This edition collects all the surviving evidence for the fifth-century BCE Athenian sophist Antiphon and presents it together with a translation and a full commentary, which assesses its reliability and significance. Although Antiphon is not as familiar a figure as sophists such as Protagoras and Gorgias, substantial fragments have survived from his major works, On Truth and On Concord, including extensive remains preserved on papyrus. In addition, information about his doctrines is preserved by ancient writers ranging in time from Aristotle (...) to Simplicius and beyond. The introduction provides a brief sketch of Antiphon, his works, and his place in the fifth-century BCE sophistic movement, including his important contribution to the contemporary debate over the relation of law and nature. It also deals with the controversial question of the identity of Antiphon the sophist in relation to Antiphon of Rhamnus and other men of the same name. (shrink)

A fluent and accurate new translation of the dialogue that, all of Plato's works, has seemed to speak most directly to the interests of contemporary analytical philosophers. White's extensive introduction explores the dialogue's center themes, its connection with related discussions in other dialogues, and its implication for the interpretation of Plato's metaphysics.

This collection of essays sheds new light on the relationship between two of the main drivers of intellectual discourse in ancient Greece: the epic tradition and the Sophists. The contributors show how throughout antiquity the epic tradition proved a flexible instrument to navigate new political, cultural, and philosophical contexts. The Sophists, both in the Classical and the Imperial age, continuously reconfigured the value of epic poetry according to the circumstances: using epic myths allowed the Sophists to present themselves as the (...) heirs of traditional education, but at the same time this tradition was reshaped to encapsulate new questions that were central to the Sophists' intellectual agenda. This volume is structured chronologically, encompassing the ancient world from the Classical Age through the first two centuries AD. The first chapters, on the First Sophistic, discuss pivotal works such as Gorgias' Encomium of Helen and Apology of Palamedes, Alcidamas' Odysseus or Against the Treachery of Palamedes, and Antisthenes' pair of speeches Ajax and Odysseus, as well as a range of passages from Plato and other authors. The volume then moves on to discuss some of the major works of literature from the Second Sophistic dealing with the epic tradition. These include Lucian's Judgement of the Goddesses and Dio Chrysostom's orations 11 and 20, as well as Philostratus' Heroicus and Imagines. (shrink)

This book offers an introduction to the Sophists of fifth-century Athens and a new overall interpretation of their thought. Since Plato first animadverted on their activities, the Sophists have commonly been presented as little better than intellectual mountebanks - a picture which Professor Kerferd forcefully challenges here. Interpreting the evidence with care, he shows them to have been part of an exciting and historically crucial intellectual movement. At the centre of their teaching was a form of relativism, most famously expressed (...) by Protagoras as 'Man is the measure of all things', and which they developed in a wide range of views - on knowledge and argument, virtue, government, society, and the gods. On all these subjects the Sophists did far more than simply provoke Plato to thought. Their contributions were substantial and serious; they inaugurated the debate on many central philosophical questions and decisively shifted the focus of philosophical attention from the cosmos to man. (shrink)

The third volume of Professor Guthrie's great history of Greek thought, entitled The Fifth-Century Enlightenment, deals in two parts with the Sophists and Socrates, the key figures in the dramatic and fundamental shift of philosophical interest from the physical universe to man. Each of these parts is now available as a paperback with the text, bibliography and indexes amended where necessary so that each part is self-contained. The Sophists assesses the contribution of individuals like Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias to the (...) extraordinary intellectual and moral fermant in fifth-century Athens. They questioned the bases of morality, religion and organized society itself and the nature of knowledge and language; they initiated a whole series of important and continuing debates, and they provoked Socrates and Plato to a major restatement and defence of traditional values. (shrink)

This discussion emphasises the diversity, philosophical seriousness and methodological distinctiveness of sophistic thought. Particular attention is given to their views on language, ethics, and the social construction of various norms, as well as to their varied, often undogmatic dialectical methods. The assumption that the sophists must have shared common doctrines (not merely overlapping interests and professional practices) is called into question.

The Sophist is one of the late Dialogues of Plato. This dialogue takes place a day after Plato's Theaetetus, and aims at defining the Sophist. The participants are Socrates, who plays a minor role, the highly promising young student Theaetetus, and a Visitor from Elea, who plays the major role in the conversation.

