Sophistes

“ Professor Charles Thurot (in his Études sur Aristote, Paris, 1860, p. 119) takes a juster view than Zeller of the difference between Plato and the Sophists (Protagoras, Prodikus, Hippias) . “Les Sophistes, comme tous ceux qui dissertent superficiellement sur des questions de philosophie, et en particulier sur la morale et la politique, s’appuyaient sur l’autorité et le témoignage; ils alléguaient les vers des poètes célèbres qui passaient aux yeux des Grecs pour des oracles de sagesse: ils invoquaient l’opinion du commun des hommes. ”

“ With Plato, as with other inventive writers, a time seems to have arrived when he desired to connect successive works in a series.Sophist. Thus in planning the Sophistes he linked it to the Theaetetus (which had been written without any such intention) , and projected a whole tetralogy of dialectical dialogues, Theaetetus, Sophistes, Politicus, Philosophus, of which the last piece seems never to have been written.
After an interval, of which our only measure is a change of style, the philosopher returns to the great central question of knowledge and being. ”

“ In so far as I venture to present a general view of one who keeps constantly in the dark — who delights to dive, and hide himself, not less difficult to catch than the supposed Sophist in his own dialogue called Sophistês — I shall consider it as subordinate to the dialogues, each and all: and above all, it must be such as to include and acknowledge not merely diversities, but also inconsistencies and contradictions.78
77 The only manifestation of the personal Plato is in the Epistolæ. I have already said that I accept these as genuine, though most critics do not. ”

“ Schaarschmidt's objection to Sophistes is based on the fact that the idealistic doctrine, which is attacked in Sophistes 246, 248, and 249, is identical with the Platonic doctrine as we find it in dialogues of undoubted authenticity. The Platonic teaching of the holiness and exaltedness of the world of ideas is ridiculed in Sophistes. A., without discussing the view of Schaarschmidt, gives the passages in the Sophistes, along with those in the undoubtedly genuine dialogues, in which mention is made of the doctrine of ideas. ”

“ The plain announcement contained in the Theætêtus, Sophistês, and Politikus themselves, that the two last are intended as sequel to the first, is in my mind a proof of sameness of authorship, not counterbalanced by Socher’s objections. Why should a Megaric author embody in his two dialogues a false pretence and assurance, that they are sequel of the Platonic Theætêtus? Why should so acute a writer (as Socher admits him to be) go out of his way to suppress his own personality, and merge his fame in that of Plato? ”

“ He can do no more than give answers signifying assent and dissent, which merely serve to break and diversify the exposition. In fact, the dialogue in the Sophistês and Politikus is assimilated by Plato himself,6 not to that in the Theætêtus, but to that in the last half of the Parmenides; wherein Aristotelês the respondent answers little more than Ay or No, to leading questions from the interrogator. ”

“ Though Plato himself plainly designates the Sophistês as an intended sequel to the Theætêtus, yet the method of the two is altogether different, and in a certain sense even opposite. In the Theætêtus, Sokrates extracts answers from the full and pregnant mind of that youthful respondent: he himself professes to teach nothing, but only to canvass every successive hypothesis elicited from his companion. ”

“ Again, p. 288 D. τό τε αἶ πρὸς τὴν τοῦ προβληθέντος ζήτησιν, ὡς ἂν ῥᾷστα καὶ τάχιστα εὔροιμεν, δεύτερον ἀλλ’ οὐ πρῶτον ὁ λόγος ἀγαπᾷν παραγγέλει, πολὺ δὲ μάλιστα καὶ πρῶτον τὴν μέθοδον αὐτὴν τιμᾷν, τοῦ κατ’ εἴδη δυνατὸν εἶναι διαιρεῖν, &c.
Method of logical Definition and Division.
Both the Sophistes and the Politikus are lessons and specimens of that process which the logical manuals recognise under the names — Definition and Division. What is a Sophist? What is a politician or statesman? What is a philosopher? ”

