INFLUENCE OF SOPHIST ARETE {RHETORIC} POLITIKE IN MODERN DEMOCRACYORIGIN AND CONCEPT OF SOPHIST

The Greek word sophos, Sophia usually translate ‘wise’ and‘wisdom’, were common use from the earliest times, andstanding as they do fro intellectual or spiritual qualities,naturally acquires some delicate shade of meaning which canbe crudely illustrated.

At first they connote primarily skill in a particular craft.A shipwright n Homer is skilled in all Sophia, a charioteer,a state man, an augur, a sculptor are sophoi in hisoccupation, Appollo is sophos with lyre, Thersites acontemptible character but sophos with his tongue: there isa law in Hades (for comic purpose) that whoever excel hisfellow-craftsman in ‘one of the great and clever arts’ shallhave special privileges until someone else comes along whois sophos in his art.1

Therefore the word “sophist” is derived from the Greek wordSophia, which means “wisdom”. Originally it had a neutralmeaning and meant something like ‘Professor” 2

The sophists were the itinerant professional teachers andintellectuals who frequented Anthens and other Greek Citiesin the second half of the fifth century B.C.E. In return forthe a fee, the sophists offered young wealthy Greek men oneducation in arête (Virtue or Excellence), thereby attainingwealth and fame while also arousing significant antipahhty.Prior to fifth century B.C.E., arête was predominantlyassociated with the aristocratic warrior virtue such ascourage and physical strength. In the democratic Anthen of

the fifth century B.C.E however, arête was increasinglyunderstood in term of ability to influence the fellowcitizens in political gathering through rhetoricalpersuasion.

It is not possible to understand the activities and teachingof the Sophists without some knowledge of the religious,political, and social conditions of the time. After longstruggles between the people and the nobles, democracy hadalmost everywhere triumphed. But in Greece democracy did notmean what we now mean by that word. It did not meanrepresentative institutions, government by the peoplethrough their elected deputies. Ancient Greece was never asingle nation under a single government. Every city, almostevery hamlet, was an independent State, governed only by itsown laws. Some of these States were so small that theycomprised merely a handful of citizens. All were so smallthat all the citizens could meet together in one place, andthemselves in person enact the laws and transact publicbusiness. There was no necessity for representation.Consequently in Greece every citizen was himself apolitician and a legislator. In these circumstances,partisan feeling ran to extravagant lengths. Men forgot theinterests of the State in the interests of party, and thisended in men forgetting the interests of their party intheir own interests. Greed, ambition, grabbing, selfishness,unrestricted egotism, unbridled avarice, became the dominantnotes of the political life of the time.

Hand in hand with the rise of democracy went the decay ofreligion. Belief in the gods was almost everywherediscredited. This was partly due to the moral worthlessness

of the Greek religion itself. Any action, however scandalousor disgraceful, could be justified by the examples of thegods themselves as related by the poets and mythologers ofGreece. The universal tendency of that philosophy was tofind natural causes for what had hitherto been ascribed tothe action of the divine powers, and this could not but havean undermining effect upon popular belief. Nearly all thephilosophers had been secretly, and many of them openly,antagonistic to the people’s religion. The attack was begunby Xenophanes; Heracleitus carried it on; and lastlyDemocritus had attempted to explain belief in the gods asbeing caused by fear of gigantic terrestrial andastronomical phenomena. No educated man any longer believedin divination, auguries, and miracles. A wave of rationalismand scepticism passed over the Greek people. The age becameone of negative, critical, and destructive thought.Democracy had undermined the old aristocratic institutionsof the State, and science had undermined religiousorthodoxy. With the downfall of these two pillars of thingsestablished, all else went too. All morality, all custom,all authority, all tradition, were criticised and rejected.What was regarded with awe and pious veneration by theirfore-fathers the modern Greeks now looked upon as fitsubjects for jest and mockery. Every restraint of custom,law, or morality, was resented as an unwarrantablerestriction upon the natural impulses of man. What aloneremained when these were thrust aside were the lust,avarice, and self-will of the individual.

