The First Sophistic

Superstructure of classical Greece

Introduction

When writing a historical narrative about the Sophists of the 5th century BC, one must first of all bear in mind the difficulty of taking an objective stance when reconstructing this period. The reasons for this are multiple. The first is the lack of sources; many of the works that the sophists wrote for their students have been lost, preventing historians from gaining a full insight into how they thought and assessing the extent to which their teachings actually influenced the course of Athenian culture. In the absence of these sources, early historiography inevitably fell under the influence of strong philosophical traditions that had built themselves up through opposition to the Sophism of the 5th century. Here, one is primarily thinking of Plato, whose dialogues, from Protagoras to the Sophist, shaped a certain awareness of who the Sophists were. Thus, in the Sophist, Plato, through the "Stranger from Elea", in a dialogue with Theaetetus, defined the sophists as, among other things, paid hunters of rich young men, masters of contradictions, sorcerers and imitators. In the Hippias the Elder, a dialogue between Socrates and Hippias, Socrates contrasts the ancient sages who did not sell their wisdom for money or boast about it and the Sophists who did just that in Socrates' time. Although Plato's intentions are clear, historians owe him an immense debt in this regard, because in his efforts to create a contrast with the Sophists, he left behind a wealth of valuable information about their teachings and actions in Athens.

The outcome of this awareness of the sophists that Plato had built up led to the formulation of two very loud claims: first, that the sophists were not serious thinkers and did not deserve a place in the history of philosophy, and second, that their teaching was immoral and corrupted the Athenian spirit. Aristotle, originally Plato's student and then his greatest rival, followed his old teacher in his footsteps when he said of the sophists in the Metaphysics that:

"The kind of reality in which Sophism and Dialectic move is indeed the same as in Philosophy, but the latter differs from Dialectic in the kind of method, and from Sophism in the rule of life which it preaches. Dialectic is purely critical where philosophy provides positive knowledge. As for Sophism, it only pretends to be what it is not."

These opinions were slow to change. The first change came in the history of philosophy; Hegel emphasized their place, interpreting their emergence through his own philosophy. For Hegel, the philosophy of the sophists was a necessary step in the dialectical movement of Geist or Spirit. The necessity stems from the fact that the philosophy of the Sophists, in his opinion, made up for the shortcomings of the teachings of the old Ionian sages. Early Ionian philosophy was objective; in its attempt to explain the order of the world, it used material first causes as the original foundations of the world, building from there. Hegel interprets that Ionian philosophy knew only the world and its external aspects that were studied and analyzed in the hope that universal principles would be found. These materials were necessarily abstract, however; insofar they were posited as the universal first causes they were also externalized from their sensuous aspects and elevated to the position of an abstract universality, which always already presupposed the framework of the subject in its negativity. However, for Hegel, what is missing in the Ionians is the awareness of precisely that subject, that is, the consciousness of the subject who observes the world and is self-aware of mediation as inherently constitutive to reality itself. That is why Hegel attributes the discovery of subjectivity to the sophists. Through the negation of objective thought, the subject manifested itself, thanks to which, following Hegel's terminology, the abstraction or emptiness of the universality of Ionian philosophy was revealed. The philosophy of the sophists then leads to Plato's and then Aristotle's teachings, where the conflict over the objectivity of subjectivity is resolved in the framework of Greek mind. The interpretation that the philosophy of the sophists was subjectivist only establishes the image that their teachings were opposed to the objectivist principles of classical philosophy whose creators were Plato and Aristotle. Although they were presented as a necessary foundation for later philosophy, considering the yophists as such, Hegel's analysis, in the opinion of many, only confirmed old doubts, and accordingly their negative influence on Athenian society. However it is necessary to mention here also the work of the historian George Grote and the opinion he advocated in his History of Greece, published in 1846. For him, the Sophists were a product of their time. They were the forerunners of the intellectual progress in Athens that was a consequence of its cultural flourishing. The attempt to categorically characterize the teachings of the sophists as immoral and corrupt was, for Grote, intellectually unfair; if the teachings of one Sophist corresponded to such qualities, this was not indicative of the entire Sophist "movement". By showing the differences in the activities of individual sophists and in their teachings, he showed that it was not correct to randomly attribute one category of views to all sophists. What they had in common was their profession, as teachers of public argument. Their contribution to Athenian society was viewed solely through the needs of the then social regime, and any assessment of their work as harmful to Athenian society is rejected in the absence of clear indicators.

This was the first significant revision in thinking on this topic and established the boundaries of the debate about the Sophists. Grote's work raised new questions, among which the most important were: was the sophism of the 5th century BC a unified movement or an agglomeration of different thinkers who simply coincided in space and time? The most important question, and accordingly Grote's conclusion: how to treat the sophists after his assessment that it was not Plato or other ancient thinkers, but modern historians, who most critically assessed the sophists within their modern, conceptual systems? How to approach the subject? Eduard Zeller in Die Philosophie der Griechen in ihrer geschichlichen Entwicklung argued, in contrast to Grote, that it was correct to assess that they were a unified movement. Continuing on Hegel, E. Zeller believed that the sophists, by breaking down older forms of knowledge and education, established the principle of subjectivity and affirmed moral relativism. On the ruins of Ionian science, man became the center that rejects everything that is not "real" for him. Man became the criterion of knowledge. This was the merit of the Sophists; they turned the study of nature into a study of man himself. However, their method, which, as Zeller argues, was based on form rather than content, threatened to stifle truth. The institutions of religion, society, and the state were in danger of collapsing under the onslaught of emerging individualism. Despite this, the sophists did have a place in the history of philosophy, because they were a necessary stepping stone for the scientific philosophy that followed. Zeller's conclusion was that if there had been no Sophists, we would not be talking about Socrates or his successors.

According to these methods and conclusions, two approaches are offered to the researcher; the first is historical, which places greater emphasis on the historical context and historical causes for the creation of the sophistic movement, as well as on their activities and opinions. This approach places great emphasis on their writings, how individual sophists thought, and the application of the hermeneutical method to each sophist. The second approach, inherent in the tradition conceived by Hegel, is based on the classification of the sophist's teachings within a coherent category, on the basis of which a meaningful whole is created and an assessment of the sophistic movement is built. This is, in brief, the picture that G.B. Kerferd presents.

At this point, several things should be noted. The riskiness of the second approach stems from its a priori structure, which most often sees in sophism one logical step in a series towards the actualization of Hegel's Geist or some other universal principle. There is a tendency for such evolutionary and foundational models to be blinding because they can, at the cost of losing empirical distinctions, create the appearance of something that is not really the case. The first approach, advocated by modern theorists such as G.B. Kerferd and Edward Schiappa, involves a rigorous analysis of the doctrines of individual sophists. Their method is philosophically centered and examines the movement of intellectual thought through different periods, which greatly illuminates certain details about the sophists that have previously been overlooked in favor of modern conceptual systems. However, such a way of paying homage to the sophists, justified by the fact that their doctrines were denied because they professed relativism, occurs at the expense of the general social context. G.B. Kerferd's The sophistic movement, one of the most important works on sophism in recent decades, contains a chapter on the sophists as a social phenomenon, but it is insufficient since the author contented himself with defining the position of the sophists in Athenian society through their need for higher education and adding that Pericles' support enabled their smooth functioning.

What should be avoided in any account of the history of an intellectual movement is a reductionist narrative; reducing it to just one particular by-product of social tensions. However, we must also not completely abstract it from the circumstances in which it arose (as well as the historical roots of those circumstances). Although an intellectual movement is a product of existing social tendencies, it is also a window through which it is possible to see how a society thought about the world around it and about itself. The sophistic movement of the 5th century is certainly representative, if we do not forget the importance that Hegel and his successors attributed to the discovery of subjectivity in this period. It is necessary to present in parallel the narrative connection between social changes and the changes that occurred within the framework of philosophy and intellectual history, in order to be able to see the connection between the two.

A brief overview of the history of sophia in ancient Greece

It is first necessary to present the concept of wisdom itself and the image that the ancient Greeks had of it, so that we could answer the question of who a sophist was, because it should not be overlooked that Sophos, Sophistes and Sophia are all roots and variations of the word "sophiste". They all carry the meanings of wisdom, intelligence, cunning, skill and knowledge, as well as understanding and cognition. Specifically, in the understanding of the ancient Greeks, there were different types of wisdom, and therefore in ancient thought there is a distinction between technical wisdom, skill in a particular craft; practical wisdom, which is manifested in matters of politics, and theology, or philosophical wisdom. This was the classification that Aristotle emphasized in the Nicomachean Ethics. What is necessary to investigate is whether this classification and conception of wisdom was an Aristotelian creation or whether it originated in earlier times.

