So who exactly were the sophists? Simply put, they were teachers. They would go around teaching their students (not without expecting proper payment from the students, of course) on just about any topic imaginable. Although they are well known for their rhetoric and being able to teach it. This plays into the purpose of what they were teaching. Possibly the greatest criticism against this group is that they were more interested in being right than in the truth. Granted, nearly everything that we know about them comes from Plato, who wasn’t their biggest fan, so the information we have about the sophists has an unfavorable tint. Although they did find themselves an important niche in society. There was a demand for higher education due to the growing wealth and intellectual pursuits. As politics grew, there was a need for the development of specialized techniques of persuasion and argument. Also, there were new questions (or the same old questions recurring) about morality, religion, and political conduct. The sophists both responded and contributed to these demands. Because the niche they were filling was so broad, each of the sophist contributed in their own way with topics that interested them, which I suppose is why there is so little unity in a common body of beliefs.
Wednesday, February 26, 2014
The Sophists
This post covering the sophists is
a little late. Frankly, I spent so most of my time reviewing Prodicus for this
particular set of pages, so I had done mostly a cursory reading of the other
three. So after listening to the presentations over Protagoras, Gorgias, and
Hippias and having some time to think about it… Who am I kidding? Even after
thinking about it I can’t get them to fit under a nice category of unifying
thoughts and ideas. I suppose I should have seen that coming though, since while
researching Prodicus, I found out about the sophists belonged to no
organization, shared no common body of beliefs and founded no schools.
So who exactly were the sophists? Simply put, they were teachers. They would go around teaching their students (not without expecting proper payment from the students, of course) on just about any topic imaginable. Although they are well known for their rhetoric and being able to teach it. This plays into the purpose of what they were teaching. Possibly the greatest criticism against this group is that they were more interested in being right than in the truth. Granted, nearly everything that we know about them comes from Plato, who wasn’t their biggest fan, so the information we have about the sophists has an unfavorable tint. Although they did find themselves an important niche in society. There was a demand for higher education due to the growing wealth and intellectual pursuits. As politics grew, there was a need for the development of specialized techniques of persuasion and argument. Also, there were new questions (or the same old questions recurring) about morality, religion, and political conduct. The sophists both responded and contributed to these demands. Because the niche they were filling was so broad, each of the sophist contributed in their own way with topics that interested them, which I suppose is why there is so little unity in a common body of beliefs.
So who exactly were the sophists? Simply put, they were teachers. They would go around teaching their students (not without expecting proper payment from the students, of course) on just about any topic imaginable. Although they are well known for their rhetoric and being able to teach it. This plays into the purpose of what they were teaching. Possibly the greatest criticism against this group is that they were more interested in being right than in the truth. Granted, nearly everything that we know about them comes from Plato, who wasn’t their biggest fan, so the information we have about the sophists has an unfavorable tint. Although they did find themselves an important niche in society. There was a demand for higher education due to the growing wealth and intellectual pursuits. As politics grew, there was a need for the development of specialized techniques of persuasion and argument. Also, there were new questions (or the same old questions recurring) about morality, religion, and political conduct. The sophists both responded and contributed to these demands. Because the niche they were filling was so broad, each of the sophist contributed in their own way with topics that interested them, which I suppose is why there is so little unity in a common body of beliefs.
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Good sense for the sophists. Assuming their interest was primarily in the art of persuasion, it makes sense that they didn't have a common body of beliefs.
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