Sophists

Like Socrates, the Sophists turned to the study of man and human behavior, turning away from the material world of nature which the earlier Greek philosophers had studied. The study of the material world would seem more likely to yield definite conclusions than the study of human behavior, but even the material philosophers disagreed with one another about the very substance of which things were made. Therefore, to the Sophists, it was absurd to argue that such intangibles as good and bad could ever be clearly defined. Not only do individuals disagree with one another about good and bad, but entire societies and cultures disagree as to what constitutes moral or immoral, ethical or unethical behavior. One society condones cannibalism, another celebrates polygamy, another (such as that of the great Greeks) champions slavery as a natural state for some. Custom, preference and prejudice among both individuals an

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ch treats its citizens like the imbeciles they would have to be to believe such a falsehood. The Sophists openly declare that they are practical men, but Plato claims to be an idealist basing his perfect society on absolute good. In reality, however, precisely like the Sophists, Plato opts for practical ends--social order and control of the people with a "noble lie." To whoever argues that reliance of God or gods for instruction in what is good or bad, Protagoras, the most famous of the Sophists, declares: About the gods, I am not able to know whether they exist or do not exist, nor what they are like in form; for the factors preventing knowledge are many: the obscurity of the subject, and the shortness of human life (Stumpf 34). the absence of the gods as a sounding board for morality or goodness leaves human beings right back where they were in the first place--with themselves and their individual and cultural perceptions, conventions, preferences and prejudices, which are not much to build an absolute definition of goodness upon. Therefore, Knowledge is measured by what we perceive, and if there is something about each person that makes him perceive things in a different way, there is no standard for testing whether o
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Approximate Word count = 1551
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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