Already in Plato's Apology of Socrates, one can find the main features of this division. In that work, Socrates, trying to test the oracle's claim that he (Socrates) was the wisest man of all, spoke to three groups of Athenian society, each of which represented a certain type of wisdom: poets (representatives of theoretical wisdom), politicians (representatives of practical wisdom), and craftsmen (representatives of technical wisdom), in that order. This classification into three groups, but somewhat qualitatively different, is also found in Aristotle's Rhetoric. There Aristotle explains that Alcides, a sophist from the 4th century BC and Isocrates' rival, distinguished the sophists into poets, philosophers, and men of excellent political skill. He then discusses the virtues that were necessary for a sophist, and in the absence of which he became bad and inept. These were, for Alcides, historia, παιδεία, and rhetoric. Historia, the investigation or study of the world, was characteristic of scholars; παιδεία was attributed to poets such as Homer and Sappho, and skill in speech belonged to those who were politically active.

The most important evidence for the persistence of this definition of wisdom is found in Plato's dialogue, the Protagoras, from which it is possible to conclude that the source of classification and categorization predates Plato and Aristotle. It is a myth that Protagoras expounds to prove that virtue can be learned. He tells how the gods, after creating animals and humans, ordered Epimetheus and Prometheus to teach humans and animals how to survive. Epimetheus endowed the animals with strength, claws, wings, fur, and many other things necessary for survival, but forgot to give any of these to humans. Prometheus, who supervised him, realized that humans were particularly susceptible to various difficulties because of their anatomy. Having first tried to take σωφροσύνη from Zeus's palace without success, he decided to steal fire from Hephaestus' workshop and technical wisdom from Athena so that humans could use it. However, humans lacked political wisdom, which Hephaestus could not steal because it was strictly guarded in Zeus's palace. Seeing this, Zeus sent Hermes to distribute justice and shame equally among humans. Hermes originally thought that he would only distribute justice to some and shame to others; but Zeus held the view that without justice and shame present in every man, men could not create and govern a state.

Several things can be concluded from this account. First, it is clear that if we accept the premise that the views that Plato attributes to Protagoras were indeed his, then Plato and Aristotle use a slightly modified, if not identical, version of Protagoras's understanding of the concept of wisdom. However, a very interesting nuance can be observed here if we pay attention to the order present in the myth; man first acquired technical wisdom, not political, which indicates that political wisdom is only acquired first with the knowledge of technical skill. Accordingly, taking into account the previous accounts, it is possible to make a table with the appropriate order, thereby indicating which wisdoms were most accessible to man and those that are not in the hierarchical order. According to G.B. Kerferd, this would look like this:

1. Useful skills, necessary for survival.

2. Political skill/wisdom.

3. Poetry.

4. Science.

5. The highest level of wisdom: knowledge of the divine order.

It should be noted that this scheme, as G.B. Kerferd notes, would not be appropriate if we moved it chronologically back, before the sophists; to the time of Homer. Such boundaries between individual types of wisdom, especially in Homer, did not exist; they were all interconnected. Aristotle's interpretation that something like this existed then is incorrect. Although he was not the only one, we should not leave out the fact that the most dominant form of sage in Homer's time was precisely the poet. The gods spoke through his poems, but this was not due to his technique, but rather to the connection between the poet and the gods, which also constituted an archaic conception of wisdom. The poet was granted visions that were inaccessible to ordinary mortals. This gift was given to the poets by the Muses, who, depriving the poet of mortal vision, granted him insight into ἀλήθεια, true speech. The poet asked them to become their speaker, and they to grant him truth by showing him the whole world and its past, through which he acquired true knowledge. This, then, was the connection between the poet and the Muses, that is, the conditions in which the earlier conception of wisdom arose.

Given this gap between the undivided wisdom of the Homeric age and the fragmented and gradual wisdom of Plato’s time and post-Platonism, what was the position of the sophist in all this? Here we must turn to Plato himself. According to Protagoras in Plato's work of the same name, Sophism is:

,,...an old art, but those who practice it among the ancients, out of fear of what is hateful in it, take only something as an excuse and hide behind it: some for poetry, like Homer, Hesiod and Simonides, others again for sacred mysteries and prophecy like the Orpheans and Muses, and some, I have noticed, for grammar, like Icus of Tarentum and Herodicus of Selymbria, formerly of Megara. The latter is still a sophist. Your Agathocles, the great sophist, took music as an excuse, and so did Pythoclides of Ceania and many others. All of them, as I said, were frightened by envy, and so they covered themselves with these arts as with a veil. But I do not agree with any of them in this, because I do not think that they achieved what they wanted at all. It did not escape the eyes of the leaders of the cities that they were engaged in what was only an excuse, because the majority, I should say, see nothing, but what some say is confirmed by others. Therefore, to flee and not to escape, but to be caught – is great madness, and it must anger people even more, because they consider such a man to be, among other things, a deceiver. And for this reason I have taken the opposite path to them. And I admit that I am a sophist and to educate people. And I will rather admit it than to hide it – and that, I think, is a better precaution than the other. And I have considered the second precaution against this one, and, thank God, I do not suffer any horrors because I admit that I am a sophist. And I have been engaged in this art for many years...''

There are several key things to pay attention to in this passage. The first is that Protagoras applies the term “sophist” to all those he considers his predecessors – here G.B. Kerferd’s model is useful, because Protagoras speaks within the framework of “divided wisdom” to define how his predecessors operated. He defined not only who all were sophists, but also who was a sophist. They all practiced one particular thing, opening up a special path to wisdom for themselves. However, they, according to Protagoras, did not openly admit that they were sophists, teachers of wisdom; instead, worrying about their own safety, they called themselves musicians, poets, athletes, etc. Although it is used in the narrative as an excuse to cover up what is true, alethestate prophasis, it is precisely in this use that we see how Protagoras agrees when he speaks of wisdom from earlier times, thereby showing how it was transmitted and received in fifth-century Athens. Among his predecessors, Protagoras cites Icus of Tarentum, an Olympic athlete who won the 84th or 70th Olympic Games. He is mentioned by Plato in the Laws, where the "Athenian" states that, driven by ambition and a desire for skill, he was gentle and temperate in soul, and while preparing for the competition he allegedly never touched a woman or a boy. Pausanias, five centuries later, records that after his victory Icus was considered the best trainer in all of Greece. Even Roman writers during the Empire admired him, such as Claudius Elanus in De Anima Naturalis. Herodicus is also mentioned, whom Plato calls in the Republic a wrestling teacher who, after falling ill, devoted his life to healing and medicine. He tried to create a synthesis between gymnastics and medicine, in order to invent a method of treatment in order to cure himself of a disease that was supposedly fatal. To this end, he recommended a moderate diet, the use of medicinal herbs and oils, and massage with a certain rhythm. According to Plato, Asclepius himself adopted Herodicus' teachings. The other examples cited, as well as their merits, are generally known. The question that now arises is; what specifically was this common thread, if it existed at all, by which Protagoras and those before him were connected? It is clear that the term "sophist" did not have the derogatory meaning it acquired after the comedies of Aristophanes and Plato's criticism. Also, it did not denote a state of being, something that in itself emanated wisdom. Being a sophist meant belonging to a certain profession. In this respect, it can be said that Protagoras presented the history of the sophistic movement. The link between him and the people he cited was their profession and certain skills that enabled them to access wisdom and educate the people around them. However, something has obviously changed in the conception of the sophist, otherwise there would not have been such a sharp turn after Plato and Aristophanes; when the sophist no longer referred to a teacher of wisdom or knowledge, but to a charlatan who has the power to deceive the human soul through rhetoric and argument. This criticism is, among other things, moral-philosophical, but currently insufficient to create a clear and complete picture. In Protagoras' account, if we look at how he defined the sophists, one particular dimension is missing that is crucial for understanding this movement; education. An identification is made between the sophists of older times and Protagoras as if nothing had changed in terms of their methodology of acquiring knowledge and wisdom; but with the exception of the mention of their concealment due to the envy of others, the specific relationship of the sophists with society through the prism of education is neglected in this account. Considering the mechanism of the earlier concept of wisdom, we can suspect that this is not the same not a version of what really happened, but a particular representation of that era that Protagoras uses. This is based on the ideologisation of the "eternity" of their method as well as the influence that "they" exerted on society through education and upbringing. However, this is where the historical narrative breaks down, because Homer and Protagoras are from two different eras with different values. For this reason, it is necessary to make a turn from the history of sophia to the history of παιδεία and, in connection with it, of Athenian society, in order to break this ideological vision that Protagoras created. In this way, the importance of education for the Athenian man will be seen and how the ideals of that education, and their destruction, contributed to the creation of the representation of reality necessary for the birth of this intellectual movement. Bearing in mind this dimension of the historical landscape, it will be possible to understand the phenomenon of the sophists in the 5th century BC.

παιδεία and ἀρετή before the sophists

What can be said about Athenian education before the emergence of the Sophists? There was talk of wisdom in the Archaic period; it is necessary to go back to that period to gain insight into their education and the ideals that coexisted with the conception of wisdom of that time, thus creating a unique cultural structure. Here it is impossible not to mention Homer, whose Iliad and Odyssey had a paramount influence and significance. Of course, Homer should not be viewed in isolation from the Athenian context. Before turning to the specific influence that Homer had on Athens in the period relevant to us, it is necessary to briefly outline the ethos of Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, bearing in mind the time in which these two works were created, and then their intertwining with the Athens of the 6th and 5th centuries BC.

