Notes on the Sophists

04 February 2013

The Sophists

Sophists were not a collective school or organized group, but known by their core principles. According to Pernot, most of their works are lost (p. 13). Yet we know that they advanced two main ideas in rhetoric: 1) questioned the existence of unchanging values, and 2) intelligible realities.

Pernot claims that sophists created the philosophic parameters, where “all standards are undermined here to the benefit of. Phenomalist and relativist conception of the world” (p. 13). They practiced a “situational ethics” dependent upon “‘the critical moment’ (kairos)…, where “justice and truth are constructed in the moment… in and through the discourse that gives them life.”

Sophists were concerned interested in situations where truth had not yet been identified. Here, values and probabilities are paramount and axioms and formal logic are but stances to be contested.

Pernot writes that all sophists were teachers, and “they introduced a new type of instruction with an intellectual character” (p. 15) to Athenians already immersed in subjects such as “music, poetry, and physical exercise.” Rhetoric was instructed, claims Pernot, as “simultaneously both subject and method” with the following goals in mind:

to be a clever speaker,
preparation for playing a role in private and public affairs,
development of intelligence, education of the citizen, and
teaching of politics.

One of the main instructional tools for sophists were in the form of an epideixeis, or a lecture.

Gorgias

From antiquity, Gorgias is the only sophist whose work has survived.

Well known for his treatise: On the Nonexistent or On Nature, “which considers the concept of Being according to a demonstration” (p. 15-16). This demonstration employs the following three points:

Nothing is or exists;
If something does exist, this something cannot be apprehended by man;
If this something can be apprehended, it cannot be communicated.

Due to these contraries, it spurred Plato’s desire to fuse philosophy and rhetoric together in rhetorical theory and practice. Gorgias, here, models these points by criticizing ontological bases via his demonstrations of argumentation that embody the situational ethics mentioned earlier. While Being is knowable, it cannot be communicatable to another. This ontological position, in effect, “makes language relative by admitting that in the absence of a speech charged with truth, there exist discourses, multiple and variable” (p. 16).

NOTE
Much of these sophistic practices remind me of 20-21st century scholarship by ANT theorists, Latour, Law, and Mol. This would also explain rhetorics interest in these sociologists, and vice versa. It could prove interesting to interrogate ANT and Latour’s latest Modes of Existence (AIME) with the sophistic revolution during the latter half of the 5th century. Even on the most fundamental level, Sophists agree that Being is unknowable, which is counter to philosophy, but still inextricably connected to it. Latour often notes his position on a type of no-position position, where being exists in relation to its situation. Unlike Harmon, Latour doesn’t think we can know the one-true being of a non/human.
/NOTE

From Pernot’s survey, I was particularly drawn to the passage on one of the four key texts that he claims provide a “coherent outline of a philosophical vision of the world and a theory of persuasion: 1. Gorgias’ aforementioned treatise 2. The Praise of Helen 3. The Defense of Palamedes 4. The Funeral Oration

Pernot highlights how Gorgias treats these texts by emphasizing the forcefulness of “opinion, emotion, illulsion, and the decisive moment” – all means of persuasion, (which are revived in The New Rhetoric along with the audiences role, of course) (p. 16-17). In particular, Pernot paraphrases a passage from the Praise of Helen that characterizes this force:

Language exerts a violent force on the soul, comparable to the action of drugs on the body and to the arts of sorcery and magic; it arouses or suppresses opinions and emotions; and it takes many forms, including poetry, incantations, speeches written "artfully" (the word *tekhne* is used at 13) for delivery in debates, and philosophers' controversies (p. 17).

Gorgias’ preserved works embody these principles, as he is well known for working in both theory and practice as a prominent, perhaps, the prominent, pedagogue of the time.

NOTE
I would like to trace some of these mediated affects as they are articulated and “artfully” practiced today with code. The suasive force of technology, but also the pervasive language of code, certainly share these principles and characteristics, as well as some of the prevailing aesthetics and discourse of magical qualities of code.
/NOTE

Gorgias was not only well known for this ideas and teaching, but also “celebrated,” according to Pernot, “for his style” (p. 17). Aristotle even remarked on his “‘poetic’” style in Rhetoric, paying attention to his use of repetition and “taste for metaphors” (p. 18). In fact, numerous other ancient rhetoricians ammassed what is known as the set of “Gorgianic figures,” known as being :bold and showy” in effect, which serve as the progenitors to establish the canon of style.

interesting ideas

Protagoras wrote a collection of contraries called the Antilogies. Also, I’d like to look more into the anonymous work, Double Arguments (dissoi logoi).