The Sophists

Through this geo-political transition of culture to Athens, the central question of the problems of philosophy was no longer sought in Heaven and Earth, in nature and its principles (Anaxagoras was still preoccupied with this philosophy of nature in Athens).

They were now concerned about the Human beings Themselves.

In order that such a radical shift of questions in philosophy was possible, some cultural, psychological and philosophical preparations had to be done in ahead.
1) The problem of human-being oneself and of the society as well as the politics became more serious questions tot the consciousness of the people rather than those of the heaven and nature. Why? Because what had been previously taken for granted as self-evident was no longer acceptable as true, but on the contrary, everything which was taken for granted in humanity and society had become questionable.
2) After the Persian War (490-480 B.C.) Athens became the leader of Pan-Graeca civilization.
Furthermore, the Athenians were basically very political people. They were thus more concerned about politics and human-being oneself.
3) The Athenians were originally very practical people, being good at making money, skillful in engineering, well equipped with navigational talents and excellent in military affairs. To them, philosophy, the search for knowledge for its own sake, appeared as idle talks and totally useless in our human existence. That was why they hated Anaxagoras, who appeared to the Athenians wasting time for idle talks. At that time, they did not appreciate knowledge itself for its own sake and its pursuit.
As a result of the victory of the Persian War, Athens and the Athenians (aristocrats, of course) suddenly became very wealthy and now had a lot of leisure. Then, the Athenians started appreciating arts, theatres, poetry, music and philosophy. That is why it is often said, "To philosophize, leisure is necessary!"
Furthermore, the abundance of wealth and the cultural maturity brought forth the crushes between the values of the elders and those of the youngers, which lead to relativism of values and culture.
Thus, the mental preparation for and attitude towards such questions about the human affairs had been already prepared and made them to eagerly raise such questions.
4) Thanks to the economic prosperity and the military strength of Athens, many excellent men of letters, arts and sciences, as well as every phase of advanced civilization were welcomed and gathered in Athens.
They were poets, performers, sculptors, painters, architects, scientists, political advisors and philosophers and lawyers.
Among them, there were educators and self-claiming teachers and political consultants at the same time as well.
The so-called "sophists" were some of those intellectuals who claimed themselves to have special talents, knowledge and skills (all of which thy called "wisdom") as well as abilities (virtues) and they claimed that they were able to educate the youth with such special knowledge and skills to smart out in politics. That was why they were called sophists (=wise men).
What did the sophist (ho sophistés) mean?
1) According to the dictionary, the sophist is an Ancient Greek teacher of rhetoric or capricious or fallacious reasoner.
This definition was mainly due to Plato's one sided conception of the sophist. It is indeed negative allegations probably due to his strong resentment caused by the fact that Socrates, Plato's beloved teacher, was alleged to be a sophist and was prosecuted by a death sentence.
The earlier sophists such as Protagoras, Gorgias (whom Plato viciously accused in Gorgias, however), Hippias, Prodicus, Callicles, Antiphon, Critias were supposedly different. They gave an important impact to the Athenians and the other city states in Greece both intellectually and culturally.
Sophia purports first of all wisdom.
Sophizein means , as the intransitive verb, the state in which wisdom is active, and
this sophizein later became to be used as the transitive verb, it signifies to make one's wisdom work, to assist someone's wisdom to work better, to teach!
Hé sophistés means:
1) A wise human-being.
Aeschylus called Prometheus in his play Prometheus hé sophistés in the sense that Prometheus as a wise human-being and a teacher taught men many things including the use of fire.
Therefore, the term in itself had no negative connotation. And it was further used to call such people (the Seven Wise men) as Solon, the Athenian great politician who created the Athenian Constitution, or as Thales, the founder of the Ionian natural philosophy.
Herodotus in his Historia thus called Solon and Pythagoras as sophistai.
2) A teacher of rhetoric.
As clearly seen from the above, in itself the word, "hé sophistés", never signified the negative meaning. Therefore, in Athens, people called Protagoras, Gorgias or Hippias or Prodicus sophists and admired them.
As stated earlier, it was Plato that started using the "sophists" in the negative sense, and yet he also sometimes called a mathematician hé sophistés in Cratylos and Hadés hé sophistés in Meno. The difference consists in the fact that while the sophists in the former sense referred a professionals with the claim of special knowledge and skills (in fact they denied knowledge and its pursuit meaningless), the latter as a common noun referred to a wise person.
In the latter sense, in the school of Isocrates, for example, Lycias called Socrates and his followers sophists.
3) According to Plato, the sophists are those who prey the sons of the wealthy with the claim of producing, wholesaling and retailing "knowledge" and skills which are supposed to be nutrition of mind and are in reality nothing but appearances and possess no substance. They were all relativists and claimed that there is no universal truth and knowledge, so it was meaningless to pursue knowledge. What they called "knowledge" was the skill of rhetoric in the sense of the art of persuasion in political debates and by teaching them, the sophists earned high fees. The so-called sophists are those who themselves do not know what they are.
4) Besides Plato, Xenophon in his Kynegetikos (Hunting) describes the sophist as a human-being who exerts himself to deceive others, writes books to his own benefit and love no one else. Since there is no genuine sophist (wise human-being) on earth, according Xenophon, some people do not want to be called sophists (wise men).
5) Aristotle in his Sophistici elenchi, following Plato's negative definition of the sophist, said that one is called a sophist, if he earns money with the pretentious knowledge which does not actually exist.
6) In the later period, the term, the sophist, refers to a particular kind of professionals (e.g. Plato's Gorgias).
When Socrates stayed overnight at one of his friends' house, a young human-being came to him and told him that Gorgias had came to Athens and asked Socrates to introduce him to Gorgias, for he was called a sophist just like a physician and a carpenter is called so. The young human-being told Socrates that, by learning from Gorgias, he would become a great human-being.
Here appeared Gorgias as a well known educator of the youth.
According to one of his fragments,Protagoras declared himself:

"I am a sophist and my profession is to teach men how to govern the house, the government, how to improve the political affairs of the state and to better the art of argument and to instruct the youth how to become a significant, influential human-being...
"It (the knowledge Protagoras would teach them) is hé politiké techné (political science), that is, it makes the citizen become an excellent politician."