Homeric society was, in the words of H. I. Marrou, a chivalrous society, seen through the prism of education. Their life was colored by religious ceremonies and sports. Games were organized in which aristocrats competed with each other. The significance of victory lay in the reward for the one who would prove the most capable – honor. These games could be organized in advance in the form of a public debate or duel. The significance of these public games should not be overlooked, because the Iliad and the Odyssey were created precisely in such conditions. However, the fact that such phenomena could be spontaneous, daily occurrences, as both Homer’s works represent speaks of the constancy of the structure in which people lived and the firm idea of ​​the reality that existed. There was wrestling, ordinary races as well as chariot races, archery; all possible competitions where a young nobleman could prove himself and outwit his opponents. It would not be unjustified to call this image of society "heroic." Accordingly, there was a certain code of conduct that was manifested in battles and everyday life. Because the society that Homer described was aristocratic, focused on warfare and struggle, virtue, or ἀρετή was strictly tied to the values ​​that enhanced and fulfilled these needs. Accordingly, it was originally not an indication of some abstract, moral quality of a person, such as goodness or humility, but rather the excellence of an individual in certain aspects of life relevant to the fulfillment of the ethical-aesthetic ideal that was required of man. These concrete qualities built a single concept of ἀρετή; something that could be defined as heroism. However, this model did not survive. Later, ἀρετή became a symbol of human perfection, which was not simply reflected in military successes and strength, but also in beauty and wisdom. This was, as Werner Jaeger points out, the beginning of the ancient Greek educational ideal which was originally firmly attached to the aristocracy and was at the center of its mental structure. The achievements of the Homeric man, based on ἀρετή were necessary for him to gain a reputation and be immortalized. Being immortalized was an act that was more important for any Homeric character than life itself. Consequently, the worst act, worse than death itself, was an insult to his virtue.

It is precisely this dimension of "heroic morality", as H. I Marrou calls it, that is crucial here. Achilles is its best representative. Fighting for honor more than anything else, he is angry with Agamemnon because he believes that he has deprived him of an opportunity, and after the latter offers him abundant gifts, Achilles does not relent. What he wants is to fight Hector, even though he was aware that after that battle he would die. In this context, Achilles was not concerned with Achaia, but with avenging Patroclus and defending his honor. Achilles, of course, is not a perfect example. He sometimes defied the moral laws that are present in the Iliad; Homer himself states that Achilles' treatment of Hector was immoral and a consequence of his hubris, which would later cost him dearly. However, this tragic dimension of Achilles' choice, to fight despite knowing that he would disappear, is the symbolic center of the Homeric man. For the man of Homer's time, and Achilles was no exception here, the afterlife represented the very opposite of what a man would aspire to; instead of the tranquility of the Eleusinian fields, he became a shadow in the underworld of Hades. Therefore, he was turned to earthly things, and his transience was fulfilled in his aspiration to be the best of all which gave him glory and eternity. If we have in mind future eras, Achilles' shadow was indeed enormous; its influence reached even Alexander and Pyrrhus who, following his example, wanted not only to imitate him, but also to surpass him in feats.

Such displays of heroism and moral contradiction had an enormous influence not only on epic education, characteristic of this period, but also on all subsequent forms of education. The poet educated others by using the model of education of heroes and them as models to which others should aspire. In the Phaedrus, Plato succinctly explains how the poet wraps the deeds and achievements of heroes in a cloak of glory so that others, following their example, would actualize themselves. The poets achieved this to a large extent by the very depiction of the hero's education within the narrative of the Iliad. Surrounded by advisors, the future hero was presented with examples of famous heroes from the past who, thanks to their exploits, remained remembered in history.

The imitation of the hero, with all its charms and contradictions, the rush towards the ideal that inevitably leads a person to death for the sake of eternity in the writings and songs of future generations was the ideal, or rather the depiction of the ideal, that Homeric works left behind. Therefore, it is not surprising that the conclusion that has long been extended in historiography that he educated all of Greece. His verses and hymns that were recited at the Panhellenic festivals served to ideologically establish the aristocratic value structure. As we have seen, Homeric and then archaic education (which, in its Athenian form, will be discussed in the next chapter) was expressed on a public level, through festivities and festivals, and on a private level, through the construction of the self, the personality of the individual, something that would later acquire the name καλὸς καἀγαθός. This was a double influence; institutional and mental. This is precisely why it is necessary to follow the network of this time; such a strong structure was not destroyed by the onslaught of the new order, on the contrary, it adapted. By creating a socio-cultural configuration unique to Athens, these foundations of the conceptual structure that have been discussed contributed to the creation of the sophistic movement.

Ancient Athenian Education and Society

With Homeric education exposed, it is necessary to return to Athens itself. Ancient Athenian education, thus defined, was the successor of the Homeric period specifically in Athens, and the immediate predecessor of the Sophistic period. Here we should mention the early uniqueness of Athens. It consists in the fact that most of the educational systems in archaic Greece were military-oriented. The separation of the Athenian educational system from other polises, on the other hand, occurs as early as the 6th century. The evidence for this is as follows. First, there are clear indications that military education was transformed into civilian. This can be concluded on the basis of political struggles, the reforms of Solon and Cleisthenes, and ostracism. Frederick A. G. Beck particularly emphasizes the role of ostracism; his assumption is that for its functioning it was necessary that the majority of citizens were literate.

Second, the sources specifically mention schools and the existence of a specific educational system; there are clear passages that depict the construction of schools as well as incidents during classes. Aristophanes himself mentions in the Clouds what was done in the kitharistes school. One of the most famous scenes depicting education is on the Duris vase, which depicts musical and grammatical learning. There is also the “Splanchnopt” vase, which depicts a music lesson, dating from the first half of the 5th century BC. These sources point to the fact that the goal of Athenian education was not to produce hoplites and to put young men through rigorous military training. However, the fact is that there are very few sources from that time that speak specifically about the archaic educational system in Athens. Based on these excerpts and the considerable silence of the sources, it can be assumed that military readiness was largely absent in its archaic period.

This separation occurred on the basis of the weakening, or rather diffusion, of the aristocratic value structure. It should be noted that, in the period when it was strongest, it had a great influence on the understanding of politics. However, this very fact did not work in its favor. Although the organization was aristocratic, the mental structure of the Athenian nobility, the eupatridai, was not oriented towards active participation in politics. There was no collectivist understanding or awareness of belonging to some abstract unity. Ancient Greek cities in the archaic period, as Christian Meier states, were entities that served the interests of the nobility that were directed outside the framework of the polis. Consequently, all the policy of the Athenian polis in the archaic era was directed towards sporadic conquests that were undertaken out of necessity or at the initiative of an ambitious member of the nobility who wanted to distinguish himself on the battlefield. This social configuration manifested, among other things, the absence of political unity in Athens. It was precisely the collapse of this "depoliticized" political form due to social crises during the time of Solon, and the tendency of the demos during the time of Peisistratus and Cleisthenes that made it possible to create a coherent political order that slowly became actualized. If Solon paved the way for this, Peisistratus's equalization of the entire citizenry with the Athenian state, a measure that ideologically legitimized his rule, added support to the growing power and self-awareness of the Athenian demos; political unity as an idea slowly emerged and became stronger. On the other hand, the reactions to this trend in Athenian society were not positive. Pindar and Theognis were among the first to zealously criticize this new direction in society. Through them, one can see how the old guard reacted.

This "awareness" of the decadence of society, represented, among others, by Pindar and Theognis, speaks of something else. As previously noted, after Solon's reforms, but especially the reign of Peisistratus, the emerging awareness of an abstract, political unity was stronger. The demos, enabled to participate more and more actively in the political affairs of the polis, became self-conscious of its position within the polis. Despite the rather conservative legislation of the Peisistratids, and the elite that opposed these social tendencies, the pure aristocratic ethos could no longer be dominant. The arrival of the Spartans, and the conflict between Isagoras and the Alchemeonidis, did not resolve itself in the creation of a new oligarchy that would stifle the newly emerging tendencies. On the contrary, they only contributed to the materialization of the revolt of the Athenian demos, and consequently to the reforms of Cleisthenes that determined the democratic character of Athens for the entire next century.

One factor that also contributed to this was literacy. Greater literacy was a consequence, among other things, of the opening of Athens to trade and the increasing demand for people who knew accounting. This led, in practical terms, independently of politics, to the universalization and democratization of aristocratic culture. The number of people who could be educated increased. However, it should not be overlooked that education was not free. It still remained available only to a few aristocratic families and wealthy non-noble citizens, who remained powerful on the basis of origin and wealth. The gymnasiums, for example, were full of knights and nobles; the power of the knights, i.e. their prestige, increased considerably after the Battle of Marathon. However, this too was changing; By the end of the 5th century, most Athenians had begun to participate. This was a consequence of the battle for political rights that the demos had won for themselves in the 6th century and the radicalization of democracy in the 5th century. Through these social changes, the first schools in Athens began to appear. This moment would not have fully materialized had they not been established. Although not everyone could, most citizens could pay for an education and, if we now go back to the sources that inform us about this, we see that although private education did not disappear, school education was increasingly becoming the norm.

