Philosophy 101

Philosophy is one of the most challenging undertakings a human can enter into.  It is one of the most powerful mental disciplines humans have developed in their time on this planet.  It has changed the course of human events around the world in manners that are both subtle and in some that are quite obvious.  Philosophy has evolved or arisen in every major human civilization.  It is a natural development for minds that are inquiring and critical. 

People come to the reading and studying of Philosophy through different paths.  Many, perhaps most, do so because they have entered some formal educational program that has the study of Philosophy as part of a curriculum of studies.  Some, a few, come to Philosophy because they have a mind that is questioning and they want to learn more about the issue or problem that is on their minds and so they are led through this common but less traveled path to the door of Philosophy as they discover that there are books on the topic that perplexes or befuddles them or stirs them to wonder and they learn that these books are written by philosophers.

Most people who take a college course in Philosophy do so without having had another.  Most will take only one and many of them do so primarily to satisfy some degree requirement.  Indeed, many students in a college Philosophy course are only interested in finishing the course in order to get their credits and those credits are to satisfy a degree requirement.  The degree is desired as a means to some other end: transfer to a four-year college, a job, different job or promotion.  Be that as it may, this text  is designed to stimulate your mind.  Whether you read it because it is required or whether you are really interested in the subject matter, there will be plenty in this study of Philosophy to interest you, entertain your mind, challenge you and frustrate you as well.

WARNING

Most people think that it is all well and good and no big deal to read and accept such phrases as "there will be plenty in this study of Philosophy to interest you, entertain your mind, challenge you and frustrate you as well. "  Well, in the case of Philosophy and of this work in particular, the reader should be aware and forewarned that the issues raised in this work might just be disturbing to them in a personal manner, if they seriously consider the issues raised in this work, that are characteristic issues for Philosophy and how Philosophers approach them.  What is meant by this?  Is it just a "promo" for the book?  Is it some "hype" or "come-on"?  Well, I simply report to you that there are many who have read this work in connection with taking a class in Philosophy who have been disturbed in their thinking and have needed to make changes in the very manner in which they think, the manner in which they settle on their beliefs and on what they think is true after being encouraged to think most carefully and seriously and critically about a number of very basic questions and issues.  Why would this be the case?  Well, in Philosophy people reflect on their thinking and on the contents of their minds in terms of the views, assumptions, presuppositions and beliefs and sets of beliefs that they hold and with which they do their thinking.  Today when people do that after having been alive for say 18 years or more they find that in that time they have acquired a good number of ideas and beliefs and that when you get around to examining them with the slightest bit of careful thought it turns out that not all of the beliefs can be true.  Yes, people learn through Philosophy that they have been holding beliefs that are inconsistent or even outright contradictory to one another.   This can be quite disturbing for some of those beliefs have provided some degree of comfort or even a feeling of certainty that makes life easier.  The beliefs that are serving as the most basic upon which others are founded or with with others are supported can provide the overall view of life that serves those believers with a sense of identity and orientation and of life's value, even the basis for hope in the face of death that all is not for nothing.  It can be quite disturbing to reach a point where one is  facing the simple truth that some of the held beliefs are contradictory and realizing that they can not all be true requires that a decision be made as to which beliefs are better founded and more likely to be true or make more sense and which are less so or even proven not to be true and needing to be rejected and abandoned.   It is like being directed or forced to give up that which has been serving so well for so long to provide a sense of comfort.  It is akin to being forced to open up the mind and venture out into new areas of thought and having to bear the possibility that this motion from the old and comfortable into the new and perhaps disturbing.  What is most disturbing and a sign of intellectual growth is that one is "forced" into the new mode of thinking by the decisions made by the thinker based on the thinker's own realization and acceptance that the prior thoughts are now seen as being defective in some way.  This is not a mental act that anyone performs being forced to do so from without but is only done from within once the mind has been opened up and educated into the consideration of more information and the examination of the relationship to one another of the ideas and beliefs that were being held in an uncritical fashion.  It is not a pleasant act to realize the need to surrender that which was once so certain and comforting for entry into a process with a resultant set of beliefs and positions that one does not yet know.  Some will attempt to refuse to make the departure from past beliefs out of fear of the new and some will attempt to refuse in an effort to remain in close relationship to those who share the old ideas and beliefs, thinking erroneously that the relationships are absolutely dependent on the belief systems that are shared by those in the relationships.  One  reader expressed this view in this manner after having reached a point of realizing that some previous beliefs were simply no longer tenable "I feel like I am being disloyal if I were now to change my mind."

