The sophistry genre was, in Classical Greece, a determining factor in the education of the Hellenes. Its propagators possessed an impressive discursive skill that delighted their interlocutors. They talked about all things, the divine, the occult, the common and the arts and sciences in general. They proposed themselves as omniscient and, for a salary, were willing to teach their art. In addition to that skill, a great yearning for personal satisfaction drew a multitude of suitors willing to pay the amount necessary to acquire the art of knowing about all things.
However, in the dialogue "Sophist", Plato assumes that no man is given the power to know all things, which would make him a god, noticing, in the sophist's propaganda, a deceptive discourse of one who could then teach only an appearance of science universal. Here is the difficulty to establish the truth and falsehood that foster an ontological discussion. It is necessary to define the sophist so that he is not confused with the philosopher and the politician. If it is established that your art is an art of illusion, it is necessary to investigate the parameters that delimit it and what provides this power of illusion, in addition to determining its object and its relationship with the imitated. This is because it cannot be said that the sophist is a layman. He does possess an art that must be justified as illusory and harmful when one intends to formulate a critique and establish the ideal principle or norm for educating.
In this search for the definition of the sophist, Plato, using the method of division and classification, finds up to six definitions that would need a link capable of unifying them. Using the example of how to define the fisherman's art by hook, for example, Plato begins by dividing art into two types: that which is acquired and that which is produced. Subdividing, therefore, the art of acquisition, we have acquisition by voluntary exchange, purchase or bestowal; and on the other hand capture, whether by action or by word. Continuing the division, the latter genus is also taken in two ways: capture occurs either in the open, like fighting, or in the dark, as in hunting in which traps are used. Hunting, in turn, is subdivided into hunting the inanimate and also the animate genre. These can be aquatic or terrestrial beings. Aquatic fish are fished in two ways: the first is the net and the second the slingshot. If the sling is from the top down, then it is done with the harpoon. But if it's done backwards, from the bottom up, it's with the hook. Thus Plato defines the art of fishing with a hook and similarly proceeds to look for the sophist. In art by acquisition, by capturing words, in the dark, to the animate terrestrial genre, there is a subdivision: terrestrial animals are domestic or wild and man is situated in the first genre. This is because either there is no domestic animal or, if there is, the man is not one of them and would then be wild or man is a domestic animal but there is no hunting for him. If it is then agreed that he is savage and that there is a hunt for man, two forms of capture are used: one through physical violence, the other through persuasion. Also in this last genre there is a persuasion that is done to the public and another that occurs in private. The one that takes place in the private sphere is further subdivided by those who come together voluntarily out of love and those who only do so with a view to profit. And, finally, this profit-seeking genre is favored by flattery, by gallantry in the granting of pleasures, and is reduced to immoderate and unruliness. In this definition, one could classify the sophist. But it is not so simple to define it, just pointing out the conduct it provides. It must be justified that it is harmful.
The sophist would be, at the same time, a self-interested hunter of rich young people, since he only transmits his knowledge to those who have the resources to obtain them; he is a wholesaler in the sciences relating to the soul since they claimed to know all the virtues; and with respect to technical sciences, a retailer. Furthermore, it constitutes a producer and seller of these same sciences. He is also an athlete of speech always willing and positioned to fight long oral-discursive battles. On the other hand, the last definition, which is the one that allows for a deeper reflection and that prevents us from even condemning it, is that it purifies souls of opinions that are an obstacle to science. So far he would not distinguish himself from those who would speak the truth.
Despite being several misters, to designate it is necessary a single name able to unify these definitions since they can be true or false. The one that presents itself best is that of a contradictor (the purpose of the art that teaches is to form good contradictors). However, on this subject, Plato raises the discussion of the possibility of someone, incompetent in a certain area, contradicting the competent. If in fact this happens, it is because there is something prestigious about the power of the incompetent. In the case of the sophist, there is some brilliance in his wisdom that makes him contradict, giving him the boast of which he is so proud. That same boast that makes him claim to be able to know all things. However, with an irony characteristic of his dialogues, Plato questions this capacity. For him, whoever was capable not only of explaining or contradicting, but also of producing and executing, for a only art, all things, would never sell its valuable knowledge so cheap nor teach it in so little time. Somehow, this critique of the sophist's omniscient pretension shows that the only thing he really produces is imitation, homonyms of reality. And this is done through the speech that, like painting, allows a technique capable of taking young people, still separated from the true, magical words and verbal frictions, introducing a dissimilarity that eludes and deceives them, driving them away from the real. It's its mimetic character. However, the denunciation alone is not enough to prove that, in some way, imitation is an evil. This is because all ignorance is an evil and the worst one is believing that you know something without actually knowing it. Plato means by this that, in throwing itself at the truth and in this very impulse to go astray, the soul commits a nonsense which is what is called ignorance. This is the evil of the soul for which the only remedy would be education. But not technical, specialized education, but that willingness of the mind to seek and understand reality.