Protagoras claimed that the ideal of educating a human-being is to make a human being a good citizen and an excellent politician capable of handling the political affairs of the state better. He promised to make a citizen an able and eloquent speaker, a competent politician by influencing other citizens and make him capable of assuming a significant position of the government.
Till then (Protagoras' time), the general education of the youth in Athens was either the training for a trade (professional education) or the moral, religious training of the children by the elders of the clan. The sophists did promise or claim a higher level of education than those above two and declared that their job was a further development of Homer and other poets (cf. Werner Jaeger, Paideia).
Although the educational ideal advocated by the sophists seemed high and good, their paedagogical methods were not well thought out or even not highly developed. On the contrary, they took their profession as the means of obtaining wealth and attaining a influential position with the then famous politicians.
The sophists were not native Athenians. They were foreigners (except Antiphon of Athens) and they used to give a lecture on or several examples of eloquence.
According to Socrates (= Plato), the sophist revealed only the finished shoes, and never how to make the shoes!

Positive Aspects of Sophists
Against those negative aspects of being a sophist in the 5th and 4th Century B.C., we should not overlook the many invaluable, positive aspects and contributions that the sophists accomplished for the further development of the Western philosophies.
1) The quest for and inquiry into Human-being Himself.

The early sophists initiated the shift of the philosophical questions from those of nature to those of human-being himself. Considering the further development of the Athenian philosophies from Socrates through Plato to Aristotle, it is the greatest contribution of the sophists of all is that they accomplished the preparation for the rise of Plato's and Aristotle's philosophies and philosophical inquires into human beings and their society.

Needless to remind ourselves of Protagoras' drafting the constitution of Thurioi, many sophists appeared as lawyers and served as lawyers. They helped drafting laws, acting legal advisors. Sometimes they even appeared as defense lawyers. They were well acquainted with different legal systems among different civilizations. They contributed to the understanding of the nature of law as well.

By traveling widely, almost all sophists were well acquainted with various cultures not only among Magna Graeca, but also other civilizations than Greek in terms of legal systems, political structures, languages, mores, customs, etc. This awareness of pluralism of the culture made them cultural relativists and those of values.

They were able to speak several languages and were interested in the inquiry into the grammar and the linguistic structure.

Apart from Parmenides and Zeno, they were the intellectuals who were interested in logic and contributed to the development of logic and as well as the art of eloquentia (speech) as rhetoric, which were further developed decisively by Aristotle.

As well exemplified by the role of Gorgias, who came to Athens from Leontini to secure military supports, many sophists were either themselves diplomats or advisors for the diplomat, as they were well acquainted with various cultures and had mastered the art of persuasion.

Again Gorgias was an example. However, more those who were taught by the sophists and mastered the skills of eloquentia were very successful in obtaining high positions in politics. They were remembered more primarily as politicians than as sophists, however.

Many self-claimed sophists were active as political consultants, advising influential politicians, giving advice, helping making legislation, conceiving political plots.

The sophists were the first professionals who claimed themselves as educators. Education means to mold the youth into a certain trait both in character and skills by giving special training. No civilization has ever neglected education, for the human beings want to transmit the value of the existing society to the next generation. However, here the sophists appeared as the first self-claimed educator for the youth. They claimed that they could make the youth better (superior politicians and influential persons) by teaching them the art of persuasion (eloquentia). This skills were far short of fulfilling the task of moral education, but it is very important that they presented themselves as educators as professionals for the first time.

Sophists were well travelled and well acquainted with various societies. Thus, their knowledge about the societies, social structures and its conventions was the first which could claim the beginning of the sociology.

Although Plato would never approve to call sophists philosophers, but they were indeed philosophers with relativistic thoughts in ethics and epistemology. Through their investigations about the moralities of different cultures, they advocated that there was no absolute moral duties, but the moral principles were only conducive to a given culture or society, thus, they were relative. Just as many matter of taste were relative, so they argued, even such matters as moral laws (e.g. Thou shall not lie) and as the meaning of life were all relative. The efforts by Socrates and Plato were answers to those relativism of values which they felt they must overcome.

In epistemology, also, they took a relativistic view. Namely, according to almost all the sophists, knowledge and truth is neither absolute nor objective, but merely subjective and relative to the culture, society and person. Therefore, it is non-sense to pursue knowledge for its own sake, since there is no such a thing. In stead of absolute truth and objective knowledge, they believed that what we could call "knowledge" is only the skills of persuade the majority, convince them with what they advocate. This presented a serious challenge to the traditional philosophy, the pursuit of (objective) knowledge for its own sake. Socrates and Plato tried to fight against this relativism.

Although their accomplishments seem negative in general, as mentioned above, we must emphasize, they prepared for the re-birth of the philosophy by Socrates (and Plato) and fulfilled the
needs of the society at the time of Greece.