The Sophists

The Sophists of Athens taught the art of persuasion, for money--much like law professors today. The best-known of the sophists were Gorgias (c.483-c.325 B.C.) and Protagoras (c.481- c.421 B.C.) both of whom appear as characters (along with Socrates) in Plato's Dialogues. A lesser-known sophist, Thrasymachus, also appears as a major character in Plato's Republic.

Neither Protagoras nor Gorgias was native to Athens. The former hailed from Thrace, and the latter was from Sicily, and so both men brought to Athens a cosmopolitan spirit-a skeptical attitude about morals, a kind of moral relativism. Having "been around," they knew that different people and cultures have different ethical standards, and they concluded that there are no absolute standards of right and wrong.

The sophists also taught the young men of Athens how to argue either side of any issue, an important skill in a democracy. But such skill can be a two-edged sword, and many Athenians (especially Socrates) came to believe that sophistry was cynical and superficial and that it made truth seem unattainable, Indeed, the word "sophistry" has now--thanks to Socrates--come to mean "devious and misleading arugmentation."

Socrates: Doesn't it happen sometimes that, although the same breeze is blowing, one of us feels a chill and the other doesn't?
Theaetetus: Yes.
Socrates: So should we say in that case that the wind is in itself cold or not, or should we say, with Protagoras, that it is cold to the person that feels cold but not to him who doesn't?
- Plato, Theaetetus

Protagoras said that the measure of all things is man -- of what exists, that it exists, and of what does not exist, that it does not.
- Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicus

If actual objects, that we perceive by our senses, are outside us, how then can they ever be communicated to someone else? For it is by words that we hold discourse, and words are not actual objects.
- Gorgias, quoted in Sextus Empiricus, Adversus Mathematicus

[ This and following quotations from Plato's Dialogues are paraphrased from the Benjamin Jowett translation, 1892. Quotations from Sextus Empiricus are paraphrased from John Mansley Robinson's An Introduction to Early Greek Philosophy, 1968. ]