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Èãîðü Ðàññîõà
Àïîëîãèÿ ñîôèñòîâ
Ðåëÿòèâèçì êàê îíòîëîãè÷åñêàÿ ñèñòåìà
Summary
Sophists’ apologia.
Sophists were the first paid teachers ever. These ancient Greek enlighteners
taught wisdom. Protagoras, Antiphon, Prodicus, Hippias, Lykophron are most
famous ones. Sophists views and concerns made a unified encyclopedic system
aimed at teaching common wisdom, virtue, management and public speaking. Of the
contemporary “enlighters”, Deil Carnegy’s educational work seems to be the most
similar to sophism. Sophists were the first intellectuals – their trade was to
sell knowledge. They introduced a new type of teacher-student relationship – the
mutually beneficial communication on equal terms. They taught pupils how to
think independently and how to persuade others, which was inseparably connected
with the rise of democracy in the most advanced Greek polices.
Sophists were the first to proclaim that all people are naturally equal. They
put forward the idea of natural rights and social contract, working out the
fundamentals of the present-day law. In addition, they developed the basics of
philology, psychology, logic, and gave a scientific explanation to the origins
of religions. They embodied definite positive ideals of their epoch.
Sophistry flourished in the second half of the Vth through he first third of the
IVth centuries B. C. The period coincides with the heyday of the entire Greek
history – the so called Greek Miracle epoch. Sophists expressed some present-day
concepts of Ancient Greek ideology and mentality, characteristic of its Golden
Age times. The Ancient Athens of the times of Periclus were similar to the
Florence of Renaissance as to the type of social structure. That is why (?) the
art of eloquence (public speaking) was highly respected in Florence. The two
cities had a lot of features of the present-day capitalist society, which was
due to their role as the main centres of industry of their “worlds-economies”.
During the subsequent Hellenic period, the Old Order was restored, based on the
feudal rent recipients’ rule. The degradation of society resulted in the decline
of sophistry.
Sophistry represents the highest point in the evolution of Greek philosophy. It
is also the most prominent school as to the novelty of its ideas. That was owing
to the common propensity for innovation typical of Periclus’ Golden Age, which
in its turn resulted from the establishment of the individualistic and
rationalistic thinking similar to present-day mentality. Among other aspects,
close attention was paid to ethnic issues; some humanistic ideas such as Master
and Servant ethics and Enlightment as the primary condition of man’s freedom,
received scientific grounding. The genre of philosophical dialogue was developed,
as well as the rationalistic scientific gnoceology, aimed at consistently
opposing any religion. Dialectics, the most outstanding achievement of the
Antiquity, was also worked out by the sophists. Zeno of Helleas was one of the
sophists. Democrites’ ideas were, too, quite close to dialectics.
Socrates’ contemporaries regarded him ironically, as shown, for example, in the
Aristophanes’ comedy “Clouds”. Nevertheless, this scholar can still be referred
to as a sophist, although of somewhat weird personality. Socrates’ popularity,
which came later, should be attributed to the fact that he was the first
philosopher ever to have been sentenced and executed by law, rather than to any
valuable scientific contributions. Sophistry as such, rather than Socrates,
marks the line between pre-Socratic and post- Socratic schools.
Plato, with the exception of his latest works, is considered to belong to the
same philosophical school. Specifically, there are valid reasons to believe that
he was paid fees by his disciples. In Plato’s Dialogues, all points of view will
be proven and then disproved, so that an integral philosophical system is hard
to observe. Plato’s “Idealism” is but one of the many possible theories. His
ideal philosophy is a high-minded argument of wise men. As late as towards the
end of his life, Plato betrayed the ideals of sophistry, turning into the
world’s first proponent of totalitarianism.
Sophistry is Greek classical literature. Later on, philosophy, as well as the
entire Greek civilization, started to fall into decline. Over 500 subsequent
years, Hellenistic-Roman scholars never came up with anything novel. The entire
process of antique philosophical evolution can be subdivided into the following
six stages: Phoenician (IX–VIIth centuries B. C.), archaic (VIth – the first
half of IVth century B. C., classic (the epoch of sophistry: the second half of
the Vth through the first decades of the IIIrd centuries B. C.), late antique (middle
of the IIIrd – first decades of the VI th centuries B.C.)
The fact that early in the VIth century B. C. sophistry was rejected in Athens,
has a lot to do with the consequences of their defeat in Peloponnesian war, a
social catastrophe. Ever since, the prevalent part of the criticism of sophistry
is a criticism of sophists’ immoral ways of life and personalities, rather than
the essentials of their philosophy. For instance, Aristotle’s criticism
primarily concerns their pragmatism and tendency to make a profit out of
teaching. However, Aristotle himself taught his disciples along similar lines,
showing them how to “be able to prove both opposites”. It was Aristotle who
summed up sophists’ century-long elaborations.
