ANCIENT PHILOSOPHY 9: SOPHISTS
- Presocratics assumed relation between physis and logos, did cosmological inquiry
- change with the sophists, already a major turning point
Sophistry:
- the undermining of Athenian tradition and culture (Persion and Pelopennesian wars, imperialism, Thirty Tyrants)
- Sophists were blamed for this (?)
- foreigners (Athens was anatagonistic to foreigners), paid teachers
- undermined Athenian perspectives and filiative educational structures
- no metaphysical ideas, but political ones
- a focus on the human being, not on the cosmos
- a new conception of nature: a break between man and nature (Logos and Physis), so that subject and object are different domains, maybe there is no Logos of Physis
PROTAGORAS:
- an acceptance of sense perception and the way of opinion and Parmenides rejected
- human beings are the measure of all beings
- truth appears as truth to whomever it appears
- truth is relative, all representations are true
- reality is not one, singular unity, but a multiplicity of perspectives
- Logos cannot reach a unified understanding of nature
- consensus is impossible, any opinion is valid if well argued for
- truth is fragmented, because reality is fragmented
- what is most important is arguing for your opinion well
- with sophistry we can create a human order via some form of human agreement, a new order different from the natural one
- discussion is the construction of a new human reality
- Good/Evil is relative, but discourse is vital in determining what we consider them to be
- they’re not relativists, but pluralists
GORGIAS:
- nothing exists, and even if it does it is unknowable, and even if it is it is uncommunicatable
- complete fracture between Logos and Physis
- no correspondence between reality and thought (unlike in Parmenides)
- Economicum of Helen: Logos is a small being with great power to persuade, Helen was herself persuaded and is thus innocent
- Zeno and the whole idea of rationality vs sense-perception was an already sophism: the detatchement between Physis and Logos
- no meaning, we can give reality meaning only with language
- language is now a philosophical problem
- Logos is not true or false, but precise or impersice, strong or weak
- the power of language: PHARMAKON, both cure and poison
- it is both ways at once, it becomes one or the other in the process of interpretation (alteration and deception)
- language is what makes us human
Physis vs Nomos (convention/law):
- Hesiod: laws as god-ordained
- Homer: the stronger rule
- Sophists: these are conventions, a product of Logos and humanity
- Protagoras: justice is simply what is most useful to the majority, sophistry teaches you how to argue for yourself; we are a political animal, we exercise ourselves by practicing politics
- Antiphon and Thrasymachus: strongest prevail, Nomos cements natural hierarchies, justice legimizes this power, Nomos perpetuated Physis, highliting man’s animal aspects