Having, however, specified in this way, it is now necessary to show what the sophist actually does in order to be able to regard him as harmful. His craft that makes it show and appear without being; to say something without, however, saying it with the truth is to suppose that in reality and in speech, error is possible. But to say or think that the false is real without, already saying it, does not contradict itself, is to make non-being existing. How could it be possible to think of something that doesn't exist? And say it? Is the Parmenidian thesis that Being is and non-being is not the correct way of operating thought? Plato will try to demonstrate that no, so that no false speech would be possible. It is necessary to check if there is any object to which the non-being can refer. And if it's just one or if there are multiples.
All this discussion requires a high degree of abstraction and depth in the investigation, without which one runs the risk of getting lost in representations that are inconsistent with reality. This is because, as Plato found out in "Theetet", the soul has the capacity to unify sensations, since in it there are ideas or universal forms that guarantee the ontological intelligibility of sensible multiplicity. It is impossible to designate an object by an isolated sensation without first having a prior notion of it. When we have an image or representation of an object, we only verify its appearance and not its being. This corresponds to saying that every representation is a copy of being and what allows us to classify it is an original form prior to all experience, or, as Kant would say, "a priori". However, this copy is not the real object; and it is not a non-being either, since there is a kind of being, an internal resemblance that it has with the original model. This determination would make imitation quite natural, since what occurs in nature is a copy. However, if there is something distinct from Being and which cannot be non-being, that is, it must somehow have existence, it is necessary to distinguish the types of imitation: the one that imitates the true being is a copy; the one that imitates this other kind of being, a being by similarity, is the simulacrum. Now, it is recognized here that non-being is. It could also be justified that the false opinion comes from this and if we already attribute to the sophist that his art he belonged to a mode of imitation, it would be enough to condemn him attributing to him the imitation of non-being or of simulacrum. The sophist himself who says that non-being is unspeakable, ineffable, inexpressible, etc., cannot, if he has good sense, attribute falsehood to this discourse.
But far from definitively giving the accusation against the sophist and once the necessity of error is imposed, Plato intends to show that there is neither mobilism nor universal immobilism and for that, it will criticize materialist theories and also the formalists. First, those who only believe in what is tangent define existence and bodies as identical. However, when asked about the reality of a living mortal being, they are faced with the truth that this is only possible if a body is animate, that is, if it has a soul. Even though this is material, they are also convinced that the just, the wise, the beautiful, etc., is only constituted like this in the possession and presence of justice, wisdom and beauty. However, they do not admit the material existence of these objects, which would result in the agreement of the existence of some non-material beings. The formalists, on the other hand, attribute an invisible way of being which are the intelligible forms to which the soul is in communion, contemplating the true, always identical to itself, and the sensible bodies, through which the soul comes into contact with the becoming that varies throughout instant. But they do not explain the meaning of this double attribution. What is the meaning of the relationship between the mobile, the soul and the Being? Becoming participates in the power to suffer and to exert some force or action, but the Being does not have any of these powers. How, then, could soul know? Plato clarifies that knowing and being known cannot be, respectively, neither action and passion, nor passion and action, nor both because if the to be known would be acted upon and at this moment everything passive starts to move and this is impossible for what is at rest permanent. So it seems that absolute Being lacks life, soul, thought, intelligence, movement and seems to be establishing a frightening doctrine. It is undeniable that a Being of such magnitude, the foundation of all existence, lacks precisely what characterizes it as such: life, intelligence and movement, since if beings are completely immobile there is no intelligence, that is, there is no subject for any object; but also if everything moves there cannot also be intelligence in the number of beings since it would not give enough time to apprehend any object. The two doctrines together are necessary, then, in order to justify knowledge and its communication. The Being cannot be reduced to movement or rest. It is a supreme category on which all others depend. It's first on the scale of genres. Abstractly, one can follow a line of reasoning that allows us to define the