In this regard, certainly the most important part of aristocratic culture and education was physical. Physical education is what prepared a person for war and for participation in competitions. It was the earliest developed form of education; earlier there was mention in Protagoras of Icus of Tarentum who was considered the best trainer of his time. It can certainly be assumed that he had many students because of the reputation that existed about him. However, physical education, which was the pride of the knights and the aristocracy, later passed into the hands of the demos. The consequence of this was that the old ideals associated with the Homeric ἀρετή changed and that in the new social context it no longer denoted heroic achievements. The predominant form of expression of physical competition was no longer in battles but in competitions. Instead of glory, strength was elevated to the position of one of the necessary qualities to achieve kalos kagathos. As a consequence of the transformation of Athenian education from military to civilian, this became the new ethos. The second component of education was musical, and this, according to Plato in the Republic, was complementary to physical education. In order to achieve perfect moderation in body and soul, physical education served to keep people fit and sharp, and musical education to make them gentle in soul and develop intellectual abilities. A special place, of course, was held by poetry, especially Homer. Every child had to know a certain amount of Homer. This continued in the time of the Sophists, although their use of Homer and other poets was intended to support their way of thinking, rather than to interpret the text itself. The most important Athenian poet of this period, who was also one of the most important statesmen in Athenian history, was Solon, whose poetry emanated the aristocratic ethos of this period. The third component was grammar, which, in the opinion of the Athenians, as Plato reports in the Cleitophon, completed education. It is likely that this form, in relation to the the latter two, later; music and physical education were from a very early stage an integral part of aristocratic education. This does not mean that aristocratic parents neglected this type of education. As to whether education took place in sequences or whether children attended all three forms simultaneously, Frederick A. G. Beck and H.I. Marrou agree that the sources indicate that they were simultaneous.

The consequences of this upheaval resulting in increasing literacy were great; the first, among many, was the sudden rise of philosophical and speculative thought in the late 6th and 5th centuries BC. This correlation was not accidental. The actual transition from illiterate to literate culture was slow; it can be said that only with the appearance of Protagoras in Athens and later did books become the more dominant medium for the transmission of knowledge, which was another merit of the sophists. However, it is necessary to pay attention here not to the quantity of books that were in circulation, a fact that is important but unfortunately very difficult to determine, but to the very form of the medium of knowledge. On the one hand, it inherited oral compositions that, although small in number, had an enormous influence on the structure of Homeric and archaic society. The change that inevitably had to occur with the increase in literacy is the change in the structure and form that oral compositions took on into something else, and consequently, the emergence of a different conceptual structure dominant in society. In historiography, this change is often explained by the mythos/logos dichotomy, when myth gives way to rational discourse.

This point of departure was developed by Eric A. Havelock, interpreting the emergence of philosophy and the writings of philosophers through this transition that occurred in the 5th century BC. His argument was based on the change in the form of thinking that was a consequence of the diminished importance of the oral component in society. Walter S. J. Ong accepted his thesis and created a list of differences between oral and written culture that, in W. S. J. Ong's opinion, were universal and appeared in every society. According to E. Schiappa, out of 9, there are 5 conclusions from W.S.J Ong's Orality and Literacy that need to be interpreted and put into the context of scientific criticism. These are:

The main characteristic of the way of thinking of oral culture is its form of additivity. Content was constantly added while form served to maintain the coherence of the narrative but also to enable it to be open to new content. Evidence for this is the very frequent use of the conjunction "and". The result of this orientation is the neglect of technical and analytical vocabulary. Secondly, the expression of oral culture is also aggregate, aided by formulaic and epithetic constructions. Analysis of thought was not the main characteristic of this form, albeit it was also present. Thirdly, the relationship of thought to the world in the mytho-poetic tradition is organic. It takes over the particulars of human life, remains faithful to them, and incorporates them into its narrative. The thought of literary culture, on the other hand, takes over objects from the phenomenal world, abstracts them, and forms categories of thought. As a result the mytho-poetic tradition, its thought, and its mode of expression are in an active relationship with reality. On the other hand, the relationship of the literary tradition is objective. An indicator of this organic nature of the mytho-poetic tradition with the world and society is, for example, the influence of Homer and Hesiod on ancient Greek society. Eric A. Havelock adds that this can be illustrated by the emergence of the concept of the individual self in the 5th century BC which, although present within a small group of intellectuals, was a defining feature that marked the twilight of the mytho-poetic tradition. It differed drastically from the incorporation of the individual and his personality within the tradition where there was no thinking "I", the subject. Man in Homer's time was strongly influenced by the corpus of poets themselves and their work with which he maintained a personal relationship and emotional identification. He, according to Havelock, did not exist outside the tradition. What replaced the psychic mechanism that exploited memorization with association characteristic of the Homeric age was the rationalization of man's position within society, characteristic of late Athenian society.

A good example of this is the reception of the concept ἐξαίφνης, the sudden in the post-Homeric thought-world. In the Homeric and pre-Platonic setting, ἐξαίφνης denoted a sudden shift of emotions, changing from sadness to anger to happiness and vice versa, sudden shifts to which human beings were utterly subordinate to. We mentioned this in the article related to Krüger's critique of Heidegger. Achilles is a good example of this: his anger which leads him to act rashly against Hector, in spite of the implications; his grief at both Patroklos’ death and his regret at the end when talking to Priam. Plato uses that very same concept but gives it an entirely different meaning, which now reappears in a context where it is intimately related to pure thought, self-reflection and dialectics. It is also severed from its connection to finitude of the human soul, as in Achilles; in Plato ἐξαίφνης or the sudden describe the manifesting forth of the Form of the Beautiful in Symposium or the ontological flash in which the world as such appears, as in Parmenides.

The thought of the mytho-poetic tradition, so closely tied to the daily life of its characters and the form that allows for infinite addition, was more tied to concrete circumstances than to abstract categorizations, logical reasoning, definitions, or geometric figures, all of which characterize the classical period. There is no kind of self-analysis; the reason, according to Ong, is that such thought does not come from thought itself, but from thought formed through the text. It should be noted that this transition, which places great emphasis on the mythos/logos dichotomy, has been somewhat revised thanks to more recent research. Today, such an open and simple causality between literacy and the emergence of rational thought is not accepted. What is forgotten in this equation of "transition" are concrete social circumstances, as well as the actual influence that the mythological tradition, regardless of its waning influence, had on the formation of rationalist discourse. Book never completely supplanted myth, even towards the end of the 5th century BC. The mythos/logos dichotomy was certainly evident in thinkers such as Aristotle and Plato, who attempted to explain the order of the world through pure reason. However, the sophists are precisely an example of those transitional figures who, in their attempt to rationally explain the world, used myths to provide additional support for their theories. Here too, we must not forget that on the social level this happened thanks to the self-awareness of the demos that, in contrast to the aristocratic ethos, clearly defined the framework of the political order of the polis, building on the foundation that had been built in the archaic period. The fact must not be overlooked, however, that this new system that was being born was not formed ex nihilo and that in the course of its creation it was itself fulfilled and complete. Herein lies, according to E. Schiappi and in my opinion, the peculiarity of the emergence of the sophists; It was precisely by combining rationalistic and mythical discourse that the Sophists created theories that were both philosophical-theoretical and political-practical in character, thereby clarifying the nature of democratic logos in the 5th century BC. The combination of aristocratic ethos and universal, democratic ἀρετή and mythos/logos: the mixture of these forms is a unique feature of the Sophistic movement; a moment that greatly illuminates the Greeks' awareness of the world and themselves in the 5th century BC.

,,Accordingly, a persistent theme… is that Protagoras and his fellow Sophists were transitional theorists and practitioners of discourse. They hold a distinct place in the history of Greek consciousness that should not be reduced to a narrow sense of mythos or logos.’’

Thinkers before the emergence of the Sophists in Athens

Before the first philosophical schools emerged, the first schools of medicine had their primacy at the end of the 6th century, in Croton and Cyrene. However, they were only a foreshadowing of more influential phenomena. Hippocrates, born around 460, created his own school, based on the teachings he had acquired, in part from ancient sages such as Herodicus, mentioned earlier. Although Herodicus’ advice was rudimentary and provided a simple foundation for Hippocrates, it was certainly essential for what Hippocrates would develop in his school on Kos, his native island. The Corpus Hippocraticum was a collection of some 58 works written by Hippocrates himself and his students.

His key contribution is what we might characterize as the growing empiricist tendency in ancient Greek science. In the Corpus Hippocraticum there are works that largely touch on the question of the relationship between religion and medicine. Here Hippocrates takes a critical stance towards all efforts to link the causes of disease to divine will, or to abstract them from their natural context. Hippocrates sought to create an empirical science of the human body. Philosophy contributed significantly to this development, thanks to its theories that managed to abstract the empirical sciences such as medicine from exclusively dealing with the machinations of the world from divine things and religion. However, this should not mean that philosophy and medicine collaborated. Each science, in its attempt to explain man, had different answers; For Hippocrates and the empirically oriented physicians who came after him, natural philosophy represented a great theoretical rival. The exception was Alcmaeon, who tried to unite the two disciplines.