If this work is successful the reader will see that there are a number of positions that have been taken on many of the most basic problems or issues or questions faced by philosophers over the millennia and that some of them are better defended than are others.  It is the intent of this work to encourage the reader to become a critical thinker and to make the best informed decision as to which position is at this time the best position to hold and then to move to adopt that position.  

Here are some of those issues:

• What is real?
• What is truth?
• What is knowledge?
• What is the good?
• What is justice?
• Is the mind something separate from the body?
• Are we free or our our actions determined by that over which we no longer have any control or influence?

It has happened in the past that readers of this work have come to understand that there are three or four or possibly more positions to take on any or each of these issues.  They also have come to realize that the positions that they held upon entering into the reading and the reflecting and the critical thinking process could no longer be accepted as the best position which they could defend using reasoning and evidence.  Then they face the decision as to whether or not they will abandon their prior positions and move to the best defended position in their own view or attempt in some manner to deny what they have come to see as the faults in their positions and going on maintaining them for the sake of avoiding change, discomfort or some other perceived ill felling.  This difficulty can be expressed in this manner paraphrasing what more than one reader has disclosed:  " I now know that there are five possible positions and that the one that I can best defend is position 'c' , but I would like to go on believing in 'b' because that is what I was brought up with and what all my family and friends think."  So, be forewarned that, if the reader takes seriously reflecting on and thinking about matters in this text ,there may be some difficult decision ahead as to how the reader will be fixing the beliefs with which the reader will be thinking about matters of great importance and of personal concern.

BACK TO PHILOSOPHY

At this time what I would like to do is to get you to gather some idea of what you think Philosophy is.  So I have an assignment for you. Think about philosophy and about what questions you have about life.  It is very easy really.  I don’t want you to do any research or to read anything before you answer the questions I just want you to think about these things.  So, do so , and write your answers or responses down in some way and keep them somewhere and then review it when you have completed your reading of this work.  See if your thoughts and views have changed any by that time.

The Greeks

Greek Thought

Classical Period

I. Culture and History  

The Greeks wanted a good life.  The question then, as well as now, is how to know what the good life is? How does one recognize the good life?  The GOOD itself?  How does one gain the knowledge needed to pursue the good life and distinguish it from another that is less good or even not good but appearing as good for those who are foolish, impetuous and ignorant, lacking in wisdom?  

The Greeks at the time of Socrates and Plato were undergoing a major change in the way in which they would think about the world, themselves and reality itself.  Greek culture rose to great heights in the period from 525 BC to 350 BC, the period that brackets the lifespan of Socrates and Plato.  In this period Athens, the Greek city-state, would rise to the height of its political and military powers and would come to represent the height of Greek cultural achievement as well.  The Greeks during this time, and particularly in Athens, were moving from an oral to a literate culture and from a foundation of religious belief and mythology to another based upon the inventions and creations of artistic endeavor and rational thought. 

