The Sophists & Socrates

The Pythagoreans & Plato

 Definitional difficulties & Origins
• Describing who they were & what they stood for is complicated.

• Evidence available is scarce & usually comes from antagonistic sources.

• Heterogeneous group: differed in method, personality, teaching, & period of

activity.

• Present-day disagreement as to whether their influence was good or bad.

• Etymology: “sophia” means wisdom or knowledge.

• In a general sense then, a sophist is a person who exercises wisdom or knowledge

• It could designate particular types of expertise/skills (e.g. rhetoric) or overall wisdom in the
conduct of life.
Could be seen as a development or extension of the tradition of the itinerant
rhapsode (poets who travelled telling stories & poems; e.g. Homer).

But by the 5th C.B.C. it came to designate an itinerant professional teacher

Who polemicised, lectured & gave instruction particularly in rhetoric as the key to success in public
life & in general to a successful conduct in life.

But they also gave instruction on a number of different subjects, theoretical & practical

They thus supplied a form of higher education for the sons of the wealthy.

The Greek polis had grown richer & more intellectually sophisticated, specially Athens, and this
created a demand for higher education beyond the usual fields of literature, arithmetic, music &
physical training.

They charged for their services and some of them were fond of challenging accepted views on
morality & religion.
 • The increase of democracy (e.g. Athens) led to a higher demand for teachers of rhetoric.

• Individualistic ethos of the sophistic profession:

• Founded no schools, shared no common body of though, and belonged to no organisation.

• Philosophers like Socrates, Plato & Aristotles considered them as superficial

• more concerned with success in public life & than with the pursuit of truth & goodness.

• They tend to be associated with scepticism.

• The first of them to call himself a sophist was Protagoras.

• Socrates was contemporary of them (of Protagoras & Gorgias).

• Information on both on them & their ideas on the platonic dialogues

• In Plato’s “Protagoras”, Protagoras claims to teach 

• ‘the proper management of one’s own affairs, how best to run one’s household, and the management of public
affairs, how to make the most effective contribution to the affairs of the city by word and action’.

• Ideological/philosophical nemesis of Socrates,

• Sophists like Protagoras were sceptics, whereas Socrates was confident that knowledge is possible, although
he always made open profession of not having it himself;

• Against the atheism, or at least agnosticism of the sophists, Socrates never wavered in his belief in divine
providence;

• Against extreme relativism, Socrates held that goodness is always something positive.

• Differing notions of virtue

• Virtue in the public sense (sophists) vs Virtue in the general / inward sense (Socrates/Plato/Aristotle)

• Topic that we will encounter in Plato’s “Gorgias”.

 (Sophistic)Scepticism
The idea that our sense faculties & reason restrict us to appearances.

We cannot therefore discover & have true knowledge about realities.

We often have perceptions without a corresponding material object (e.g.

dreams, hallucinations, etc.).

Distinction between Primary (real) & Secondary (sensible) qualities in

physical objects/bodies.

Primary qualities: shape, size, number, motion, & solidity.

Secondary qualities: colour, taste, heat, cold, sounds, etc.

 Phytagoreans & Plato
After Socrate’s death Plato decided to leave Athens, first to Egypt and then to
Italy and Sicily to imbibe on Pythagorean knowledge. (Cicero, "De Republica”).

Pythagoras of Samos was a 6th C. (BC) sage who emigrated to Croton and
founded a religious/ philosophical order or brotherhood in 530 BC.

He left no writings & much of his teaching was purportedly secret

A mathematical genius & appears to have learned this in Babylonia.

His brotherhood excelled on mathematics, music & astronomy.

Profound influence on Western thought despite the evidence for his

doctrines is troublesome: scattered, inconsistent, & obscure.
• What can we say with certitude about his religious/philosophical brotherhood?
And the man himself?

A. He was primarily a religious teacher.

B. He believed that the cosmos is rational(since it exhibits order & numerical ratios, living & divine.

C. That the human soul is immortal & akin to the soul of the cosmos.

D. Reincarnation: sin in one life is punished by a downgraded reincarnation in the next.

E. Theosis as the end of life: which necessitates the purification of the soul through philosophy (Cfr.
Plato’s last pages of the “Phaedo” & the myth of Er in the “Republic”).

F. He advanced the development of the first dualistic system of philosophy (opposition of good &
evil).

G. Philosophy as a way of life: a contemplative activity for the emancipation of the soul.