SOPHIST

in philosophy, a member of a group of itinerant professional teachers, lecturers, and writers prominent in Greece in the latter half of the 5th century BC and continuing, although declining, into the 4th. A later movement, known as the Second Sophistic school, existed in the 2nd century AD, but it consisted of Greek prose writers characterized more by nostalgia than by originality or profundity of thought. The name Sophist derives from the Greek sophistes, itself derived from sophos, meaning wise, clever, or expert, and, in a general sense, the epithet was applied to craftsmen as well as to poets and sages and to such figures as the Athenian statesman Solon (late 6th and early 5th century BC), Pythagoras, Socrates, and Plato. The first and most eminent representative of the so-called Sophistic school was Protagoras (c. 485c. 410 BC). Other notable Sophists, all working in the late 5th century, include Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicus, Hippias, Antiphon, and Thrasymachus; Critias is often considered a Sophist, although he was an amateur whose main career lay in politics. The Sophist movement arose at a time when there was much questioning of the absolute nature of familiar values and ways of life. It was recognized that while different societies expressed radically different outlooks on fundamental questions, all people everywhereGreeks of one's own as well as of other cities, Greeks and non-Greeks, men and women, masters and slavesshared a common human nature. An antithesis arose between nature and custom, tradition, or law. Custom could be regarded either as artificial trammels on the freedom of the natural state or as a beneficial and civilizing restraint upon natural anarchy. Both views were represented among the Sophists, although the former was the more common. The Sophists worked independently of each other, primarily on ethical, political, and social questions. They drew their audiences partly from people with a general intellectual curiosity, but also from those seeking practical training in the arts of persuasion as preparation for political and legal careers. This led certain Sophists to specialize in logic and rhetoric and to ask questions, both theoretical and practical, about the nature of language; a common sport developed in the form of so-called dialectic, a kind of intellectual jousting subject to elaborate rules of procedure. Other Sophists lectured or wrote on subjects ranging from mathematics to wrestling. The early Sophists enjoyed great prestige, but as challengers to orthodoxy they soon incurred unpopularity. In Athens those citizens who had the money and leisure to attend the lectures of the Sophists came from the aristocratic class, and they were constantly suspected of trying to subvert the popular democracy in the interests of the traditional enemy, Sparta. On the other hand the Sophist teachers were also regarded by some criticsmost significantly, Platoas catering to popular opinion in order to attract a larger group of pupils, and teaching those pupils to do likewise in order to advance politically. Only fragments of the Sophists' writings have survived, and it is from Plato that they are mainly known. Plato gives a vivid picture of an assembly of Sophists in his dialogue Protagoras, and in another dialogue, the Sophist, he discusses more formally what he takes to be the essence of their thought. His attitude is generally hostile, though he does allow a tenuous intellectual link between them and his master, Socrates. But it is clear that the Sophists had an immense influence, largely via Plato himself, on a number of spheres, including the growth of logic, the philosophy of language, and epistemology, as well as on ethical and political theory. After their decline, the reputation of the Sophists remained generally low into the 19th century, when they were defended by the English historian of Greece, George Grote. Still more recently, they have attained through some evaluations a modest esteem. any of certain Greek lecturers, writers, and teachers in the 5th and 4th centuries BC, most of whom travelled about the Greek-speaking world giving instruction in a wide range of subjects in return for fees. Additional reading Ancient sources and fragments are presented in R.K. Sprague, The Older Sophists, a Complete Translation (1972), and in K. Freeman, Ancilla to the Pre-Socratic Philosophers (1948), to be used together with Freeman's The Pre-Socratic Philosophers, 2nd ed. (1949). The original Greek texts are in H. Diels and W. Kranz (eds.), Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 6th ed., vol. 2 (1952); and are edited with an Italian translation and commentary in M. Untersteiner, Sofisti, 4 vol. (194962).General discussions include T. Gomperz, Greek Thinkers, Eng. trans. by L. Magnus, vol. 1, bk. 3, ch. 57 (1901); M. Untersteiner, The Sophists, Eng. trans. by K. Freeman (1954); and W.K.C. Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, vol. 3, The Fifth-Century Enlightenment (1969). G.B. Kerferd, The Sophistic Movement (1981), is a study of the intellectual contributions made by the movement. The Second Sophistic period is treated in G.W. Bowersock, Greek Sophists in the Roman Empire (1969).