The Greeks, prior to Plato, had a culture (the way a people learn to think, feel and act from the previous generation) that was transmitted orally.  Few could read or write.  There was little material to write upon.  Papyrus from Egypt would be arriving and be popularized after Socrates death.  If the average Greek were to learn about anything it would need to be through hearing whatever it was spoken about.  What they heard they made every effort to remember and then repeat.  This pattern for transmitting information became a pattern for life itself.  The tales of the gods and goddesses, the titans, heroes and heroines were placed in rhyme and meter to make it easier to remember.  What they remembered of the tales they endeavored to repeat not only in the telling of the tales but also in their lives.  The gods and goddesses supplied the examples, the paradigms, and the models for behavior.  If the gods did it, it must be good and so I should do it as well: so went the thinking.  When faced with a conflict or problem the Greeks had sought answers in the stories that they heard as they grew and which they believed were true and served as guides through life for each of them.    By the time of Socrates there had grown a considerable amount of doubt about the stories.  There was skepticism and outright denial as well.  The tales when examined often displayed a number of troublesome features including contradictions amongst the many stories and examples of divine beings acting in a morally outrageous manner, such as involving murder, patricide, matricide, rape, theft, lies etc…  The playwrights were encouraging audiences to reflect upon the tales and consider the values and morality within them. Orators were distorting the tales for personal gain and some, such as Socrates, were examining the entire basis for the moral order.  

The tales appear to describe a number of gods and goddesses who have each an assigned place in a general hierarchy.  As the divine beings had an order, so too should the human community have an order.    The question had arisen: upon what was the order to be based?   Should it be based upon moira, fate or destiny, as with the gods or upon something else?  The Greeks, as with most humans, hated chaos, disorder.  As the gods enjoyed a cosmos, order, so too should humans have an order.  The Greeks look for the order in the tales of the gods but by the time of Socrates that approach was no longer working. 

Greek culture was mythopoetic, based upon myths and transmitted through poetry.  These tales had an imaginative character and an emotional one as well.  The myths proclaim a truth, which transcends reasoning.  These myths try to bring about the truth that they proclaim: the moral truths.  The myths are a form of action or ritual behavior, which must proclaim and elaborate a poetic form of truth.  The logic of the events, the order of causality, is anthropomorphic.  If one asks "why" things are as they are , then the answer will be in the form of "who" is responsible or the agent behind the events.    The function of these myths, as in most cultures, is to explain, unify, and order experience.  The myths dispel chaos.  They reveal a structure, order, coherence and meaning not otherwise evident.  

The tales spoke of Zeus, Chronos, Poseidon, Hera, Athena and dozens of other divinities, each with a genealogy and an assigned place in the pantheon or general organization of the divine community.   The divinities did not get along all that amicably.  The tales told of terrible and violent conflicts.  This is probably due to the coming together of the tales and divinities of two different peoples that became the Greeks of Plato’s time.  There were the original peoples of the land now called Greece and there were the Aryan invaders, the Ionians and Dorians.  These peoples had different conceptions of the world and of the realm beyond it.  The indigenous or autotocthonous , peoples were matriarchal with theriomorphic divinities.  They tended to be pacific and agrarian.  The Aryans, from Anatolia, were patriarchal with anthropomorphic deities. They were nomadic and belligerent.  The tales of Homer and Hesiod contain an amalgamation of tales in which the deities (many female) are woven into the tales of the invading peoples in order to accommodate the belief systems of the indigenous peoples.  For example, while Zeus is placed at the top of a hierarchy of deities, he has a wife, Hera, who is supposed to be by his side, but whom he regularly disrespects or insults. Hera is she who has no specific name; “she” or “her”  the name for the highest female deity of the indigenous peoples. Athena, one of the highest of the native deities (the “th” indicates she was a deity of the indigenous peoples) is given a place very high in the order.  Athena is reported to have been born or to have emerged directly from the head of Zeus, knowing no woman as mother!  Athena, the protective deity of Athens, represents wisdom (what philosophers seek) and she also offers assistance to warriors.  She takes on the form of an owl to bring information and advice to humans.  (Owls are associated with wisdom in much of the western world to this day.)  

The physical conflicts between the two peoples who merged into the Greeks is mirrored in the tales of the deities.  Zeus takes several wives and has affairs, possibly to appease the indigenous peoples beliefs in the high order of their female deities.  The deities of the indigenous peoples are transformed, metamorphosed, into human like beings with super human qualities.  

