Sophists

Resumo: Com base no Teeteto de Platão, busca-se compreender a dimensão do termo ánthropos na famosa sentença de Protágoras. Segundo a crítica platônica, Protágoras parece entender corpo e alma como diferentes tipos de percipientes: os órgãos sensoriais corporais percebem a aparência imediata de algo que provoca a sensibilidade; a alma, por sua vez, ‘percebe’ por ter julgamentos admitidos pela aprendizagem e experiência. O homem-medida protagórico, do tema da realidade sensível, conduz-nos à formulação do problema em termos de julgamento e opinião, (...) e a medida, que inicialmente é atribuída a cada indivíduo, para além de cada ser humano, é reputada a cada cidade. Palavras-chave: Homem-medida; Protágoras; Paideia; Democracia; Teeteto. The ánthropos of Protagoras: from singular to common: Based on Plato's Theaetetus, we seek to understand the dimension of the term ánthropos in the famous sentence of Protagoras. According to Platonic criticism, Protagoras seems to understand body and soul as different types of percipients: the bodily sensory organs perceive the immediate appearance of something that provokes sensitivity; the soul 'perceives' by having judgments admitted by learning and experience. The protagorical measure-man, from the theme of sensible reality, leads us to formulate the problem in terms of judgment and opinion, and the measure, which is initially attributed to each individual, in addition to each human being, is reputed to each city. Keywords: Man-measure; Protagoras; Paideia; Democracy; Theaetetus. El antropos de Protágoras: del singular al común Resumen: Con base en el Teeteto de Platón, buscamos comprender la dimensión del término ánthropos en la famosa oración de Protágoras. Según la crítica platónica, Protágoras parece entender el cuerpo y el alma como diferentes tipos de perceptores: los órganos sensoriales corporales perciben la aparición inmediata de algo que provoca la sensibilidad; el alma, a su vez, "percibe" al admitir juicios mediante el aprendizaje y la experiencia. El hombre-medida protagórico, desde el tema de la realidad sensible, nos lleva a formular el problema en términos de juicio y opinión, y la medida, que inicialmente se atribuye a cada individuo, además de cada persona, se le atribuye a cada ciudad. Palabras clave: Hombre medida; Protágoras; Paideia; Democracia; Teeteto. Data de registro: 15/07/2021 Data de aceite: 15/03/2022. (shrink)

A pesquisa teve como objetivo explicitar duas importantes obras de Platão, Fédon e Górgias, no primeiro Platão buscará distinguir a natureza do corpo e da alma, sendo que o corpo pertence à natureza sensível estando sujeito a mudanças e sendo f onte das paixões e apetites do homem. Enquanto que a alma pertence à natureza do mundo inteligível, sendo imutável e onde o logos reside e se pode conhecer as coisas em si, ou seja, as essências das coisas. Platão também (...) se preocupará em evidenciar a questão epistemológica, ou seja, como conhecemos as coisas e relacionando a participação da alma e do corpo nesse processo. (shrink)

On the basis of evidence obtained by unravelling enigmas in Philostratus and Eunapius’ Lives of the Sophists and lifting the veil of mystery surrounding some of the crucial, sophistic-related passages from Isocrates and Dio Chrysostom’s writings, we were able to arrive to a conclusion that, contrary to all expectations, the Second Sophistic is closely connected not so much with rhetoric as with philosophy itself, no matter what the so-called sophists say of the phenomenon in their attempts to disguise the essence (...) of things. Paradoxically enough, it turned out that the enigma in Eunapius and, above all, Philostratus’ work played almost the same role as did myth in Herodotus’ historical work in so far as only the skillful use of the mentioned stylistic device might confer an aura of magic to the scarce material being at the disposal of the authors. Keywords: Second Sophistic, Philostratus, Eunapius, legend of Socrates, Xenophon’s Memorabilia, Isocrates, Platonism, enigma, symbolism. (shrink)

