Sophist | Ancient Greek Philosophy, Rhetoric & Argumentation (2024)

Sophist, any of certain Greek lecturers, writers, and teachers in the 5th and 4th centuries bce, most of whom traveled about the Greek-speaking world giving instruction in a wide range of subjects in return for fees.

History of the name

The term sophist (Greek sophistes) had earlier applications. It is sometimes said to have meant originally simply “clever” or “skilled man,” but the list of those to whom Greek authors applied the term in its earlier sense makes it probable that it was rather more restricted in meaning. Seers, diviners, and poets predominate, and the earliest Sophists probably were the “sages” in early Greek societies. This would explain the subsequent application of the term to the Seven Wise Men (7th–6th century bce), who typified the highest early practical wisdom, and to pre-Socratic philosophers generally. When Protagoras, in one of Plato’s dialogues (Protagoras) is made to say that, unlike others, he is willing to call himself a Sophist, he is using the term in its new sense of “professional teacher,” but he wishes also to claim continuity with earlier sages as a teacher of wisdom. Plato and Aristotle altered the meaning again, however, when they claimed that professional teachers such as Protagoras were not seeking the truth but only victory in debate and were prepared to use dishonest means to achieve it. This produced the sense “captious or fallacious reasoner or quibbler,” which has remained dominant to the present day. Finally, under the Roman Empire the term was applied to professors of rhetoric, to orators, and to prose writers generally, all of whom are sometimes regarded as constituting what is now called the Second Sophistic movement (see below The Second Sophistic movement).

The 5th-century Sophists

The names survive of nearly 30 Sophists properly so called, of whom the most important were Protagoras, Gorgias, Antiphon, Prodicus, and Thrasymachus. Plato protested strongly that Socrates was in no sense a Sophist—he took no fees, and his devotion to the truth was beyond question. But from many points of view he is rightly regarded as a rather special member of the movement. The actual number of Sophists was clearly much larger than 30, and for about 70 years, until c. 380 bce, they were the sole source of higher education in the more advanced Greek cities. Thereafter, at least at Athens, they were largely replaced by the new philosophical schools, such as those of Plato and Isocrates. Plato’s dialogue Protagoras describes something like a conference of Sophists at the house of Callias in Athens just before the Peloponnesian War (431–404 bce). Antimoerus of Mende, described as one of the most distinguished of Protagoras’s pupils, is there receiving professional instruction in order to become a Sophist, and it is clear that this was already a normal way of entering the profession.

Most of the major Sophists were not Athenians, but they made Athens the centre of their activities, although travelling continuously. The importance of Athens was doubtless due in part to the greater freedom of speech prevailing there, in part to the patronage of wealthy men like Callias, and even to the positive encouragement of Pericles, who was said to have held long discussions with Sophists in his house. But primarily the Sophists congregated at Athens because they found there the greatest demand for what they had to offer, namely, instruction to young men, and the extent of this demand followed from the nature of the city’s political life. Athens was a democracy, and although its limits were such that Thucydides could say it was governed by one man, Pericles, it nonetheless gave opportunities for a successful political career to citizens of the most diverse backgrounds, provided they could impress their audiences sufficiently in the council and the assembly. After Pericles’ death this avenue became the highroad to political success.

The Sophists taught men how to speak and what arguments to use in public debate. A Sophistic education was increasingly sought after both by members of the oldest families and by aspiring newcomers without family backing. The changing pattern of Athenian society made merely traditional attitudes in many cases no longer adequate. Criticizing such attitudes and replacing them by rational arguments held special attraction for the young, and it explains the violent distaste which they aroused in traditionalists. Plato thought that much of the Sophistic attack upon traditional values was unfair and unjustified. But even he learned at least one thing from the Sophists—if the older values were to be defended, it must be by reasoned argument, not by appeals to tradition and unreflecting faith.

Seen from this point of view, the Sophistic movement performed a valuable function within Athenian democracy in the 5th century bce. It offered an education designed to facilitate and promote success in public life. All of the Sophists appear to have provided a training in rhetoric and in the art of speaking, and the Sophistic movement, responsible for large advances in rhetorical theory, contributed greatly to the development of style in oratory. In modern times the view occasionally has been advanced that this was the Sophists’ only concern. But the range of topics dealt with by the major Sophists makes this unlikely, and even if success in this direction was their ultimate aim, the means they used were surely as much indirect as direct, for the pupils were instructed not merely in the art of speaking, but in grammar; in the nature of virtue (aretē) and the bases of morality; in the history of society and the arts; in poetry, music, and mathematics; and also in astronomy and the physical sciences. Naturally the balance and emphasis differed from Sophist to Sophist, and some offered wider curricula than others. But this was an individual matter, and attempts by earlier historians of philosophy to divide the Sophistic movement into periods in which the nature of the instruction was altered are now seen to fail for lack of evidence. The 5th-century Sophists inaugurated a method of higher education that in range and method anticipated the modern humanistic approach inaugurated or revived during the European Renaissance.