The tales organized under Homer and Hesiod were used by the people as an encyclopedia, as the foundation of the educational system.  The tales were entertaining, containing stories of adventure.  There was a great deal of sex and violence in them s well.  They held the interest of generations of listeners and offered instruction on how to conduct war, raise children, administer assistance to the wounded, resolve family conflicts and much more.  The tales, epic works, gave the Greeks a sense of history and their place in the general scheme of things.  The myths provided a set of moral exemplars, which each Greek was to follow.  Each Greek was to be the best that they could be, pursue virtue (arête), accept fate and prepare for the next life.  

For a presentation of the Greek Myths  you could look into a well known work by Thomas Bullfinch.

http://www.bartleby.com/bulfinch/   or here   http://www.online-literature.com/bulfinch/mythology_fable/

The vocabulary was not advanced and often the Greeks would think in terms of the stories and the characters in them rather than in the abstract.  For example, if one were to call for justice the Greek would call upon the female deity who represented justice to come and settle the matter in some way.  The figure of a robed woman with blindfold holding a scale in one arm, is the representation of the goddess whose actions are what the Greeks had thought of as Justice.  Themis, the Divine Right or Divine Justice and Dike, human Justice, were the deities whose actions constituted the Greek idea of the Right or Justice.  It is Socrates' time that the Greeks are seeking an answer without recourse to those stories and without the picture thinking methodology of the mythopoetic culture, which was rapidly waning.

    

The Greeks at the time of Socrates and Plato had experienced a criticism of the tales and the morality of the gods in their dramas performed in public amphitheaters.  There was a raising of questions concerning the moral foundation that was disturbing the order.  Chaos was threatening!  There was a noticeable breakdown of traditions.  There was a decline in respect for both the tradition and the laws.  The Greeks were familiar with speculation about the nature of the universe that did not involve the deities.  They had experienced a development in technology that afforded a much higher quality of life than known by their ancestors.  Through trade, travel and warfare they had come to know of other peoples, their history and cultures; their belief systems and values.  The Greeks were undergoing a shift in their worldviews and along with that a change in their values, their ethical orientation and conceptual frameworks.  In these ways the Greeks of 400 BC are like the peoples of advanced technological societies today in a post-modern era.  

serious reservations were voiced about the traditional gods. Before 500 B.C. the free-thinker Xenophanes (who even attacked the Greek obsession with athletics!) spurned the gods of Homer and Hesiod for their deplorable behavior -- ''thieving, fornicating and tricking one another.'' Before 400, Thucydides wrote a history, obsessed with explanation, that all but left the gods out of the frame. Plato, not much later, wanted to exclude these old portrayals of the divine from his ideal polity. So, by the time of the tragedian Euripides, many did not take the Homeric vision of the gods literally: their mythical interventions were a way of talking about human life rather than a description or a truth. Oliver Taplin (  December 14, 2003, New York Times, Book Review)

The key question for humans was and is: how to live a GOOD life?  Before 500 BC the Greeks answered that by thinking that the way was to follow the gods and to accept moira.  After 400 BC the answer was not so clear at all.  What had happened?  This is something worth examining for what it may offer those in our time.  Before 1800 the answer to the question in the West had been to obey God’s commandments and accept God’s will.  Today that answer does not appear to be the actual approach in practice.  There does not appear to be any commonly accepted answer to the question   In a post-modern age the general respect for the laws of God, the truth of science, the traditions of our ancestors all seems in doubt. Ideas of an objective truth and single standard for justice are regularly derided in discussions of the judicial system.  Ideas of relative truths and morality are very popular.  

The Greeks were clustered due to conditions of geography and geopolitics.  They lived in city-states, polii.  (The term ” politics” comes from this condition.) They often quarreled and went to war with one another.  The various city-states were organized under different forms of government.  There were several: tyranny, military dictatorship, Oligarchy, Autocratic, Aristocracy and Democracy.  These forms might change over time.  Indeed, in Athens prior to Plato the Athenians had experienced several transitions; arriving at a form of democracy that would put Socrates to death and motivate Plato to become a philosopher and write about an ideal polii or state in his work , the Republic.  The Greeks preferred any form of government and thus order to chaos or disorder as would be present with tyranny (no rule of law or constitution).  