What is the similarity between these physicians, Hippocrates and his successors, and the Sophists? Precisely in the fact that they sought to explain the human condition without binding it to any metaphysical principles; monistic or pluralistic, in the manner of the Pre-Socratics, or the gods through a religious prism. Empedocles' cosmogonic theory that there were four, eternal elements that were its basis and were only set in motion by Love and Discord was a kind of a priori teaching that Hippocrates, and later the Sophists, denied. They took what they considered valuable, but did not copy the entire system of these philosophers, creating their own theories in opposition to it just as Plato did with the Sophists. Thus Hippocrates and the Sophists, in addition to Empedocles, reacted against the Eleatics and the Atomists. The Eleatics, taking cue from its founder and one of the fundamental thinkers of Western philosophy, Parmenides (born around 515), denied the reality of the phenomenal world and the metaphysics of change. His teachings were based on the unchanging Being – what is, is; what is not, is not and can never be. The conclusion that follows from this is that bodily sensations are deceptive and do not represent the truth of what really is. Our sensors, eyes, mouth, nose, skin, do not give us insight into ἀλήθεια. For Parmenides in his poem, it is reason that leads him to the truth and whom he glorifies. The method to truth, then, is through pure thinking abstracted from the senses and sensations.

It is still debatable whether Parmenides was reacting to Heraclitus' metaphysics of change, or whether Heraclitus was reacting to Parmenides. Certainly one thing is correct; using pure thinking to arrive at the solution that everything consists of Being, and that Being is in everything, that it is one and unchangeable, was a great innovation in the history of ancient Greek thought and immediately became a very influential idea. It should also be noted that the very form that Parmenides used in arriving to this was through the poem - the Greek philosophical tradition properly began with the fusion of mythos and logos. What is fundamental in his poem is precisely his conviction that it is possible for man to know the essence of reality. What is Being? What is the relationship between the human mind, thinking and the possibility of cognition and reality? These were the questions that Parmenides tried to answer. However, this opening that Parmenides carried out did not end there. Largely opposed to Parmenides' monism, the new theories sought to re-establish phenomenal reality as primary in contrast to the negative condemnation it had received from Parmenides’ successors. Empedocles is one of them, who, although he admits some of Parmenides' arguments, gives his elements a true substantiality - they exist and form the basis of the cosmos. Anaxagoras, the teacher of Pericles and his collaborator, admitted that what is not is not, as well as the immutability of Being, but he used its uniqueness to create something else; Nous. This was a consequence of the conclusion that Anaxagoras saw as arising from Parmenides' argument that then there is no difference in magnitude and that accordingly there are no entities that can be distinguished from each other in a certain temporal-spatial configuration. However, if this argument is accepted, then Parmenides is right; phenomenal reality does not exist. Therefore, Anaxagoras posited that everything that has the same qualitative parts of which it is composed, as well as the whole to which it belongs, is fundamental and underived in terms of species. All things that exist and that we can see are, according to Anaxagoras, composed of those elements which, reduced to the most elementary level, Anaxagoras attributes to each other identity. Beings, in other words, are mixtures of them. The similarity with Empedocles or Leucippus ends here; Anaxagoras introduces another concept, Nous, to which he attributes the ability to combine these elements into beings. Nous has many of the characteristics of Parmenides' Being; it is identical, unique, and present in all things. Contrary to later philosophical definitions that Nous is creative matter within other systems, Anaxagoras' Mind was not; he religated the movement and expansion of matter. Leucippus emphasized the existence of empty space and an infinite multitude of unique, monadic entities within that space. For the founder of the atomistic theory they, unlike Parmenides' Being, moved in that empty space thus creating another open contradiction with the main thesis of Parmenides' theory, namely that what is not is not.

Protagoras

No thought arises in abstraction from the time in which it is found. The same applies to the Sophists. Their philosophical convictions were created in contrast to the thinkers who preceded them and to the political, socio-economic and mental order of the society in which they lived. This, I believe, applies to Protagoras more than to any other Sophist. The Sophists reacted against Parmenides and his theory that denied the permanence of phenomenal reality; but they also denied the objectivity of cosmogonic theories that did not take man into account. Here Hegel's assessment is correct that the philosophy of the Sophists, at least the most famous and influential ones, made a turn from the objective world to the inner, subjective. However, it remains to be assessed whether this turn was universal among the Sophists, and to what extent the subjectivist tendency in their philosophy determined the qualities of the objective world. On the other hand, this would not have been possible if certain changes had not occurred in ancient Greek society that provoked such fundamental reexaminations. These changes were closely linked to Athens and the consciousness that arose there thanks to the political and social changes in the 6th and 5th centuries. When it comes to Sophism in 5th-century Athens, the most famous representative of this movement was Protagoras. Born in Abdera, Thrace around 490 BC, there are traditions that attribute to him that his education at that time was religious and Persian. He was originally influenced by Heraclitus as a gnoseologist, and from Anaxagoras, for the sake of his pedagogy, he took over the idea that every man has his own role in creating a constitution for the colony of Thurii in 443 BC. This most likely means that he had visited Athens long before that and that Protagoras and Pericles had a good relationship. However, some of his most critical writings on religion, including the lost work On the Gods, did not spare him from the condemnation of the Athenians. By openly declaring that he could say nothing about the gods, whether they existed or what they looked like, he was accused of asabeia, something for which Socrates, in 399 BC, would also be accused by his fellow citizens. He managed to escape, but, according to Sextus Empiricus, died on the way.

His most famous doctrine and the foundation of his philosophy, from which such statements as this one about the gods proceed, is homo mensura – “man is the measure of all things”. This was in the first sentence of his work On Truth:

,,Of all things man is the measure, of things that are that they are and of things that are not that they are not.’’

This one sentence is undoubtedly the key, but also the most difficult part of his philosophy. It is very difficult to define its meaning. First, the term “man” is key here. One of the most important interpretations of this sentence states that Protagoras did not mean by “man” a single person here, but humanity, a collective unit. Leading interpretations today, such as G.B. Kerferd’s and Edward Schiappa’s, including Mario Untersteiner’s, believe that Protagoras is talking about man in general. The next point of contention is hōs, or in the part “that are that they are”; of what exactly is man the measure? Is he, if translated literally, the measure of the permanence of things that exist and the impermanence of things that do not? If so, does this mean that if there is collective agreement about someone’s existence, they exist, and if the opposite is true, they do not exist? This simple argument has very strong epistemological and social implications. However, there is another way in which the word hōs can be translated. It is “how”, or if we were to imagine in the sentence “that are how they are”, then its meaning would change considerably. The lesson of Protagoras, in that case, would not be that man is only the one who determines the permanence or impermanence of a matter, but that it is the one who determines the way in which it exists – in other words, all its qualities and characteristics as a phenomenon are ontologically subordinate to human judgment. There are several other problematic terms. It is difficult to philosophically define pantôn chrêmatôn, which consists of chrêmata; a word that most often meant "things", but could also refer to other things such as goods, property, or matter. It is questionable whether Protagoras, as later thinkers did, distinguished chrêmatôn from pragmata. In any case, since pantôn precedes chrêmatôn, Protagoras most likely meant all possible objects imaginable. Mario Untersteiner translated this as "experiences", thus transforming Protagoras' maxim into "Man is the master of all experiences, in regard to the phenomenality of what is real and the non-phenomenality of what is not real". Plato's dialogue Theaetetus expounds this Protagoras' thought in detail, along with examples that have given rise to three leading interpretations today.

The example that Plato (through Socrates) uses is that of the wind. In the dialogue with Theaetetus, Socrates invites him to imagine the blowing of the wind. Socrates then suggests that he imagine two people; the wind blows towards both of them, thanks to which one person feels cold and the other warm. The question, according to Socrates, is then twofold. The first, which wants to penetrate the essence of "wind", is whether we can then call the wind in itself cold or warm. The second is directly linked to Protagoras; if this is impossible, does this mean that Protagoras is right when he states that it is cold for the one to whom the wind is cold, and warm for the one to whom the wind is warm. If we take into account Protagoras' line of thinking, then this means that perceiving a phenomenon, regardless of its different qualities that may appear in the other, is always true.

Several things can be concluded from Plato's presentation. The first is that Protagoras's "perception" is equated with knowledge if one accepts his starting point. Although Plato's (philosophical) opposition to Protagoras is clear, his characterization of Protagoras' philosophy seems to be correct and it is still not clear in science how to truly define his teaching; hence the aporia from which three main interpretations of modern research have emerged. The first interpretation takes into account that there is not really a wind per se, but two winds, unique to each person, that is, one "wind" for a person who is cold, and another "wind" for a person who is warm. The second interpretation takes into account the existence of an objective wind, but which is not characterized by the qualities of heat or cold. The sensation only occurs when it comes into contact with a person, in other words, the wind per se exists in this case, but the constancy of its properties is denied. The third interpretation also takes into account the objective constancy of the wind, but also of its qualities; this would mean that the wind is both warm and cold in itself. Both qualities coexist with each other, which explains why one feels cold and the other feels warm.