The teaching of the Sophists was merely a translation intotheoretical propositions of

these practical tendencies of the period. The Sophists werethe children of their time, and the interpreters of theirage. Their philosophical teachings were simply thecrystallization of the impulses which governed the life ofthe people into abstract principles and maxims.

the Sophists were not a school of philosophers. They are notto be compared, for example, with the Pythagoreans orEleatics. They had not, as a school has, any system ofphilosophy held in common by them all. None of themconstructed systems of thought. They had in common onlycertain loose tendencies of thought. Nor were they, as weunderstand the members of a school to be, in any closepersonal association with one another. They were aprofessional class rather than a school, and as such theywere scattered over Greece, and nourished among themselvesthe usual professional rivalries. They were professionalteachers and educators. The rise of the Sophists was due tothe growing demand for popular education, which was partly agenuine demand for light and knowledge, but was mostly adesire for such spurious learning as would lead to worldly,and especially political, success. The triumph of democracyhad brought it about that political careers were now open tothe masses who had hitherto been wholly shut out from them.Any man could rise to the highest positions in the State, ifhe were endowed with cleverness, ready speech, whereby tosway the passions of the mob, and a sufficient equipment inthe way of education. Hence the demand arose for such aneducation as would enable the ordinary man to carve out apolitical career for himself. It was this demand which theSophists undertook to satisfy. They wandered about Greecefrom place to place, they gave lectures, they took pupils,

they entered into disputations. For these services theyexacted large fees. They were the first in Greece to takefees for the teaching of wisdom. There was nothingdisgraceful in this in itself, but it had never beencustomary. The wise men of Greece had never accepted anypayment for their wisdom. Socrates, who never accepted anypayment, } but gave his wisdom freely to all who sought it,somewhat proudly contrasted himself with the Sophists inthis respect.

The Sophists were not, technically speaking, philosophers.They did not specialise in the problems of philosophy. Theirtendencies were purely practical. They taught any subjectwhatever for the teaching of which there was a populardemand. For example, Protagoras undertook to impart to hispupils the principles of success as a politician or as aprivate citizen. Gorgias taught rhetoric and politics,Prodicus grammar and etymology, Hippias history, mathematicsand physics. In consequence of this practical tendency ofthe Sophists we hear of no attempts among them to solve theproblem of the origin of nature, or the character of theultimate reality. The Sophists have been described asteachers of virtue, and the description is correct, providedthat the word virtue is understood in its Greek sense, whichdid not restrict it to morality alone. For the Greeks, itmeant the capacity of a person successfully to perform hisfunctions in the State. Thus the virtue of a mechanic is tounderstand machinery, the virtue of a physician to cure thesick, the virtue of a horse trainer the ability to trainhorses. The Sophists undertook to train men to virtue inthis sense, to make them successful citizens and members ofthe State.

But the most popular career for a Greek of ability at thetime was the political, which offered the attraction of highpositions in the State. And for this career what was aboveall necessary was eloquence, or if that were unattainable,at least ready speech, the ability to argue, to meet everypoint as it arose, if not with sound reasoning, then withquick repartee. Hence the Sophists very largely concentratedtheir energies upon the teaching of rhetoric. In itself thiswas good. They were the first to direct attention to thescience of rhetoric, of which they may be considered thefounders. But their rhetoric also had its bad side, whichindeed, soon became its only side. The aims of the youngpoliticians whom they trained were, not to seek out thetruth for its own sake, but merely to persuade the multitudeof whatever they wished them to believe. Consequently theSophists, like lawyers, not caring for the truth of thematter, undertook to provide a stock of arguments on anysubject, or to prove any proposition. They boasted of theirability to make the worse appear the better reason, to provethat black is white. Some of them, like Gorgias, assertedthat it was not necessary to have any knowledge of a subjectto give satisfactory replies as regards it. And Gorgiasostentatiously undertook to answer any question on anysubject instantly and without consideration. To attain theseends mere quibbling, and the scoring of verbal points, wereemployed. Hence our word “sophistry.” The Sophists, in thisway, endeavoured to entangle, entrap, and confuse theiropponents, and even, if this were not possible, to beat themdown by mere violence and noise. They sought also to dazzleby means of strange or flowery metaphors, by unusual figuresof speech, by epigrams and paradoxes, and in general by

