What does a Modern Audience Gain From Understanding the Hatred of Sophists in Ancient Greece?

Parthenon in Athens, Greece

(This is an adapted Freshman Seminar essay for St. John's College in Santa Fe, NM)

SANTA FE, NM — There is a question which has been sitting with this author since it was first posed in Seminar some time ago. Why does it seem that the Sophists are hated? To examine this question narrowly this essay is only on the hatred seen in Plato's Protagoras. As someone who has been hated plenty- sometimes for justifiable reasons, others simply because the person writing this is purportedly (According to a source known his resemblance is temperament and intelligence to an Orangutan) “poisoning the blood of this country [America]”. Hate is one of the most powerful, pungent, and destructive of emotions. It has guided more of the history of humanity’s motions then most would like to admit. A question that should be pondered when reading this text, which may not be directly asked or answered by virtue of the constraints of the format of the Seminar essay at St. John's College, simply put, will we ever stop hating each other? This writer is unconvinced of a position on either side of this debate. The questions that are more directly answered in this text can be essentially boiled down to: why did so many in Ancient Greece hate so vividly a person who, as far as this author could tell, is simply being paid to teach philosophy and the virtues of certain manners of living (which in general are accepted in Greek culture as far as could be demonstrated in Plato’s text), in addition, can the seeds of what will come in future times to be admired be seen in Socrates’ position on the Sophists in this text, and can this be replicated among currently hated groups? 

The first section of this platonic dialog that this writer would like to perhaps over-analyze is actually at the very beginning of the text, even before Socrates and his Friend are able to converse with Protagoras about his own beliefs about what he does and why he does it. In this section of text Socrates asks his friend, who wishes to pay to gain knowledge in the company of Protagoras, an action Socrates attempts to logically equivocate to paying a surgeon to teach one how to become a surgeon, which is to say, in paying for the services of Protagoras they may be paying to become sophists. With this thinking revealed by Socrates’ line of questioning, he asks of his friend “You? Wouldn't you be ashamed to present yourself to the Greek world as a Sophist?” his friend in a terse response states “yes, I would, Socrates, to be perfectly honest”. What is perhaps most interesting about this interaction is that Socrates responds by taking a jab at his friend in a rather long-winded response that I will take only an excerpt from for brevity's sake “As to what a sophist is, I would be surprised if you really knew”. The image that these quotations paints is , at least for this author, the most pungent form of hatred that is often and always tragically driven by a lack of knowledge or proliferated by tainted inaccuracies painted as fact infected with this strain of the illness of hatred. This, to the knowledge of the author, is one of the earliest instances of the foreign idea, in some sense being hated, because of the foreign origins of the ideas. This distortion of thoughts will of course be replicated and echoed many times throughout the modern day and history. Thus the view of hatred is easily garnered, the Sophists it seems, are mostly foreign in their origin. The easiest and most prominent example of this is the title character of Protagoras, who is not from Athens. This author can even recall a time in Seminar when Mr. Ehrmantraut said (most likely to imitate a commonly held belief in Greece at the time) that where Protagoras stayed was full of foreigners who did not belong in Athens and should not be there, spreading their foreign ideas of Sophistry, if the meaning and memory of this author is correct. This quite simply means that most Athenians are not welcoming to foreign ideas and merchants of the nourishment of the soul.   

Another thing truly interesting when analyzing these ancient forms of hatred is that Protagoras when discussing this hatred with Socrates reaches back into even more ancient times to claim that sophistry has a long and storied tradition, and that it has been hated for as long a time that it has existed, and as such ancient sophists hid behind another trade to conceal their sophistry. He states “ disguised itself sometimes as poetry, such as Homer and Hesoid and Simonides did”, in this author's mind, if Protagoras can make such a claim about revered and respected figures of the ancient world. A natural question that comes to mind with this assertion is why does it seem that the sympathies of most non sophists do not lie with the sophists. Thus leads to the last question asked in the introduction to this text, are Socrates’ perception of the Sophists, a generally more positive one then the commonly held beliefs, one that can be seen to be becoming the eventually accepted as mainstream thought through what we see in this text? It's difficult to know for certain with just the interactions in this text, but it certainly can be done. There are some signs of what is to become a softening of attitudes to those that teach and educate philosophical virtues for a fee. Indeed, coming back to the quote cited in the beginning of this paragraph, perhaps the fact that Protagoras can openly make the claim to be a sophist is indeed progress. The fact that there were times when no person could openly state that they were a sophist, that when great (and surely respected) minds for times before Protagoras and his contemporaries, did the same things he did but have to hide, and could not have claimed as much respect as Protagoras does while also still openly asserting to be Sophists. Now, it should be clear to all that in the setting of this text, Protagoras is able to practice freely (but with caution, as he is a foreigner). Another thing that should clearly demonstrate a form of progress on this issue is that Protagoras is described as a celebrity in Plato's text, someone who is revered and who is larger than life. Where his name and ideals are carried outside of his native lands. Thus it could be seen as a turning point in the minds of some Greeks. There are still many that could haunt these people with their hatred, and there still is a type of taboo surrounding sophists. That being said, despite the reported shame associated with bringing a sophist, there are clearly many of them in number. And, perhaps more significantly, many of them are respected men seen as virtuous.

As a careful reader should be aware there are two questions directly addressed in this text, both of which are hopefully answered satisfactorily. It should be clear that Socrates' perspective will eventually be replicated and mimicked in most of Greek society and later ones to come. Alongside this, the vitriol demonstrated in Protagoras against the Sophists can be tied to their perceived foreign associations and their lack of ties to their home nations. This, perhaps brings me to a wider question that arose in my mind writing this essay, can the progress that the Sophists made be replicated by any target of hatred? Or is humanity's continually hatred of the other only demonstrated further by the fact that our targets have simply shifted?