards should our actions be judged, and how are these standards to be discovered? What legitimizes the laws that govern society? Are law and morality rooted in the nature of things, or are they merely matters of custom and convention? Such questions mark a shift in intellectual inquiry away from the sorts of naturalistic, metaphysical, and ontological problems that preoccupied presocratic thinkers and toward a primary concern with matters of praxis, politics, and morality.My aims in this essay are, first, to illuminate the conceptions of wisdom that can be reconstructed from our evidence for the teachings of the Older Sophists, and then to discern the role of speech in the attainment and exercise of this wisdom. The past half-century or so has witnessed a growing interest in the Sophists of fifth-century Athens. This interest is particularly noteworthy because it involves a determination to consider the Sophists on their own terms rather than through Plato's eyes, as had been customary in most nineteenth- and early twentieth-century sophistical studies. Though an early precedent was set by Grote's (1846) effort to challenge the Platonist bias in historical treatments of the Sophists, it was such scholars as Untersteiner (1949, 1954), Cornford (1950), Kerferd (1950, 1981), and Guthrie (1968, 1971) who inspired more recent revisionist histories of sophistical ideas.5 More recent studies have sought to illuminate the philosophical foundations of such ideas and their implications for the theory and practice of rhetoric. J. Poulakos (1983a, 1983b, 1984, 1990, 1995), Schiappa (1990, 1991, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999), de Romilly (1992), Consigny (2001), McComisky (2002), Gagarin (2002... (shrink)

Two dialogues explore a vital concern of a democratic society: how to define the qualities of a genuine statesman as well as the distinction between an authentic statesman and a sophist.