The Sophistic Tradition
The Sophists were itinerant teachers of fifth-century BCE Greece who professionalized instruction in persuasive speech and provoked enduring questions about truth, relativism, and the power of language.
Definition
The sophistic tradition is the line of professional teachers of rhetoric and argument, beginning in fifth-century BCE Greece, associated with a pragmatic and often relativistic view of language and persuasion.
Scope
This topic covers the Older Sophists—Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, Hippias, and others—their teaching of rhetoric and virtue, and signature doctrines such as Protagoras's relativism and the two-sided argument. It also treats the imperial Second Sophistic and the modern revaluation of sophistic thought in rhetorical studies, distinguishing the historical movement from Plato's polemical caricature.
Core questions
- What did the Sophists actually teach, beyond Plato's hostile portrait?
- Is sophistic relativism a coherent philosophical position?
- What is the relationship between rhetoric, truth, and social convention?
- Why have modern rhetoricians sought to rehabilitate the Sophists?
Key concepts
- dissoi logoi (two-fold arguments)
- kairos (opportune moment)
- nomos versus physis
- man-measure doctrine
- Second Sophistic
Key theories
- Protagorean relativism
- Protagoras's dictum that man is the measure of all things, and his claim that there are two opposing arguments on every matter, ground a view of truth as relative to perspective and discourse.
- Sophistic rehabilitation
- Modern scholars reread the Sophists as serious theorists of language and democratic deliberation rather than cynical manipulators, recovering their contribution to rhetorical theory.
History
The Sophists arose amid the democratic culture of fifth-century BCE Athens, where skill in public speaking was valuable and they offered paid instruction. Plato's dialogues cast them as purveyors of mere opinion, an image that long dominated. A revival of declamatory rhetoric in the imperial period, the Second Sophistic, carried the name forward. Twentieth-century rhetoricians, working from the surviving fragments, reassessed the movement as foundational to rhetorical theory.
Debates
- Were the Sophists philosophers or charlatans?
- The evaluation of the Sophists is contested, with the Platonic tradition treating them as relativist manipulators and revisionist scholarship recovering them as theorists of language, probability, and civic argument.
Key figures
- Protagoras
- Gorgias
- Prodicus
- Hippias
- Susan Jarratt
Related topics
Seminal works
- kerferd1981
- schiappa1991
Frequently asked questions
- Why does 'sophistry' have a negative connotation today?
- The pejorative sense derives largely from Plato's and Aristotle's critiques, which charged the Sophists with valuing victory over truth. Modern scholarship distinguishes this polemic from the historical teachers' actual contributions to rhetoric.