“ It is also the same doctrine as is declared, both by the Eleate in the Sophistês and by Sokrates in the Theætêtus, to imply as an undeniable consequence, that the falsehood of any proposition is impossible. “A false proposition is that which speaks the thing that is not (τὸ μὴ ὄν) . ”

“ How are we to explain these three ditferent modes of handling the same question by the same philosopher? If the question about Non-Ens can be disposed of in the summary way which we read in the Kratylus, what is gained by the string of unsolved puzzles in the Theætêtus, or by the long discursive argument in the Sophistês, ushering in a new solution no way satisfactory? ”

“ His devotion to Plato found expression in two translations—‘The Sophistes of Plato, translated, with explanatory Notes and an Introduction on Ancient and Modern Sophistry,’ 1868, and ‘Plato's Meno, translated, with explanatory Notes and Introduction, and a preliminary Essay on the Moral Education of the Greeks,’ 1869. ”

“ With this most serious inquiry there is combined (as in the Sophistes and Politicus) an ironical and controversial use of dialectic, by which the juggler and false pretender (who is in this case the goddess of pleasure) , after claiming the highest place, is thrust down to the lowest.
It must be admitted that the style of the Philebus is far from brilliant, or even clear. In the effort of connecting abstractions Plato's movement is more laboured than in his first glad realization of them. ”

“ The proceeding of Plato in the Sophistês is different. He supposes a Sophist who maintains that no proposition either is false or can be false, and undertakes to prove against him that there are false propositions: he farther supposes this antagonist to reject the evidence of sense and visible analogies, and to acknowledge no proof except what is furnished by reason and philosophical deduction.149 Attempting, under these restrictions, to prove his point, Plato’s Eleatic disputant rests entirely upon the peculiar meaning which he professes to have shown to attach to Non-Ens. ”

“ No (replies Theodôrus) that is not his character. He is less given to 187dispute than his companions. He is far from being a God, but he is a divine man: for I call all true philosophers divine.2
1 At the beginning of the Politikus, Plato makes Sokrates refer both to the Theætêtus and to the Sophistês (p. 258 A) . In more than one passage of the Politikus (pp. 266 D, 284 B, 286 B) , he even refers to the Sophistês directly and by name, noticing certain points touched in it — a thing very unusual with him. ”

“ In conclusion, a friendly hint is given to Isocrates that he may do better than Lysias if he will but turn his attention to philosophy.
The Phaedrus anticipates much that Plato afterwards slowly elaborated, and retains some things which he at last eliminated. (1) The presence of movement or impulse in the highest region is an aspect of truth which reappears in the Sophistes and other later dialogues. It has been thought strange that it should be found so early as in the Phaedrus. ”

“ The view taken by Schleiermacher and other critics — that Plato lays out the difficulties in one anterior dialogue, in order to furnish the solution in another posterior — is not borne out by the facts. In the Theætêtus, many objections are propounded against the doctrine, That Opinion is sometimes true, sometimes false. Sokrates shows that false opinion is an impossibility: either therefore all 181opinions are true, or no opinion is either true or false. If we turn to the Sophistês, we shall find this same question discussed by the Eleatic Stranger who conducts the debate. ”

“ Schleiermacher (Einleit. pp. 136-137) also points out the negligent execution and heavy march of the dialogue.
101 See Politikus, pp. 285-286; Phædrus, p. 265; Xenoph. Memor. iv. 5, 12.
I have already observed that Socher (Ueber Platon. pp. 260-270) and Stallbaum (Proleg. ad Politik. pp. 52-54-65-67, &c.) agree in condemning the extreme minuteness, the tiresome monotony, the useless and petty comparisons, which Plato brings together in the multiplied bifurcate divisions of the Sophistês and Politikus. Socher adduces this as one among his reasons for rejecting the dialogue as spurious. ”

“ When therefore we characterise the Sophist as one who builds up phantasms for realities — who presents to us what is not, as being like to what is, and as a false substitute for what is — he will ask us what we mean? ”

