Sophists: Greek Thinkers and the Rise of Rhetoric
The “Sophists” were a group of Greek thinkers who flourished in the second half of the 5th century BCE. They shared at least two outstanding features: their teachings included a set of humanistic disciplines (rhetoric, politics, moral rights, etc.), and they were the first professionals of education, teaching full courses organized and paid for with considerable sums. Both features—the humanistic character of their teachings and the institutionalization of teaching itself—clearly show that the Sophists had a clearly defined project of education, which broke with traditional education, inadequate for the demands of the time. Two circumstances surrounding the emergence of the Sophists are often seen: one philosophical, and the other political-social. The first deals with the development of earlier physical theories, and the second with the democratic system established in Athens.
The Development of Relativism and Skepticism
The development of Greek theories about the universe until the middle of the 5th century BCE (a development covering philosophers from Thales to Democritus) offers a show of opposing and incompatible theories that contradict each other. It is not strange that this show created a relativistic and skeptical attitude toward the philosophy of nature, which had been unable to produce an acceptable system for everyone. Relativism (there is no absolute truth) and skepticism (if there is absolute truth, it is impossible to know it) extended and generalized as an intellectual stance. A famous expression of relativism is the sentence of Protagoras: “Man is the measure of all things.” A crude expression of skepticism is found in Gorgias’ three staggered statements: “Nothing exists; if anything existed, it could not be known; if it were known, no knowledge could be communicated through language.” The text of Gorgias shows a radical break with earlier Greek philosophy. For previous philosophy, and later for Plato and Aristotle, reality is rational; therefore, thought and language, to accommodate it, are able to express it properly. The decoupling of language from reality constitutes an important pillar of the Sophists’ interpretation of man and reality. Indeed, if we renounce language as a manifestation of real speech, language ends up becoming an instrument of manipulation, a weapon to convince and impress the masses in an effective way to impose on others, if you know the proper techniques.
The Influence of Athenian Democracy
The abandonment of the philosophy of nature also contributed to the needs raised by the democratic practice of Athenian society. The advent of democracy had brought a remarkable change in the nature of leadership: offspring no longer sufficed, but political leadership passed by popular acceptance. In a society where decisions are made by the village assembly, where the highest aspiration is to win political power, the need to prepare for it was soon felt. A politician needed, undoubtedly, to be a good speaker to manage the masses. They also needed to have certain ideas about law, about what is right and appropriate, about administration, and so on. This was precisely the type of training that the teachings of the Sophists provided. Among the political and moral doctrines of the Sophists, the most characteristic and important is their claim that political institutions and moral norms and ideas are conventional in nature.
Nomos vs. Physis: The Conventional Nature of Laws
The Greek term nomos came to mean the laws and regulations, a set of conventions as opposed to the term physis, which expresses the natural, the laws and rules unrelated to any agreement or convention, that are rooted in human nature. The Sophists promoted the belief that laws and institutions are the result of an agreement or human choice: they are as they are, but nothing prevents them from being otherwise. This is precisely what is meant by the term “conventional”: something established by an agreement and that, therefore, nothing prevents it from being otherwise if deemed appropriate.
The Conventionality of Morality
The Sophists were defending not only the conventional nature of political institutions but also of moral standards: what is considered good and bad, right and wrong, noble and reprehensible, is not fixed, or absolute, or universally valid, nor immutable.
The Lasting Impact of Sophist Thought
It’s easy to understand the significance of these reflections of Sophistry. They opened the eternal debate about moral norms, on natural law (physis) and positive law (nomos). The debate began with the Sophists in Greek philosophy but did not end with them.
Their historical impact is felt in the Hellenistic school of Pyrrho of Elis’ skeptics, and from the standpoint of political theory, in the contractarian authors of the 17th and 18th centuries (Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau).