Sophists in Fifth-Century Athens

1. Sophists in Fifth-Century Athens The Greek Enlightenment

2. Athenian Empire and Athenian Culture • Athens and Imperial Infrastructure • Naval Empire and Its Industries • Shipwrights • Docks and Dock-workers • Pitch and Rope Manufactures • Training of Crews • Athens and Its Subjects • Service Industries in Metropole • Metropolitan Commercial Centers • Imperial Economies and Generation of Culture • Imperial Tribute and Athenian Tragedy and Comedy • Pericles’ Building Program (Parthenon) • Athenian Elite Citizens: Wealth, Leisure, Cultural Appetites • Culture as Child of Empire

3. Thucydides (2.38) on Athens and Culture When our work is over, we are in a position to enjoy all kinds of recreation for our spirits. There are various kinds of contests and sacrifices regularly throughout the year; in our own homes we find a beauty and a good taste which delight us every day and which drive away our cares. Then the greatness of our city brings it about that all the good things from all over the world flow in to us, so that to us it seems just as natural to enjoy foreign goods as our own local products.

4. Sophists as Socio-Cultural Phenomenon • Sophia: “Wisdom” • Sophistes: “Wise Man” • Itinerant Professors • Teach for Pay • Attract Large Followings • Wide Range of Expertise • Astronomy, Geometry, Language, Rhetoric • Arete

5. Athenian Agora

6. Fifth-Century Athens as the Center of Sophistic Movement • Second Half of Century: Sophists Gravitate to Athens • Oratory and Athenian Democratic Politics (Market Forces of Democracy) • Gorgias of Leontini and the Rhetorical Education of the Public Speaker • MeticLysias and the Business of Speech-Writing • W.R. Connor’s “New Politicians” • Patronage of Pericles (Damon, Anaxagoras, Protagoras)

7. Plato, Protagoras 310a-b Last night, in the small hours, Hippocrates, son of Apollodorus and brother of Phason, knocked violently at my door with his stick, and when they opened to him he came hurrying in at once and calling to me in a loud voice: “Socrates, are you awake or sleeping?” Then I, recognizing his voice, said, “Hippocrates, hello! Some news to break to me?” “Only good news,” he replied. “Tell it, and welcome,” I said, “and what business brings you here at such an hour?” “Protagoras has come,” he said.

8. Protagoras of Abdera (ca. 485-420 BCE) “Man is the measure of all things.” Agnosticism regarding the gods Skepticism regarding knowledge

9. Sextus Empiricus, Outlines of Pyrrhonism, 1.216 Protagoras also holds that “Man is the measure of all things, of existing things that they exist, and of non-existing things that they do not exist”; and by “measure” he means the criterion, and by “things” the objects, so that he is virtually asserting that “Man is the criterion of all objects, of those which exist that they exist, and of those which do not exist that they do not.” And consequently he posits only what appears to each individual, and thus he introduces relativity.

10. Gorgias of Leontini, On Non-Existence • Nothing exists • Even if something exists, it cannot be known • If it could be known, it could not be communicated

11. Gorgias of Leontini on Rhetoric I call it the ability to persuade with speeches either judges in the law courts or statesmen in the council-chamber or the commons in the assembly or an audience at any other meeting that may be held on public affairs. And I tell you that by virtue of this power you will have the doctor as your slave, and the trainer as your slave; your money-getter will turn out not to be making money for himself, but for another—in fact for you, who are able to speak and persuade the multitude. ~Plato, Gorgias 452e

12. Plato, Republic, 338e-339a (Thrasymachus) And each makes laws to his own advantage. Democracy makes democratic laws, tyranny makes tyrannical laws, and so on with the others. And they declare what they have made—what is to their own advantage—to be just for their subjects, and they punish anyone who goes against this as lawless and unjust. This, then, is what I say justice is, the same in all cities, the advantage of the established rule. Since the established rule is surely stronger, anyone who reasons correctly will conclude that the just is the same everywhere, namely, the advantage of the stronger.

13. Compare Thucydides (5.89)Athenians to Melians (416 BCE) You know as well as we do that, when these matters are discussed by practical people, the standard of justice depends on the equality of power to compel and that in fact the strong do what they have the power to do and the weak accept what they have to accept.

14. Tragedy, Comedy, and Sophists • Nomos and Physis Controversy (Sophocles’ Antigone) • Irreverence towards Traditional Religion (Euripides) • Theater as Public Institution; Sophists as (often non-Athenian) outsiders

15. Sophists and the Radical Fringe Diogenes of Sinope 400-325 BCE Founder of Cynic School

16. Diogenes of Sinope and Cynicism • Happiness is attained by satisfying only one’s natural needs and by satisfying them in the cheapest and easiest way • What is natural (physis) cannot be dishonorable or indecent and should be done in public • Conventions (nomoi) contrary to these principles are unnatural and should not be followed

17. Practical Life of the Cynic • Self-Sufficiency (autarkeia) • Training of body to have as few needs as possible (askēsis) • Shamelessness (anaideia)

18. Diogenes of Sinope and Breaking Down Nomos • “When masturbating in the marketplace (agora), he wished it were as easy to relieve hunger by rubbing an empty stomach.” (Diogenes Laertius, Lives of Eminent Philosophers, 6.46; cf. 6.69) • “Then a little further on he [the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus] praises Diogenes for saying to the bystanders as he masturbated in public (en phanerōi), “Would that I could in this way rub the hunger too out of my belly.” (Plutarch, Moralia, 1044b)

19. Sophistic RelativismDangers to the Established Order? • Nomos vs. Physis (Culture vs. Nature) • Thrasymachus’ Justice: Right of the Stronger (cf. Alcibiades) • Moral Ambiguity and the Dissoi Logoi • Form over Substance (Gorgianic simile and antithesis)

20. Plato, Socrates, and the Sophists • Plato a student of Socrates • Trial and Execution of Socrates in 399 BCE • Plato strives to dissociate Socrates from the Sophists • Plato’s Hostility to Athenian Democracy (and Hostility to Art and Drama as mimesis) • Philosophy and Rhetoric (Reality and the Forms) • Celebrity Status of Famous Sophists

21. Plato and Censorship • Myth of Metals (Republic) • Few, wise Philosopher-Kings should rule • Guardian Class • Worker Class • Rulers determine education, music, poetry, clothing, foods • Censorship: the many, being ignorant, do not know what is good for them • Current Cultural Debates about Internet, Television, Hip-Hop, etc.

22. Plato’s Complaints against Rhetorikē:Relativism, Persuasion, and Democracy • Philosopher-Kings and Ignorant Multitude • Rhetorical Skill without Philosophical Knowledge highly dangerous • Democracy and Public Speakers: Rhetorical Training panders to the appetites, emotions, greed, and vindictiveness of the mob