The Exclusion Argument, which aims to deny the causal efficacy of irreducible mental properties, is probably the most serious challenge to non-reductive physicalism. Many proposed solutions to the exclusion problem can only reject simplified exclusion arguments, but fail to block a sophisticated version I introduce. In this paper, I attempt to show that we can refute the sophisticated exclusion argument by appeal to a sophisticated understanding of causation, what I call the 'Dual-condition Conception of Causation'. Specifically, I argue that the (...) dual-condition account of causation gives strong support to the so-called 'Autonomy Solution', which contends that even if mental properties are unable to cause (fundamental) physical properties, they can still cause higher-level properties (such as mental, behavioral, and social properties)—if so, human agency would be preserved in the physical world. (shrink)

In Platons Dialog Sophistes wird nach der Definition des Sophisten gefragt; das führt zum Begriff des Nichtseienden und schließlich unter dem Stichwort 'Dialektik' auf die Frage nach dem Seienden. Daß Platon dabei von der sophistischen Methode ausgeht, das Seiende als bloße Spitze einer Begriffspyramide zu deuten, haben seine Interpreten seit jeher als irgendwie widersprüchlich empfunden. Dieser Kommentar ist für Leser gedacht, die bereit sind, den Sophistes genau zu studieren, aber dabei einen Begleiter haben möchten, der ihnen in möglichst direkter und (...) knapper Form hilft, den oft schwierigen einzelnen Schritten zu folgen und zugleich die Übersicht über das nicht weniger schwierige Ganze zu behalten. Er will nicht in die kaum noch überschaubare wissenschaftliche Diskussion einführen, sondern nur das dort zunehmend ins Hintertreffen geratende unmittelbare Verständnis des Wortlauts sicherstellen. Er ist "kritisch", weil er zum unbefangenen Lesen anhalten möchte. Damit wendet er sich nicht gegen die idealistische Interpretation von Platons Dialogen, der Platon seinen Ruhm als Philosoph verdankt, sondern will zeigen, daß es falsch wäre, den Platon, der im Sophistes Grundlegendes u. a. über Begriffsbildung und Sprache zu sagen hat, darüber zu vernachlässigen. (shrink)

Sophistics is the paradigm of a discourse that does things with words. It is not pure rhetoric, as Plato wants us to believe, but it provides an alternative to the philosophical mainstream. A sophistic history of philosophy questions the orthodox philosophical history of philosophy: that of ontology and truth in itself. In this book, we discover unusual Presocratics, wreaking havoc with the fetish of true and false. Their logoi perform politics and perform reality. Their sophistic practice can shed crucial light (...) on contemporary events, such as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in South Africa, where, to quote Desmond Tutu, "words, language, and rhetoric do things," creating things like the new "rainbow people." Transitional justice requires a consistent and sustainable relativism: not Truth, but truth for, and enough of the truth for there to be a community. Philosophy itself is about words before it is about concepts. Language manifests itself in reality only as multiplicity; different languages perform different types of worlds; and difficulties of translation are but symptoms of these differences. This desacralized untranslatability undermines and deconstructs the Heideggerian statement that there is a historical language of philosophy that is Greek by essence and today is German. Sophistical Practice constitutes a major contribution to the debate among philosophical pluralism, unitarism, and pragmatism. It will change how we discuss such words as city, truth, and politics. Philologically and philosophically rethinking the sophistical gesture, relying on performance and translation, it proposes a new paradigm for the human sciences. (shrink)

Suppose that one thinks that certain symmetries of a theory reveal “surplus structure”. What would a formalism without that surplus structure look like? The conventional answer is that it would be a reduced theory: a theory which traffics only in structures invariant under the relevant symmetry. In this paper, I argue that there is a neglected alternative: one can work with a sophisticated version of the theory, in which the symmetries act as isomorphisms.

In a highly original rereading of the writings and seminars of Jacques Lacan, together with works of Freud and others, Cassin shows how psychoanalysis, like the sophists, challenges the very foundations of scientific rationality. In taking seriously equivocations, jokes, and unfinishable projects of interpretation, the analyst, like the sophist, allows performance, signifier, and inconsistency to reshape truth.

Plato's Sophist is a dialogue which is key to the understanding of Platonic metaphysics and dialectics: its traditional subtitle is 'On Being.' Thomas Taylor's translation was first published in 1804 as part of his Works of Plato - the first ever complete translation of Plato into English. This Students' Edition volume has extensive notes to help those coming anew to the Sophist to grasp some of the important concepts which stand behind the dialogue. Also added is an extract from Proclus (...) On Forms, Reasons and Dialectic (from his Commentary on the Parmenides); a dissertation, On Ideas, by Thomas Taylor; and two modern essays which the Trust hopes will further the understanding of the newcomer to Plato and his tradition. (shrink)

Dieser Titel aus dem De Gruyter-Verlagsarchiv ist digitalisiert worden, um ihn der wissenschaftlichen Forschung zugänglich zu machen. Da der Titel erstmals im Nationalsozialismus publiziert wurde, ist er in besonderem Maße in seinem historischen Kontext zu betrachten. Mehr erfahren Sie.