El artículo pretende mostrar la importancia que reviste el tratamiento ofrecido por Gorgias en torno a la sensación y su relación con el pensamiento y el lenguaje en los dos resúmenes conservados del Peri tou me ontos. Sostengo queallí se postula una fragmentación radical del hombre como polo unificado de la sensación, así como también del objeto en una multiplicidad de aristas que no encuentran momento sintético alguno. El paradigma de la sensibilidad fragmentada es el fundamento central, incuestionado en el (...) tratado que se proyectará a las relaciones entre ser, pensamiento y discurso para abonar la tesis de la imposibilidad del conocimiento y de la comunicación. Más allá de las intenciones gorgianas, se subraya el valor aporético de tales planteos y se sugieren importantes proyecciones de tales aporías en las propuestas de Platón y Aristóteles en torno a la sensibilidad. (shrink)

Assuming that a nihilist reading of Gorgias’ thought is to be ruled out, the issue of ‘not being’ remains one of the thorniest in his philosophy; indeed, it is fair to conclude that Gorgias is deeply concerned with ‘not being’. But what, after all, is Gorgias’ ‘not being’? This paper aims to answer this crucial question, by taking into consideration Gorgias’ main texts. Each of them provides a serious – although not always explicit – account of ‘not being’. Overall, the (...) aim is to show that Gorgias’ account of ‘not being’ is not concerned with ‘non-existence’ at all. It is deeply concerned, however, with falsehood and language. The paper will, therefore, be structured as follows: in part 1, the Treatise and specifically the the first section of the Particular Proof will be addressed and its ‘linguistic’ conception of ‘not-being’ fully exploited; in part 2, the Apology of Palamedes will be taken into account, in order to enucleate its ‘not-being-as-falsehood’ argument; the results from part 1 and part 2 will allow us, in part 3, to provide an analysis of the Encomium of Helen which points at its underlying conception of ‘not-being’. (shrink)

The philosophical nature of the two versions of paraphrasing the Gorgias’ treatise On Non-Being — the skeptical version by Sextus Empiricus and the peripatetic version by an anonymous author — are discussed. The paper gives a comparative analysis of the arguments upheld by the informants enunciating Gorgias’ thoughts, demonstrates the range of philosophical problems, which Gorgias considered, judging by the reports of his speech, and shows how both versions add to and clarify each other in terms of philosophical issues. The (...) work provides insights as to how Gorgias modernizes and transforms the initial attitudes of Parmenides, shifting the reasoning plan: from how thought can be directed to an object and the qualities of this object to how thought can be directed to the non-existent. Accordingly, the problems of intentionality in the Gorgias’ teaching are considered as well as the privileged status of any of mental states, the nature of word or speech as an autonomous way to develop knowledge about external objects, the issue of meaning as a reference, and inter-subjectivity in cognition. A conclusion is reached that giving preference to one of the paraphrasing versions impoverishes our understanding of the Gorgias’ teaching considerably, while the joint analysis of both versions demonstrates the engagement of the sophistic issues raised by Gorgias, in the philosophical and, particularly, the epistemological paradigm of the ancient as well as modern philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of my paper is to investigate Gorgias’ argument against motion, which is found in his Peri tou meontos and preserved only in MXG 980a18. I tried to shed new light both on this specific reflection and on the reliability of Pseudo-Aristotle’s version. By exploring the so called “change argument” and the “argument from divisibility”, I focused on the particular strategy used by the Sophist in his synthetike apodeixis, which should be investigated in relation to the dispute between monistic (...) and pluralistic ontology. In this regard, the puzzle from “divisibility everywhere” and its connection with the void as not-being can provide new elements to grasp the philosophical background in which the Sophist moves. On the one hand, Gorgias’ argument against motion is part of a broader dispute on the divisibility/indivisibility of being; on the other, his original elaboration of this puzzle seems to be perfectly understandable within the controversy between Eleatics and Atomists, and coherent with the argumentative style of the Sophist. (shrink)

