On the Sophists

I will begin this blog with my thesis: The Sophists rocked! 

But, before I go into detail about why the Sophists were so amazing, I must first give a shout-out to James Meyer of Meyer Bookbinding Company in Auburn, New York. Check out the site below:

http://www.meyerbookbinding.net/about.php 

This week, I got my book back, and it is lovely! My precious book is now in tact with a new, leather cover, complete with gold lettering. Proper for sure. And, getting my book back means I get to continue with my blog!

So, here we go. Onto the Sophists, who are featured first in The Rhetorical Tradition.

One time, at a meeting, I had a colleague list the oldest “fields” of academia. He included philosophy and psychology and excluded rhetoric. When I added, “and rhetoric,” he said, “Well, rhetoric is just really philosophy.” I disagreed. Its foundations are in philosophy, but rhetoric is specific and old. I wanted to add that psychology really just started in rhetoric, but academics could argue all day long about such things, and sometimes, they do. I try not to engage in such behaviors, but I did have an urge to throw my pen at this guy.

People do not understand rhetoric or how important it is. Rhetoricians, we need to do something about that. We could start at the beginning, with the Sophists.

Background 

Rhetoric goes way back to sixth century Greece, but the first study of rhetorical effects of language is generally credited to a pre-Socratic philosopher, Empedocles, around 444 B.C.E. (Bizzell and Herzberg). The part of his study that was particularly interesting was the idea that human knowledge is flawed because we are limited by our senses; however, we can work toward “probable truth” by exploring oppositions. This already sounds like modern rhetoric, right?

The first official rhetoricians, however, came from Syracuse in Sicily around 467 B.C.E. Corax and Tisias, according to our text were “the first practitioners of a schematized rhetoric” (21). Corax was an excellent speaker and taught his strategies to Tisias, among others. Tisias compiled Corax’s strategies in a handbook, and the first rhetoric textbook was born. I wonder how many of those we have now.

Scholars think Tisias was a student of Empedocles, as was Gorgias, a famous Sicilian orator who will be the focus of the next blog in this series.

Protagoras was the most famous and influential of the Sophists. He advised the famous orator Pericles, and, even though Plato and Aristotle may have disagreed with him, they took him seriously. The work Dissoi Logoi (400 B.C.E) will be explored as the fourth entry in his blog, coming in later weeks. The anonymous work explores finding probable truth via opposing arguments, which is key to the teachings of Protagoras.   

So, these guys, Protagoras, Empedocles, Corax, Tisias, and Gorgias, are among the “rock stars” of the Sophistic movement, but we should further explore what that movement was about. 

Sophistic Philosophy (A.K.A. How the Sophists Rocked) 

The Sophists were rhetoric teachers, which is significant. They apparently wandered around teaching anybody and everybody the art of rhetoric. Unfortunately, because their teachings were controversial, much of their work was destroyed. But, from what survived, we know a few things:

1. They believed truth was a matter of perception and absolute truth was something that simply was not available to humans. All we can aim for is probable knowledge, and language is how we arrive at that. The idea that there is no “transcendent” truth was extremely controversial. Some people in ancient Greece feared that, without respect for “transcendent authority,” civil order could be jeopardized. 

Sound familiar? People never change. 

2. They believed anybody and everybody could learn rhetoric and have this knowledge. This was controversial. Bizzell and Herzberg write:

[T]he Sophists taught young people that they could improve themselves via Sophistic teaching. They did not need to defer to the wisdom of their elders or social betters—self-improvement was open to anyone who could pay for it, and anyone, no matter what his or her natural endowments, could make some progress under Sophistic teaching. Hence the traditional privileges of the aristocracy were undermined. (22) 

I guess we are still struggling on this point, too. 

3. They taught a doctrine of kairos. Kairos is the idea that social, cultural, and political contexts, not transcendent truth, give us the best lenses through which to explore solutions to problems. So “truth” is simply relative. 

Sounds controversial, right? It was. It still is. And, people never change. 

4. The Sophists taught that seeing many sides of an issue was the best way to come to knowledge. This encouraged social tolerance, which was an important factor as Athens was seeing an influx in immigrants at this time. 

Seems like we need more of this right now. See? People never change. 

Perceptions of the Sophists: Isocrates and Plato 

Isocrates and Plato, of course, are significant separate of a discussion of the Sophists and will be explored in coming weeks on this blog. However, it is important to consider their reactions to the Sophists in an effort to understand why Sophistic rhetoric “lost out” in many ways and only recently experienced a revival. Ultimately, as we will see, this mainly Plato’s fault.

Isocrates and Plato lived at the same time, and both wanted to “stand out” from the Sophist crowd. However, while Isocrates saw value in what the Sophists were teaching, Plato was dead set against it. Isocrates valued the active methods of the Sophists and asserted that “truth,’” in absolute form, was not available to humans. Plato argued that rhetoric could be used to find “absolute truth,” and he went on the attack against the Sophists, calling them out for their manipulation and the fact that they took money for teaching rhetoric. Plato led the way in a campaign against the Sophists, to eliminate their power and to destroy their texts. Today, few Sophist texts survive, and Plato's perception of the Sophists has become the dominant perception.

And, today, most people have heard of Plato, as most of us likely read something Plato wrote as an undergraduate, but how many of us have learned about the Sophists? In this rhetorician’s opinion, western culture is in desperate need for a little more Sophistic philosophy. So, thanks, Plato, for all of your hard work in getting the Sophists either maligned or cut out of the history books. 

Don't get me wrong, Plato has a lot of offer, but his campaign against the Sophists did the field of rhetoric a disservice. We could all benefit from a little re-education, I think. 

Why We Need the Sophists Now 

As we have seen from history, the belief in one, absolute truth gets all of us in trouble. The problem seems clear: If people think they have and somehow own this “truth,” they do not react well to others who believe in a different “truth.” Seeing the world in dichotomies of black and white, right and wrong, has been, historically, very dangerous. I think it is important to note again that the Sophists helped improve tolerance in ancient Greece. We are still in need of tolerance.

We continue to hurt those who disagree with us, those who are different from us. It somehow seems to make it easier to bring harm to others if we can see ourselves as “good” and others as “bad.” And, even in a culture where we easily have access to information about the lives, children, homes, loves, wants, and needs of others, we have so many who seem only to focus on our differences, instead of what we all have in common.

I always tell my oldest son and my students who will listen that the only “wrong” way if thinking is thinking your way of thinking is the only right way of thinking. Yeah, we need some Sophistic thinking today.

Sadly, modern rhetoricians generally have their work cut out for them if they plan to re-educate on the Sophists. A Google search of “Sophists” brought up a wide variety of misinformation and oversimplification—ironically, something the Sophists worked against. I found this definition of “Sophistry” on a blog—a blog that was full of misinformation and oversimplification on all kinds of topics. The image below is taken from this blog site, the Stone Crab, posted May 8, 2010 and accessed April 13, 2013 from 10ksnookers.blogspot.com. However, this definition in the image below was apparently taken from dictionary.com. And, other online dictionaries provide similar definitions. The Sophists have been maligned so completely that anything relating to them is now perceived as negative--at least in the mainstream.

This misunderstanding of the Sophists reminds me of the general misunderstanding of rhetoric that I encounter so often, even in academia. There is an idea that permeates our culture that rhetoric cannot be trusted, that it is only about manipulation. Certainly, given the likes of those who use rhetoric only to push people’s buttons, to mislead, to manipulate, and for their own personal gain, this general mistrust of rhetoric is understandable. But, writing teachers can open people’s eyes to the benefits of rhetoric. A better understanding of what scholars know about the Sophists is a good start, especially since the Sophistic concept of kairos is really at the heart of modern rhetoric. 

Teaching the Sophists When We Teach Writing 

In addition to helping students open their minds to different ways of thinking, to helping them understand that their perspective is not the only perspective, teaching students about the Sophists can make them better writers. Beginning writers have a tendency to have real struggles considering audience. They often have a hard time envisioning anyone’s needs but their own, and, seeing the world in "black and white" often goes along with this. I cannot tell you how many essays I have read, essays that should appeal to a broad audience, in which the student-author could not get past her or his own significant biases.

The logic is often flawed, and the writing is just poor. When the main argument for welfare reform is based on the author’s cousin who apparently abuses the system or the main argument against abortion is a religious one, the writing is not persuasive. It is limited and could never appeal to anyone who didn’t see the world in the exact same way the student-author sees the world. And, chances are, that is a pretty limited audience, making the writing highly ineffective for a general readership.

Giving students some background in rhetoric, beginning with the Sophists, can help them begin to understand that writing is often about writing for a bigger audience than oneself. I tell my students that, unless they are writing a journal or a diary, they really have to think about how others might perceive their writing—and not just the others who are scoring a standardized essay 5, 4, 3, 2, or 1—but others who will have a personal, meaningful, emotional, logical reaction to their writing. If students are going to be effective in writing for that audience, they will have to learn to imagine what the difference in the world might look like, feel like, and think like.

Yes, the Sophists rocked! Maybe writing teachers can bring them back to their rock-star status they had in ancient Greece. We have a lot of work to do, but I, for one, certainly see the benefits.