The past fifty years have witnessed the flourishing of scholarship in virtually every area of ancient Greek philosophy, but the sophists have for the most part been neglected. This is certainly true of Prodicus of Ceos: of the four most well-known sophists--Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicus, and Antiphon--he has received the least attention. Robert Mayhew provides a reassessment of his life and thought, and especially his views on language, religion, and ethics. This volume consists of ninety texts with facing translations--far more than (...) have appeared in any previous edition--and provides the first commentary on the extant evidence for Prodicus' life and thought. The texts are drawn from the best available editions; the translations are new, and faithful to the original. Mayhew's commentary is designed to serve the needs of a wide range of readers: both scholars of ancient philosophy, and advanced students curious about this intriguing figure who appears in over a dozen Platonic dialogues. (shrink)

This paper defends an interpretation of Plato, Soph. 259c7–d7, which describes a distinction between genuine and pretender forms of ‘examination’ or ‘refutation’ (ἔλεγχος). The passage speaks to a need, throughout the dialogue, to differentiate the truly philosophical method from the merely eristic method. But its contribution has been obscured by the appearance of a textual problem at 259c7–8. As a result, scholars have largely not recognized that the Eleatic Stranger recommends accepting contrary predication as a condition of genuine refutation. After (...) reviewing various proposals to change the text, the paper defends this reading. Finally, the paper turns to the methodological significance of accepting contrary predication. The dialogue depicts contrary predication as an instance of a class of statements that compel the soul's disbelief. Soph. 259c7–d7 suggests that these kinds of statements are a crossroad: one can either reject them and turn to eristic discourse or accept them and practise genuine refutation. The paper reflects on what this indicates about Plato's meditations on contradiction and philosophy. (shrink)

Two dialogues explore a vital concern of a democratic society: how to define the qualities of a genuine statesman as well as the distinction between an authentic statesman and a sophist.

_Draws out numerous affinities between the sophists and Socrates in Plato's dialogues._.

Summary: The paper provides an argument for modal primitivism, the view that necessity is not defined and is therefore part of the structure of reality. It then raises the explanation-challenge for primitivists: how can modal truths be explained by hyper-intensional truths, if necessity is not defined in terms of hyper-intensional phenomena? To address the challenge, the paper introduces 'sophisticated modal primitivism' which gives a substantive analysis of the notion of a 'source of necessity'. The final part of the paper offers (...) some applications of that novel piece of ideology. (shrink)

Ghostwriting for medical journals has become a major, but largely invisible, factor contributing to the problem of credibility in academic medicine. In this paper I argue that the pharmaceutical marketing objectives and use of medical communication firms in the production of ghostwritten articles constitute a new form of sophistry. After identifying three distinct types of medical ghostwriting, I survey the known cases of ghostwriting in the literature and explain the harm done to academic medicine and to patients. Finally, I outline (...) steps to address the problem and restore the integrity of the medical literature. (shrink)

In the Sophist Plato introduces a very peculiar character, the eleatic stranger who plays both for Theaetetus and for us the role of a perfect sophist. His terrific power simply comes of his refusal to understand the examples. He just requires his interlocutors that absolutely all what is to be understood by them must be explicitly said. And “all” means really all: even the most evident for everybody, all what is not necessary to say and perhaps is not possible either. (...) The eleatic visitor, in order to hunt the sophist whose role himself is playing, trays to say all indeed, even the most difficult: the meaning of words as being, not-being, same, other or similarity. In this way, the language shows oneself as a play of likeness and unlikeness. (shrink)

This book explores the place of the sophists within the Greek wisdom tradition, and argues against their almost universal exclusion from serious intellectual ...