Athens had defeated great city-states and foreign empires in several wars; sea war in particular.  Athens enjoyed a great prosperity as a result that brought many public works, theaters, temples, buildings, water works, streets, commerce, festivals, foreign “teachers” or speakers.  Athens represented an open city and a way of life that was open to ideas, foreigners, trade etc..  Athens principle threat at the time of Socrates death was Sparta.  If Athens represented the way of ADVENTURE , Sparta represented the way of SAFETY.  I the quest after cosmos over chaos, Sparta had become an oligarchic state with a strict disciplinary code and a great deal of uniformity. Sparta had a totalitarian government.  Athens created a democracy.  Just prior to Socrates trial and death Sparta defeats Athens in battle and imposes a rule by thirty young men who would become the tyranny that would be overthrown an democracy put in its place.  Socrates lived and died in Athens.  He embodied much of its spirit.  He was open minded and questioned all.  His life in pursuit of the GOOD was also one of intellectual adventure.  The chaos that threatened Athens in 399BC was associated with the openness of the preceding years.  In an attempt to restore an order, to fashion a cosmos again, Socrates appears as a thereat to the rulers of Athens and that threat must be removed.  In the lives of many humans there often come moments when a choice must be made between the path of adventure versus that of safety.  Athens and Sparta represented those paths.  

The Greeks were moving from pre-history and the mythic time to history.  They recorded events and preserved them and transmitted them.  The Greeks were moving from the mythic mode of thought as well.  Instead of accepting and repeating the tales they were starting to reflect upon them, to examine them closely and even to question, doubt and disbelieve.  A clear indication of the process of rational reflection upon the mythic epics is given in the works of the playwrights.

Greek Theatre

Throughout the year there were public performances of plays in all the Greek city-states.  There were festivals that would last for several days and plays would be performed.  Families would attend with children and servants.  They would bring food.  If the play met with disfavor the audience would shower the stage with food to drive the actors off the stage.  Often prizes were awarded for the best play of the festival.  Afterwards there would be a party for the winner. It was not too dissimilar to the parties after the Emmy Awards or the Oscars or Tony's. 

The large amphitheaters would hold from 10 to 20,000 people.  Almost an entire town would fill the theater to watch and listen to the plays.  The acoustics are still to this day, amid the ruins, simply amazing.  All those in the theater could hear the actors on stage. Assisting in the seeing of the action and the emotion of those on stage were large masks held before the faces of the actors; one mask with a smile representing joy the other with a frown for sorrow.  These masks were the persona (or personalities) of the actors made more visible for the audience to see.  

The following playwrights will be discussed in brief to permit an understanding of the type of thought being promoted by these artistic works. 

• Thespis   560BC
• Aeschylus 525-456BC
• Sophocles 496-405BC
• Euripides 485-406B
• Aristophanes 450-385BC

Thespis   560BC 

The father of the play.  Thespians are actors.  Thespis utilized a chorus and a single actor.  

 

Aeschylus 525-456BC

Type of Play: Drama

Plays Mentioned: 90

Survive: 7,  Prometheus, Orestes Trilogy: Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, Eumenides

                    Suppliants, Seven Against Thebes,  The Persians

First Prizes 13:

Number of actors: 2            Chorus:12 

His plays appear to focus upon justifying the way of the gods to humans according to human notions of justice.  He attempts to promote harmony and cooperation.   In his plays he demonstrates how violence begets violence begets more violence until reason enters to settle the discord.  He demonstrates that the principles which govern the gods are above those of humans.  He favored the civilized life in which reason prevails over violence.  He encourages humans to avoid the sin of pride (hubris) and be mindful of the proper place for everyone.  He indicates that the state is the champion of justice and it promotes reasoned reconciliation.