After briefly considering Plato’s objections to rhetoric—it disregards the truth, aiming only to persuade, and it manipulates our emotions rather than instructing us—I turn to the historical Gorgias. The ‘Encomium of Helen’ ascribes to logos virtually all-powerful capacities for persuasion, seduction, and even bewitchment. Here Gorgias celebrates the very things Plato rejects. Yet in the ‘Defense of Palamedes’ considerable anxieties about whether logos actually does possess such strength are voiced: the weakness, not the power, of logos comes to occupy center (...) stage. Gorgias’ own views thus are likely more complex than Plato allows. (shrink)

We find the Platonic replenishment theory for the first time in the Gorgias, but it definitely can be find at its clearest in the Republic and the Philebus,where it plays a key role in the Platonic psychology of pleasure. According to thereplenishment theory, pleasure is defined as a movement or process or fulfillmentthat satisfies a previous lack, amounting to the recovery of our natural humanbalance state. Also, replenishment theory underpins ethical issues on the necessity ofpleasure in a good life. The (...) aim of this work is to show how the replenishment theoryshapes Platonic general theory of pleasure, as it is the link between ontologicalquestions about pleasure‟s true nature and ethical questions about its importance inhuman life. (shrink)

This article seeks to present some elements of the theory of education and communication that appear in the Plato’s Protagoras. For this, a general presentation of the text is offered at the beginning. Then an analysis is elaborated, according to the main sections of the Protagoras, of those passages that are more pertinent to the subject of this work. In the end, some synthetic reflections are offered.

This paper argues that Protagoras’ concept of education, unlike the Platonic ideal of complete transmission of cognitive knowledge, is not oriented towards the paradigm of axiomatic geometry, but seeks to develop virtue and judgment through processes of consideration, insight, imitation, and practice. Accordingly, his epistemology combines consciousness of moderate relativity with a preference for proliferation of theories, without giving up the claim to gradually better logoi. Protagoras’ position can thus be understood and defended against the reservations of Plato to Boghossian (...) as a systematically attractive and virtuous epistemic attitude. (shrink)

Logos is a central Greek term for the construction of the sophistic movement. Gorgias de Leontinos, one of the main representatives of the first generation of this movement, proposed to reflect, in Elogio de Helena, about the discourse as a great and sober master, able to produce persuasion in Helena and denouncing this persuasive power at the same time. In the first part of this study, we intend to situate logos as a producer of experiences in its listener, which is (...) important in understanding the persuasive power. In the second part, the fabrication of experiences, different from persuasion, is identified with a fictitious reality produced due to voluntary deception. Because this experience of deception is voluntary, the reason for the sovereignty of logos is for Gorgias, in which speech, in addition to persuading, can serve as a possible instrument for the fabrication of learning, whose artistic experience his own text exemplifies. (shrink)

In the Theaetetus Socrates provides an elaboration and discussion of Protagoras’ measure doctrine, grounding it in a “secret doctrine” of flux. This paper argues that the anthropology of the myth in the Protagoras provides an earlier, very different way to explain the measure doctrine, focusing on its application to civic values, such as “just,” “fine,” and “pious.” The paper shows that Protagoras’ explanation of the dual etiology of virtue – that it is acquired both by nature and by nurture – (...) tracks the two meanings of “anthropos” in his formulation of the measure doctrine, as “humankind” and “individual human.” On Protagoras’ account, humankind’s survival can be explained by the fact that humans share shame and justice, which enables them to live together in cities. (shrink)

This essay aims at elucidating the distinction between sophistry and rhetoric in Plato’s Gorgias starting from Socrates’ enigmatic contention that “sophists and rhetors are mixed up in the same area and about the same thing, since they are so close to each other”. To this end I will discuss, firstly, the genealogy of the Greek words sophistikē and rhētorikē in the remaining Greek literature, attempting to show that the modern notions of “sophistry” and “rhetoric” in a broad sense derive from (...) a Platonic-Aristotelian operation of delimitating a special kind of thought and pedagogical activity in opposition to “philosophy”. Secondly, I will analyze some passages of Plato’s Gorgias and Protagoras in which these two notions are being theoretically defined. The general idea pursued in this essay is that rhetoric integrates the sophistic education represented paradigmatically by Protagoras as a necessary means for the citizen to take part in the deliberative institutions of a democratic city, whereas in the case of Gorgias rhetoric – and more specifically, the judiciary species – consists in the end itself of his pedagogical activity, and not as a means to a wider moral and intellectual education – that is to say, the teaching of political art, identified with moral virtue in Plato’s Protagoras. (shrink)