being clever and smart, rather than earnest and truthful.When a man is young he is often dazzled by brilliance andcleverness, by paradox and epigram, but as he grows older helearns to discount these things and to care chiefly for thesubstance and truth of what is said. And the Greeks were ayoung people. They loved clever sayings. And this it iswhich accounts for the toleration which they extended evento the most patent absurdities of the Sophists. The modernquestion whether a man has ceased beating his wife is notmore childish than many of the rhetorical devices of theSophists, and is indeed characteristic of the methods of themore extravagant among them.

The earliest known Sophist is Protagoras. He was born atAbdera, about 480 B.C. He wandered up and down Greece, andsettled for some time at Athens. At Athens, however, he wascharged with impiety and atheism. This was on account of abook written by him on the subject of the gods, which beganwith the words, “As for the gods, I am unable to say whetherthey exist or whether they do not exist.” The book waspublicly burnt, and Protagoras had to fly from Athens. Hefled to Sicily, but was drowned on the way about the year410 B.C.

Protagoras was the author of the famous saying, “Man is themeasure of all things; of what is, that it is; of what isnot, that it is not.” Now this saying puts in a nutshell, soto speak, the whole teaching of Protagoras. And, indeed, itcontains in germ the entire thought of the Sophists. It iswell, therefore, that we should fully understand exactlywhat it means. The earlier Greek philosophers had made aclear distinction between sense and thought, between

perception and reason, and had believed that the truth is tobe found, not by the senses, but by reason. The Eleatics hadbeen the first to emphasize this distinction. The ultimatereality of things, they said, is pure Being, which is knownonly through reason; it is the senses which delude us with ashow of becoming. Heracleitus had likewise affirmed that thetruth, which was, for him, the law of becoming, is known bythought, and that it is the senses which delude us with ashow of permanence. Even Democritus believed that truebeing, that is, material atoms, are so small that the sensescannot perceive them, and only reason is aware of theirexistence. Now the teaching of Protagoras really restsfundamentally upon the denying and confusing of thisdistinction. If we are to see this, we must first of allunderstand that reason is the universal, sensation theparticular, element in man. In the first place, reason iscommunicable, sensation incommunicable. My sensations andfeelings are personal to myself, and cannot be imparted toother people. For example, no one can communicate thesensation of redness to a colour-blind man, who has notalready experienced it. But a thought, or rational idea, canbe communicated to any rational being. Now suppose thequestion is whether the angles at the base of an isoscelestriangle are equal. We may approach the problem in two ways.We may appeal either to the senses or to reason. If weappeal to the senses, one man will come forward and say thatto him the angles look equal. Another man will say that oneangle looks bigger than the other, and so on. But if, likeEuclid, we appeal to reason, then it can be proved that thetwo angles are equal, and there is no room left for merepersonal impressions, because reason is a law universally

valid and binding upon all men. My sensations are privateand peculiar to myself. They bind no one but myself. Myimpressions about the triangle are not a law to anyoneexcept myself. But my reason I share with all other rationalbeings. It is not a law for me merely, but for all. It isone and the same reason in me and in other men. Reason,therefore, is the universal, sensation the particular,element in man. Now it is practically this distinction thatProtagoras denied. Man, he said, is the measure of allthings. By man he did not mean mankind at large. He meantthe individual man. And by measure of all things he meantthe standard of the truth of all things. Each individual manis the standard of what is true to himself. There is notruth except the sensations and impressions of each man.What seems true to me is true for me. What seems true to youis true for you.