other genres and establish their relationships. Movement and rest are absolutely opposite, but both participate in Being. Here, there is already another difficulty: Being is in itself and not Movement or Rest. So if it doesn't move, it's because it's static and then it would be confused with rest; if the being moves, it is in motion and is confused with movement. How can this be conceivable in reasoning? In order to have some kind of predication, there must be a community between Being, Movement and Rest. Otherwise, the only possible predication would be the one that evidences a tautology, such as, for example, “man is man” or “good is good”. However, in fact, what happens is that it is always asserted about objects that they are one, so soon then make them multiple as in the case of the union between "man" and "good" in the denomination "man is well". But let's examine whether or not community is possible. If it is impossible to alienate anything and they are incapable of mutual participation, then Movement and Rest not participating in Being, would not exist; if everything communicated with everything, the Movement would become Rest and vice versa, which is also inconceivable; but if only some things lend themselves to the community while others don't, it would be possible to understand the structure of the intelligible universe that, according to Plato, is the foundation of the sensible that can be deduced. This is because, contrary to what is traditionally and customarily understood by the Theory of Ideas in Plato, in which these are of character absolute, not establishing a relationship with anything, only if they intercommunicate can there be a union capable of forming the objects. every idea é in itself and it is not the other idea. Just like the lyrics; among them there are vowels that are distinguished from the others and that serve to establish agreement, as well as disagreement, between all the letters in the formation of words. It's a bond that allows the combination. Plato's concern is precisely with such determination: the young man who does not yet know of the laws that allow such an agreement is influenced by whoever instills something in him. Because for the correct use of such laws an art or science is necessary: grammar. Likewise, in relation to bass and treble sounds, who knows if they match or not is the musician. Anyone who doesn't understand is a layman. There is, in all art, competence and incompetence. And if the genres are mutually susceptible to association, there is a need for a science that guides these genres, through discourse, pointing out precisely which ones match and which ones do not. And yet dividing by genders not taking one form for another is the science of dialectics. This is the supreme science and whoever uses it is capable of taking refuge either in justice or in obscurity. At this point, Plato shows the fine line that differentiates the sophist from the philosopher, a line which a vulgar soul is unable to distinguish, apart from to characterize the second with the one that addresses Being while the first surrenders to non-being and such difference will be noticed in the speech. It is necessary to look for what qualitatively differentiates Being from non-being, since difficult reasonings are addressed to one, but which allow a kind of contemplation while the other is only attributed the clipping and montage of reality, which properly constitutes the simulacrum.
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To this end, Plato further develops two supreme genres necessary to complement the understanding of those first three. This development is due to the fact that each of those genders is perceived to be the other in relation to both and the same in relation to itself. Thus, these two new genres, the Same and the Other, constitute themselves as distinct genres from those and their highly abstract combinations. In this way, Movement is other than Rest. He is not Rest. He is also other than the Same, that is, not the Same. However, the Movement is the same in relation to itself, since everything participates in the Same. Therefore, the Movement is the same and it is not the Same. It's not the same relationships. He is the same because in himself he participates in the Same; he is not the Same because in community with the Other that separates him from the Same, he thus becomes another. If, then, of the genres, some lend themselves to mutual association and others do not, the Movement is other than the Other, just as it was other than the same and not Rest. Furthermore, Movement is other than Being; he is not being yet that Being insofar as he participates in the Being. There is, therefore, a being in non-being, not only in movement, but also in all genres. In fact, in all of them, the nature of the other makes each of them other than Being, that is, they are a non-being. Thus, universally one can correctly call everyone non-being and on the contrary, because they participate in Being, one can call them beings. It is because each form contains a multiplicity of being and an infinite amount of non-being and Being itself is other than the rest of the genres, which makes these so often the Being is not and not being, it is one in itself and the others, infinite in numbers, not they are.
