The Sophists in Plato's Dialogues

David D. Corey

• Editore: SUNY Press
• Anno: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781438456195
• Argomento: Philosophy
• Categoria: Political Philosophy

Are the sophists merely another group of villains in Plato's dialogues, no different than amoral rhetoricians such as Thrasymachus, Callicles, and Polus? Building on a wave of recent interest in the Greek sophists, The Sophists in Plato's Dialogues argues that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, there exist important affinities between Socrates and the sophists he engages in conversation. Both focused squarely on aret? (virtue or excellence). Both employed rhetorical techniques of refutation, revisionary myth construction, esotericism, and irony. Both engaged in similar ways of minimizing the potential friction that sometimes arises between intellectuals and the city. Perhaps the most important affinity between Socrates and the sophists, David D. Corey argues, was their mutual recognition of a basic epistemological insight—that appearances ( phainomena ) both physical and intellectual were vexingly unstable. Such things as justice, beauty, piety, and nobility are susceptible to radical change depending upon the angle from which they are viewed. Socrates uses the sophists and sometimes plays the role of sophist himself in order to awaken interlocutors and readers from their dogmatic slumber. This in turn generates wonder ( thaumas ), which, according to Socrates, is nothing other than the beginning of philosophy.

ONE

INTRODUCTION

Tradition ascribes thirty-five dialogues to Plato, and more than half of them (21) touch on the theme of sophistry in one way or another.¹ In some dialogues, Plato casts the sophists as leading interlocutors of Socrates; in others they are mentioned for their intellectual tendencies and pedagogical practices. Frequently Plato exposes readers to hearsay about the sophists—sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile. At times he has Socrates defend them, but not always. And, constantly, he hints at the many ways in which Socrates seems both like and unlike the sophists. The richness and frequency of Plato’s handling of the sophists gives rise naturally to certain questions: What was Plato’s purpose in presenting these controversial figures? What was his view of them? And how did he expect readers to understand their relationship to Socrates?

This book springs from the suspicion that such questions have not been adequately answered. The dominant and indeed almost universally held view is that Plato was the sophists’ implacable foe, that he presented them in his dialogues in order to discredit them, and that his campaign against them was motivated by a deep desire to separate what he regarded as the sham wisdom of the sophists from the genuine wisdom of his teacher, Socrates.² This view no doubt has its attractions, not least of which is that it captures something of a dramatic, almost epochal struggle for the soul of Athens and the integrity of philosophy in Plato’s handling of the sophists. But how well does it ultimately line up with evidence from the dialogues?

In his dialogue, The Sophist, Plato has a silent Socrates look on while a stranger from Elea investigates the nature of sophistry with a pupil, Theaetetus. The dialogue ends when, after prodigious effort, the interlocutors finally agree on a definition of sophistry. The definition is intensely negative,³ but it is also tendentious—or so readers of this dialogue should understand. For it fails to accommodate the full range of sophistic traits that Theaetetus and the stranger had outlined over the dialogue’s labyrinthine course. Moreover, and just as importantly, around the midpoint of the dialogue, Theaetetus and the stranger hesitatingly agree that Socrates (or some group of figures indistinguishable from Socrates) should be classed among the sophists for attempting to educate the young by means of a purgative art of refutation (231a–c). One thus wonders: Why would Plato’s chief dialogue on the sophists (if the Sophist can be described that way) dismiss these figures on obviously tendentious grounds and, at the same time, allow Socrates to appear vexingly intermingled with them, if his purpose were indeed to distinguish Socrates and the sophists once and for all?

Plato’s handling of sophistry in the Meno raises similar questions. When Socrates there suggests to Anytus that people who want to learn virtue or excellence (aretē) might do well to consult the sophists, Anytus reacts with horror: the sophists are “plainly the ruin and corruption of those who associate with them!”⁴ But Plato does not leave it there. He rather has Socrates interrogate Anytus: Is it really credible to suppose that a great sophist like Protagoras has been corrupting all of Greece for forty years while receiving pay and gratitude in the process? The question goes unanswered, so Socrates continues: “Has one of the sophists done you some injustice, Anytus? Or why are you so harsh toward them?”⁵ Anytus responds notoriously that he has in fact never had any experience of the sophists at all. To which Socrates reasonably retorts that Anytus must be some kind of prophet; for how else could he know whether there is something good or bad in a matter of which he has no experience? Thus is Anytus revealed to be a thoughtless proponent of a mere prejudice against the sophists. But, again, why would Plato have Socrates stand up for the sophists in this way if his goal were to discredit them?