We commonly distinguish between subjective impressions andobjective truth. The words subjective and objective areconstantly recurring throughout the history of philosophy,and as this is the first time I use them, I will explainthem here. In every act of thought there must necessarily betwo terms. I am now looking at this desk and thinking ofthis desk. There is the “I” which thinks, and there is thedesk which is thought. “I” am the subject of the thought,the desk is the object of the thought. In general, thesubject is that which thinks, and the object is that whichis thought. Subjective is that which appertains to thesubject, and objective is that which appertains to theobject. So the meaning of the distinction between subjectiveimpressions and the objective truth is clear. My personalimpression may be that the earth is flat, but the objective

truth is that the earth is round. Travelling through adesert, I may be subject to a mirage, and think that thereis water in front of me. That is my subjective impression.The objective truth is that there is nothing but sand. Theobjective truth is something which has an existence of itsown, independent of me. It does not matter what I think, orwhat you think, what I want, or what you want; the truth iswhat it is. We must conform ourselves to the truth. Truthwill not conform itself to our personal inclinations,wishes, or impressions. The teaching of Protagoraspractically amounted to a denial of this. What it meant wasthat there is no objective truth, no truth independent ofthe individual subject. Whatever seems to the individualtrue is true for that individual. Thus truth is identifiedwith subjective sensations and impressions.

To deny the distinction between objective truth andsubjective impression is the same as to deny the distinctionbetween reason and sense. To my senses the earth seems flat.It looks flat to the eye. It is only through reason that Iknow the objective truth that the world is round. Reason,therefore, is the only possible standard of objective truth.If you deny the rational element its proper part, it followsthat you will be left a helpless prey to diverse personalimpressions. The impressions yielded by the senses differ indifferent people. One man sees a thing in one way, anothersees it in another. If, therefore, what seems to me true istrue for me, and what seems to you true is true for you, andif our impressions differ, it will follow that twocontradictory propositions must both be true. Protagorasclearly understood this, and did not flinch from theconclusion. He taught that all opinions are true, that error

is impossible, and that, whatever proposition is putforward, it is always possible to oppose to it acontradictory proposition with equally good arguments andwith equal truth. In reality, the result of this procedureis to rob the distinction between truth and falsehood of allmeaning. It makes no difference whether we say that allopinions are true, or whether we say that all are false. Thewords truth and falsehood, in such context, have no meaning.To say that whatever I feel is the truth for me means onlythat what I feel I feel. To call this “truth for me,” addsnothing to the meaning.

Protagoras seems to have been led to these doctrines partlyby observing the different accounts of the same object whichthe sense-organs yield to different people, and even to thesame person at different times. If knowledge depends uponthese impressions, the truth about the object cannot beascertained. He was also influenced by the teaching ofHeracleitus. Heracleitus had taught that all permanence isillusion. Everything is a perpetual becoming; all thingsflow. What is at this moment, at the next moment is not.Even at one and the same moment, Heracleitus believed, athing is and is not. If it is true to say that it is, it isequally true that it is not. And this is, in effect, theteaching of Protagoras.

The Protagorean philosophy thus amounts to a declarationthat knowledge is impossible. If there is no objectivetruth, there cannot be any knowledge of it. Theimpossibility of knowledge is also the standpoint ofGorgias. The title of his book is characteristic of {117}the Sophistical love of paradox. It was called “On Nature,

or the non-existent.” In this book he attempted to provethree propositions, (1) that nothing exists: (2) that ifanything exists, it cannot be known: (3) that if it can beknown, the knowledge of it cannot be communicated.

For proof of the first proposition, “nothing exists,”Gorgias attached himself to the school of the Eleatics,especially to Zeno. Zeno had taught that in all multiplicityand motion, that is to say, in all existence, there areirreconcilable contradictions. Zeno was in no sense asceptic. He did not seek for contradictions in things forthe sake of the contradictions, but in order to support thepositive thesis of Parmenides, that only being is, and thatbecoming is not at all. Zeno, therefore, is to be regardedas a constructive, and not merely as a destructive, thinker.But it is obvious that by emphasizing only the negativeelement in his philosophy, it is possible to use hisantinomies as powerful weapons in the cause of scepticismand nihilism. And it was in this way that Gorgias made useof the dialectic of Zeno. Since all existence is self-contradictory, it follows that nothing exists. He also madeuse of the famous argument of Parmenides regarding theorigin of being. If anything is, said Gorgias, it must havehad a beginning. Its being must have arisen either frombeing, or from not-being. If it arose from being, there isno beginning. If it arose from not-being, this isimpossible, since something cannot arise out of nothing.Therefore nothing exists.

