The sophists were teachers of Greece in the latter part of the fifth century. Sophists taught rhetoric and the skills needed to win in courts of law, along with literary criticism, grammar and poetry. Sophism was actually a social movement led by sophists like Protagoras and Gorgias. The main elements of sophism were its skepticism of the intellect and its rejection of logic. Sophistry also embodied moral and ethical skepticism. The sophists argued that individuals by their very nature are greedy and pleasure-seeking, as well as selfish and directed toward the acquisition of power. Laws are necessary in the sophist perspective to keep such impulses in check to maintain order and justice. Thus, the sophists argued that moral and ethical relativity were inevitable. The sophists, therefore, introduced the principle that everything (morals, values, ethics, etc.) is relative, meaning that while the sense may testify to one situation, thought may dictate another.
Socrates and Plato viewed all human experience as constant, while Protagoras and Gorgias believed that life is torn by contraries and opposites and objects of experience exist only in their relation to other objects. Socrates (and therefore Plato) argued instead that the soul and the “good” are constant that are in no way relative. The sophists argued that since things are only known in relation to the knower, all truth must be dependent upon the individual perceiver. Truth, therefore, is no more than a personal opinion. Socrates strongly disagreed with this and undertook to find the “universal.”
As a public relations professional and sophist, Socrates and Plato would argue that there are universal values, ethics and morals. I believe as a public relations sophist that morality is relativistic, in other words the state and the individual can and do play a role in deciding and determining what is and is not ethical and moral. As Herrick (2001) argues
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