Or consider Plato’s fascinating presentation of the sophist, Prodicus. Though there is no dialogue called the Prodicus, this sophist is treated in more than a dozen different places in the Platonic corpus, once as a character in the Protagoras and often as the originator of certain useful ideas or skills that Socrates wants to consider.⁶ In multiple dialogues, Socrates claims to have studied with Prodicus, and he frequently goes on to employ one of this sophist’s best known skills (an art of making careful distinctions, called diairesis) in order to dispel intellectual confusion and expose fallacies. But why would Plato portray this sophist so sympathetically and indeed go so far as to stress his role as Socrates’ teacher if his purpose were to dissociate Socrates from the sophists and tarnish their reputation?

Further examples could easily be cited to suggest that Plato’s handling of the sophists is more varied and complex than frequently assumed. But rather than pile example on example, I set out a summary of the argument that emerges gradually over the chapters that follow. The argument of this book is that Plato did not cast the sophists merely to criticize them, much less to villainize them or attack them as the enemies of philosophy.⁷ Rather he treated them with remarkable care as teachers engaged in an enterprise similar in many ways to that of Socrates. He used them, moreover, to illuminate what was most distinctive about Socratic philosophy while at the same time supplying readers with necessary propaedeutic experiences to begin to engage in it.

On a more particular level, my thesis involves three basic claims. First, I argue that Plato made crucial and sometimes fundamental distinctions among the various figures we today call sophists. Plato’s sophists were neither a school nor a movement. Specific figures differed from each other in manifest ways—in what they studied, how and what they taught, how they stood in relation to conventional civic norms and, most importantly, how they related to Socrates. Moreover the sophists, on Plato’s account, were categorically different from another important group of intellectuals, the “rhetoricians,” even though both groups taught rhetoric.⁸ In Plato the sophists are defined with remarkable consistency as professional teachers of aretē (human excellence or virtue) while the rhetoricians made no claim to teach aretē and in fact tended to denounce its conventional forms. Based on this important distinction, I claim that Plato treats only five major sophists in the dialogues. These are Protagoras, Prodicus, Hippias, and the brothers Euthydemus and Dionysodorus. Contrary to the modern tradition of classifying the sophists, Plato does not typically present such figures as Gorgias, Thrasymachus, Callicles, Polus, Antiphon or Critias as sophists in the precise sense of the word.⁹

Second, I argue that Plato intentionally discloses deep affinities between Socrates and the sophists, affinities that approach the very heart of what it means to philosophize in the Socratic manner. One affinity is their shared interested in aretē. At a time when most intellectuals focused primarily on questions of cosmology, religion, and natural science, Socrates and the sophists focused squarely on human excellence. It was Socrates who would become famous for pulling philosophy “down from the heavens,” implanting it in the cities of men, and compelling it to attend to questions of virtue and vice.¹⁰ But the truth is that the sophists also pulled philosophy down from the heavens. The so-called Socratic turn was anticipated by Protagoras, the oldest of the sophists, who maintained that the gods were too obscure to admit of knowledge and that man was, at any rate, the “measure of all things.”

Another affinity between Socrates and the sophists relates to certain shared techniques. Scholars have long noted that Socrates’ practice of elenchus (refutation) bears a strong resemblance to the method of eristic (verbal combat) developed by Protagoras, Euthydemus, and Dionysodorus. Both Socrates and the sophists crafted speeches that made “weaker arguments appear stronger.” But this is not all. Plato’s Socrates also candidly acknowledged a methodological debt to Prodicus in the dialogues. And he likewise shared with other sophists a broad range of rhetorical tactics, some aimed at pedagogical effectiveness, others at minimizing the potential friction that could sometimes arise between intellectuals and the city.

A final affinity between Socrates and the sophists lies in their mutual recognition of a basic epistemological insight. With the exception of Hippias, who appears to have been an outlier in this regard, all the sophists as well as Socrates recognized that appearances (phainomena) both physical and intellectual were vexingly unstable. Such things as justice, beauty, piety, and nobility seemed susceptible of radical change depending on the angle from which they were viewed; and Socrates as well as the sophists were interested in the implications of this for human life. Socrates tried to respond to this problem by seeking some plane on which ideas might ultimately stand still, the plane of the “forms” as he calls it in some of Plato’s accounts. This differed markedly from the various ways in which the sophists responded to the experience of instability. But that Socrates and the sophists both recognized and reacted to this problem put them in a class of their own and often brought them into fascinating conflict with traditionalists of various stripes.