If we take into account that homo mensura is, at its core, a theory of how things exist and not a criterion of existence, based on this example we can conclude that the perception of a phenomenon and its qualities will always be valid. Here G.B. Kerferd uses the example of a white object and states that the perception of a white object will always be what it is; the perception of white. However, this is where the source of the reproach against the sophists was created through Plato and up to the present day. Relativism is hidden in this teaching, because if we take into account Protagoras's claim that perceptions are always valid and that man is the measure of all things then this inevitably means that everyone's perception, regardless of the differences in their content, is true.

G.B. Kerferd's interpretation is just that; the wind contains the qualities of heat and cold, and one man feels one, another the other. However, both perceptions are correct and valid, regardless of their contradiction. They express what is felt, so if the sensations correspond to the perception and vice versa, they are correct. If all perceptions are true, then there is no way that they can be contradicted by another perception, because each expresses the truth that it "perceives". However, on the basis of this, three other interpretations have also arisen, each with its own corresponding argument to reveal the meaning of Protagoras's position.

If the perception is true in any case, then, according to the first interpretation, there is no difference whatsoever between the statements of the first and second man, because they are talking about the same thing. Contradiction is thus avoided. However, in the second case, if a formal contradiction is admitted, that one speaks about what he considers to be true (that he is cold) and the other contradicts him, then they are talking about different things. Because they are talking about different things, there is no contradiction. In the third case, if one person speaks about what he considers to be true, then the other verbally expresses something different, untrue. But precisely because of this dimension of untruthfulness of the second person's statement, he is talking about nothing. Since he is talking about something that does not exist, his statement cannot be considered contradictory. This, in essence, was the argument that Plato used to present the teachings of Protagoras and his disciples in the Euthydemus.

Of the interpretations offered, the third should probably be rejected. Although the first claim is given truth, it is done at the cost of reducing the second to non-existence. There is no false explanation regarding perception, for, as was emphasized earlier in the Theaetetus, perception, in whatever case it is and whose (human) it is, is true. Therefore, it should be admitted that both statements are true and that they are not contradictory on the grounds that they do not talk about the same thing, since they talk about their own experience separately. This could be further clarified if we add two more significant dimensions to this reasoning, Protagoras' argument about the two logoi and Parmenides. Plato in the Theaetetus and Aristotle in the Metaphysics consider sophistry, as embodied in the Protagoras, to have arisen as a reaction to the monistic system of the Eleatics. On the other hand, if we connect the philosophical significance of this doctrine with Protagoras' other doctrine of the two logoi, we get that although it is possible to consider that there will be an infinite number of perceptual experiences, as many as there are people, they will always be reduced to two; a starting point and a counter-position. However, this means that the positions are contradictory, something that Protagoras' homo mensura does not allow. G.B. Kerferd offers the following solution: although this verbal contradiction is implied, Protagoras' argument should be interpreted not on the basis of the words, but on the level of the things in question. In other words, if there are contradictions at the level of the words, it means that the two statements do not mean the same thing; thus making them different from each other and therefore non-contradictory. The third interpretation is given primacy, now going back, which is that wind exists in itself and contains the qualities of heat and cold.

If we look at the argument that there are two logoi about every thing that are opposed to each other, abstracted from the rest of Protagoras' thought, two interpretations can arise here depending on how we translate pragmata and logos. If pragmata is translated as "question", or "subject", it undoubtedly acquires a subjectivist dimension, thus emphasizing that both arguments arise from the subject itself. That would be the first option. The second option resembles the Heraclitean interpretation which, if we accept that pragmata does indeed denote things, places the emphasis on the nature of the object itself and the metaphysics of change. Considering that a strong boundary between subjectivity and objectivity did not exist in Protagoras' time, although he can be considered the originator of subjectivity, the Heraclitian interpretation seems to be more accurate because pragmata in his time conceptually still represented an undivided reality (meaning it was intersubjective, in contrast to strictly subjective). Viewed from this perspective, two conclusions emerge: first, that Protagoras' argument concerns the nature of reality itself, which, taking over from Heraclitus, is opposed to Eleatic monism. It not only contradicts Parmenides' metaphysical conclusion, that all that is is one, but also provides an alternative vision of the correct understanding and speaking of that which is in itself. Justification for this interpretation is also found in what Sextus Empiricus said about Protagoras:

,,Now, what he says is that matter is in a state of flux, and that as it changes there is a continuous replacement of the effluvia which it gives off, that, moreover, one’s sensations undergo change and alteration in accordance with one’s age and other aspects of bodily condition. He says too that the reasons, [logoi] of all the appearances are present in matter, so that matter is capable, as far as lies in its own power, of being everything that appears to everybody.’’

Sextus attributes to Protagoras the idea that there are two logoi inherently in matter, opposed to each other, and that it has the capacity to be a phenomenon for the perceiving subject (man). This also makes sense if we look at the other word that appears here: logos. The meanings most often attributed to this word are language and rationality. However, if we accept that logos takes on the meaning and association of language in Protagoras' philosophy, as Plato does, then it is surely a matter of contradiction within language itself, not matter itself. If we were to adopt that in this case, it does not represent some form of connecting mechanism of two opposing forces, as in Heraclitus; but if we were to take the different approach, then this would denote a logical and abstract way of expressing the nature of reality which, according to this statement, is qualitatively contradictory. Both interpretations clearly reject the subjectivist version, and the question remains whether Protagoras believed in contradiction within matter or language itself.

Here it is important to consider that logos can also mean something else. Originally, it is derived from the leǵ-, that originally means to gather, say, order, etc. Within the period of the Greek colonization it also gained the meaning of accounting. Since then it also means, notably, reason, word, etc. Later on Stoics used logos spermatikos which had a far more metaphysical, generative meaning whereas Philo and later theologians used to distinguish it between different types of words and speeches, and obviously there is Logos as Divine Reason. Having the above in mind, if we consider it in conjuction with appearing - φαίνεσθαι in Protagoras, then it seems that that all ways of φαίνεσθαι are inherent to things themselves insofar all possible contents are always already foregathered in the things themselves. This is also connected with change inherent to both things and the human being themselves; as they change, different forms of manifesting take place and this happens in tandem with the change in the human being itself, shaping the possible form of receptivity depending on one’s age or bodily condition. For now it should be said that the subjectivist interpretation of Protagoras, which is often attributed to him, cannot be fully be substantiated as it cannot fully account for the ambiguities in the evidence and Protagoras’ directions of thought that go explicitly against that framework.

Protagoras as a political thinker

Although it is difficult to find a single formulation of his thinking, Protagoras was certainly clear when it came to political thinking. Presenting himself as a teacher of ἀρετή, now significantly modified from what it meant before, he openly stated that it could be learned, regardless of a person's background, contrary to what Pindar had once emphasized. As Miloš Đurić says in The History of Hellenic Ethics:

,,The new ideal of upbringing and education carried within itself not only a scientific, but also a rational element, and this was lacking in the old noble ideal, which Pindar's poetry showered with the gold of the evening blush, and which was based on the authority of the gods, the state, tradition... A new aristocracy was being created, and its main characteristic was education and enlightenment.''

The myth of Protagoras was already discussed in the first chapter, but that was within the framework of the history of sophia; now going back, it is necessary to investigate what were the theoretical implications of the myth that he wanted to present to the public. The process of acquiring wisdom depicted in the myth, first technical, then justice and shame, is based on the interpretation that human nature does not contain innate qualities such as technical, practical or theoretical/philosophical wisdom. He wanted to justify his position, through a mythological framework, that ἀρετή can only be learned, and to show that any assumption about the innateness of virtue within an individual or a certain group due to origin or anything else cannot be a matter of serious consideration. The entire myth is shaped in the manner of an educational process, from the skills necessary for survival to Aidōs. They represent all the qualities necessary to create a state and lead. Due to the disintegration of the pure form of aristocratic ethos, which was based on the origin and wealth of the nobles, it was extended to the level of the entire polis and especially political participation within a given polis. If ἀρετή can be learned, and if it is necessary, especially in the time after the revolutions of the demos and the Greco-Persian Wars, to participate in political affairs and lead the state, the only one who can provide it is the sophist.

However, his myth also provides a justification and a necessity for the participation of every citizen in politics. The justification is precisely in the universal form of giving justice and shame to all people. This allows everyone, regardless of their origin or wealth, to participate in the political affairs of the polis. Because not everyone has the same amount of justice, education was necessary to balance these qualities among the population, thereby avoiding disorder within the polis. On the one hand, Protagoras provides an argument for action and participation in democracy; but he also explains its necessity through the myth itself; If justice and shame are qualities necessary to govern a state, as a substitute for political wisdom that they could not acquire, what would happen if these qualities were neglected? This should not mean that Protagoras should be classified among thinkers who had a negative assessment of man's ability to maintain a polis. Quite the opposite can be said; his entire myth is the antithesis of Hesiod's concept and his theory of the Golden Age and subsequent periods that have receded and represent only a further degree of decadence. Although Hesiod's thinking has considerably more nuance than this brief account allows, the fact is that the starting points of Protagoras and Hesiod are radically different.