The second proposition of Gorgias, that if anything existsit cannot be known, is part and parcel of the wholeSophistic tendency of thought, which identifies knowledge

with sense-perception, and ignores the rational element.Since sense-impressions differ in different people, and evenin the same person, the object as it is in itself cannot beknown. The third proposition follows from the sameidentification of knowledge with sensation, since sensationis what cannot be communicated.

The later Sophists went much further than Protagoras andGorgias. It was their work to apply the teaching ofProtagoras to the spheres of politics and morals. If thereis no objective truth, and if what seems true to eachindividual is for him the truth, so also, there can be noobjective moral code, and what seems right to each man isright for him. If we are to have anything worth callingmorality, it is clear that it must be a law for all, and notmerely a law for some. It must be valid for, and bindingupon, all men. It must, therefore, be founded upon thatwhich is universal in man, that is to say, his reason. Tofound it upon sense-impressions and feelings is to found itupon shifting quicksands. My feelings and sensations arebinding upon no man but myself, and therefore a universallyvalid law cannot be founded upon them. Yet the Sophistsidentified morality with the feelings of the individual.Whatever I think right is right for me. Whatever you thinkright is right for you. Whatever each man, in his irrationalself-will, chooses to do, that is, for him, legitimate.These conclusions were drawn by Polus, Thrasymachus, andCritias.

Now if there is, in this way, no such thing as objectiveright, it follows that the laws of the State can be foundedupon nothing except force, custom, and convention. We often

speak of just laws, and good laws. But to speak in that wayinvolves the existence of an objective standard of goodnessand justice, with which we can compare the law, and seewhether it agrees with that standard or not. To theSophists, who denied any such standard, it was mere nonsenseto speak of just and good laws. No law is in itself good orjust, because there is no such thing as goodness or justice.Or if they used such a word as justice, they defined it asmeaning the right of the stronger; or the right of themajority. Polus and Thrasymachus, consequently, drew theconclusion that the laws of the State were inventions of theweak, who were cunning enough, by means of this stratagem,to control the strong, and rob them of the natural fruits oftheir strength. The law of force is the only law whichnature recognizes. If a man, therefore, is powerful enoughto defy the law with impunity, he has a perfect right to doso. The Sophists were thus the first, but not the last, topreach the doctrine that might is right. And, in similarvein, Critias explained popular belief in the gods as theinvention of some crafty statesman for controlling the mobthrough fear.

Now it is obvious that the whole tendency of thissophistical teaching is destructive and anti-social. It isdestructive of religion, of morality, of the foundations ofthe State, and of all established institutions. And we cannow see that the doctrines of the Sophists were, in fact,simply the crystallization into abstract thought of thepractical tendencies of the age. The people in practice, theSophists in theory, decried and trod under foot therestrictions of law, authority, and custom, leaving nothingbut the deification of the individual in his crude self-will

and egotism. It was in fact an age of “aufklärung,” whichmeans enlightenment or illumination. Such periods ofillumination, it seems, recur periodically in the history ofthought, and in the history of civilization. This is thefirst, but not the last, such period with which the historyof philosophy deals. This is the Greek illumination. Suchperiods present certain characteristic features. Theyfollow, as a rule, upon an era of constructive thought. Inthe present instance the Greek illumination followed closelyupon the heels of the great development of science andphilosophy from Thales to Anaxagoras. In such a constructiveperiod the great thinkers bring to birth new principles,which, in the course of time, filter down to the masses ofthe people and cause popular, if shallow, science, and awide-spread culture. Popular education becomes a feature ofthe time. The new ideas, fermenting among the people, breakup old prejudices and established ideas, and thus thought,at first constructive, becomes, among the masses,destructive in character. Hence the popular thought, in aperiod of enlightenment, issues in denial, scepticism, anddisbelief. It is merely negative in its activities andresults. Authority, tradition, and custom are wholly orpartially destroyed. And since authority, tradition, andcustom are the cement of the social structure, there resultsa general dissolution of that structure into its componentindividuals. All emphasis is now laid on the individual.Thought becomes egocentric. Individualism is the dominantnote. Extreme subjectivity is the principle of the age. Allthese features make their appearance in the Greekaufklärung. The Sophistical doctrine that the truth is what

I think, the good what I choose to do, is the extremeapplication of the subjective and egocentric principles.

The early eighteenth century in England and France waslikewise a period of enlightenment, and the era from whichwe are now, perhaps, just emerging, bears many of thecharacteristics of aufklärung. It is sceptical anddestructive. All established institutions, marriage, thefamily, the state, the law, come in for much destructivecriticism. It followed immediately upon the close of a greatperiod of constructive thought, the scientific developmentof the nineteenth century. And lastly, the age has producedits own Protagorean philosophy, which it calls pragmatism.If pragmatism is not egocentric, it is at leastanthropocentric. Truth is no longer thought of as anobjective reality, to which mankind must conform. On thecontrary, the truth must conform itself to mankind. Whateverit is useful to believe, whatever belief “works” inpractice, is declared to be true. But since what “works” inone age and country does not “work” in another, since whatit is useful to believe to-day will be useless to-morrow, itfollows that there is no objective truth independent ofmankind at all. Truth is not now defined as dependent on thesensations of man, as it was with Protagoras, but asdependent on the volition of man. In either case it is notthe universal in man, his reason, which is made the basis oftruth and morals, but the subjective, individual, particularelement in him.

We must not forget the many merits of the Sophists.Individually, they were often estimable men. Nothing isknown against the character of Protagoras, and Prodicus was

proverbial for his wisdom and the genuine probity anduprightness of his principles. Moreover the Sophistscontributed much to the advance of learning. They were thefirst to direct attention to the study of words, sentences,style, prosody, and rhythm. They were the founders of thescience of rhetoric. They spread education and culture farand wide in Greece, they gave a great impulse to the studyof ethical ideas, which made possible the teaching ofSocrates, and they stirred up a ferment of ideas withoutwhich the great period of Plato and Aristotle could neverhave seen the light. But, from the philosophical point ofview, their merit is for the first time to have brought intogeneral recognition the right of the subject. For there is,after all, much reason in these attacks made by the Sophistsupon authority, upon established things, upon tradition,custom and dogma. Man, as a rational being, ought not to betyrannized over by authority, dogma, and tradition. Hecannot be subjected, thus violently, to the imposition ofbeliefs from an external source. No man has the right to sayto me, “you shall think this,” or “you shall think that.” I,as a rational being, have the right to use my reason, andjudge for myself. If a man would convince me, he must notappeal to force, but to reason. In doing so, he is notimposing his opinions externally upon me; he is educing hisopinions from the internal sources of my own thought; he isshowing me that his opinions are in reality my own opinions,if I only knew it. But the mistake of the Sophists was that,in thus recognizing the right of the subject, they whollyignored and forgot the right of the object. For the truthhas objective existence, and is what it is, whether I thinkit or not. Their mistake was that though they rightly saw

that for truth and morality to be valid for me, they must beassented to by, and developed out of, me myself, not imposedfrom the outside, yet they laid the emphasis on my merelyaccidental and particular characteristics, my impulses,feelings, and sensations, and made these the source of truthand morality, instead of emphasizing as the source of truthand right the universal part of me, my reason. “Man is themeasure of all things”; certainly, but man as a rationalbeing, not man as a bundle of particular sensations,subjective impressions, impulses, irrational prejudices,self-will, mere eccentricities, oddities, foibles, andfancies.

Good examples of the right and wrong principles of theSophists are to be found in modern Protestantism and moderndemocracy. Protestantism, it is often said, is founded uponthe right of private judgment, and this is simply the rightof the subject, the right of the individual to exercise hisown reason. But if this is interpreted to mean that eachindividual is entitled to set up his mere whims and fanciesas the law in religious matters, then we have the bad sortof Protestantism. Again, democracy is simply politicalprotestantism, and democratic ideas are the direct offspringof the protestant Reformation. The democratic principle isthat no rational being can be asked to obey a law to whichhis own reason has not assented. But the law must be foundedupon reason, upon the universal in man. I, as an individual,as a mere ego, have no rights whatever. It is only as arational being, as a potentially universal being, as amember of the commonwealth of reason, that I have anyrights, that I can claim to legislate for myself and others.But if each individual’s capricious self-will, his mere

whims and fancies, are erected into a law, then democracyturns into anarchism and bolshevism.