The third and final part of my argument addresses the reasons why Plato might have wanted to emphasize these manifold similarities between Socrates and the sophists. This is something that cannot be explained (or not easily) on the assumption that Plato was the sophists’ inveterate enemy. Again, why would someone who ostensibly wished to dissociate Socrates from the sophists once and for all allow readers to see so many deep affinities? I argue that Plato casts the relationship between Socrates and the sophists in such complex terms for two reasons. One is propaedeutic. If Socratic philosophy is understood as an effort to respond to the instability of appearances, then it can only be engaged in by individuals who sense that instability. Yet human beings typically attempt to suppress such uncomfortable experiences, failing to acknowledge that, for instance, their understanding of justice does not account for what they themselves deem just in every instance. People have multiple, competing understandings of important moral concepts vying for primacy in their minds, but they do not realize their inconsistency. And here the sophists have a valuable role to play. In Plato’s account, Socrates uses the sophists and sometimes plays the role of sophist himself in order to awaken interlocutors and readers from their dogmatic slumber. He uses them to reveal the inconstant nature of appearances. This generates wonder (thaumas), which, according to Socrates, is nothing else than the beginning (archē) of philosophy (Theaetetus, 155d).

The second reason Plato casts the relationship between Socrates and the sophists in such complex terms can be described as protreptic—not simply preparing students for philosophy, but positively leading them to practice it. What is philosophy? This question is hardly exhausted by saying it is Socrates’ unique way of searching out something above and beyond the realm of vacillating appearances. Certainly it is that. But it is, beyond that, a whole way of life, a commitment to honesty and integrity in the face of the unknown, a disposition to seek lovingly and patiently for the source of our being, a dissatisfaction with partial answers and false prophets, and above all an understanding of what, given the conditions in which we find ourselves, it means to live a life of excellence or virtue (aretē). The love of wisdom (philosophia) as such is essentially related to aretē, and yet wisdom and aretē are themselves among those problematic appearances that admit of instability. What wisdom and aretē finally mean looks different depending on the angle from which they are viewed.

Plato did not try to suppress this fact. He did not compose dialogues that uniformly celebrate Socrates as a philosopher with sound answers about wisdom and virtue; nor did he orchestrate a blanket dismissal of the sophists as impostors. Rather, he wrote dialogues in which Socrates and particular sophists (among other interlocutors) appear vexingly interrelated. Indeed, as a rule, the closer one looks at Plato’s treatments of Socrates and the sophists, the more do apparent differences give way to similarities. This pattern can be appreciated in every dialogue relating to the sophists. Plato has made them difficult to distinguish. But why would he do that? My argument is that he does so because he sees in the relationship between Socrates and the sophists a possible entry point to the practice of philosophy itself. He sees that readers who honestly admit that their first impressions on the matter of Socrates and the sophists are inadequate may well be fit to seek the truth about philosophy and in so seeking actually to engage in it. This is what I mean when I say that Plato uses the problem of Socrates and the sophists as a protreptic.

CONNECTION TO RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

How does this book’s argument relate to recent work on the sophists and their presentation in Plato? Studies of Greek sophistry have been bountiful in recent decades, and to a certain extent all such studies necessarily touch on Plato, for he is one of the most valuable sources of information we have on the sophists.¹¹ But the primary aim of almost all recent scholarship has been not so much to deepen our understanding of Plato’s rich portraits or his goals in presenting the sophists, but rather to uncover facts about the “historical” sophists, washed clean of any distortions that may have been wrought by the biases of Plato or other conveyers of information. Scholars have thus been engaged in a subtle and challenging sifting operation—poring over sources such as Plato’s dialogues for “fragments” of information, which, once sifted, might be reassembled into an unbiased account.¹²

Moreover, and more significantly given the aims of the present study, scholars engaged in the effort to uncover the historical sophists have tended to rely heavily on the common view that Plato was the sophists’ enemy as a starting point for analysis. Thus Eric Havelock expressed his method of reconstructing the sophists as follows: “the historian, even as he discounts Plato’s judgmental evaluation of sophistic, can find in Plato’s hostility a valuable guide, a signpost, to what precisely sophist doctrine was. It was everything that Platonism was not.”¹³ Similarly, G.B. Kerferd began his study by lamenting that “for much of our information we are dependent upon Plato’s profoundly hostile treatment of [the sophists], presented with all the power of his literary genius and driven home with a philosophical impact that is little short of overwhelming.”¹⁴ And John Dillon and Tania Gergel begin their more recent study by announcing that “Plato is, of course, a declared foe of the sophists and all that they stand for, so that we cannot expect from him a sympathetic portrayal,” even if Plato does (according to them) occasionally allow one or two sophists to speak briefly in their...

Indice dei contenuti

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations
• 1. Introduction
• 2. Defining the Platonic Sophists
• 3. The “Great Speech” in Plato’s Protagoras
• 4. Prodicus: Diplomat, Sophist, and Teacher of Socrates
• 5. The Sophist Hippias and the Problem of Polytropia
• 6. Brother Sophists: Euthydemus and Dionysodorus
• 7. Protagorean Sophistry in Plato’s Theaetetus
• 8. Plato’s Critique of the Sophists?
• Appendix: A Primer on Hesiod’s Myth of Prometheus
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover