Sophist
The word σοφός gives rise to the verb σοφίζω, sophizo, 'to instruct / make learned', the passive voice of which means "to become or be wise", or "to be clever or skilled".
In the second half of the 5th century BCE, particularly in Athens, "sophist" came to denote a class of mostly itinerant intellectuals who taught courses in various subjects, speculated about the nature of language and culture, and employed rhetoric to achieve their purposes, generally to persuade or convince others.
Nicholas Denyer observes that the Sophists "did ... have one important thing in common: whatever else they did or did not claim to know, they characteristically had a great understanding of what words would entertain or impress or persuade an audience.
Most of these sophists are known today primarily through the writings of their opponents (particularly Plato and Aristotle), which makes it difficult to assemble an unbiased view of their practices and teachings.
This meant that "the Athenians needed a strategy for effectively talking to other people in juries, in forums, and in the senate" (W. Keith, 5).
Originally known as Sicilians, they began to teach Athenians how to speak in a persuasive manner in order to work with the courts and senate.
Athens became the center of the sophists' activity, due to the city's freedom of speech for non-slave citizens and its wealth of resources.
[6] The little that is known of him is derived from Sextus Empiricus, who represents him as holding the most ultrasceptical opinions, and maintaining that all notions are false, and that there is absolutely nothing true in the universe.
[8] Gorgias was a well-known sophist whose writings showcased his ability to make counter-intuitive and unpopular positions appear stronger.
The sophists' practice of questioning the existence and roles of traditional deities and investigating into the nature of the heavens and the earth prompted a popular reaction against them.
As there was a popular view of Socrates as a sophist, he was among the targets (which prompted a vigorous condemnation from his followers, including Plato and Xenophon).
For example, in the comic play The Clouds, Aristophanes criticizes the sophists as hairsplitting wordsmiths, and makes Socrates their representative.
In Aristophanes's comedic play The Clouds, Strepsiades seeks the help of Socrates (a parody of the actual philosopher) in an effort to avoid paying his debts.
By developing a school in Athens around 392 BCE, approximately five years after Plato opened his Platonic Academy, Isocrates gave sophism more credibility in society.
Plato described sophists as paid hunters after the young and wealthy, as merchants of knowledge, as athletes in a contest of words, and purgers of souls.
Plato describes them as shadows of the true, saying, "the art of contradiction making, descended from an insincere kind of conceited mimicry, of the semblance-making breed, derived from image making, distinguished as portion, not divine but human, of production, that presents, a shadow play of words—such are the blood and the lineage which can, with perfect truth, be assigned to the authentic sophist".
[23] The works of Plato and Aristotle have had much influence on the modern view of the "sophist" as a greedy instructor who uses rhetorical sleight-of-hand and ambiguities of language in order to deceive, or to support fallacious reasoning.
Although many sophists were apparently as religious as their contemporaries, some held atheistic or agnostic views (for example, Protagoras and Diagoras of Melos).
The early sophists charged money in exchange for education and providing wisdom, and so were typically employed by wealthy people.
[citation needed] James A. Herrick wrote: "In De Oratore, Cicero blames Plato for separating wisdom and eloquence in the philosopher's famous attack on the sophists in Gorgias.
The historical context provides evidence for their considerable influence, as Athens became more and more democratic during the period in which the sophists were most active.
Sophists contributed to the new democracy in part by espousing expertise in public deliberation, the foundation of decision-making, which allowed—and perhaps required—a tolerance of the beliefs of others.
This liberal attitude would naturally have made its way into the Athenian assembly as sophists began acquiring increasingly high-powered clients.
[27] Continuous rhetorical training gave the citizens of Athens "the ability to create accounts of communal possibilities through persuasive speech".
Contradictions (antithesis [31]) were important to the Sophists because they believed that a good rhetorician should be able to defend both his own opinion and the exact opposite one.
For them, there were no topics they could not dispute, because their skill reached such a level that they were able to talk about completely unknown things to them and still impress upon listeners and the opponent.
Unlike Plato's approach, the Sophist rhetoricians did not focus on identifying the truth, but the most important thing for them was to prove their case.
By methods of double oppositions, stringing of repetitive positive qualities and insightful consistent arguments, Gorgias gradually purifies the poor reputation of a woman.
[citation needed] However, despite the opposition from philosophers Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, it is clear that sophists had a vast influence on a number of spheres, including the growth of knowledge and on ethical-political theory.
[32] In his writings, Cicero is said to have shown a "synthesis that he achieved between Greek and Roman culture" summed up in his work De Oratore.