Therefore, one of the most important questions about democracy, to which Protagoras alluded, is the question of leadership. If justice and shame are not equally divided, and it is the people who rule, then it is necessary to elect those people who are educated and capable. In this new arrangement, political power was one of the greatest aspirations of the Athenians. Aretḗ no longer manifested itself as a superiorist in relation to others through the sphere of courage, sports, or beauty – these were all still important, of course, but participation and position in politics were now at the top. However, we should not ignore the fact that the leadership within the democratic regime of Athens continued to consist of leaders from the aristocratic class. This did not mean that they did not go to the sophists for lessons. The most important lessons they offered, from Protagoras onwards, were intended for those who wanted to become political leaders in the polis.

What was the skill that Protagoras offered? Here we must turn to the third significant part of Protagoras’ philosophy, which is about the strength of one logos, or the weakness of the other. If we take into account homo mensura and admit that both arguments are true, it is still practically known, especially in politics, which statement is more useful and desirable and which is not. The argument that is more desirable will be stronger in the eyes of others, while the other will be weaker, despite both being epistemologically (and ontologically) valid. Therefore, the duty of the political orator was to strengthen this weaker argument, in the hope that it would overshadow the other, which had recently been stronger. This is seen as the last, significant part of his philosophy; Protagoras embarked on the theory of language in order to be able to clearly present the correct forms of linguistic expression.

Gorgias

Gorgias of Leontinus, a Chalcidian settlement in Sicily, was one of the most important representatives of Ancient Sophism, along with Protagoras, Hippias, and Prodicus. As is the case with other Sophists, little is known about his life before his mission to Athens in 427 BC. It can be concluded from the position he held within the delegation to Athens that he was respected in his hometown. He was most likely born in the first half of the 5th century, for we know that he was already an old man on the eve of his mission to Athens. Porphyry's estimate that he was born during the 80th Olympiad (460-457) should not be considered credible. In 427 BC he succeeded in securing Athenian aid against Syracuse. He achieved this thanks, as Diodorus Siculus relates, to his oratory and the beauty of his style, which left a deep impression on the Athenians who listened to him. He then travelled throughout Greece, and his presence was most noticeable in Thessaly. He taught his students for no small sum of money, and after his death a golden statue of him was erected at Delphi and Olympia. He was first a follower of Empedocles, as can be seen from his theory of perception. About 11 works can be attributed to Gorgias, of which two speeches and two reviews of his work On Nature survive, which is one of the most important works of this period. However, the interpretation of this work has long been difficult due to the obscurity of Gorgias's thought and the misunderstood meaning of the verb "to be" in ancient Greece. When the existence of something is expounded, it is inferred in the form "A is B", where A would denote the subject, B the object. The real meaning, however, is found in the copula "is". On the one hand, it establishes the permanence of the subject-object relationship; but it is nevertheless distinct from the verb "to exist". There is an existential use of the verb "to be", but it is understood that the verb itself contains, implicitly, more predicates than just the existential form. For language to be clear, it is necessary to see what the exact relationship is between words and the things they refer to and how that relationship is established. This, according to Kerferd, was Gorgias's interest in On Nature.

The writing, or rather his argument, is in the form of a syllogism and takes Eleatic philosophy as its basis. Its claims and conclusion are as follows:

1) There is nothing, 2) if anything exists, it cannot be known by man, and 3) if anything can be known, it cannot be communicated and explained to another. The evidence for this claim is (completely opposite to the starting point of Eleatic teaching): 1) there is nothing; that there is no such thing as not existing, is understood by itself, but there is no such thing as being, because it cannot be thought of as unborn and imperishable, nor as formed and perishable, neither as one nor as plural, etc.; 2) If something exists, a person cannot know it, because the fact that a person thinks something does not mean that it exists... 3) If a person can know something, he cannot communicate it and explain it to another, because it can only be communicated with words, and for example, color is not a word and the ear does not hear color, but a word.

M. Đurić's interpretation is that Gorgias was most likely a skeptic or a nihilist. The well-known view about Gorgias is that he made a parody of genuine philosophical positions and that he ridiculed the dialectic of the Eleatic School, something that G. B. Kerferd considers inappropriate in light of new trends of interpretation. Since there will be a separate stand-alone post for Gorgias, for now we’ll suggest here that Kerferd’s point of view is correct - Gorgias did not merely write this to parody Parmenides and the Eleatics, but fundamentally question the relation between thought and being that had previously been established by Parmenides and his successors.

Although interpreting On Nature is still largely difficult, there is much to be said about his oratorical skills. He practiced all branches of rhetoric, with rich stylization and linguistic formulas such as antitheses and wordplay. One of his most famous speeches was the Epitaphios, in which he openly proclaimed the Panhellenic ideal of conquering the surrounding countries. Rhetoric was for Gorgias the highest science, but he could combine prose and poetry and create a work in which both would be intertwined to make an impression on the reader. His Defense of Palamedes and Elegy of Helen were dedicated to the defense of a weaker person against stronger persons, forces, and circumstances that influenced them to do what, according to Gorgias, they were forced to do. There will be more word on this when we discuss Hippias. Although there is no complex philosophical elaboration, Gorgias was another sophist who moved openly within the form of myth to indicate the different directions that could arise within its framework.

Prodicus

Prodicus was born on the island of Kea in the Cyclades before 460 BC. Like Gorgias, he visited Athens on official business assigned to him by the city; Although Gorgias had only one such mission, Prodicus seems to have visited the center of Attica in this manner several times. He wrote several works: On the Choice of Heracles, On the Nature of Man, and On the Correctness of Names, for which he is best known – his theory of language, which, unfortunately, has not been written down. Based on the great emphasis Plato places in his dialogues on his theory of language, such as in Cratylus, it was something that also influenced Socrates (as Plato shows). Prodicus appears as a friend of Socrates several times, and it is mentioned that even Socrates attended Prodicus's lessons several times.

The work for which he is best remembered is On the Choice of Heracles. According to Prodicus, Heracles had to choose between two paths; virtue and sin. Two women appeared before him. The first was of noble beauty, modest and virtuous, while the second was the opposite of the first in everything. The second called herself "Happiness", although she admitted that those who hated her called her "Wickedness". Both promised him two paths; the first woman offered him a path without suffering, full of pleasures and ease, while the second reminded him of his noble origin and added that the gods granted happiness, beauty and goodness only to those who are willing to go through great hardships. Prodicus particularly emphasizes the following moment: the first woman, emphasizing the benefits of the first path, tries to convince Hercules not to take the other path because of its enormous difficulty, while the second indicates to him that the greatest joy comes from noble deeds achieved through great danger to himself. She illustrates this with examples that show that choosing the first path will not bear fruit, that there is no success on that path, and that she herself is the embodiment of all those who have decided to follow her path. Accordingly, Heracles decided to follow the path of virtue. This motif of choosing between two paths first appears in Hesiod and Theognis, but also in Parmenides, who pointed out that there were two paths; the path of Truth and the path of Lies. Prodicus's theory of ethics in particular contains the motif of work developed by Hesiod, the principle of effort and toil, as well as other old aristocratic values. This incorporation of old, aristocratic ideals makes sense if we also consider Prodicus's glorification of farmers as the best citizens who are happy to do their jobs and are ready to give their lives for the polis.

His theory of religion was that primitive man, so amazed by the universe and the earth, created gods in the process of apotheosis of cosmic bodies and earthly forces. He explains that in fact this psychological reaction arose precisely from agricultural activity. Agriculture, according to Prodicus, was so effective that it managed to create a mental structure that saw signs of divinity in the wonders of the earth and the cosmos. This was his naturalistic explanation, for which he was considered an atheist. However, when it came to the way of leading life, he was, according to M. Đurić, a pessimist. His understanding of the value of human life was low; this can be seen especially in the example where he shows that through all the phases of human life, and that every period of human life is filled with discomfort. When a child is born, it cries, because it begins life with pain; after the seventh year, all sorts of teachers come to teach him, and later more, until the moment when he becomes free and realizes that all his previous difficulties, compared to those he now has to face, were naive. What awaits a man after that, Prodicus claims, except war, wounds and constant struggles? And if he reaches old age, then nature "comes in like a usurer and robs this man of his sight, that man of his hearing, often both. If anyone waits, then she takes his limbs, mutilates them, and mutilates them; but very many wither in old age and in mind, and the old become children twice over." Prodicus tries to balance this pessimistic picture of human life with his theory of law, which, based on Hesiod, sees in work and law a salvation from injustice.

Hippias

One of the first polyhistorians and polymaths in history, Hippias was born in Elis, probably around 460 BC. It should therefore not be surprising that Hippias was more active in the Peloponnese than in Athens; but he is known to have been in contact with Attic sophists such as Antisthenes, Callias, and others. He is also known to have maintained contact with Protagoras, whom he often visited in Thurii. Like Prodicus and Gorgias he was respected by his city, which is why he participated in many diplomatic missions at the head of the delegation to other cities. He most often visited Sparta, where he gave some of his lectures. He attended many Olympic Games and gave speeches at them, which is why he became especially famous. The whole Peloponnese knew about him and received him into their cities. Like other sophists, he taught for money in many Greek cities, for which he received a multitude of citizens. As already mentioned, he was one of the first polyhistors; he boasted that he could answer any question, and he emphasized the power of his education, which was universal and delved into every area of ​​knowledge. These were dialectics, founded by the Eleatic school and elaborated by Protagoras, astronomy, geometry, rhetoric, grammar, history, music; he claimed that his knowledge was based on the method of trained memory.