There is a substantial difference between our way of "philosophizing", born out of Descartes' clear and well-defined thinking and bent on building alternative (aut-aut) models, and the classical (especially Platonic-Aristotelian) way where a constant use of technical and methodical pluralism serves to juxtapose different (et-et) schemes necessary to grasp an intrinsically one-manifold reality. The ancient Philosophers bring a great wealth of schemes into play, albeit in different forms. This is to say that one could also come across statements that are (...) clearly mismatched and sometimes even at odds with one another, without either giving rise to a real contradiction or (even less so) a quasi relativistic viewpoint. Quite the contrary, an approach of this kind focuses on the necessary knowledge of a reality which, however, is multiform. By assuming this interpretative paradigm and applying it to some of the most pivotal reflections of the Sophists, Plato and Aristotle, the Authors of the contributions herein provide a number of particularly eloquent examples of that typically "Greek" movement, which is to proceed steadily by association of possibilities, rejecting the either/or solicitations and hinging their reflections upon the more open and dynamic "and-and" combination. The authors believe that many of the puzzles of Ancient philosophy that have involved and divided scholars can acquire a new and convincing explanation with this paradigm. (shrink)

AT Sophist 255b7-e the Eleatic Stranger gives two arguments, one to show that being and identity are not the same, and one to show that being and otherness are not the same. Scholars have not paid them particularly close attention, but it seems generally agreed that the two arguments are quite different. In this paper I shall offer an interpretation which shows that the two arguments, though superficially quite different, are intrinsically and importantly related. Specifically, in the first argument the (...) Stranger elicits an obvious falsehood from the hypothesis that being and identity are the same. I claim that in order to distinguish being and otherness an exactly parallel argument could have been given instead of the second argument we actually find. However, there are sound dramatic reasons why this was not done, for in this case the falsehood would not be obvious. Instead, the argument we are given takes us deeper and analyzes the source of the falsehood by introducing a distinction between absolute and relative uses of"being.". (shrink)

The text of Sophist 237-9 is aporetic and shares with many other dialogues this structure: A question is asked and an answer, given in a single sentence, is reached and accepted by the interlocutor. The the interlocutor is examined further and his assent undermined. I argue that the Stranger does not share Theaetetus' perplexity and holds the rejected answer. I explain the Stranger's behavior by appealing to his pedagogy.

Of the later dialogues of Plato, the Sophists stand out. This article highlights the concept of sophist as propounded by Plato. A didactic approach runs through the text. Socrates harps on the relation between sophist, philosopher and a statesman. Are they three different or they are the same. The basic idea that Plato wants to convey is, both features highlight some of the key enigmas of the dialogue: What is the relation between the outer and middle parts? How seriously are (...) we to take the outer part? And is there a genuine, and successful, attempt to say what the sophist is? The article focuses on two key problems discussed and solved in the middle part: the late-learners' problem, and the problem of false statement. The article also discusses communion of kinds and Plato's idea of the four quartets. (shrink)

In several dialogues Socrates criticizes negative comments made against a sophist or the sophists. I show that Socrates’ target really is the sophists’ detractor, not the sophists themselves. From these passages I draw two broader conclusions. First, Plato’s defence of Socrates’ memory sometimes relies on creating a parallel between sophists and Socrates, rather than distinguishing between them and him. Secondly, Socratic philosophical practice has a widely neglected feature: examining and correcting the criticism made by his interlocutors against others.

In Lives of the Sophists Philostratus depicts the widespread influence of Sophistic in the second and third centuries CE. Lives of Philosophers and Sophists by Eunapius is our only source concerning Neo-Platonism in the latter part of the fourth century CE. Of the distinguished Lemnian family of Philostrati, Flavius Philostratus "the Athenian, " ca. 170-205 CE, was a Greek sophist who studied at Athens and later lived in Rome. He was author of the admirable Life of Apollonius of Tyana and (...) of Lives of the Sophists, a treasury of information about notable sophists. Philostratus's sketches of sophists in action yield a fascinating picture of the predominant influence of Sophistic in the educational, social, and political life of the Empire in the second and third centuries. The Greek sophist and historian Eunapius was born at Sardis in 347 CE, but went to Athens to study and lived much of his life there teaching rhetoric and possibly medicine. He was initiated into the mysteries and was hostile to Christians. His Lives of Philosophers and Sophists is our only source for knowledge of Neo-Platonism in the latter part of the fourth century. (shrink)