It is a great mistake to suppose that the doctrines of theSophists are merely antiquated ideas, dead and fossilizedthoughts, of interest only to historians, but of noimportance to us. On the contrary, modern popular thoughtpositively reeks with the ideas and tendencies of theSophists. It is often said that a man ought to have strongconvictions, and some people even go so far as to say thatit does not much matter what a man believes, so long as whathe believes he believes strongly and firmly. Now certainlyit is quite true that a man with strong convictions is moreinteresting than a man without any opinions. The former isat least a force in the world, while the latter iscolourless and ineffectual. But to put exclusive emphasis onthe mere fact of having convictions is wrong. After all, thefinal test of worth must be whether the man’s convictionsare true or false. There must be an objective standard oftruth, and to forget this, to talk of the mere fact ofhaving strong opinions as in itself a merit, is to fall intothe error of the Sophists.

Another common saying is that everyone has a right to hisown opinions. This is quite true, and it merely expressesthe right of the subject to use his own reason. But it issometimes interpreted in a different way. If a man holds atotally irrational opinion, and if every weapon is beatenout of his hands, if he is driven from every position hetakes up--so that there is nothing left for him to do,except to admit that he is wrong, such a man will sometimestake refuge in the saying, that, after all, argue as you

may, he has a right to his own opinion. But we cannot allowthe claim. No man has a right to wrong opinions. Therecannot be any right in wrong opinions. You have no right toan opinion unless it is founded upon that which is universalin man, his reason. You cannot claim this right on behalf ofyour subjective impressions, and irrational whims. To do sois to make the mistake of the Sophists.

The tendencies of the more shallow type of modernrationalism exhibit a similar Sophistical thought. It ispointed out that moral ideas vary very much in differentcountries and ages, that in Japan, for example, prostitutionis condoned, and that in ancient Egypt incest was notcondemned. Now it is important to know these facts. Theyshould serve as a warning to us against dogmatic narrow-mindedness in moral matters. But some people draw from thesefacts the conclusion that there is no universally valid andobjectively real moral law. The conclusion does not followfrom the premises, and the conclusion is false. People’sopinions differ, not only on moral questions, but upon everysubject under the sun. Because men, a few hundred years ago,believed that the earth was flat, whereas now we believe itis round, it does not follow that it has in reality no shapeat all, that there is no objective truth in the matter. Andbecause men’s opinions differ, in different ages andcountries, as to what the true moral law is, it does notfollow that there is no objective moral law.

We will take as our last example the current talk about theimportance of developing one’s personality. A man, it issaid, should “be himself,” and the expression of his ownindividuality must be his leading idea. Now certainly it is

good to be oneself in the sense that it is hypocritical topretend to be what one is not. Moreover, it is no doubt truethat each man has certain special gifts, which he ought todevelop, so that all, in their diverse ways, may contributeas much as possible to the spiritual and material wealth ofthe world. But this ideal of individuality often leads tofalse developments, as we see in the spheres of art and ofeducation. Such a man as Oscar Wilde, whose personality isessentially evil, defends his artistic principles on theground that he must needs express his personality, that artis nothing but such personal expression, and that it issubject to no standard save the individuality of the artist.Some writers on education, among them Mr. Bernard Shaw, whohas many points in common with the Sophists, tell us that toattempt to mould the character of a child by discipline, isto sin against its personality, and that the child should beallowed to develop its individuality unchecked in its ownway.