 

Sophocles 496-405BC

Type of Play: Drama

Plays Mentioned: 120

Survive: 7  :  Ajax, Electra,   Oedipus the king, Antigone, Oedipus at Colonus,

                    Trachinian Women ,   Philoctetes

First Prizes: 24        Number of actors:  3    Chorus : 15     Used Painted scenery! 

Sophocles tragedies are concerned with the fate of human heroes.  He accepts the principles of the gods but focuses on the human response to the actions of the gods.  The hero is a human who has an extraordinary career, which pushes back the horizons of what is possible for a human.  The hero is not a flawless character but a virtuous character.  Sophocles acknowledges the power of the gods but he does not assume that their standards are the same for humans.  The human hero takes responsibility for the action of the human.  Oedipus could easily claim that he did not know that the man that he killed was his father and neither did he know that the woman who was the mother of his children was also his mother.  Oedipus could have claimed it was all a matter of fate, the work of the gods.  He could have offered excuses and "copped a plea".  Instead, Oedipus takes responsibility for what he has done and acknowledging the horror of it all, he plucks out his eyes and abandons the palace and his kingship.   

 

Euripides 485-406B

Type of Play: Drama  , Tragedy

Plays Mentioned: 92

Survive: 19 including: Alcestis, Medea, Hippolytus, Andramache, Ion, Trojan Women, Electra, Iphigenia among the Taurians, The Bacchants, Iphigenia at Aulis.

First Prizes:4  Number of actors: 4            Chorus: 15 

While Euripides appears to have won fewer prizes in his lifetime than others, more of his plays survive to this day and are enacted in the principle cities of the Western world every year.  His tragedies are very dark.  They challenged the audience to radically reconsider some of their most cherished notions.    He reduced the heroes to the level of the contemporary.  He demonstrates that gods who do evil deeds are not to be considered as gods!  Euripides  encouraged his audience to criticize antiquated conventions and the restraints of the social order- a human made order. 

Euripides ' work promotes a psychological understanding or perception of events.  The plays move from darkness to light.  He promotes a questioning of the gods, often displaying their actions in a fashion so that they appear ludicrous or at least questionable.  He illustrates how the gods whatever they may do are not responsible for human motivation.  His human personages are seen struggling simply to survive in some tolerable manner. Euripides  illustrates how human laws deny basic human rights to women, bastards, foreigners and slaves.  His plays show the consequences of accepting those laws without question.  He illustrates how the heroic deeds of the legends look when carried out by contemporary humans.  Euripides  discredits belief in the gods that promotes horrors.  In his play Medea, he shows a horrible act of a mother killing her children in the light of unjust and inhumane conventions that drove her to such a horrible act.  In the Trojan Women he shows the Athenians how their victory over the Trojans looked to the women and children of Troy who were raped and killed.  The Greeks were made to think by Euripedes works, to think and to question.  

 

Aristophanes 450-385BC

Type of Play: Comedy

Plays Mentioned: 40

Survive: 11 including:  Archanians, the Birds, the Frogs, the Clouds, Lysistrata

Number of Actors: 3  Chorus: 15

Aristophanes was a comic playwright.  He was a conservative minded artist.  He liked to poke fun at man and his foibles.  He delivered hilarious indictments concerning the politics, morality, law, economic theories and educational practices of his time.

His plays are an example of old comedy: burlesque, farce, comic opera, pantomime.  It was fun with a serious intent to it.

In one play the Lysistrata, the men of a Greek city-state are off at war.  The women are lamenting their fate as they await news of the war and learning whether their husbands and sons are still alive or not.  The women do not like their station in life, the folly of war and the devaluation in the eyes of men.  They are aware that the men appear to have only one interest in them.  They use this as part of a scheme.  The women send word to the front lines that no woman of the polis will have sex with the men while there is still a war going on.  When word of this strike reaches the men at war not much times goes by before they have settled the matter and are at peace again. This play was greated with much laughter by the audience for several reasons.  It was Aristophanes way to condemn both the impatience to go to war and the narrow interest that men appear to have had in women.