It follows from this that not being does not mean something contrary to Being, but something other than Being. For example, is the non-Large more the Small than the Equal? Denial cannot be an attribute or meaning of annoyance. Rather, it must assign a meaning to something other than the thing itself. And if one studies the constitution of genres and their relations, one can see many nuances that are so complex that they can suggest some pertinent classifications of reality. For example, the nature of the Other bears some resemblance to science. This is because they are one, but each part of them separates to apply to an object and, therefore, must have a proper name. That is why the plurality of arts and sciences is established. When being is opposed by non-being, a determined opposition, being is not more being than non-being. Thus, it can be seen that there are genres that combine and penetrate each other, participating in each other to combine, in multiple combinations, the possible and rational designations of objects. You cannot separate everything from everything. Without a relationship between the ideas, the discourse is annihilated. However, its place in the number of beings must be ensured and its nature defined. If the Being were deprived of it, it would be impossible to talk about anything. But, since it has been determined that non-being is a different genre from the others and that it is distributed among the series of other genres, it is necessary to ask whether it is associated or not with opinion and discourse. It follows that if he does not associate, everything is true; however, if he joins together, false opinion and false speech would be possible. The fact that they are non-beings, what is enunciated or represented is what constitutes falsehood, whether in thought or in speech; and if there is falsehood, there is deception, that is, there are images, copies and simulacra. It is precisely here that the sophist took refuge, obstinately denying the very existence of falsehood. But if some still lend themselves to association and others do not, it might be possible to distinguish imagination, discourse and opinion and if there is community between them. If so, the correct understanding would depend on a correct ordering and disposition of the names in the speech that would produce meaning in a sequence in which its elements agree and harmonize. It is necessary to build a discourse the use of names (nouns) and verbs. When this is so, the discourse refers to something that we have a temporal notion, that is, if it is, if it was or if it will be. This relationship between true and false in discourse is a logical-ontological foundation that allows the attribution of these qualities to a discourse. The set formed by the association of verbs and nouns enunciates about something making the other the same and what is not as being what is attributed to a false speech.
Therefore, even in interviews, thought, opinion and imagination are distinct. The first refers to the inner dialogue with the soul itself; the second translates this thought as vocal emission; and the last to judgment, that is, affirmation or negation, made through sensible representations. So, the mistake occurs when a false speech is constituted that has sensations through the intermediary, that is, always with what is already removed from the real. But an illusionist discourse, which influences a consciousness to deviate from its purpose, is what Plato tries to explain when he divides the general types of art. For him there are two: the divine and the human. The first is characterized by being an intelligent power capable of giving rise to being, which initiates the things of nature and it engenders becoming and which can still be subdivided, since nature itself represents a reflection of norms or forms immutable. The second refers to human art which, even though it is part of the first, has its specificity: the creations developed by men. These, when they imitate realities in a natural way, produce what Plato calls a copy. But when imitation occurs at the level of appearance, it is called simulacrum. This differentiation is of crucial importance for understanding Plato's thought. This is because when dividing the arts, until the imitation is found, it is perceived that it still comprises a subdivision. Imitation is done through instruments such as painting, for example, and mime, in which the imitator lends itself to imitate the gestures of a being, be it man, animal or any other type of object. Even so, such art must submit to that division that classifies all knowledge: it is necessary to distinguish, in all arts, the one who knows from the one who does not know. It is therefore determined that the sophist, as an imitator, ranks among those who seek to introduce a difference into a copy. moving away from reality those consciences that do not have the intelligible parameter as a safe guide in the search for knowledge, through creation of images and which in themselves do not keep their proper proportions in relation to the original model (and this is exactly what the knowledge of the sophist). He approaches the sage insofar as he refers to being, but in a distanced way and along a very ramified path, which is the relativity of opinions. He manages to garner fame, disciples and success because he touches what every soul has: an original drive to achieve and that, for lack of reflection, he loses himself in any attempt to reach his goal when he does not follow the method. appropriate. He is skilled in the art of contradiction and in manipulating opinions as long as this serves to further feed his vanity and pride.
Therefore, the dialogue that seeks to distinguish the sophist from the philosopher and the politician ends up almost uniting them. But the distinction is evidenced in the construction of the Supreme Genres of reality that intertwine to form the various types of ideas that make up the intelligible basis of all that exists. You can designate the Good and the Beautiful whenever they are carefully investigated, using principles that are not congruent with reality, but sustaining it in its archetype, enabling discourse and knowledge. The sophist, as a refuteer, would be considered a purifier of souls, separating what is evil to them, since he claims to be a master in virtue. However, illness in the soul takes on two characters. One is the discord with what nature intended and the other is the ugliness, the lack of measure. In the souls of the wicked there is a mutual and general disagreement between opinions and desires, courage and pleasures, reason and suffering, and the sophist is the one who foments this disagreement by appealing to the appetitive part of the human soul, thus diverting men from their purpose originating.
By João Francisco P. Cabral
Brazil School Collaborator
Graduated in Philosophy from the Federal University of Uberlândia - UFU
Master's student in Philosophy at the State University of Campinas - UNICAMP