Protagoras and Aristotle’s conceptions of virtue are without doubt different. The former conceives it as the exercise of certain moral qualities that are indispensable to the attainment or maintenance of what is useful to oneself and to those who dedicate themselves to the affairs of the city. The latter conceives it as a strong and immutable state of character, which is the condition for the realization of the individual’s and of the city’s Eudaimonia. It would seem, however, that Protagoras and (...) Aristotle converge on this point: the subsistence of a city does not depend upon a ruler who holds the science of ruling well with which he rules, but rather on well educated and excellent rulers and citizens, which is the condition for good political exercise. My aim here is to indicate the affinity between the political conceptions of Protagoras and Aristotle concerning the end of civic education as a guarantee of justice in the city. (shrink)

En el Gran Discurso de Protágoras, en el diálogo platónico que lleva su nombre, Platón pone en boca de Protágoras un mito acerca del origen, desarrollo y naturaleza del ser humano, que es de gran relevancia filosófica. Se expresa que los dioses crearon a los seres mortales desde dos elementos: la tierra y el fuego. A su vez, también asignaron dos titanes, Epimeteo y Prometeo, para que proveyeran a los mortales de sus facultades. ¿Acaso esto implica que la creación no (...) fue terminada por los dioses? ¿Hasta qué punto los dioses crearon enteramente al ser humano? ¿Podría afirmarse que este es un mito creacionista? El desarrollo de los seres vivientes puede dividirse en cuatro instancias. A lo largo de este artículo, se proponen distintos modelos hermenéuticos para responder los interrogantes mencionados anteriormente. (shrink)

The following article provides an interpretation of the structure of courage in Plato’s Laches, Meno and Protagoras. I argue that these dialogues present courage in the soul according to the same scheme: that there is a normatively neutral psychic state which is informed by the knowledge of good and evil. The knowledge which informs this normatively neutral psychic state is called practical wisdom. This interpretation seems to negate the claim that virtue is knowledge. I will show, however, that this is (...) not a contradiction and that virtue is in fact knowledge, despite the complex moral psychology of courage. Finally, I will argue that the conception of courage in the Republic addresses some of the problems posed by the discussion of courage in the above-mentioned dialogues. (shrink)

Protagoras beansprucht, die Jugend erziehen zu können. Warum nicht? Wenn «Mensch Maß aller Dinge» ist, kann jeder jeden ‘besser’ machen… Für Plato geht das nicht auf. Was fehlt? Was ist das Maß des Menschen, wenn der Mensch Maß sein soll? Protagoras claims to be able to educate the young. Why not? If «Man is Measure of Everything», anybody can make everybody ‘better’… To Plato, this doesn't add up. What's lacking? What is the measure of Man, if Man be measure?

The Helen of Gorgias is designed to provoke the aspiring speaker to consider his relationship with society as a whole. The speech's extreme claims regarding the power of logos reflect simplistic ideas about speaker-audience relations current among Gorgias' target audience, ideas reflected in an interpretive stance towards model speeches that privileges method over truth. The Helen pretends to encourage this conception of logos and interpretive stance in order to expose the intense desire and naïve credulity that drive a coolly technical (...) appraisal of model speeches. The Helen thus manifests, with a playfulness suited to its liminal position, a concern for the ethical and social formation of those who might accept the invitation to study logos. (shrink)

Se revisa la cuestión del poder del lenguaje en una comparación entre las teorías del lenguaje de la sofística antigua y las de los pensadores franceses Gilles Deleuze y Louis Althusser.