In another of his plays, the Clouds, Aristophanes is poking fun at the Sophists.  These public speakers, debaters, lawyers and educators were respected, feared and despised by many.  The Sophists were destroying respect for the traditions, including the family.  They taught a form of skepticism, atheism, cynicism and relativism that was undermining the foundations of the moral and social order.  They did have tremendous skills as orators.  It is connection with Socrates that this play becomes very important.  Aristophanes play The Clouds   was first produced in the drama festival in Athens—the City Dionysia—in 423 BC, where it placed third.    In this play, the author, a friend of Socrates, uses his name in a comedy that criticizes the Sophists.  Many who see the play do not realize that the character named “Socrates” in the play did not depict the actual thinking of Socrates.  It was burlesque and farce; an exaggerated comic depiction.

Aristophanes and Socrates were well known to one another.  They were friends of a sort.  They dined together as reported in the Symposium of Plato and Zenophanes.  It was in the manner of a Friar's Club Roast were the host of honor is lampooned and kidded by his friends that Aristophanes thought that he would poke a little fun at Socrates.  Aristophanes used the name of Socrates for one of the characters in his play.  He made him the head of a school.  It was a school of sophistry, something that in real life Socrates not only would have no part of but also would criticize.  In the play the character Socrates spends his time suspended in air above the stage looking heavenward in contemplation of the clouds and the heavens and divine nature of things.  Because of this association with the Sophistry, many who saw the play but who had never met Socrates or who had not learned of his actual works, his questioning and questing after virtue and wisdom, these people would mistakenly associate Socrates with being a Sophist and thus the animus born toward the Sophists was directed to Socrates.  Some of the jurors at the trial of Socrates were probably in that group who knew of Socrates only indirectly and through the play.  People today born after the events depicted in an Oliver Stone film might take the film to be an actual depiction of the events as they did occur.  Those who were alive and experienced those events now that this is not the case. 

In the Clouds, Aristophanes satirizes the intelligentsia of his day and decries the new educational programs of the Sophists.  The play opens with a father confronted by his son who is begging for more money to pay off gambling debts.  The father is a well-to-do businessman who wanted his son to assist him in business instead of going off entertaining himself and gambling.  The father agrees to pay off the debt one last time if the son will agree to make something of his life, go off to school and learn how to assist his father in the business.  The son must agree as the debtors are threatening.  The father takes his son into town where he knocks on a door and enters a "school" where his son will be taught how to speak well so that he can conduct business, take up legal matters in a court and become educated.  In the school the actor named Socrates appears above the stage engaged in reflections upon heavenly matters.  The son is given a course in oratory, rhetoric and sophistry.  The son returns home to meet his father.  The father greets his son and expects him now to assist the father.  The son, using his new speaking skills, attempts to convince the father that the father should turn over his business to his son in payment for what the father owes the son.  The father is most distressed by this and expresses his concern about how his wife will receive this news of their son's attitude.  Upon hearing this,  the son proceeds to say insulting things about his mother which the father becomes enraged upon hearing.  So enraged in fact, that the father drives the son away and then proceeds into town where he burns the school down.   The audiences who feared the Sophists enjoyed seeing them made fun of and receive their just deserts at the hands of the father.  Unfortunately, while entertaining to the general public Aristophanes, unwittingly contributed to the negative assessment some had of Socrates.

In the Greek theatre there was a considerable amount of thinking going on.  The dramatists and comedians were encouraging their audiences to consider and reconsider their accepted truths, their traditions and their laws, customs and values.  It was not only on the stages that encouragement was given for thought.  The Sophists were at work with their questioning process as well. 