“ It was the age of the Sophists,--those popular but superficial teachers who claimed to be the most advanced of their generation; men who were doubtless accomplished, but were cynical, sceptical, and utilitarian, placing a high estimate on popular favor and an outside life, but very little on pure subjective truth or the wants of the soul. They were paid teachers, and sought pupils from the sons of the rich,--the more eminent of them being Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus ”

“ I would not, however, be understood to share the opinions of those, who can discern nothing but evil in the doctrines of the sophists. On many points their notions harmonised altogether with those of the wisest philosophers. Accordingly it was not precisely what they inculcated, but the principles which regulated their teaching, that rendered them sophists. They taught with a view to enrich themselves, which is wholly incompatible with a strict allegiance to truth; since, with such views, men will always be found to prophesy agreeably in order that they may effect their purpose. ”

“ The scholars hold disputations, some declaiming, others by way of question and answer. These roll out euthymemes, these use the better form of perfect syllogisms. Some dispute merely for show as they do at collections; others for truth, which is the grace of perfection. The sophists using the Socratic irony are pronounced happy because of the mass and volume of their words; others play upon words. Those learning rhetoric, with rhetorical speeches, speak to the point with a view to persuasion, being careful to observe the precepts of their art, and to leave out nothing that belongs to it. ”

“ The Sophists, those skirmishers of a new and as yet unrecognizable philosophy, scattered and put to flight the old guard of positive and doctrinal wisdom, but to the individual, who was bidden to depend upon his own resources, they offered stimulus to reflection in abundance but no permanent foothold in the shifting sands of opinion. ”

“ DOCTRINES OF THE SOPHISTS.—The Sophists descend from Parmenides and Zeno of Elea; Gorgias was the disciple of the latter. By dint of thinking that all is semblance save the Supreme Being, who alone is real, it is very easy to arrive at belief in all being semblance, including that Being; or at least what is almost tantamount, that all is semblance, inclusive of any idea we can possibly conceive of the Supreme Being. To believe nothing, and to demonstrate that there is no reason to believe in anything, is the cardinal principle of all the Sophists. ”

“ SOPHISTS (from Gr. σοφιστής, literally, man of wisdom) , the name given by the Greeks about the middle of the 5th century B.C. to certain teachers of a superior grade who, distinguishing themselves from philosophers on the one hand and from artists and craftsmen on the other, claimed to prepare their pupils, not for any particular study or profession, but for civic life. For nearly a hundred years the sophists held almost a monopoly of general or liberal education. Yet, within the limits of the profession, there was considerable diversity both of theory and of practice. ”

“ In so far as he is critical, Grote leaves little to be desired. That the persons styled sophists “were not a sect or school, with common doctrines or method,” is clear. Common doctrine, that is to say, common doctrine of a positive sort, they could not have, because, being sceptics, they had nothing which could be called positive doctrine; while there was a period when even their scepticism was in no wise distinctive, because they shared it with all or nearly all their contemporaries. ”

“ But, in addition, even sophists who personally took an attitude radically contradictory to popular belief had the most important reasons for being careful in advancing such a view. They had to live by being the teachers of youth; they had no fixed appointment, they travelled about as lecturers and enlisted disciples by means of their lectures. For such men it would have been a very serious thing to attack the established order in its tenderest place, religion, and above all they had to beware of coming into conflict with the penal laws. ”

“ It is true that Socrates and his great successors Plato and Aristotle were called "Sophists," but only as all philosophers or wise men were so called. The Sophists as a class had incurred the odium of being the first teachers who received pay for the instruction they imparted. The philosophers generally taught for the love of truth. The Sophists were a natural and necessary and very useful development of their time, but they were distinctly on a lower level than the Philosophers, or lovers of wisdom. ”

“ These men were the Sophists,--rhetorical men, who taught the children of the rich; worldly men, who sought honor and power; frivolous men, trifling with philosophical ideas; sceptical men, denying all certainty in truth; men who as teachers added nothing to the realm of science, but who yet established certain dialectical rules useful to later philosophers. They were a wealthy, powerful, honored class, not much esteemed by men of thought, but sought out as very successful teachers of rhetoric, and also generally selected as ambassadors on difficult missions. ”