Why do multinational corporations frequently encounter corporate social responsibility crises in leading emerging markets in the new century? Existing research about institutional impacts on MNC CSR has developed a void-based account about how the flawed institutional system allows misdeeds to happen. But the fact that such misdeeds have turned into increasing CSR crises in the new century along with institutional change is rarely taken into account. This paper combines studies of institutional voids, institutional entrepreneurship, and stakeholder theory to develop a (...) concept of institutional sophistication, which refers to both the top-down maturation of the regulatory system that standardizes firm behavior and the bottom-up diversification and intensification of grassroots initiatives that redefine stakeholder membership. Based on this concept, we developed a framework to comprehensively demonstrate how both institutional voids and sophistication drive the MNC CSR crisis in leading emerging markets. Empirically, we established an original database that includes 309 publicized CSR crises encountered by major foreign MNCs in China, India, and Russia, 2000–2011. Through a content analysis, the paper reveals six common sophistication processes that drive the MNC crisis across contexts and also specifies stakeholder strategies that make these processes happen and vary by social problems and national contexts. We also discussed the value of studying corporate social irresponsible behavior in understanding the institution–MNC relationship. (shrink)

1. Generic statements are some of the most intriguing statements we make. They are so central to our commonsense reasoning that every attested human language can express them (Dahl 1995; Cohen 2013...

In this paper, I oppose the now-dominant view that Thrasymachus offers a definition of justice in Book I of the Republic. This way of interpretation Thrasymachus does not pay sufficient attention to the methodological assumptions he makes during his disagreement with Socrates. To better understand Socrates’ antagonist, it is crucial to remember that he was, in fact, a sophist. I argue that what the character Thrasymachus is doing in Book I is importantly akin to a certain genre of sophistic arguments (...) from the 5th century. In his discussion with Socrates, Thrasymachus attempts a genealogical unmasking of justice, which he hopes will change the action-guiding beliefs of his audience. Although my discussion is primarily about the methodology or structure of Thrasymachus’ argument, I conclude by offering a brief discussion of its substance, as well. (shrink)

Socrates' cross-examination of Callicles in the 'Gorgias' has traditionally been viewed as a paradigm of the Socratic method. I argue that, when he cross examines Callicles, Socrates behaves out of character. In fact, he acts like a Sophist and violates the very principles of persuasion that he advocates in the 'Gorgias'. I offer an explanation of Socrates' temporary transformation into a Sophist, and suggest that his role-reversal reinforces Plato's representation of Socrates as the model of the virtuous philosopher.

This paper examines the sophistic practice of antilogikê or antilogic, which consists in, as G. B. Kerferd described, “causing the same thing to be seen by the same people now as possessing one predicate and now as possessing the opposite or contradictory predicate.” Although, since Plato, antilogic has been cast in a cloud of suspicion, understood primarily as the dubious practice of making the weaker argument stronger, I explore a contrary interpretation that antilogic was a technique for pursuing the suspension (...) of judgment, or epochê. In this paper, I define the practice of antilogic through the tale of Corax and Tisias and the surviving fragments of Protagoras and Gorgias. In so doing, I hypothesize that antilogic was a method for averting the natural tendency of language to assign stability and durability to being. Through the perpetual displacement of one logos by another, antilogic grants thought access to the ceaseless flux and becoming of nature. As it barred language from assigning stability to being, so too did it provide a “way out” of the inexorable human drive captured in the opening line of Aristotle’s Metaphysics: “All humans naturally desire to know.”. (shrink)

This paper demonstrates the central role of the Socratic elenchus in the Sophist. In the first part, I defend the position that the Stranger describes the Socratic elenchus in the sixth division of the Sophist. In the second part, I show that the Socratic elenchus is actually used when the Stranger scrutinizes the accounts of being put forward by his predecessors. In the final part, I explain the function of the Socratic elenchus in the argument of the dialogue. By contrast (...) with standard scholarly interpretations, this way of reading the text provides all the puzzles about being (241c4–251a4) with a definite function in the dialogue. It also reveals that Plato’s methodology includes a plurality of method and is more continuous than what is often believed. (shrink)

Stanley Rosen's book is the first full-length study of the Sophist in English and one of the most complete in any language. He follows the stages of the dialogue in sequence and offers an exhaustive analysis of the philosophical questions that come to light as Theaetetus and the Eleatic Stranger pursue the sophist through philosophical debate. Rosen finds the central problem of the dialogue in the relation between original and image; he shows how this distinction underlies all subsequent technical themes (...) and analyzes in detail such problems as non-being or negation and false statement. Arguing that the dialogue must be treated as a dramatic unity, he pays careful attention throughout to the setting, the events, the language used, and the relations between the natures of the speakers and the topics under discussion. (shrink)

Generic sentences are commonsense statements of the form ‘Fs are G,’ like ‘Bears have fur’ or ‘Rattlesnakes are poisonous.’ Kind theories hold that rather than being general statements about indivi...