But against this we have to protest that to make thecultivation of individuality an end in itself, and to putexclusive emphasis on this, is wrong. The cultivation ofindividuality is not in itself a good thing; it is not agood thing if the individuality be a worthless one. If achild exhibits savage or selfish tendencies, it must besubjected to discipline, and it is ridiculous to make afetish of its personality to such an extent as to allow itto develop as it likes. In a similar way, the ideal ofindividuality is often interpreted to mean that the

cultivation of the mere eccentricities and oddities of theindividual is something good. But the personal peculiaritiesof a man are just what are worthless about him. That alonewhich entitles him to the sacred rights of a “person”, ishis rational and universal nature.

SOPHIST UNDERSTANDING OF ARETE POLITIKE

In the ancient Greece, sophists were a category of teachersspecialized in using technique of philosophy and rhetoricfor the purpose of teaching arête politike.

Arête on its own means “excellence of any kind” whilepolitike which means politics correspond with the activatesassociated with the governance of a country or other area,especially the debate or conflict among individuals orparties having or hoping to achieve power.

In its earliest appearance in Greek, this notion ofexcellence in speech was ultimately bound up withfulfillment of the purpose or function: the act of living upto one’s full potentials.

The man of or woman of arête is the person of the highesteffectiveness; they use all their faculty: strength, braveryand wit to achieve real result. In politic theypredominantly employ the tool of rhetoric. The slightestdifference between arête taught by the earliest philosophersagainst the sophist lies on ground that while theyfulfillment of one’s purpose or function, the sophistsunderstood arête basically on the ground of rhetoric and

oratory especially for the purpose of winning an argument orattaining power.

For this reason the sophist specialized in the techniques ofphilosophy and rhetoric for the purpose of teaching arête inreturn for money. This resulted to Plato referring them as“shopkeepers with spiritual wares” Plato, Protagoras

Ironically, the flood of social and political changes opendoor for the in flock of the sophist who sort theopportunity to teach the young men and the noble the skillof rhetoric, debate, public speaking and persuasion. WilliamF. Lawhead p. 30

These were useful skills, where being persuasive could leadto political power and economic wealth. These rhetoricaltechniques were extremely useful for any nobleman lookingfor public office and the societal roles for the Anthenianpolitical system at large. The historical context providesevidence for their considerable influence, as Anthens becamemore and more democratic during the period in which thesophists were most active.

The sophists certainly were not directly responsible forAnthenian democracy, but their cultural and psychologicalcontributions played an important role in its growth. theycontributed to the new democracy in part by espousingexpertise in public deliberation since this was thefoundation of decision-making, which allowed and perhapsrequired a tolerance of the beliefs of others. This liberalattitude would naturally have precipitated into the Athenianassembly as sophists acquired increasing high-poweredclient.

INFLUENCE OF SOPHIST ARETE POLITIKE IN MODERN DEMOCRACY

It is a fact that rhetoric has become accepted as afundamental aspect of modern politics especially Nations ofthe Developed world such as American and Britain. Many wouldsay that it is unavoidable, that rhetoric is inevitablyinvolved with political speaking because politician must bepersuasive, and to an extent they’re correct.

Why then is rhetoric currently such important part of modernpolitics and leadership- a question with an infinite numberof answers

1. The competitive nature of contemporary politics

The first priority of any political party is to defeatopposing parties and become re-elected; this can be done byconvincing the voters that their party is the best possibleoption or by undermining the opposition (both of which aredone predominantly through rhetoric), as well as by simplegoverning well. When political parties compite, the use ofrhetoric becomes the most effective way in which to gainpower.

2. Ignorant Voting

One explanation why sophists’ arête has influence our modernpolitics also lies on the fact that many people vote withouta good knowledge of politics or rhetorical speaking. Thisleads to many individuals casting their votes entirely basedon rhetorical encouragement: because the candidate looks andsound smart or because they claim they can and will do thisor that, claims that are fine in the surface but often donot necessarily stand up to scrutiny.

REFERENCES

1. Guthrie W.K, The Sophist (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1983), p.27

2. Willam F. Lawhead, The Voyage of Discovery (America:Wadsworth, 2002),p. 30.

3. W.T. Stace. A Critical History of Greek Philosophy. (London:MacMillan and Co., 1920), p.45-51

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