The Sophists

The Sophists were orators, public speakers, mouths for hire in an oral culture.  They were gifted with speech.  They were skilled in what becomes known as Rhetoric.  They were respected, feared and hated.  They had a gift and used it in a manner that aroused the ire of many.  They challenged, questioned and did not care to arrive at the very best answers.  They cared about winning public speaking contests, debates, and lawsuits and in charging fees to teach others how to do as they did.  To be able to speak well meant a great deal at that time.  As there was no real paper available, there were no written contracts or deeds and disputes that would be settled today with a set of documents as evidence back then they would need to be settled through a contest of words: one person's words against another's.  Whoever presented the best oral case would often prevail.  To speak well was very important.  The Sophists were very good speakers.  Indeed, they had reputations for being able to convince a crowd that up was down, that day was night, that the wrong answer could be the right answer, that good was bad and bad is good, even that injustice is justice and justice would be made to appear as injustice!  

To support one's position in any matter, nothing better could be offered than a quotation from one of the works, which told of the gods and their actions.  If an action of the gods could be found that was similar top that being taken by a party to a debate then that was evidence of the correctness of that action.  Therefore, those who were the fastest and most accurate at being able to locate quotations and take them and apply them to a given situation would often win the debate, the contest, the lawsuit or discussion.  The Sophists were very well versed in the epic tales and poems.  They were able to find the most appropriate quotation to support any position.  They regularly entered contests and those who won were given prizes, but no prize was greater than being the victor and able to charge the highest rates of tuition to instruct the sons of the wealthy in how to speak in public.  This skill was needed to defend oneself against lawsuits even against the most frivolous of lawsuits brought by one who thought himself to be the better speaker.  

The Sophists taught courses that might have been labeled with such current phrasings as:

• How to win no matter how bad your case is.
• How to win friends and influence people
• How to succeed in business without really trying
• How to fall into a pigsty and come out smelling like a rose.
• How to succeed in life.
• How to play to win  

The Sophists held no values other than winning and succeeding.  They were not true believers in the myths of the Greeks but would use references and quotations from the tales for their own purposes.  They were secular atheists, relativists and cynical about religious beliefs and all traditions.  They believed and taught that "might makes right".  They were pragmatists trusting in whatever works to bring about the desired end at whatever the cost.   They made a business of their own form of education as developing skills in rhetoric and profited from it.  

Their concerns were not with truth but with practical knowledge.  They practiced rhetoric in order to persuade and not to discover truth.  Their art was to persuade the crowd and not to convince people of the truth.  They moved thought from cosmology and cosmogony and theogony, stories of the gods and the universe, to a concern for humanity.  Their focus was human civilization and human customs.  Their theater was the ethical and political problems of immediate concern for humans.  They put the individual human being at the center of all thought and value.  They did not hold for any universals; not universal truths nor universal values.  They sought and took payment for their lessons at speaking (and writing).

Here are some excerpts:  

Protagoras:

Man is the measure of all things

There is relative truth only

Everyone has his won truth  

Gorgias

1. nothing exists
2. If something does exist we can not know it
3. even if we can know it we can not communicate it  

Callicles: Might is right and accident and not fate nor the gods ror destiny makes might  

Thrasymachus :Might makes right  

The Sophists challenged and criticized and destroyed the foundations of traditions and the moral and social order and they put nothing in its place nor did they care to.  While Socrates looked for objective and eternal truths the Sophists were promoting ideas of relativism and subjectivism, wherein each person decides for him or herself what the true and the good and the beautiful are.  This appealed to the mob, the crowds, the unthinking horde but it is not an approach that serves as the foundation for a common life. Conflicts are resolved through the use of power.  The Sophist held that might makes right.  Society's demand for wisdom required more than what the Sophists offered.  Socrates attempted another approach and in part due to the Sophists lost his life in his quest.  Plato would be inspired by Socrates to take up the challenge and find answers to the questions that were most basic and most in need of answering in the quest after wisdom and the GOOD.  

Socrates could debate with Sophists and do quite well.  Socrates was skilled in the art of reasoning. In his exchanges with the Sophists Socrates developed his ability to think using a dialectical process.  This methodology would be not only an important part of his legacy to Plato but to Western thought as well.  There were other influences on both Socrates and Plato.