The traditional modern interpretation of sophists as shown in Plato’s dialogues
appears to be groundless. The truth of the matter is that Plato regards sophists
as more serious philosophers than Socrates was. It becomes especially clear in
the dialogue titled “Protagoras”, which shows the latter as gaining an undoubted
victory over Socrates. Generally speaking, Plato’s works never regard sophists
as weak or worthless opponents.
A common opinion as to the essence of sophists’, in particular, Protagoras’s
philosophy, has hitherto not been worked out. Many researchers renounce the very
existence of any specific philosophical position in sophistry. The term
“relativism” itself now has a bad name. However, it should be borne in mind that
Protagoras doctrine emerged as a result of an attempt to get out of the
ontological dead-end to which the entire Greek natural philosophy had come. To
this purpose, he employed Anaxagoras’s idea about everything comprising
everything, whereupon he built his physical-ontological theory, and Zeno of
Helleas’s concept that all objects are such and different at the same time in
the same respect.
According to Protagoras’s philosophy, every object does not only seem, but is
different from every other object, including human beings. Therefore, every
person is his or her own measure of all other entities. The objective reality is
the Ego’s relations with the outer world. Every object’s essence is defined
through its interaction with ourselves. Nothing remains stagnant – every
existence already contains non-existence, and vice-versa.
However, the relativity of being is not to be regarded as absolute. That means,
that relatively stable and therefore relatively cognizable entities do exist,
among them the words we say. Doubt is not considered absolute by relativists
either, which differentiates them from skeptics and agnostics. They dare to
believe. Uncertainty is Godly – here, Protagoras becomes very close to the
concept of apathetic theology.
Gorgius shared Protagoras’s views and tried to prove them applying the same
method as Zeno applied when upholding Parmenidis’s philosophy. He argued that if
one accepts the opposite point of view and agrees that nothing can exist and not
exist at the same time, one is bound to come to an the absurd conclusion that
nothing is cognizable and nothing exists.
To prove that there is a universal contradiction within the Existence itself,
Protagoras and his followers in their turn put forward a number of special
logical arguments, called rules of contraries, or sophisms. The most well-known
of them is the Euathle’s sophism, which proves that an object can be such and
different at the same time in the same respect. Generally speaking, all
relationships of any entity are extraneous. The idea that all entities,
including concepts, exist and do not exist at the same time, was also accepted
by Plato. It should be stressed, that Plato’s philosophy as a whole is
relativists’ greatest achievement.
In his dispute against relativism, Aristotle put forward the main concepts of
his ontology: the existence falls into the existence in possibility and the
existence in reality, or substance and accidence – the ever changing “sublunary”
world and the stable world of divine heavenly bodies.
This division made his system self-contradictory to the point of absurd.
Aristotle quite realized, that the direct disproof of relativism is hardly
possible, which fact makes his criticism a mere tautology. It is very indicative
in this respect that materialists, idealists and even skeptical agnostics
applied the same arguments do disprove relativism. That demonstrates that the
inner contradiction between any forms of “absolutism” and relativism is the most
fundamental philosophical problem.
Relativist ideas were repeatedly renewed throughout history, provided the social
conditions were favourable. In variations, the concepts were advanced by Tzuan
Tsi and ancient Chinese sophists, apostle Paul, Nicolas of Cusa, Galileo, Rene
Descartes, G. Berkley, D. Hume, Ch. S. Pierce, E. Mach, A. Bogdanov, F. de
Saussure, N. Bore, P. Feuerabend, U. Quain and others. However, no consistent
relativist ontological system was developed after Protagoras. Meanwhile, a valid
relativist theory could provide a clue to a fuller and more adequate general
physical concept of the world, and to a deeper understanding of quantum
mechanics.
Âåðíóòüñÿ ê îãëàâëåíèþ
Ðàññîõà È.Í. Àïîëîãèÿ ñîôèñòîâ. Ðåëÿòèâèçì êàê îíòîëîãè÷åñêàÿ ñèñòåìà.
Õàðüêîâ. 2007.
Êíèãà äëÿ ïóáëèêàöèè â ÕÐÎÍÎÑå ïðåäîñòàâëåíà àâòîðîì.
Çäåñü ÷èòàéòå:
Ôèëîñîôû, ëþáèòåëè ìóäðîñòè
(áèîãðàôè÷åñêèé óêàçàòåëü).
Ðóññêàÿ
íàöèîíàëüíàÿ ôèëîñîôèÿ â òðóäàõ åå ñîçäàòåëåé
(ñáîðíèê ïðîèçâåäåíèé).
"Ôèëîñîôñêàÿ êóëüòóðà" ¹1.
"Ôèëîñîôñêàÿ êóëüòóðà" ¹2.
"Ôèëîñîôñêàÿ êóëüòóðà" ¹3.
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