A Beginner's History of Philosophy, Vol. 1: Ancient and Mediæval Philosophy

by Herbert Ernest Cushman

The Sophists were then primarily and, on the whole, the transmitters to the people of the culture of the time. They were the teachers of the humanities to that age. They were not technically philosophers, but were interested in philosophical questions. Protagoras was the only Sophist who was the author of any fruitful philosophical conceptions. Gorgias made occasional essays into philosophy. But besides Protagoras and Gorgias no other Sophists can be classed as philosophers, except possibly Hippias and Prodicus.

The Sophists introduced a profusion of knowledge among the people. They made investigations in language, logic, and the theory of cognition. They taught literature, history, grammar, the principles of the dialectic, the eristic, and rhetoric—all subjects concerned with the art of human expression. They studied and taught the special subjects concerned with human relations, like ethics, the theory of knowledge, psychology, and politics. Anything that had a place in Greek culture was systematically and skillfully presented by such men as Protagoras, Gorgias, Hippias, and Prodicus, who were men of encyclopædic erudition. The Sophist took the education of the Greek child at the age of sixteen, after he had received his elementary training, firstat home and then at the hands of the teacher at school. The Greek boy’s education was naturally divided into two parts: gymnastics for the body and music for the soul. Under music was included geometry, performance on the lyre, pronunciation, the chorus and poetry, astronomy, physics, and geography. At the age of sixteen he got his instruction by meeting public men, such as the Sophists, in the street, in the Agora, and other public places. It was at this period of his life that the Sophist took his education into those higher branches which were necessary for his success in politics, society, and law. Thus the instruction of the Sophist was usually for a specific purpose, and thus rhetoric, dialectic, and the mental sciences were in great demand.

The Prominent Sophists. The list of Sophists is a long one. The first to call himself a Sophist and a teacher of public virtue was, according to Plato, Protagoras of Abdera. He was also probably the most eminent of the number. He was born about 480 B. C. Polus and Thrasymachus were the last; and Aristotle mentions the Sophists as in the past. So that we may conclude that as a band they existed only one hundred years (450–350 B. C.). Already at the beginning of the fourth century (400 B. C.) their importance had greatly diminished. In this hundred years we find some fourteen or fifteen prominent Sophists. There is, first, Protagoras, whose theory of knowledge is not only in itself a contribution to thought, but also of importance as a factor in forming the materialist atomistic doctrine of the school of Abdera,—the school of Leucippus and Democritus; Gorgias of Leontini, the head of an embassy to Athens, a man of eloquence, whose style was imitated by Thucydides and whom we might have studiedin connection with the Eleatic school, for he carried out still further the doctrines of Zeno; Prodicus, the pupil of Protagoras and Gorgias, a brilliant man and a traveler, whose method of instruction was used by Socrates; Hippias, contemporary of Prodicus, remarkable for his mathematical, physical, and historical erudition, and a man full of vanity; the brothers, Euthydemus and Dionysiodorus, teachers of eristic; the rhetorician Thrasymachus and the rhetoricians of the school of Gorgias, viz., Polus, Lycophron, Protarchus, and Alcidamus; Evenus, rhetorician, moralist, and poet; Critias, the leader of the thirty; Callicles and Hippodamus.

Many of these men were reformers. Some (as Alcidamus) were opposed to the institution of slavery in Greece; some to marriage; some (as Lycophron) to the nobility; some to the inequality of property; while Hippodamus was the first to propose an ideal state.

The method of argumentation employed by the Sophists was first to perplex and confuse their opponents as to what had been taken in the past as valid. Then they made their opponents ridiculous by drawing out consequences from their statements.Their conclusions were often verbal and their witticisms vulgar.[16]

The Philosophy of the Sophists. The philosophy of the Sophists was only the logical following out of the general attitude of the time toward all traditions. The more the old physical theories fell into disrepute, the more the changes of the world of politics seemed to indicate instability everywhere, the more opinions differed on the same subject,—so much the more did the possibilitypresent itself to the Sophists of taking two contradictories as equally true, and so much the faster did the whole Greek world lose faith in any valid truth and in any certain knowledge. The dogmatism of the Cosmological Period is thus naturally followed by the skepticism of the Anthropological. Beginning with the cautious and enlightened relativism of Protagoras, there grew up a volume of criticism, until the later Sophists applied destructive doctrines to everything. The best representatives of the philosophical aspect of the Sophistic movement were Protagoras and Gorgias.

1. The Relativism of Protagoras. Although theoretically skepticism is the centre and logical result of the Sophistic movement, the teaching of the greatest Sophist, Protagoras, cannot be strictly called skepticism. Philosophically, skepticism is not the denial of this or that particular belief as true, but the denial of the existence of any truth whatever. Protagoras refused to make any positive statements—either in denial or affirmation—about ultimate truth, because, as he said, we have no insight whatever into the nature of absolute truth. Our knowledge is confined to motions and the phenomena of motion. His teaching would be called in modern times relativism or phenomenalism. The fundamental principle beneath such a doctrine is that knowledge is human—never absolute, but always relative.

The relativism of Protagoras was based on two principles: the first is that of universal change, which he borrowed from Heracleitus; the second is, so far as we know, original with Protagoras,—that sense-perception is the only source and only kind of knowledge. In Heracleitus’ doctrine change is universal, each term of a series of changes passing into another. The senses are apart of this flux, and since they are, according to Protagoras, the only source of knowledge, knowledge is ephemeral and unreal. Reason is extended and continued sensation. A movement external to the organism stimulates an organ of the body and is met by a reacting movement of the organ. The result is perception. Perception being itself a process, each present moment of perception is the only knowledge. We cannot know things as they are in themselves; there is no insight into the Being of things over and above our perceptions. On the contrary, reality is not only what it perceptually appears for each individual, but also what it appears at each individual momentary perception.

What is the result of such a theory of knowledge? Protagoras expresses it well in his famous words, “Man is the measure of all things.” It is absolute sensationalism. There is no truth except that of the present moment. Each man sees the truth for himself at the moment of his perception. It does not matter if another has a different perception. It does not matter if at the next moment his perception differs. Each perception exists at the moment, is true, and at that moment is the only perception. There are as many truths as there are individuals, as many as there are moments in an individual’s life. Each individual is the measure of the true, the beautiful, and the good; for a thing that is good or true to one man may be harmful or false to another. Metaphysical discussions are vain, for the only reality to prove is the content of the present moment. All causes and ultimate criteria are impossible to be known.

2. The Nihilism of Gorgias. As the philosophy of Protagoras teaches that everything is equally true, that of Gorgias teaches that everything is equally false.Gorgias declared that Being, knowledge, and the communication of knowledge are impossible. Starting from the dialectic of the Eleatic, Zeno (as Protagoras started from that of Heracleitus), Gorgias maintained: (1) Nothing is; (2) If anything is, it cannot be thought; (3) Even if it can be thought, it cannot be communicated. The knowledge of the thing is different from the thing; the expression of the thought in words is different from the thought itself.