Hippias's On the Trojan Dialogue was a work on ethics and education that uses the mythological framework of the Trojan War. He uses the account of Nestor's dialogue with Neoptolemus to show what were the appropriate occupations for a young nobleman. Nestor's advice to Neoptolemus takes on the educational dimension typical of the Homeric and Archaic ages; and Hippias himself admits that the ideal of happiness is, in Hippias the Elder, to be rich, healthy, respected by the Hellenes, and, after the death of one's parents, to be respectfully buried by one's descendants.

If we briefly compare Hippias' educational method with that of other sophists we can see that his use of myths, such as in the On the Trojan Dialogue, is more faithful to the old type of education in content. Based on the famous examples of people in the past, it is possible to create an ideal of education to which others could aspire. It was precisely On the Trojan Dialogue that consisted of lessons for the behavior of any future prince or ruler, while within the work itself the glory, the old aristocratic ideal, stood out. If we compare this with Protagoras, who considered the teaching of ἀρετή to be possible only thanks to the school of thought and speech, and Prodicus' educational method consisted of moral dualism, then Hippias, using old and new patterns to a greater extent than other sophists sought to provide the most diverse possible material for his students. This enabled him, among other things, to engage in one of the greatest questions that arose from the work and activities of the sophists - the debate between nature and custom. This should be considered one of the natural consequences of the sophistic mixture of mythical and rationalistic discourse. Situated between the worlds of mythos and logos, the sophists had to face the drastic differences on the intellectual level that distinguished the ethos of the older era and the new democracy that was rising in the 5th century BC. However, special attention should not be paid to their use of it but to the form in which they functioned. They had a relationship with myth insofar as they wanted to point to something else on the basis of its foundations through the form of rationalistic discourse that was being created in the 5th century BC. The myth was fundamentally changed to create something that could be called critical myth, which does not abstract elements from the myth but seeks to rationally explain them and point to other directions to which the myth itself does not directly allude. They holistically interpreted myths through the new spirit of the times. However, in some cases they cannot be called critical-theoretical, because they still subordinate man to higher forces within the framework of the stronger/weaker dichotomy.

I interpret them as critical, but here it should be taken into account that they manifest themselves in two different forms: as a critical myth and a critical discourse. Critical myths most often appear as an antithesis to traditional mythological writing, such as Gorgias' writings, for example, about Palamedes and Helen. If we pay attention to his defense of Helen, it consists of 4 levels. Since the stronger rule over the weaker, by nature, then it is natural that man himself is subordinate to certain forces that have power over him. These are love, the gods, physical strength and speech, logos. If it was the gods' plan for Helen to leave her home for Troy, then she is absolved of guilt; if she was forced to leave; again, she is acquitted and he who abducted her is guilty; if love persuaded her to go, then Love must be considered as a goddess whom no man can resist. Finally, if speech persuaded her, then this is normal, because speech is so powerful and majestic that it is natural that people can be deceived. In that case, too, Helen is acquitted. Although Gorgias himself admits that the work is frivolous, we must nevertheless consider that such re-examinations, however adorned with rhetorical skill, opened up new insights into the nature of myth and led to new abstract investigations into their contents. The defense of Palamedes also served this purpose, and influenced the creation of many successors of Gorgias' thought who used the dichotomy physis/nomos to clarify the nature of both things. They are antithetical because they contradict the classical conclusions of myth and emphasizes dimensions of self-consciousness that do not exist within the framework of myth, which makes Gorgias' writings a kind of critical commentary. On the other hand, he still pays homage to the mythological framework of thought, subordinating man to higher powers against whom he can do nothing but obey their demands.

Hippias's contribution to this issue is crucial. His position is best described by the statement in the Protagoras where he speaks of all men as kin by nature, not by a law that is forcibly imposed on men. Here one can see how much his opinion differed from that of Prodicus, who found salvation in the law, by means of which justice was manifested in the human community. This can be characterized as the cosmopolitanism of Hippias' thought. It is custom that separates men, not nature, as Gorgias emphasized, where the dichotomy between the weaker and the stronger prevailed. The dichotomy that custom created and divided people was harmful to man, while nature is the repository and foundation of all that is truly true. Hippias' skepticism stems from what he considered the identity that custom creates between justice and what is legal. His rebellion was directed against human laws, which were subject to change and were not universal. By creating a contrast between divine law and human law, he assessed that human legislation is not the expression of divine but of human agreement at a certain period that enforces tyranny over nature. Only divine law, which is universal, is true and to which people naturally obey. In this respect he was similar to Antiphon, who shifted Hippias' focus from the dichotomy of the nomos/physis debate to the question of class differences within society.

Conclusion

The foundations laid by the most important representatives of Sophism were further developed by their successors in the later 5th and 4th centuries BC. Gorgias's students, such as Alcidamantes, theoretically discussed the right of the weaker. Like Hippias, his conclusion was that God had set all free and that no one was, by nature, a slave; but unlike Hippias, he considered law and custom to be the only ways to govern, but if they were based on philosophy, and consequently, justice. Callicles, in contrast to Alcidamantes, emphasized the right of the stronger. The right of the stronger was not Protagoras' justice, but precisely injustice, which was evidence of the imposition of the stronger. For the stronger, all customs and moral laws are deceptive and foggy. All this is negligible in comparison with what it really is, which is the hypostasis of strength in the hands of the subject. In the political sphere, it was practiced by Thrasymachus, Proxenus, and Meno. Sophists such as Damon, Antiphon, and Critias took different paths. Antiphon continued the path of the Eleatic school, basing his teachings on the unity and unlimitedness of reason; using Hippias, he developed a complete system of natural law. Damon influenced Pericles and was the kind of sophist who hid from the public under the cover of music, while Critias remained notorious for his leadership during the period when the Thirty Tyrants ruled. It can certainly be said that the legacy of the sophists is mixed; it is impossible to make a single definition of what exactly the doctrine of the sophist movement as such was.

The aim of this paper has not been to expound the teachings of every sophist; If we look at it by that criterion, then this work certainly does not meet the requirement, because the later sophists are viewed only from the point of view of how they concretely developed a certain thread of thought that was established by its founders. Recognizing that the doctrines of the sophists differ greatly from one another, my investigation was directed not towards finding common ground between their answers, but between their questions. If we start from the premise that the fifth century BC was a time of dichotomies, such as mythos/logos and nomos/physis, and that the merit of the sophists lay precisely in their abstract and conceptual treatment of these questions, the question arises for us as to why they did so? What were the circumstances, or rather the conditions, that forced them to ask such questions, and why did this movement, based on the unity of questions, not answers, survive for so long?

The creation of the intellectual movement of the sophists was, in my opinion, closely linked to the great social changes that took place in Greece at the end of the 6th and throughout the 5th century BC. It was this opening that made possible the creation of the Sophistic movement. The naive realism of myth, which was maintained within the framework of tradition, was continuously abolished by new social forces that sought a new political focus. It soon became clear that the political and social reality in Athens could not support this vision, in line with the social upheavals of the 6th and 5th centuries BC, which led to the transformation of old mythological ideals. The mythological content of antiquity was no longer sufficient to define social reality, but that did not mean that its form had completely disappeared. On the contrary, it had experienced a renaissance.

This renaissance took place at the hands of the sophists. Its old, Homeric structure was modified into something that began to serve to question certain social consensuses. The fifth century BC should be considered a century of questions, not answers. The democratic regime that was established in Athens, and all the innovations that emerged from that period, were the products of a process that, however much it denied them, found its foundations in older times. Sophism, and indeed the radical democracy of the fifth century, should not be considered as great turns in a different direction from what had come before them. On the contrary, if one looks at the conceptual system that both used, it depended to a large extent on older structures. The negation of one content led to the emergence of another, but both were within the same sphere of thought. For this reason, the questions posed by the Sophists provide insight into the consciousness of Greek man at that time.

The opening of a new social reality made it possible to pose new questions, produced by a detailed examination of myths to their roots. If the democratic system of the 5th century arose on the basis of the negation of the aristocracy based on the conceptual structure of the mythological age, then the 5th century represents a return to that structure through a critical aspect. The entire intellectual effort of this period was directed towards establishing a stable source for a new order that became aware that it was based on the universalization and democratization of old values. This skepticism and self-criticism were intellectually and abstractly manifested in the Sophists. Philosophers initiated this task but the Sophists were the first organized movement to be aware of the questions that were imposed on it. It is therefore not surprising that the assessment that they were relativists is rejected here; on the contrary, they discovered that in many aspects of reality, such as the social order of 5th-century Athens, there is a contradiction at its root - and that contradiction within the material foundations of Athenian, and broadly classical Greek social reality will be explored in the next post.