This paper is an attempt so to construe the arguments of the Hippias Minor as to remove the justification for regarding it as unworthy of Plato either because of its alleged fallaciousness and Sophistic mode of argument or because of its alleged immorality. It focuses, therefore, only on the arguments and their conclusions, steering clear of the dialogue's dramatic and literary aspects. Whereas I do not wish to deny the importance of these aspects to a proper understanding of the dialogue (...) – on the contrary, in a dialogue so heavily laden with irony and caricature, these aspects are necessarily more significant than they are in other dialogues – I do think there is something to be gained from concentrating on the arguments themselves. Although there can be little doubt that Socrates is up to something in the Hippias Minor, the task of determining just what he is up to can only be simplified by clarifying the arguments first. The Hippias Minor has traditionally been thought to contain two independent arguments, each having its own paradoxical conclusion. The first argument begins, it is said, when Hippias characterizes the two Homeric heroes Achilles and Odysseus as the true man and the false man respectively. Through its discovery that both the false man and the true man have δύναμις, it results in the paradox that the false man and the true are identical. The second argument, on this view, leaves the subject of ληθς and ψευδς and compares instead all sorts of agents in intentional and unintentional action. Finding that the intentional agent is in every case better than the unintentional, the argument concludes that the intentional evil-doer is also better than the unintentional. Viewing the dialogue as thus containing two distinct topics treated in two self-sufficient arguments is perhaps not the best way to understand it. (shrink)

This literature review describes the current state of research on the Greek sophists. It draws on recent work on the beginnings of rhetoric, overviews of sophistic thought and case studies on Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon and Prodicus. It is shown that the traditional notion of a sophistic antithesis to philosophy has lost further ground: While earlier »rehabilitations« of sophistic thought still use the dichotomous distinction of philosophy und sophistic, now any generic talk of »the sophist« should better be regarded as misleading.

Aelius Aristides' Sacred Tales is a complex literary text, and its first book—the diary—puzzles scholars, as it has no parallel in the entire work. This paper offers a justification for this section by arguing for a deliberate contrast between the diary and Books 2–6 of the Sacred Tales, as a result of which the latter section is crafted as a narrative about Asclepius. I will first identify a large series of shifts in the ST : starting with Book 2, change (...) concerns the protagonist, which from Aristides' abdomen turns to Asclepius, the narrator, dream interpretation, genre, and arrangement of the events. Secondly, I discuss the impact of these shifts upon the readers' response: while the diary invites the readers to relive the everyday tension between known past and unknown future, the spatial form of Books 2–6 creates the opposite effect, turning the readers' attention away from the human flow of time towards Asclepius, and leading them to perceive features of his divine time. (shrink)

Philostratus' eight-book work on Apollonius of Tyana begins with an elaborate frame narrative in which the narrator describes how the empress Julia Domna commissioned him to edit a recently discovered authoritative account of that sage's career, written by one his disciples. This narrative has clear marks of conscious fictionality, and identifies the Apollonius with such pseudepigraphic works as Dictys Cretensis and The Wonders beyond Thule. This article will explore how this claim functions within Philostratus' larger narrative self-presentation. Philostratus in effect (...) presents the reader with two models of how one obtains authoritative knowledge about cultural phenomena. The first is seen in the frame narrative, and involves single key texts authorized by politically powerful figures. The second is seen in the rest of the narrative, and involves wide-ranging research and critical argument by cultural professionals such as the narrator himself. Philostratus, although he would appear more to endorse the second model, ironically undercuts them both. The tension thus created is crucial to Philostratus' portrait of his protagonist's ambiguously human or divine status. It also has a key political component, however, inasmuch as various members of the Severan dynasty, like Philostratus' Julia, were claiming for themselves the power both to re-write political history and to redefine their status within Greco-Roman cultural discourse. The frame narrative and narratorial persona of the Apollonius are a uniquely sophistic reflection on the relationship of political power to Hellenic paideia. (shrink)

This sourcebook, a corrected reprint of the University of South Carolina Press edition of 1972, contains a complete English translation of the sophist material collected in the critical edition of Diels-Krantz, as well as Euthydemus and a completely re-edited Antiphon.